26 Ways We Talk Ourselves Out of Obeying God's Word

Okay, James 1. I am going to begin reading in v. 19. Now I think this is probably sermon number one of at least two or three sermons from this portion of Scripture. Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.

For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the Word and not hearers only." And that is the primary emphasis of the three messages probably that I want to bring forth.

Doers, not hearers only. "...Be 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 the mirror, for he looks at himself, goes away, at once forgets what he is like.

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, be no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts. He will be blessed in his doing." Now, what I want to do today, I have 26 ways, and there's more. Even as I was sitting there today, I was thinking of some more.

But I have 26 ways that we hear the Word of God. And something happens in the mental process by which we don't implement what we hear. And I've got 26 reasons.

26 ways. And remember what James says, deceiving your own selves. Brethren, I'm going to give you 26 ways, and these are not excuses.

These are ways men go to hell. Deceived. You don't want to be deceived.

And brethren, even those of us who are striving to do the Word, these are temptations we all have to wrestle with. The thing is that if you're genuine, you do wrestle with these things and you conquer them. If you don't conquer these, James says, be warned.

You're deceived. So I want to deal with that today. And then, I actually want to look into the perfect law of liberty.

James is talking about it, but I'd like to maybe do a survey of Matthew one week. I might like to do a survey of John another week. And just gaze into the mirror of the Word.

So those things are ahead. But right now, let's just follow the flow of thought here. If I said to you, brother, you better be slow to anger.

Why? Because your kind of anger, that anger you have, that temper you have, it doesn't produce righteousness. The righteousness of God, the righteousness that God expects you to have in your life, it doesn't produce that. Therefore, lay aside... What do you expect me to say? Be slow to anger.

Be careful with that anger. That anger doesn't produce the righteousness of God. Therefore, lay aside what? What do you expect? Your anger! Notice the flow of thought here.

Verse 19, slow to anger. Verse 20, it doesn't produce the righteousness of God. Verse 21, therefore, put away... And you know what happens here? I expect, put away the anger.

But see what James is doing? He actually says lay aside filthiness and rampant wickedness. That's how the ESV says it. It's got a different translation.

It's going to say it a little bit different. But you get the same effect. You get the same feel.

Do you see what James is doing there? He's basically coming along with synonyms for anger. He knows what's expected right there, but he uses a different word or set of words. You know what? I don't think anybody in this room probably would admit you are guilty of rampant wickedness in your life.

I doubt anybody would admit it. And yet, James says, hey, you got a temper? Think it's no big deal? You know what the issue is? That which... Get it. That which doesn't produce righteousness in your life is filthy.

That's what he's saying. You all see that there. Rampantly wicked.

You see, we like to tone it all down. Well, I was a little upset with my wife. See, we call it upset.

James, he likes to call it what it is. A white lie. Remember that? See, we like to tone things down.

It's just a little bit of a white anger. You know, I got bent out of shape. I was a little bit upset.

I was agitated. It's mostly justifiable. And James comes along and says, filthy.

You guys all have your brown garbage dumpster that you take out to the road and it's full of garbage. We got a bunch of people living in our house. Our house is full right now.

That garbage bin gets filled to the top. Oh, and by the way, we got a baby, so there's a lot of diapers in there. That thing sits out there and cooks in 100 degrees.

Is yours like that? I can open my recyclable. I can open the one that's got the branches and the grass in it. But you don't like to open the brown one.

And that's basically what we got here. Don't tone it down. See, we like to dress up our sin.

Redefine it. He comes along and he says, you know that anger you got in your life? That stuff that doesn't allow you to produce righteousness? That stuff is filthy. That stuff is rotten.

That stuff is bad stuff. Rampantly wicked. What do you even think when you hear that? What goes through our mind? It's the idea of just bad, debauched.

And when you think rampant, you're thinking uncontrolled, out of control, unrestrained, flagrant evil. James, he just brings our supposedly small sins into proper perspective. And I saw this that Theodore Beza, the French Calvinist, he calls this the excrement of wickedness.

Listen to John Wesley. Purge me from every evil blot. My idols all be cast aside.

Cleanse me from every sinful thought from all the filth of self and pride. I like that. Because he sees that.

It's filthy self and pride. You start to dissect anger. I mean, what do you think you're going to find there? It's all full of that self and pride and self-importance and self-assertion and intolerance and stubbornness.

Is that a big deal? It prevents you from doing the righteousness of God. Which if you carry this through into the next verse, it prevents you from receiving the Word. Which if you carry through, it prevents you from being a doer of the Word.

I mean, that's the significant. Brethren, you've got to remember what all this has to do with. It all has to do with receiving the Word of God.

You see it there in verse 21. Put away all this filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted Word. That thing you count small may be a major impediment to you profiting from and receiving and hearing and doing the Word of God.

This is what James is talking about here. We're dealing with the Word. We're dealing with receiving it.

And you know, you can't just think... Guys, we don't think about anger as being filthy and rampantly wicked. But think about the things we do count filthy. It's just the filth that's on the internet and the filth that's in the movies.

You think you sit down and you watch a movie all full of filth and then what? You're just going to kind of glide right in there and open up the Word of God and God's going to speak to you and it's going to be all great and glorious and all you're going to feel revived. Do you think that's going to happen? What James is teaching us is the impurities, the contaminants that matters as we're trying to imbibe this Word. And he says the way you want to receive it is with meekness.

That's the opposite of everything that you find in pride and anger. Brethren, this is the idea. We've got to come to the Scriptures and be surrendered and submissive and open with a genuine desire.

