In late 1942, the United States landed troops in North Africa to begin the liberation of Europe from Hitler’s Nazi Germany. In the early days after the invasion, the U.S. Army initially was not making much progress in their march across North Africa. General Dwight Eisenhower was frustrated with what many of his commanders were doing — or NOT doing! He wrote: “There’s a lot of big talk and desk hammering around this place — but very few doers!” (Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, p. 59)

I wonder if that is how the Lord must feel sometimes as He watches us, His people, here on earth? Does He see a lot of “big talk,” “but very few DOERS”? I think the fact that God placed this passage here shows that this is indeed what He too often sees from His people: a bunch of “big talk,” but “very few doers” of His word!

Last week we saw in James 1:19-21 that real faith should affect every relationship in our lives: that we are to be “quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger” towards our spouse, children, work associates, and neighbors. But, try as we may, we will fail at those things — and so we need to “receive the word implanted, which is able to save (our) souls.” Our only hope of heaven is to trust in Jesus’ righteousness, not our own.

But now James follows this up with a cautionary word here in :22-25. He says, “But prove yourselves DOERS of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.” We need to make sure we don’t “lull ourselves into a false sense of complacency” by thinking that we’re right with the Lord, when we aren’t really doing what He commanded us to do. Let’s look at how James 1:22-25 says that “What Real Faith Looks Like” means being “doers of the word”:

I. Just Hearing the Word is Not Enough
:22 “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.”

James says here that there are two kinds of people in regard to God’s word:
— there are those who DO the word
— and there are those who just HEAR the word.
And the difference between those two is HUGE.

Jesus Himself points out this difference, in His dramatic conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, where He said “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. 26 Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

There was a dramatic difference between the two people Jesus described here: one was like a house stood against every onslaught of storm and rain. The other was like a house that fell flat. What was the difference between these two? The difference was NOT that one “heard these words of Mine” and the other didn’t. NOTICE: BOTH OF THE MEN HERE HEARD JESUS WORDS! No, the difference was not that one of them heard His words and the other didn’t; it’s that one of them heard His words and DID them; and the other heard His words, but did not DO them. (The word “acts” upon them there is literally “do them”!) Jesus said the difference between standing firm in the storms of life, and being flattened by them is whether you do or do not DO the word of God that you hear. Just hearing God’s word is not enough.

Many people hear the word of God, they but don’t do anything with it. In fact I’d say MOST people who hear the word, don’t do anything about it.

Some people even enjoy “hearing the word” without doing anything about it. We see an example of that in the New Testament. Mark 6:20 says that when John the Baptist was in prison, King Herod would sometimes listen to him, and it says: “He used to enjoy listening to him.” Herod enjoyed listening to John the Baptist preach — but he didn’t change anything in his life. Herod had taken his brother’s wife, Herodias, and he never changed that because of what John preached. He “enjoyed listening to him” — but he never changed.

There are a lot of people like that. You may know somebody like that. You may even BE somebody like that! They just enjoy listening to good speeches, to preaching, to teaching. But they never really do anything about it. They are just “hearers of the word.” They listen, and listen, and listen — but it never leads them to DO what they’ve heard.

Well, so what’s so bad about the person who hears the word but doesn’t do anything about it? Because it doesn’t change anything in your life. Just Hearing the Word and walking away misses the whole point. James says in :23 “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; (:24) for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.”

Verses :23 & 24 are basically James’ illustration of this point. It’s an illustration we can all relate to: looking in a mirror. How many of you have ever looked in a mirror? We ALL have; this is why this illustration is so powerful. This is something we’ve all done. We haven’t all played football; we haven’t all jumped out of airplanes; but we have all looked in a mirror. So we can all relate to this. We’ve all looked in a mirror. (In fact last week I read about a study that said that men look in a mirror 23 times a day — and women 16! I’m not sure about that …)

In fact mirrors are some of the oldest artifacts they have found ancient civilizations. Archeologists found a mirror in what is now Turkey, that they believe is about 8000 years old. It wasn’t made of glass, because they didn’t have that technology yet, but they made it of polished obsidian rock.
So even thousands of years ago, people wanted to see what they looked like. It was one of the first tools of ancient man (or woman!)

But what is the point of a mirror? It’s so you can see yourself accurately. It’s not just what you “think” you look like; the mirror shows what you DO look like. I can go to a store and see a suit on a mannequin and think, “Oh man, that looks really nice! I need to get one of those.” And when I put it on, I might imagine that I look as good in it as that mannequin does. But when I get in front of the mirror — I see a different picture entirely! That does NOT look good on me! So the wise person sees themself in the mirror, and they makes changes according to what they see.

But James says the person who hears God’s word and doesn’t put it into practice is like a person who just looks in a mirror and walks away and doesn’t do anything about it. They don’t take into account what they saw in that mirror. They don’t adjust their clothing or their hair, or whatever. They just look at it and walk away, unchanged.

