After the Sermon Part 6

The Command to Take Heed How You Hear and Be a Doer of the Word

0:03 In the Word of God, found in Luke's Gospel, chapter 8 and verse 18, we have the record of our Lord's words spoken to the inner circle of his disciples shortly after he had given the well-known parable of the sower and the soils, had interpreted that parable in their hearing. He then said to his disciples in Luke 8 and verse 18, Take heed therefore how you hear, for whosoever has to him shall be given, and whoever has not from him shall be taken away, even that which he thinks or seems to have. Take heed. Heed therefore how you hear. That there are specific and wonderful blessings from the hand of God upon the one who takes heed how he hears, particularly taking heed that he becomes, in the language of James, a doer of the Word, that such blessings come in the path of implementation,

1:32 is clearly taught from every segment of the Word of God. However, this morning I direct your attention to one key passage, since the focus burden of this particular passage is the subject of implementation or that of being a doer of the Word of God. And I refer, of course, to James chapter 1. James chapter 1.

2:01 We saw the positive command to be an implementer, a doer of the Word, in verse 22, last Lord's Day. But be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves. There the command is clear, that we are not merely to be listeners to the Word, even though it is the Word of God accurately preached, even though it is brought to us so as to convince our judgment and draw forth our assent that this is the Word of the living God, we must be those who implement what we have heard. We must be marked as those whose pattern of life can justly be described as doers of the Word. The result of being a hearer, even of the Word itself, and giving assent to the fact that it is the Word, but stopping short of implementation, as we saw last week, is to put ourselves in the way of self-delusion.

3:21 If we attend upon the Word, but we are not implementers of the Word, we engage in a form of self-delusion. We think that because we hear well, and hear what we ought to hear, that we are thereby the better. When James says no, if our hearing does not issue in doing, we become self-deluded. And then James goes on in verses 23 through 25a to give an illustration of the difference between one who hears and who does not.

4:01 One who hears, but does not do, and the one who hears and does. And at the conclusion of that illustration, he makes this very simple statement in 25b. Being not a hearer that forgets, but a doer that works, this man shall be blessed in his doing. This man shall...

4:33 shall be blessed in his doing. And from this passage, the explicit concern of which is this matter of implementation of the Word, after we have heard the preaching and teaching of the Word, we have an explicit statement that in the path of doing, there will be found the blessing of...

The Danger of Self-Delusion and Vain Religion

5:03 of Almighty God. The doer of the Word will have his assurance established and strengthened. The doer of the Word will have his assurance established and strengthened. James has spoken of the possibility of self-delusion on this most crucial of all concerns,

5:32 true child of God. Does grace...

5:36 has affected in me that change essential to bring me out of the state of nature, condemnation and death, and into a state of grace and life and the favor of God. James has addressed the very real possibility of self-delusion. Further on in this very chapter, in verse 26, he declares that it's possible to have a self-deceit, which is to be easily the root cause of sin, that we seek God, and to fear God, and to follow

6:34 which we shall not gain. So the record is, on the record is that a man will have no fear, and a religion that is nothing but a puff of air. If any man thinks or seems to be religious while he bridles not his tongue, he deceives his heart. This man's religion is vain. It's a terrible thing for a man to be play acting to wear a mask, but to know what his own face looks like when he takes the mask off.

6:36 James says, It's possible to be so deceived in the heart that you don't even really know who you are.

6:47 And your religion is a nothing. That's a frightening possibility. James goes on to say in chapter 2 that it's possible to have a faith that goes no further than the faith of demons. You believe that God is one, verse 19.

7:02 You do well. The demons also believe and they tremble. So here within the epistle of James and in many other portions of the word of God, this great burning issue of whether or not my professed faith in Christ is indeed the faith of God's elect, whether or not my professed attachment to Christ is indeed an expression of vital union with him, or whether I am self-deceived or deluded or have nothing more, than that which the demons have. This is a crucial issue.

Blessing of Assurance: Obedience as Evidence of Saving Faith

7:41 And when James says, The doer of the word, this man, shall be blessed in his doing. One of the great blessings of being one who implements the word heard in preaching is that the doer of the word will have his assurance established and strengthened. And why? Is that so?

8:07 Well, for the simple reason that the scriptures everywhere teach that where there is saving religion, there is a fundamental pattern of obedience to the revealed will of God as found in the word of God. That very simple statement says it all. First John chapter 2. Hear the words of John the apostle, verse 3.