Think about what was said in the first hour. Unless you forsake all that you have, you can't be My disciple. All.

Brethren, do you recognize where we need to be all the time? It's bringing everything on the altar. Allowing the light. No reservations.

Brethren, that is the healthy place to be. Lord, speak to me. And you start thinking about His Word.

You do inventory. We've got to slow down. We've got to really think and meditate.

Brethren, look at this. Right at the end of v. 21, which is able to save your souls. You see what this is saying? The Word, the implanted Word which you're supposed to be receiving with meekness, and you've got to put off all this anger and this stuff that doesn't produce the righteousness of God.

And this is able to save your souls. Do we think that way? Do you think that way? As a professing believer, you came in here today. Do you think that way? This Word in the hands of God is God's instrument to save your soul.

And the idea is that, brethren, the main preoccupation of you and me ought to be the saving of our soul. You ought to be taking steps and doing those things that God's Word tells you to do. Listen, there's a lot of people that rise up early and they go to bed late in order to make money so they can buy food and buy stuff for the body and buy stuff that's in this world.

How much more ought we to be preoccupied with the very things that God tells us in His Word are for the saving of our soul? Listen, the saving of the soul, you've got to be receiving the implanted Word. That's the idea. Able to save your soul.

Think, James does not randomly talk about the saving of our soul here. What he's doing is he's talking about the Word of God and he's saying that Word of God is absolutely essential and it plays a massively important part in your life in the hands of God. But listen, God's involved in this.

And if God says to you, look, there's certain things you better lay aside out of your life, or you're not going to be, you're just not going to produce the righteousness of God. And realize what that is. Receiving the Word is producing the righteousness of God.

Being doers of the Word is producing the righteousness of God. It's basically, he says three different ways, the same thing as he's moving through these verses. This is what he's talking about.

This is the way God saves people. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through all these ways that we tend to sit under the preaching of the Word and it comes in and we hear what we're supposed to do. We hear, but then we end up not doing.

And that's verse 22. Be doers of the Word, not hearers, only deceiving yourselves. I truly believe this is one of the most important verses you will ever hear.

Now, I believe that he's just simply picking up what the Lord Jesus taught. The Lord Jesus said that if you do His Word, He says, I'll tell you who you're like. You're like the guy that dug down and he went all the way down to the rock and he built his house on that foundation.

That's who you're like. There's different places we could go here. The Apostle Paul actually says this.

He says it's not the hearers of the Word that are justified before God, it's the doers. Brethren, this truth shows up repeatedly in Scripture. Now, here's the thing.

To do, we've got to hear. Don't think he's downplaying or slighting or dismissing hearing. He's not doing that.

To do, we've got to hear. To hear, we've actually got to be exposed to the Word. So you need to be under the Word.

You need to be in the Word. You need to be hearing the Word. You've got to let it go in your ears.

You've got to process it in your head, but you can't stop there. Because if you stop there, you're deceived. Why do we tend to stop there? That's what I want to talk about today.

So, notice the picture. I'm moving towards this still, building up towards it. But notice verse 23.

The picture here is, if anyone is a hearer of the Word, not a doer, he's like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. Okay, if you hear and don't do, you're like what? You're like this guy looking in the mirror.

You go away, forget what you're like. The point is, what is the point? We know mirrors. I'm going to ask this, how many did not look in a mirror today? Look at that.

Everybody look around. We all know why we looked in the mirror. Right? Why'd you look in the mirror? I was pointing over the top of you, but I know why I look in the mirror.

Because when I don't, I end up with sideburns that are way down here. And you know, I shave in the shower and I can't see where the... And so stuff, you got to look in the mirror because stuff is out of place. Stuff is wrong.

Stuff's messed up. Ladies, you're looking for where the makeup goes. You're looking for the blemishes and the wrinkles.

And you got some wild hairs coming out your ears and you got to deal with it. Why? Because you want to be presentable and you want to be beautiful and you want to be pretty and you want to be handsome. And you just don't want to, you know, my wife is going to say, if you go up to the pulpit with that thing or this or that, she was fixing my hair last night and cutting it.

And why does all that happen? Well, we look in the mirror because we're trying to fix the things that are wrong and the things that are out of place. And that's exactly, I mean, it's like, is everything in order? My hair brushed and yes, it's falling out, but you know, you try to deal with what's left and you got that. Is there food in my mouth? My wife asked me, is there food in my teeth? And she needs me because she doesn't have a mirror right at the moment.

But we look in the mirror for a reason. Why are you here today? You see, when you come sit under this in a spiritual sense, it's exactly the same. That's what he says.

It's just like that. In order, you come and you sit under the Word to have your defects brought out, revealed in order to be a doer. Are you here for other reasons? I mean, that's the issue.

And then look at this, 122, be doers of the Word, not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. You ever notice how often the Bible warns us about being deceived? And it's deceiving yourself, self-deceived. That means you deceive you.

You deceive. What's that mean? Well, you believe you're a Christian. You hope you're a Christian.

And you're not a Christian. You believe that you're on your way to heaven. And in the end, it's not going to prove true.

You hope to miss hell, but you're wrong. That's the idea in all of this. The defect is evident right at the point where your life meets this Word.

That's the issue. That's what's happening in this place. Oh, it's not implemented into your life.

Well, how's that like the guy that looks in the mirror and forgets what he looks like? Well, it's obvious. It's the idea that you go to look in the mirror and you see your hair needs brushing. But the moment you look away from it, you don't go for the brush or the comb.

