After the Sermon Part 6

The Mandate for Right Hearing and Doing

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. Take heed therefore how you hear. Now I have no doubt but that in the minds of the vast majority of the men and women gathered in this place this morning, that there is a deep and burning conviction that the Bible mandates for every man who preaches the Word that he ought to preach that Word in an accurate manner,

1:32 in an accurate, spirit-filled, earnest, and persuasive manner.

1:40 So to preach is the solemn duty and non-negotiable standard for every man set apart to labor in the ministry of the Word. And I would be surprised if there is anyone here who is a partaker of grace who would be satisfied with a word that is not a partaker of grace. So be your trial. I'm not surprised that someone like me could be satisfied with a ministry as his regular ministry that was not marked by these words.

2:10 Accurate, spirit-filled, earnest, and persuasive proclamation and application of the Word of God. To this end, no little part of the burden of this pastor's conference is that by the blessing of God, those of us called to lay, in the word and in teaching would become more and more just such preachers, more effective heralds of the message entrusted to us by the King in Zion, even our Lord Jesus Christ. However, as certainly and as clearly as the Bible mandates, these duties which point to a higher standard of excellence in the preaching of the word, also mandates the duties connected with a higher standard of the hearing of the word that is preached. And these words of our Lord Jesus read in your hearing in Luke 8 and verse 18 constitute a watershed or an epitomizing test.

3:32 Concerning the duty of the right hearing of the word of God, especially as that word comes to us in the preaching of it. Therefore, using this text as the foundation, we've engaged in a series of some 15 messages here in our morning worship services over recent months, a series entitled, Take Heed, How You Hear. And in that series, I have sought to bring to bear the broader witness of the entirety of scripture upon what constitutes being a good hearer of the word of God. What is the nuts and bolts or what are the nuts and bolts of taking to heart the injunction of our Lord Jesus to pay close, careful. Constant attention to the manner in which we hear the word of God. Following the outline found in many of the older writers and in the framework of the Westminster Catechisms, we have considered precisely what it means to take heed how we hear under three major categories.

4:57 What we do before the preaching of the word. What we do during the preaching of the word and what we do after the preaching of the word, seeking to be obedient to the command of our Lord to take heed how we hear. Now, with respect to this last category, namely what we do after our exposure to the preaching of the word, I have suggested that the bulk of our biblical duties can be applied to the Lord. They can be arranged under four words.

5:35 Those words being repetition, supplication, meditation, and implementation. And in this, the last of our studies in this series, message number 16, we complete our consideration of what is involved in this matter of implementation. And last Lord's Day, we had time to consider. We considered just two strands of that duty.

6:05 The duty of implementation established and then we considered in the second place the activity of implementation illustrated. And we established the duty by the negative examples of Ezekiel 36, 30 to 32, Luke 6, 46 to 49, and by the positive commandment of Joshua 1. Then we looked at the activity of implementation illustrated. In Psalm 119, 59 and 60, Nehemiah 8, 13 to 18, and Philemon verse 21. Now this morning in this final message, I want us to move on from considering the duty of implementation established. The activity of implementation illustrated to consider thirdly, the blessings of implementation identified, and finally, the ability for implementation highlighted. First then this morning, the blessings of implementation identified.

Blessings of Implementation Identified: Assurance Established and Strengthened

7:24 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 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.

8:00 The 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.

8:18 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.

8:42 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. 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.

9:56 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, but does not do, and the one who hears and does.

10:22 And at the conclusion of that illustration, he makes this very simple statement in 25b. B. Being not a hearer that forgets, but a doer that works, this man shall be blessed in his doing. This man shall be blessed in his doing.

10:52 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 Almighty God. Now what are some of those blessings? Blessings not known by the non-implementer, the hearer who does not.

11:28 Well, let me seek to highlight three of them. The most fundamental and obvious blessings of those whose lives can be described as doers of the word. And the first is this. The doer of the word will have his assurance established and strengthened.

11:51 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. Am I a true child of God?

12:13 Grace effected 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-deceived heart 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, as we heard in the previous hour, to wear a mask, but to know what his own face looks like when he takes the mask off.