And isn’t that just what so many people do with God’s word? They hear it; they read it; they study it — but then they just walk away and don’t DO anything about what they just saw! But often times we feel really good about ourselves, because we think “Oh, I am a really good Christian, because I’ve been ‘looking in the mirror’ of God’s word.” But in reality we’ve missed the point, because we aren’t DOING anything with what we’ve seen. We’ve just looked in the mirror, and walked away, unchanged.

Verse 22 has a key phrase here: it says the person who does this is “deluding” themselves. How are they deluding themselves? They are deluding themselves by thinking that just listening to the word ONLY, and not doing anything about it, will benefit them.

Whether or not we CONSCIOUSLY think this way, I believe this idea has made its way into the way that many of us practice our faith. Somehow, people have gotten the idea that just coming to church and listening to the word of God is the main point of Christianity. That if you are coming and listening, that makes you a “good Christian.” They think, “Oh I’m a good Christian; I go to church. I listen to the word every week.” A lot of people think that THIS is what a “good Christian” is: somebody who comes to church every week, and hears the word! Did churches plant that idea in our minds back in the 1950s when they gave out “Perfect Attendance” medals? “Just be here every Sunday;” as if that’s the most important thing. Now, being at church IS important. Hebrews specifically says “do NOT forsake your assembIing together, as is the habit of some.” We DO need to be in church, so we can hear and respond to God’s word. But the idea that all you really need to do is just come to church and hear the word and as long as you do that, you’re a “good Christian”? —that idea is NOT from the Lord. He specifically says here, that if you are JUST a “hearer of the word” and not a doer, you are “deluding yourself.”

The word “deluding” (para/logizomai) here means “to go against reason; to reason falsely.” The Bible says it’s false reasoning to think that just listening to the word is enough. We don’t think that about any other sphere of life:
— We don’t think you’re a good doctor because you’ve listened to a lot of lectures on medicine.
— We don’t think you’re a good citizen just because you tune in to a lot of news programs.
— We don’t think you’re a good soldier just because you’ve read a lot of books on World War II!
Just “listening” to a bunch of things doesn’t make you a good anything!

And we need to understand that the same thing is true of the word of God. Just hearing it is not enough. YES, you DO need to hear it — but JUST hearing it is not enough. If you think it is, God says, you’re “deluding yourself.” You are NOT a good Christian just because you come to church meetings and listen!

Some of us need to get into a whole different mindset regarding our walk with God:
— we think that because we show up at church to hear the word, that we are a good Christian
— we think that because we’re there in attendance listening to our Sunday School teacher, that we are a faithful believer.
— we think because we read our Bible daily, that we’re a good disciple.
— we think that because we listen to all these sermons or worship services, or go to all these Bible studies, that this makes us a good follower of Jesus.
But God tells us here through James, you need to get OUT of this mindset. It is not just LISTENING to His word that makes you a good Christian! He says you are only deceiving yourself if you think that.

II. You Must Hear and DO the word to be blessed.
James now continues the picture of the mirror, except here in :25 he teaches that the word of GOD is the mirror we are to look into! He says “But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and ABIDES by it, NOT having become a forgetful hearer, but an effectual doer, THIS man will be blessed in what he does.”
He says we are to “look intently” into this “mirror,” but the “mirror” he is referring to is “the perfect law, the law of liberty” — in other words, the Bible, the word of God. Just like a person gets up in the morning and looks into the mirror to see how they look, James says we are to get up every morning and look into the word of God, which is like “a mirror for our soul,” and shows us what we look like spiritually. And just like we “adjust ourselves” according to what we see in the bathroom mirror, we should also “adjust our lives” according to what we see in the mirror of God’s word!

For example: let’s say you get up in the morning, and you are getting ready for work or school, or wherever you have to go. So you look in the mirror. What do you see?
— Maybe you see that your eyebrows have gotten a bit bushy, so you need to shave or pluck them.
— Maybe you see: “Oh, I have a piece of broccoli from the Chinese last night stuck between my teeth; I need to get that out!”
— Maybe you see where some of your hair is sticking up, so you have to comb it, or smooth it down, or whatever.
The whole point of looking in the mirror is so that you can spot something that might be wrong with your appearance, and so that you can make specific changes, based what you see.

The other day I was getting ready to record the next overview video for our Sunday School teachers, but when I looked in the mirror, I saw that I had dropped a spot of something on my shirt from lunch. I immediately went to the men’s room and dabbed that spot out before I recorded that video. I saw something wrong in the mirror, so I changed it.

James tells us here that this is the same thing we need to do with the Bible every day. He says THE WORD OF GOD IS THE “MIRROR” for our SOUL! Every day just as we look at a mirror to check out our physical body, so every day we need to look into God’s word to check out our SOUL! And when we see something that’s not the way it should be, James says, we aren’t supposed to just walk away from it; just like we would with our physical body, we should make adjustments; we should make CHANGES in our lives, based on what we’ve seen in the scriptures.