You just forget. Well, how's that? That's like the guy that comes in here, the gal that comes in here, and they sit under the Word and they hear it. And there's some tinge of conscience.

There's some stirring. The Spirit begins to speak. They feel it.

But then what happens? They walk out of here and it's gone. There's no change. Do you recognize that doing that on a regular basis, you see what it says? There's an idea of deception.

What are we supposed to do when we look in the mirror? See things aren't right. Well, brethren, we're supposed to fix it. And that's the idea.

When you come under this Word, and this happens to some. Some of you, you sit here and the Word comes and you walk out. And there's a fair level of conviction.

Your conscience has been stirred. The Spirit of God is working. And you go out and there's confession.

Or even as you're sitting here, you're like, I'm the man. You're not fighting, you're not resisting. I'm the man.

And you recognize something's got to be changed. And then what happens? You see, if you're a doer of the Word, you come under it and you go out and changes happen to your life after having been in the Word. Your life, what are we saying? The beauty of holiness.

Brethren, you go to the mirror on the wall because there's an idea about beauty. You come to this because there is a spiritual idea of beauty. Brethren, do you realize that Jesus Christ saved us to beautify us? That's the picture of how Christ loved the church and the washing with this water.

And He's taking out all the wrinkles and all the defects. He's beautifying us. That's what this is meant.

That's what His Word is for. Brethren, don't see this torturous. Don't see this as burdensome.

This is Jesus who promised to save us from all His people, from all their sins. And it's the pollution of it to make us beautiful. There's a beauty in the holiness and that's what's happening.

Scripture is that spiritual mirror that reveals where I lack in holiness, where my righteousness is defective, where I'm not like Jesus as I ought to be. And so, brethren, just remember how beautiful. You recognize, you heard it today.

Jesus was talking about you carry that cross and we follow Him. We imitate Him. Think, don't you find Christ altogether beautiful? And you see what Jesus is doing? He gives us the Word not to be some torturous thing.

Brethren, we've got the spirit of adoption, not the spirit of bondage. His commandments are not burdensome. Hasn't somebody said that somewhere? Brethren, not burdensome.

This is for the beauty. Remember how beautiful Christ is. Don't you find Him glorious? His perfections, when you think about Him dying on that cross as He walked through this life and He's bidding us carry our cross and come after Him.

This all has to do... I mean, He is the most gloriously beautiful being of all. And what He's doing, His words to us are words meant to bring us into conformity to His beauty. That's what we're talking about here.

That's what mirrors are all about. Scripture's a mirror to look into that we might see what we need to correct, that we might be beautiful. And remember, this whole thing is backed by promise.

Brethren, what are the promises of the new covenant? Let me just give you a couple of them. I will put my law within them. This is Jeremiah 31.

I will write it on their hearts. This is promise. You see, brethren, when you sit here and you come unto the Word, listen, the promise is a promise of help.

It's a promise of power. It's a promise that God is gonna give you the ability. It's not gonna be an impossibility.

God has put His own Word behind it, His own promise, He's backed it by His own name. I will put my law within them and will write it on their hearts. And then Ezekiel 36.

I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You like that? That word careful? This isn't sloppy, where we just sit under the Word and then we're sloppy in the way we're careful. That's what God's promising, that in His people He's gonna put a carefulness.

And then I think of this verse all the time, 1 Peter 2.24, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you've been healed. You see the kind of healing He's talking about? It's not just in a legal forensic fashion.

There is a healing where I die to sin and live to righteousness. That's what He hung on that tree for. So brethren, when we hear in don't do, we need to recognize we are rejecting the most glorious being ever seen.

The most glorious being in the universe. And remember, right here, James calls this thing, notice, he calls it the perfect law. You see that in verse 25, looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty.

You see the kind of mirror we have? It is a spiritual mirror that is a law of liberty. Not bondage and slavery. It's a mirror of freedom.

That's what we're talking about. This ought to be something, brethren, if you really recognize what this is all about, this ought to not be anything that we shy away from. This isn't grievous.

Our greatest incentive. Brethren, if it's grievous, our greatest incentive to not do them will be that, that it's grievous. It's alien to me.

It grates at me. Well, then there's something wrong. And you don't want to dismiss that.

You run to the Lord and say, Lord, I admit, I am not finding your law a law of liberty. I find it bondage when I hear about law, even rules, I recoil. You don't want to be there.

Confess it to Him. Ask Him to help you. Ask Him to save you to the uttermost.

So the mindset behind why people hear than don't do. Here's 26. Now listen, I want to emphasize this.

These are not valid excuses. These are excuses people make. They're not valid.

And if you make them as a habit, James says you deceive yourselves. So take this for what it is. Beware.

Christians are people who identify these things. They fight. They resist.

They triumph. They ultimately kill them. If you habitually succumb to these things, you need to take James' words at face value.

You don't want to be deceived. So, here they are. 26.

Now what I'm imagining, as I put all these together, I'm imagining me and you as we sit there. Now this may be you at home with an open Bible and your cup of coffee. But I'm imagining as I put this together, people sitting here.

And you're hearing the Word. And then you go out and you don't do what you heard. I recognize there is a mental process that's taking place.

Things are happening in the head. There's a thought process. And so here's the first one.

The casual listener. This is the person who is just totally convinced that hearing is enough. You see, there is a religious mindset that if I go to church, I'm okay.

That's very pervasive in this world. That if I go to church, I'm building up some credit with God. I know it's entirely a works-based mentality, but it's basically the idea that, hey, the vast majority of people in this world don't listen to the Word.

