Be doers of the word and not just hearers

We are in the epistle of the Apostle Santiago, chapter 1, and you will remember this trajectory that we have been following. In verse 18 we are told about the importance of the word of God, the word of truth. As a consequence of that important word of God, we have to have a certain behavior, pay close attention to that word, to see how important it is.

And when we read it we always have to be careful to treat it with a lot of reverence because it says that this word can save our souls. And we have to strip ourselves, he says, of all filth, of all abundance of malice.

I think the last time we spoke we emphasized the discarding aspect of our lives, that we have to make a commitment to live according to the Lord's commandments. We have to discard so that we can put on the blessings of the Lord. There it says, in verse 21, that discarding all filth and abundance of malice, receive the implanted word with meekness.

Discard is a strong word we used to say. In our life we have to decide to change. I believe that many people do not experience this change in life and behavior because we have never confronted each other, we have never had an experience like a crisis, of saying, you know what? I am going to commit myself to live a life that honors the Lord and that is according to the word of God. A crisis decision must be made.

Note that the trajectory that Santiago follows is interesting. He says, meekly receive the implanted word, which can save your lives. There is an internal matter there, of making a pact with the word, receiving it, giving it input. But then James says, but it's not enough to just stay in, oh, yes word of God, come into my life, I want to be good, I want to be holy, I want to please God. You have to start practicing it.

There are many people who remain only with good feelings and good intentions, but there also has to be, okay, I'm going to start to change and I'm going to stop doing things. I'm not going to wait for God to kind of flick me with a magic wand and make me a well-behaved person. No, I also have to start making clear and firm decisions in that regard. You have to be doers.

He says, but be doers of the word and not just hearers. That applies to all of us. That is the key to a successful life in the Gospel, to be a doer of the word and not just a hearer. The churches are full of people who are only listeners, they come to the church to listen to a show, to see a show, to sing very sentimental, etc. And how beautiful the preaching, how beautiful the prayers, but they have not made a commitment to be doers of the word. And that's the key.

You have to be practitioners of the word of the Lord. and that is what makes the difference between a merely religious person and a truly committed person. And by the way, if you read the entire epistle of James, the primary characteristic of the epistle of James is that continuous emphasis on practice and experience. The Apostle Santiago continually insists on that idea of being practitioners.

We'll see it later, but it's a theme that he continually insists on, like a pastor who is telling his people, hey, change your mind. So, I would like the Lord to mark your spirit with that idea tonight, I must be a doer, a doer of the word of God and not just a hearer.

He says, fooling yourselves. Who is fooling himself? The person who only listens and does not do. He knows that people who come to church and don't change their behavior are fooling themselves, they are wasting their time.

Now, that does not mean that you have to be perfect because we are always going to be in that battle, but you do have to do everything you can to please the Lord. What happens when you deviate from that word? What you do is you confess, you acknowledge and you come back and you line up and you go back in and you move on.

But your ethics is, I have to live according to the word of the Lord, that is your motto, that is your goal, that is your norm and when you deviate, you come back again. That idea, I want to mark you with that idea of being practitioners of the word and not just listeners.

If you go, for example, to First John, chapter 1, it says there, "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth."

The person who says, I love the Lord, I am a Christian, I am a believer but does not live according to the principles of the Lord, his practice, his experience, his general conduct, does not reflect the life of a servant, a servant of God, then you are living a lie. We are always struggling with sin, that is true, but the norm, the general pattern, the total image that a child of God must project, is an image of a person who is living within the commandments of the Lord.

there are defects, yes, there are falls, yes, you have detours, yes, there are temptations, yes, but we are always fighting against it, we do not submit to it. There are people in the churches that you know aren't even trying and there are whole areas of your life that have simply said, that area I am weak, the Lord knows and has mercy on me. And the devil is out there waiting to give you a good blow so you can learn. It is so.

In verse 7 John says, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin."

Verse 8 is still interesting so that you can see that the problem is that many times we do not preach all the advice of the word of God because John adds something, he says, "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

I always say, our life is a life of aspiring to holiness and knowing that we will always be struggling with sin. That is natural, but we do not submit to sin, rather we are always saying, I am going to defeat you, I am going to defeat you and when we deviate from God's norm, which we do, we confess our sins. We always have to be confessing our sins to the Lord, we always have to be transparent before God.

The Bible says that if we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive them. In verse 9, if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So, the child of God moves between that recognition of sin and never being fully within God's norm but always struggling to adapt and adjust to that holiness that God asks for. We are always there in that battle, in a tension. I believe that the problem of many churches and many preachers is that we do not preach enough about the tension that exists, about the complexity of the Christian life and the process of holiness.

If you go to John chapter 2, verse 3 to 6, “and in these we know that we know him if we keep his commandments. He who says I know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him." say ouch! "But whoever keeps his word in this truly the love of God has been perfected."

Look how beautiful that verse 6 is. I think we should all memorize this verse 6, it says, "he who says he abides in him must walk as he walked." Wow!

I wish that this morning we, brothers, and everyone make a commitment to remember what God is telling us and live a life, tell him, Lord, I need to renew my vow with you, my pact with you, to live a life according to your commandments. That is our desire as a church, to be a church, a congregation that truly reflects that integrity.

Let us ask the Lord to allow our church to be that type of congregation. If you allow me two more seconds, we are going to leave it there, when God allows us we will continue. I think that's enough for tonight already. We don't want to be too late.

May the Lord allow us. But the next time we come back we are going to emphasize this a little more, in verse 23 where Pastor Santiago talks about if someone is a hearer of the word but not a doer of it, and he makes a comparison, he uses a metaphor, an image of the person who looks at himself in a mirror and quickly forgets what he saw, what he is like, and so is the person who simply reads the word but does not practice it. And we're going to go on a little bit more about that and I hope that when we finish this section we're going to have a good idea, a good sense of God's call to a life of holiness, a life of integrity, a life that conforms to the commandments. of the Lord. Amen.

Lower your head for a second. Receive from the Lord this call to live a life according to his word. If there is any area in your life that does not conform to that word of the Lord, give it to the Lord right now, it could be your character, some area of moral behavior, a defect that you need to give to the Lord, something, name it in your mind, in your spirit, tell him, Lord, every day I want you to help me improve, improve in that area of my life. I want to be a doer of your word, a practitioner of your word.

Thanks, Dad. Thank you, may your word reach deep into our hearts, Lord, and may it do its work in us. We want to be practitioners of your word, Father, we want to be doers of your word, Lord. We are not going to excuse ourselves, we are not going to hide it, help us Holy Father, to be people who please you with our way of acting and walking, Lord, our lives. Thank you Lord Jesus. We adore you, Lord, we bless you. Thank my Lord. Amen. Amen.