For example:
— Last week we saw where James says we are to be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” (Some of y’all missed that last week, and you needed to hear it!) Many of us heard from James 1:19 there, that we need to listen better than we do. God’s word was held up for a “mirror” for us to see, that we aren’t as “quick to hear” as we should be. So what should we do? We need to make some adjustments: we should stop talking so much; we should start listening to people more. We should make changes in our life, based on what we saw in the “mirror” of God’s word.

— Or let’s say you’re doing your daily Bible reading in Luke 3, where John the Baptist is preaching and telling the people to repent, and they ask him, “Then what shall we do?” And he tells them: “The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and he who has food is to do likewise.” And you start thinking, “You know, I haven’t really been doing this: I don’t give anything to help the poor. Lord show me someone I can help; show me some charity I can give to, that will help people in need.” And so you go out and help somebody God shows you who has a need, or you start giving to a good charity each month, because of what God showed you in the “mirror” of His word. You make changes according to what you’ve read.

— Or maybe you’re reading in Psalm 119:11, which says: “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” But as you look in the “mirror” of that word, you think: “I am not hiding God’s word in my heart! I am not memorizing any verses to help me not to sin.” So you know you wrestle with anger, and so you go and find a verse that talks about anger, like Ephesians 4:26, which says “Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity,” and you memorize it, so that God’s Spirit in you can use that word inside you to help you with your anger. You look in the mirror of God’s word, and you ADJUST your life according to what you have seen there.

THIS is what’s supposed to happen every day as we read God’s word. We’re to hold it up to our life like a mirror; and just like we get up every day and adjust our physical body by what we see in the mirror, so we are to get up every day and look at our spiritual selves in the “mirror” of God’s word — and MAKE ADJUSTMENTS based on what we see! This right here is how we are to grow as Christians. THIS is what is supposed to be happening every day in our lives. We’re to use the “mirror” of God’s word to spot things in our life, and change them.

The bottom line is, the Bible is not just merely a “history book.” It is the ultimate “life changing” book. Sometimes you hear people say something like, “This show will change your life; this recipe will change your life; this book will change your life.” Often that’s just hype. You read the book, but nothing changes. But God’s word WILL change your life! But in order for that to happen, you have to use it the way God intended. You have to LET His word change your life. You have to read it every day — and not “just” read it, but really search it, like you would for silver or gold, to see what God has for YOUR specific life every day, and ask His Holy Spirit to help you change and become like what you see there. If you will do that, it WILL change your life.

But you’ve got to realize that this is what’s supposed to be happening. God doesn’t intend for you to just to look at His word every day and walk away, unchanged. You don’t just read the Bible like a novel, or a history book. You come to it, to be changed.

Back the in 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton and other scientists established the British Royal Society, which contributed greatly to our knowledge of the sciences. But some criticized them, saying that although they had gleaned many scientific “facts” from nature, the public had actually gained little of practical value from their discoveries. One of the critics said, let these learned scientists turn their attention to ‘the Nature of butter and cheese’!

But Edward Dolnich wrote in his book, The Clockwork Universe, that Newton and the other scientists DID in fact give “considerable thought to cheese, and also to finding better ways to make candles, pump water, tan leather, and dye cloth. From the start, (he said, the Royal Society’s Robert) Boyle, who was one of the pioneers of the modern scientific method, wrote: “I shall not dare to think myself a true naturalist til my skill can make my garden yield better herbs and flowers, my orchard better fruit, or my field better corn, or my dairy better cheese’ than the old ways produced.” (Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe, p. 84)

Just as that Royal Academy scientist Boyle was not satisfied until his scientific knowledge had been applied to real life, so we as God’s people must not be satisfied with just “hearing His word” and learning facts. We need to make sure that we are applying God’s word to our lives; that we are becoming better husbands and wives; better fathers, better mothers, better children, better students, better workers — and most of all, better worshipers of God, and better servants for His kingdom. God’s word is to make a difference in our lives, as we hear it — and DO it.

But James makes very clear here: if all you’re doing is hearing or reading or studying God’s word —but you are not doing anything about it, you may think you’re being a good Christian, but you are only deceiving yourself. You’ve got to be a doer of the word!

INVITATION:
Would you ask yourself this morning: when is the last time I actually changed something in my life because of what I heard in church?
When is the last time I changed something in my life because of what I read in God’s word?
This should be happening every day, as we look in the “mirror” of God’s word.
Ask the Lord to help you be a “doer” of His word.
And maybe there is something specific His Holy Spirit is leading you to do today, as you apply His word to your life.

But of no area in your life is this more important than salvation. Don’t just “hear” that Jesus died on the cross and can save you — DO what you need to do to be saved: admit your sin, trust that Jesus’ death on the cross paid for your sins, and DO IT — give your life to Him; follow Him as your Lord & Savior today. And then spend every day looking in the “mirror” of His word, and let Him really change your life!