They don't go to church. They don't sit under the preaching. I'm better than most.

And Jesus said this, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And that's just like people. It's the idea that listening to the sermon gives them some kind of preference with God.

When the reality is what James is saying, if you're hearing this Word and you're not doing it, remember last week we heard about those people that have light and don't respond to it? Brethren, the people that come in here and they say, well, I'm sitting under the preaching, like that gives them some credit with God. And what they don't recognize is that when they go out and don't do it, they are all the more guilty and they're going to be damned on that light that they have. So you get that, the casual.

Number two, we listen in behalf of someone else. Now listen, that is not a foreign deal. Remember, they said, Lord, did you hear about these guys over here? Pilate mixed their blood with their sacrifice and Jesus points His finger right at them and said, I say unto you, you better repent or you'll likewise perish.

You know, there is a tendency to do that kind of thing. You remember Peter? Jesus is saying, follow Me. There's an imperative to Him.

Like, Peter, keep My Word. Be a doer of it. And what did Peter do? He swung around.

Hey, there's the apostle that Jesus loved. Lord, what about that guy? You know, you can be sitting there and it's like, I'm glad the preacher said that. James really needed to hear that.

Oh, you know, you got the wife that's sitting there and it's like, you know, she's kind of looking at her husband out of the corner of his eye like, how's he receiving that? He needs to hear that. Or either, you know, he says, cause I'm preaching on something like hospitality and you're sitting there thinking, people don't show me hospitality. Well, you don't show it to anybody, but you're, you know, you're the victim in the midst of all of it.

And you know, I'm glad sister so-and-so is here today. That sermon, hope it does her some good. And you know what this is? It's basically David.

You know, he can sit under the Word and when he hears that, you know, some other guy took a lamb and everything, he's like, that guy needs to die. We can so easily see defects and faults in other people. And so we sit there and we're thinking about how this is going to affect somebody else and not us.

We don't listen for ourselves. Or like our brother was talking about today, we basically create a category where the Word doesn't touch us. And what I mean by that is, you create categories in your mind.

Like, you know, he was talking about discipleship. But brethren, if you've got eyes to see, you know what a disciple is? When you compare Mark's account with Luke's account, to be a disciple is somebody that's worthy of Christ. Mark's account is somebody who follows Him.

If you want to say discipleship is another category, what are you going to do with Mark's Gospel? You're not worthy of Me. You see what discipleship is all... But see, if we create a category, well, that's for the disciples. You know, you can be a Christian and you don't have to be a disciple.

That is a hell-given doctrine, folks. That is, you want to be deceived? You just buy into that kind of thinking. But see, we create categories.

You know, the letter to 1 Timothy has some things about the rich. But you know, you can be sitting there and it's like you hear the rich and it's like, I'm not rich. And so you just place yourself in this category.

Or even as a teacher, you can think I'm going to stand up and I'm going to teach this and I expect the people to receive this. And so it's almost like, I'm not in the listener category. And by the way, that's not a stretch.

You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself while you preach against stealing? Do you steal? You see, J. Vernon McGee. I'm not, you know, he was one of these ultra-dispensationalists, but he goes through the Bible every five years and I used to listen to AM 1100 when I was working as an engineer and I'd hear him at lunch. And I liked the guy, but you know, he thought that the Sermon on the Mount was for the millennium because it sounded so legal.

And so, you know what? You can develop a theology where you just basically opt out. And so brethren, we don't want to do that. We don't want to create these kind of categories.

It's like Prince was talking about. You know, how often people can come along and Jesus is speaking to everyone like he was emphasizing. And yet we can be so quick to put any kind of radical claims to Christianity in the category of, well, I'm not Matt Wilkinson.

Of course, Matt and Leanne do crazy things. Don't expect me to do crazy things. I'm not a missionary.

And Jesus isn't talking to missionaries at all. He's talking to all of us. But see, we can do that.

Son of man has no place to lay his head. And we say, well, you know, that don't apply to me. That applies to radicals like Clayton and Vess and guys like that.

Or, you know, it's like you find something in the Scripture about go and preach the message of the kingdom of God. And you're like, well, I'm no evangelist. I'm no preacher.

I'm no this, that, or the other thing. When it's not isolating that at all. We can so automatic.

Brethren, we got to listen. If you're going to be a doer of the Word, you got to really listen. Don't come in with your assumptions.

Really ask, what is Jesus? Brethren, sometimes you just got to stop. You got to slow down. Like what is, brethren, there is a place to be Berean where you go out of this place and it's like something was said and I'm afraid I'm not measuring up to go home and actually open your Bible and dive in there and study it.

Sometimes we can be so trivial, so light in this. Or, you know, here's a fourth. We wait for God to do something.

Well, God wants me to obey and submit to my husband, but God isn't changing my husband into the kind of man that I can submit to. And so what? You've just opted out. How can I do that? How can I submit to that guy? He's not submittable.

I mean, one of the things that I've always appreciated Ruby tells me is she doesn't let any of the women in her meetings speak negative about their husbands. She wants to deal with their problems. Even if their husband is 90% of the problem, she wants to nail where they're at.

Brethren, we got to hear for ourselves. We got to, it just can't, listen, you can't be waiting for God to do something when He's given you a commandment to do something. Any kind of waiting is disobedience.

It is not obedience. And so then there's number five. We imagine someone else is going to do it.

Oh, brethren, we look around in this world, do you see people sinking down? We were driving under the I-10 where there's an upper level and we were down on the lower level and there's just a guy and I could see him and there was a pillar in there and he's over the wall and he's just huddled up in there between the lanes. And he just, he had nothing. He's just sitting there.