8:32 And hereby do we know that we know him. If under the preaching of the word our flesh crawls with goose pimples,

8:47 surely I know him. When the word is preached accurately and in the power and demonstration of the spirit and with close application to the conscience, why I'm goose bumps all the way through the preaching. All it may prove is that you have very mobile goose bumps. Nothing more.

9:14 Very, very easily constricted surface flesh. That's all. John says no. Hereby do we know that we know him.

9:26 We will only tolerate the most orthodox, straight, well-structured, homiletically clean, reformed, evangelical, experimental preaching.

9:37 No.

9:46 Well-reformed preaching and be damned and go to hell. John says hereby do we know. No. If we are keeping his commandments.

10:03 Very simple. Don't need a needle. No. We're in a Greek to understand what it says.

10:09 Hereby do we know. No little part of our assurance being established and strengthened is when we see in ourselves by the grace of God a pattern of being doers of the word. And to that, a person who says, well, I shall cling to my insurance in spite of the non-pattern of doing the word. John says in verse 4, he that says, I know him.

10:42 Notice the certainty. Not he that says, I think I may know him, or I think I may be in the process of coming to know him. No, this person has what we would call a full, strong, certain assurance. He that says, I know him.

11:01 I am confident that I stand in a state of grace and is not keeping his commandments. Being a doer of the word is not the universal, albeit imperfect, pattern of his life. Being a doer of the word is not the drift and bent of his life. John says he is alive.

11:29 The truth. The truth is not in him. All the truth that has floated by him from which he has extracted a doctrine of salvation, a doctrine of the saving knowledge of God, out of which he's constructed his own unshakable confidence of his standing in grace. That truth has never penetrated him and laid hold of him to the saving of his soul.

Christ, the Author of Eternal Salvation to the Obedient

12:00 That's what John says. And so I say, when we contemplate this matter of implementation and move from the duty of it to the activity illustrated to consider the blessings of implementation identified, the first and great blessing of being an implementer, a doer of the word, is the establishing and strengthening of our assurance that we have something more than vain religion, that we are not deceiving our own hearts, that we are not self-deluded, that we have gone beyond the faith of demons. And what John affirms in 1 John 2, the writer to Hebrews so clearly affirms in chapter 5, Hebrews chapter 5, in the section in which the writer to the Hebrews is speaking of our Lord Jesus as a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, and then describing our Lord in verse 7, who in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death,

13:25 and having been heard for his godly fear, though he was a son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and having been made perfect, that is, having been made one who is able to enter in with the full range of empathy to human suffering and struggle in the crucible of his own suffering, learning obedience as a principle of life, when the path of obedience would take him through the dark and turbulent waters of Gethsemane, and the darker and more turbulent waters of Golgotha, yet the bent and commitment of his heart was not my will, but thine be done. And having learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and thereby being constituted perfectly suited as a sympathetic high priest to his people, what has he done? He became unto all, he became unto all them that are obeying the author of eternal salvation,

14:48 named of God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Isn't it interesting that the only place in the Bible where these two words, to my knowledge, are brought together, eternal salvation, are brought together in conjunction with a salvation that never, never, NEVER is applied to a sinner without making him one who is a doer of the word. To talk of any kind of assurance and any kind of so-called eternal security outside the parameters of being a doer of the word is to fly into the face of the one salvation purchased by the one Savior. Whoever your Savior is, if he's left you something other than a doer of the word, it isn't Jesus. Whoever your professed Savior may be, it is not the one made a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, because he went through what he went through to effect a salvation that would manifest itself in all of those upon whom it terminates by making them doers of the word.

16:13 He became the author of eternal salvation to all that are obeying him. Their obedience does not procure their salvation. If that were so, why his agony in Gethsemane? Why this trauma before the cup? No!

16:36 It was a salvation to be procured by his agony, his suffering, his obedience unto death. But in its application none lay hold of that totally gratuitous salvation. That salvation comprised 100% of the virtue of Jesus. But what that salvation makes them fundamentally and basically doers of the word.

Doing the Father's Will: The Mark of True Discipleship

17:06 And therefore I say the blessings of implementation identified take us first of all to this blessing. The doer of the word will have his assurance established and strengthened. For did not our Lord say in the well-known words of Matthew 7.21, Not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord.