And I just thought, who is he? He's got a soul. I mean, brethren, we see people sinking down. I just think of Keith Green talking about Jesus came to your door and you left Him out in the street.

How beautiful are the feet of Him. You see, brethren, we can be in the church and it's like we just think somebody else is going to do it. You hear, right after this pure and undefiled religion before the Lord is to visit the widow and the orphan.

And you know what? You can just think somebody else is going to do it. Or how about if your brother sins against you, you should go. How often do people in the church not do that? And yet that is exactly what you're told to do.

You see sin in the church, you have a responsibility to go first. But it's almost like people just feel like, well, pastor's got to do that. Where does the Bible say the pastor's got to do that? It doesn't say that.

It says if there is some sin there, it's sin against you, but if you're involved and you recognize somebody has sin in their life, don't go tell a bunch of other people. Go resolve that thing in the way that the Scripture does. But we think somebody else will do it.

Oh, somebody needs to be talked to in the church. Well, you're aware of it, but you kind of wait, you put it off. Oh, somebody else is going to do that.

Or there's this, I'm praying about it. Don't you hate that? You, somebody tells you, you confront somebody about some blatant thing in their life that doesn't line up with this word, I'm praying about it. What? It's like praying about rampant wickedness and anger in your life.

You see what James is saying? Put it off. And Paul said that, put it off. The truth is if you've got something in your life that you know God doesn't find agreeable, unholy, unrighteous, something that He wants stamped out, quit, repented of, then stop it.

I mean, yes, you can confess and you can cry out to Him, but brethren, there's got to be motion. You know what happens when you just say, I'm praying about it? Is that, you know, you can just excuse yourself. You're sitting there and here's, God is giving you a word for you to cleanse your life and to beautify you.

I'm praying about it. That is such a convenient way to be disobedient. And then there's the wretched man complex.

This is number seven. That's probably a perfect number for it. I'm too weak to obey.

Or I'm too frail. I'm too faint. I'm too pathetic.

I'm too inexperienced. I'm too newly saved. This is, I'm in too dark of a season.

All my righteousnesses are filthy rags and I've got it depraved and then my heart is deceitful and desperately wicked and no one does good, not even one. And if you've been born again, that's not true. You have the power.

Christian, do you have the Spirit of God in you? Listen, when James comes along, he's not giving you a way out. He says that if you're not a doer of the Word, you're a hearer only, you're deceived. And don't make that out to be anything else.

Don't justify this kind of disobedience that comes. You have the power. You have no excuse.

Number eight, always looking for the next mentor or counselor. You ever find people like this in the church? The guy that the family, well, they want to meet with this pastor. Well, then they didn't really get the kind of answer that they wanted.

They meet with these people over here. They meet with the other pastor over here. And they need this counselor.

They need mentoring. They need discipleship. They need this.

And all the time, you know what it is? They receive quite a bit of truth, but they don't implement the truth that they get. And they're always feeling like, they're always looking for the next person or the next counselor, the next mentor, the next disciple, the next pastor, or maybe even the next church to come along and tell them what? Tell them something that they haven't heard yet? Well, undoubtedly, you can go to a new counselor. You could get better counsel.

But so often, the issue is, they haven't taken what they've heard that's biblical and applied it to their life. You ever find that? The amount of time I've been in this church and had people come in, I need to be mentored. And I need this and I need that.

And then, brethren, I'll tell you, the mighty oaks of Christianity are the men and the women that have the ability to sit down with their own Bibles and to see what God wants and implement it in their lives. The person always looking for another counselor. I mean, so often, it's just an excuse.

And then number nine, I say offended. You know, the person that's out there sitting, and something is very applicable to them, but they sit there and they're offended. He's talking about me.

He's talking about my family. Who told him? And so you got the guy there. How dare him? It's just the thin-skinned people in the church.

They're so busy being insulted by it all that they don't actually stop and ask, is it true? You ever encountered that kind? And if you've pastored any amount of time you have, of course, then there's the turning grace into license. It's just disobedience is allowable and you reason that way because Jesus paid it all. And after all, isn't God forgiving? Thank God He is forgiving.

And thank God Jesus does pay it all. But brethren, you have to remember the promises of the new covenant. It is not just to forgive your sins.

It is He is going to write that law on your heart and He is going to make you careful to keep it. And one of the ways that all of this happens in reality is commandments where He talks about being doers of the Word. See, He says He puts His fear on us that we not depart from Him.

And so what happens is the genuine Christian hears about being a doer, not just a hearer, deceiving them all themselves. And they hear that and there's a fear. I don't want to be deceived.

And so it drives you back from the edge where you get some people, it's like they want to live as close to the edge of disobedience as possible. That's suicidal. You say, hey, we're not saved by works.

Brethren, I'll tell you this, we're saved by the God who saves through His Word, who means you to implement that Word. And as you implement it, He saves your soul that way. That's what's being said here.

And if you're not implementing it that way, what do you think is going to happen? What do you think is going to happen if you disregard this? You'll be deceived. And what are you going to tone down deceived and what that means? Brethren, he's obviously deceived. And then there's this, living on past obedience.

Here's how you're sitting there. And rather than see this as glorious and all, Jesus, wow, He's a Savior and He's got this law of liberty and He's calling me in a way that is so healthy and good and pure and put the impurities out of my life. And as you're sitting there, it's like you feel the weight of what's being said.

But it's kind of like, you remember the author of the Hebrews, and even though this isn't exactly what he's talking about, but he says, recall the former days when after you were in light and you endured. And you remember what they did. Joshua hit on this a couple of weeks back.

They basically identified with the people that were in prison and they were exposed to reproach and affliction and they had compassion on those and they were identifying with those and it led to the plundering of their property. Brethren, we can get to that place like a church. We can get to that place as individuals.

We can get to that place as a church. Brethren, you do not want to live on past glory days or on past days of your obedience. Like, well, in the past I did that.

Brethren, we're called to a present righteousness, a present doing. There's a lot of times we can get to a point where we're recalling former days. Brethren, I hope you're not of that mindset where you can sit there and it's like, well, you know, I've done those things in the past.

I used to do that. And you make that count. And then there's living on future obedience.

You know what I mean there. Procrastination. A lot of people have good intentions of what they're going to do tomorrow.

And don't boast about tomorrow. That's what the Proverbs says. Do you not know what a day may bring? Luke 12, Jesus said, Stay dressed for action.

Keep your lamps burning. Delayed obedience is disobedience. Lay it down.

Parents, if you tell your child to do something and they just stand there, or you tell them to go do this and they start going and doing other things, that's disobedience. Even if they intended to do it five minutes from now or ten minutes from now, the reality is it's disobedience. Remember, the Lord is watching.

The Lord gives us these things to do. God has saved us. He means for His will and our will to align and for us to be submissive.

And brethren, everything that is true of you that is out of sync with His voice, His will, being a doer, it's ugly, it's filthy, it's not good, it's not beautiful. Look in the mirror, folks. We want what's beautiful.

Christ is beautiful. We want to be like Him. And to the degree you're not like Him, you're not beautiful, you're ugly.

Brethren, God doesn't look on the outside. He looks on the inside. He sees the true beauty where we're broken and we're giving our whole life under the light, the lamp of this Word.

Then there's living on someone else's obedience. You can be sitting there and it's like you hear these things and it's like, well, we do that as a church. We visit nursing homes as a church.

We visit widows and orphans as a church. We give to missions when the truth is you're not involved at all. You don't really pray for those things.

You might give some money, but you're not specifically thinking about that and giving towards it. You're not really burdened about it. That can happen.

Brethren, there's no obedience by association. I mean, when we get there on judgment day, it's not going to be judged along with the rest of the church. It's going to be what you did in that body.

So brethren, we don't want to fall into that. It's great being in a healthy church where they're doing a bunch of things, but brethren, you really have to ask yourself how much are you involved in doing those things? And then there's the imputed righteousness excuse. Well, Christ already obeyed for me.

Now look, the imputed righteousness of Christ is great, but you notice that James is not saying, well, the imputed righteousness of Christ. So you're all, if you're a Christian or you're a believer, you all are doers of the Word. That's not what he's talking about.

He's talking about practical doing. Brethren, one of the ways that you know whether the imputed righteousness of Christ is applied to your account is whether there's real, genuine, practical righteousness and obedience to the Word and submission. And like we heard, unless you forsake all that you have, you can't be His disciple.

You're not worthy of Him. Brethren, you see what we're talking, you receive this engrafted Word with meekness. That means I'm surrendered.

Brethren, you can come to something and it can be like, wow, He's calling me to something hard. But I'll guarantee you this, Jesus doesn't call you to anything that He hasn't promised to be right at your side, undergirding you, holding you. Brethren, He will give grace.

But you see, so often we can get to the place where we're waiting for Him to like bring revival or bring some feeling. Brethren, you remember those priests of old. They stepped into the River Jordan and then the waters stopped.

He calls you to obedience. You know what you'll find? That as you seek to obey, you will find His help. But be determined first to obey.

Don't be determined first to wait until you see Him do something. Do what He tells you to do. Or there can be this mindset.

You're sitting there and you're hearing and you kind of convince yourself, well, that's the preacher saying that. That's not Christ. So you kind of imagine I'm disobeying the preacher.

Now, it might be that the preacher says something that is wrong. It might be. It might be He's giving you His opinion and you're not bound to that, I recognize.

But it can be very easy to justify your disobedience to the Word of God by sitting there and saying, I don't like Him. I don't like what He says. But again, you have to be Berean and you have to ask yourself, is it true? You may not like the intensity with which He brings it.

You may not like the whatever. You may not like the way He looked or His lack of looking in the mirror that day or whatever it is. You may not like His accent.

You may not like this, that or the other thing. But what you have to ask yourself is, is it true? Is it true? Don't try to skirt it because of anything in the preacher. Or there's this, because of exceptions to the rule, you dismiss the entire obligation.

Let me give you an example. Luke says, give to everyone who begs from you. And from one who takes away your goods, do not demand them back.

Now, you can go to the extreme like the Amish do, where they would let somebody walk into their house and steal all their stuff and even assault their womenfolk and not retaliate. Yes, could you come up with certain exceptions to times when it might not be appropriate to give to everyone who begs? Especially when Scripture says if somebody's not willing to work, they shouldn't eat. But you know what? See, you can so get your mind going about where the exceptions are that you miss the great reality there.

I know Matt and Leanne, you guys have really given yourself to that. Sometimes, I've thought even to the point where you've been taken advantage of. But you know what? It's okay to be taken advantage of.

God knows and often we know. As we've sought to help and minister to people's needs, we've often helped people when we knew it might not be the best stewardship of money, but they were asking and to the degree we had light, we sought to do this. But what you don't want to do is as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands, so you know what the wife can get there and she's like, hmm, I can think of times not to submit to my husband.