17:31 Not everyone who uses the correct language to identify my person and speaks that language with intensity, thereby reflecting a professed attachment to me in my unique identity. They not only address me as Lord off-handedly, but they address me with the double address, Lord, Lord. You are not only what you claim to be, but I claim to have an attachment to you in faith and love. Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that is doing the work.

18:09 He that is doing the will of my Father which is in heaven. He that is a doer of the word. For there is nowhere to know the will of the Father in heaven, but as he has transcribed it in his holy word. And Jesus said, Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter, but he who is doing as a pattern of life.

18:32 Not perfectly, for he had earlier taught his own true disciples in the sixth chapter, that a part of their daily prayer experience will be seeking forgiveness for their sins. And that they will be part of a community where there are people who need daily to confess their sins one to another. Therefore he said, after this manner pray ye. And among the petitions are these, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

19:04 So surely it is not perfect obedience. No. But Jesus was not contradicting himself when he went on to say in Matthew 7.21 Not everyone who says shall enter, but he who is doing the will of my Father.

Practical Applications of Doing the Father's Will

19:21 Now what do some of you do with that? You know what the will of the Father is, with respect to your role as a husband. Yet you refuse to even attempt to begin to learn how to dwell with your wife accordingly. According to knowledge, giving honor unto her is unto a weaker vessel.

19:44 You say, I just don't care. She's not worthy of it. It's not worth my trouble. I know it's the will of the Father, but I'm just not going to do it.

19:56 Then my friend, go to hell for your high-handed refusal to do the will of the Father. But don't call yourself a Christian. You kids, you know the will of the Father. You're still in the years of your minority.

20:15 The will of the Father for you is relatively simple. Children, obey your parents. Honor your father and your mother. Obey them.

20:23 Honor them. Respect them. Up to the point that they would command something contrary to the will of God. And what do you do?

20:32 You spend three quarters of your time bucking them, fighting them, and the other quarter of your time conning them and trying to lie to them. The will of God for you is clear. You're not doing it. That's not the pattern of your life.

20:49 If you died in this next moment, you'd split hell wide open, young person. I don't care what you say. I don't care what you profess. I don't care how wonderful your experience was at the youth retreat last December or the year before.

21:04 It doesn't amount to anything unless it's made you one who is doing the will of the Father in heaven as revealed in the word of God. You see, there might be some sitting here this morning who say, well, you know, this is a problem with these Reformed Baptists. They don't preach Christ enough. I come in here and all I heard this morning was doody, doody, doody.

Glorifying Christ Through Obedience, Not Mere Preaching

21:25 I want to hear Christ preached. I tell you, folks, I'm getting sick and tired of that cop-out. You want Christ glorified? Do you really want Him glorified?

21:34 Here's how He's glorified. He is glorified when it is evident that He is working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight. That's when He's glorified. And when will it be evident that He's working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight when the pattern of your life is to be a doer of the word?

21:58 And only then. And all this pious nonsense. Oh, I want Christ preached. What do you mean?

22:07 You want some glorious truth concerning Christ to be floated by your eyes with no arrows that pierce your heart, with no markers as to your doody? For anyone to preach Christ in that way is not to preach Christ but to deny Christ the fruit of His sufferings and to be disobedient to His commission. For He said, Make disciples of all the nations, baptize them, and then just go on preaching how wonderful I am for the rest of your days. No.

22:39 Teaching them to observe whatsoever I have commanded. That's His commission. But thank God in seeking to do whatsoever He commanded, ultimately, I look to the God of peace to work in me that which is well pleasing in His sight through the virtue and power of Christ. Therefore, if you're not united to Christ, you can't be a doer of the word.

23:12 At best, you can struggle and try or go through some external motions, but they that are in the flesh cannot please God. The carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can it be.

A Call to Persistent Heeding and Doing

23:27 You need to go to Jesus, mediator of the new covenant, and ask Him to do in you what you cannot do for yourself. Lay hold of the one who died that you and I might live. May God grant that these things we've considered over these many weeks, based on the words of Jesus, take heed therefore how you hear. May not be like the goodness of God's people that burned away like the morning dew.

24:02 May the Lord help us through the rest of our days to be determined by the grace of God. We shall take heed how we hear before, during, and after the preaching of the word of God.