It's easy, you just dismantle the whole thing when it actually says, Paul chose his words carefully in everything. And yet, you start to think of the exceptions and so because of those, you just dismiss the whole thing. And then there's this.

You sit there and you hear something you can't understand how it can be true, and so you dismiss it. Like, you remember what James hit on a month or so ago? This is what I mean, brothers. The appointed time has grown very short.

From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none. And so you read that and it's like, what? I don't get that. And so you just dismiss the whole thing when there's actually a really important principle and James brought it out.

You just read that and it's like, I don't get it. I don't understand what it means. And so, you just dismiss it.

Or you just get to the place where it seems like it's over the top. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for it. And you're like, who can do that? And because you feel like no one can do that, you just dismiss it.

Brethren, we don't want to be like those. We need to ask God for grace and dive in. And then, you lie to yourself.

Imagine you're doing something when you aren't. Or imagine you're trying to do something when whatever you're trying to do isn't working. Look, what king is going to accept excuses from that which is disrespectful to him and disobedient to him and dishonoring to him? I mean, no earthly king is going to accept your disobedience, whatever excuses you might be bringing.

How about the king of kings? Is he going to look at us and just accept what he's trying? Brethren, trying without doing. That's not what James is talking about. James is talking about doing, being doers of the Word.

Brethren, I'll tell you, there's a promise in that. There are many promises in that. But there are promises of help.

There's promises that God's going to come along and He's going to give us what we need to do it. There needs to be a determination. We're not going to try to tone this down in our own minds.

And we're not going to try to dismiss these things and dodge these things and justify why we don't do these things. Or you justify yourself because other people don't obey. You ever been there? They're not doing it.

Well, what's that? James says people that don't do it are deceived. Well, so all you've done is identified they're deceived. You want to be on the same bandwagon? You want to go in there with them? I mean, Exodus says you shall not fall in with many to do evil.

Just because other people are doing it doesn't mean you need to do that. Or we justify partial obedience. Brethren, remember the degree of anger Jesus had towards the Ephesian church.

Did they do a lot of things well? Oh, they toiled. They patiently endured. There's good things.

They sorted out those who claimed to be apostles and weren't. But you know what? Jesus says, but this I have against you. You lost your first love.

Brethren, do you see what Jesus is doing? Jesus does not take all of our obedience and dismiss the disobedience. He doesn't do that. You can't be sitting there and say, well, you know, my life is basically good in so many areas.

But in this one over here, but certainly He'll understand. I mean, I'm patiently enduring. I'm doing so many good things and I'm toiling.

And brethren, partial obedience is disobedience. And then there's 22. I'm making my way here.

22. We only got 26. Doctrine instead of obedience.

You ever find that? People study doctrine and they feel like they've really made these achievements because they're able to explain and express the depths of certain deep biblical doctrines. And they can talk doctrine. But brethren, that does not equal obedience.

Doctrine instead of obedience is no good. Or there's this place. Brethren, we can become discouraged by past failures.

You get overwhelmed. And you feel like, what's the use? Like I've failed before. Brethren, and the devil will be right there to tell you that.

Look at you. Sorry mess that you are. And you know what? If he talks to you like that, you can say, it's true.

I'm a sorry mess. But remember what you heard? It is finished. I got one that's finished this for me.

So even though I've messed up till now, you know what? He's very forgiving. And he's full of grace. And I'm going to go on.

There is help to be had in time of need. And yep, I've failed in the past. You ever been there where you go to the Lord, it's me again.

And I, Lord, I messed up. I'm sorry. But you know what? Because of the reality of the justification by faith and the imputed righteousness of Christ, I'm free to go on.

It's like, I can confess that. And he is going to cleanse. And he is going to give me help.

And I'm just going to go on. And I don't have to wallow in all this muck and mire of self-pity and carry on. It's not like that.

It's not like Catholicism. I don't have to go do penance. It's like he paid it all.

I can rejoice in it. And I can head on in obedience. And then there's this legalism, man-made commandments.

You know what? Sometimes people disobey God because they've made their own set of rules as to what's acceptable. And you remember, Jesus faulted the Pharisees for that very thing. You guys give yourself to these things over here.

And then you neglect these weighty matters like justice and the love of God. And then number 25, sometimes it's because things are so broad. Like that verse, the love of God.

You neglect the love of God. So you're here and you hear something about the love of God. But see, it's so broad.

It just misses you. You walk out of here. You haven't slowed down to ask yourself, wait, there are some things that are really weighty with God.

And one of them is the love of God. What does that mean? That obviously is talking about things we do because He's dealing with the Pharisees about what they do. Do you love with the love that God has? Remember, He causes the rain.

He causes the sun. You remember how He loves, how He gives? And we really have to start thinking, what is this love of God? And how do I implement it in my life? What does it have to do with the way that I relate with my family, with my church members, with the people in my city, my community? What does this look like? I mean, if I'm really loving people and I'm doing unto others what I would have done unto me, what should this look like? You got to really start thinking. And then number 26, you're sitting there and you hear this, but you're in a trial.

You're hurting. And you just have the mindset, God can't expect me to be obedient when I'm hurting. I know the trial I'm going through and so we kind of justify.

But the classic example of that is Jesus who said, follow me. When He was hurting, when He was sweating, as it were, great drops of blood, and His will is there and He's surrendering it on the altar to His Father. Your will.

Even when there's deep suffering. Brethren, I'm just ending with this. You've got to take your conscience.

You've got to bring your conscience into the presence of God. Brethren, as we hear the Word, I'll tell you, when your conscience is silent, that's a very dangerous place to be. You want your conscience speaking.

You want to bring your conscience into the presence of God and really be asking, Lord, where do I, where do we as a church, where would we be like one of those five churches in Revelation 2 and 3 that you would have something against? Lord, what's wrong in my life? Where am I not measuring up? Where should I run faster? Brethren, have you recognized the radical call that we have? These are the imperatives that we love Christ more than Father, more than Mother, more than brothers and sisters, more than wives and husbands, more than our children, more, more, and that we're carrying our cross. We hate even our own lives. We're forsaking all.

Do you remember the call? This is radical. This is out there. Brethren, we have to bring our consciences before that.

Am I living right? The Son of Man has no place to lay His head. Does that ever hit you? What does it mean when we all have places to lay our head? And so many of us are so permanently established and we've got houses and we've got stuff and all this stuff and here's... Remember, you see, Peter comes along and he says, Lord, we've left it all. Oh, see, we can categorize.

He's an apostle. That doesn't work, folks. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.

What does that mean for us? What should our lives look like? Brethren, there was a day we started up grace houses. Why? I remember in my own mind, Keith Green, he was pouring himself out for homeless people, trying to get the gospel out there. I remember Sam Patron as we were starting the church here and I was thinking, I don't know what I'm doing.

I called Sam. Sam, I don't know what I'm doing. He said, brother, we're miles ahead of everybody else because we don't know what we're doing.

And he's over there and he's got these homeless guys and he's got classes and he's meeting and he's gone out into the inner city and we're kind of doing the same thing. And God gave a burden and we started a men's grace house. We started a women's grace house.

But those things have been closed down. Brethren, what are we going to do? We're called to the love of God. We're called to make a difference.

We're called to be salt and light. What are we going to do? Jesus calls us to not just Matt Wilkinson, our bald-headed, smiling brother that we all love. I mean, it's like, what are we going to do? You see, brethren, you cannot live on what Matt does.

We each are going to be called. Have we carried our cross? Brethren, what does that mean? What do we have to die to? You know one of the things that happens? The way we dismiss, I'll add 27. We basically have this mindset of American Christianity and we judge by that.

Brethren, I think we really need to be thinking seriously about New Testament, Book of Acts Christianity. And what did they do? And how did they live? And what are we going to do? And where are we headed? Brethren, it's going to be over. A few more years and it's going to be over.

And we're going to stand and we're going to give an account for what we've done in the body. And Jesus said, My Word's going to catch up to you on that day. And all those things that He expected us to do are going to catch up with us on that day.

And remember, brethren, this is a law of liberty. John says the commandments, His commandments are not grievous. Do you find it that way? Like, wow, what a privilege that You are one of the people He saved to become like Him and follow in His path when He passed over so many others.

It's like, what would You have me to do, Lord? We say it. We're not our own. We've been bought with a price.

Do we live like it? Brethren, conscience. Bring it. Lay it out there.

When your conscience is silent, be suspicious of it. Because brethren, there's a lot of things still wrong with us. And if your conscience isn't on a regular basis speaking to you, then something's wrong with it.

And hardened consciences, silenced consciences, deadened consciences, they're dangerous, folks. There's got to be constant talk between a godly man and his conscience. And so, what I want to do in these weeks ahead, is I want to look into this perfect law.

The law of liberty. And I want us to see what Christ, as I so totally can jump on board with what Prince said, we have such a tendency to run to justification by faith that we totally lose the sense that justified people are people that have the power of God resonating in them. And they're going to live a certain way.

And we can so easily run to all these Pauline doctrines and it's like, saved by faith, yes. But brethren, you have to recognize faith, real faith, believes that Jesus is Lord. And He said, why do you call Me Lord, Lord, and you don't do what I say? See, do you believe He's Lord? If you believe He is, then all on the altar.

Surrender. You are Lord. Where does He want us to go? Do you think He wants us to fall asleep in middle class American religion? Don't believe that for a second.

Brethren, true Christianity is radical Christianity. You cannot get away from that. It is radical.

Count the cost. Brethren, what's at the end of this? Paradise, this day you will be with Me in paradise, eternal weight of glory. Brethren, we are moving toward... And as you're obedient, then you get rewarded for it.

It's just grace upon grace. Brethren, our time is short. Our time is short.

This is not, like Tozer said, this is not a playground. This is a battleground. And there's an enemy.

Brethren, we want to be on the devil's radar. There's a church that is a threat to him. And we will threaten him the more we are like Christ.

The more we look into that perfect law of liberty and are doers of that. Father, I pray that You'd help us as a church. May this resonate.

May this pulse within us. Being doers. Give us grace.

Give us the ability to stir up one another. To be doers of the Word. To be, Lord, excelling.

To be running. To be laying aside the idols and the weights and the sin. And to be serious about carrying the cross.

And even hating our own selves. Lord, I pray, help us to be abandoned to that which is good. To that which is right.

Help these brethren to cast off and lay off the kinds of things that keep them from receiving the implanted Word as they ought to. Lord, we're at Your mercy. We're Your people.

We live, we are people of promise. And You've given us such promises that You would create a people that would be careful to keep Your rules, Your statutes, Your commandments. And Lord, we're holding You to that.

Holding You to the promises. We are new covenant people. Covenant.

That covenant is full of promises that You've made to us. Father, You're going to be good to Your Word. You're an honest God.

You're a faithful God. Be faithful to Grace Community Church. I pray in Christ's name, Amen.