13:15 James says it's possible to be so deceived in the heart that you don't even really know who you are and your religion is a nothing. That's a frightening possibility. James goes on to say in chapter two that it's possible to have a face. It goes no further than the faith of demons.

13:38 You believe that God is one, verse 19. 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.

14:01 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. 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.

14:31 Demands the word heard in preaching is that the doer of the word will have his assurance established and strengthened. And why is that so? 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.

15:01 That very simple. That very simple statement says it all. First John chapter 2. Hear the words of John the Apostle, verse 3.

15:10 And hereby do we know that we know him, if under the preaching of the word our flesh crawls with goose pimples, when the word is accurately and in the power and demonstration of the spirit and with close application to the conscience. Why I'm. Full of bumps. All through the preaching.

15:43 All it may prove is that you have very mobile goose bumps. Nothing more. Very easily constricted surface flesh. That's all.

15:57 John says no, hereby do we know that we know him. If we will only tolerate most orthodox, straight, well structured, homiletically clean, reformed, and be damned and go to hell. Well, reformed, and be damned and go to hell. John says, hereby do we know that we know him.

16:36 If we are keeping his commandments. Very simple. No need for a Neo-No. We're at a Greek to understand what it says.

16:40 Hereby do we know. No little part of our assurance being established and strengthened by the word of God has been taken away. It was. It is.

16:46 What is God? It is not God. He is God. God.

16:50 What? No, that's not true! God. It is God.

16:52 What is God? is when we see in ourselves, by the grace of God, a pattern of being doers of the Word. And to that 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. Notice the certainty.

17:19 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.

17:37 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. The pattern of his life, being a doer of the Word, is not the drift and bent of his life.

18:01 John says, he is alive. And the truth is not in him. All the truth that is floated by him, from which he has extracted a doctrine of salvation, a doctrine of the saving knowledge of God, out of which he has 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.

18:34 That's what John says.

18:37 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, John 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.

19:18 And what John affirms in 1 John 2, the writer to Hebrews so clearly affirms in chapter 5. Hebrews chapter 5. In a 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.

19:43 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, 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, learned 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?

21:07 He became unto all them that are obeying the author of eternal salvation, 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. And 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, what he went through to effect a salvation

22:33 that would manifest itself in all of those upon whom it terminates by making them doers of the word. 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?

23:02 Why this trauma before the cup? No! It was the 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.

23:21 That salvation comprised 100% of the virtue of Jesus. But what that salvation makes them fundamentally and basically doers of the word. 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.

23:51 For did not our Lord say in the well-known words of Matthew 7.21, Not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord. 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.

24:25 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 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.

24:53 And Jesus said, Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter, but he who is doing as a pattern of life. 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. So surely it is not perfect obedience.

25:36 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 mother. Now what do some of you do?

25:53 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 according to knowledge giving honor unto her as unto a weaker vessel. You say, I just don't care.

26:15 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. Then my friend, go to hell for your high-handed refusal to do the will of the Father.

26:32 But don't call yourself a Christian. You kids, you know the will of the Father. While you're still in the years of your minority, the will of the Father for you is relatively simple. Children, obey your parents.

26:46 Honor your father and your mother. Obey them. Honor them. Respect them.

26:53 Up to the point that they would command something contrary to them. Something contrary to the will of God. And what do you do? 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.

27:11 The will of God for you is clear. You're not doing it. That's not the pattern of your life. If you died in this next moment, you'd split hell wide open, young person.

27:22 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.

27:32 It doesn't amaze unless it's made you one who is doing the will of the Father in heaven as revealed in the Word of God. The first and foundational blessing of being a doer of the Word, an implementer, is that our assurance is both established and strengthened. A life of settled, single-eyed obedience to the Word of Christ is generally the handmaiden of a strong and settled assurance of a saving union with Christ. And I say to you, my dear preacher friends, the kindest thing you can do for all those people under your ministry who say that they have a strong and settled assurance of a saving union with Christ, but who manifest little or no single-eyed adherence to the revealed will of Christ, is to strip their confidence out of their grip by the power of the Word of God before they sink into hell clutching to a false hope. The first great blessing of being a doer of the Word is it worth the struggle,

28:59 the pain, the agony, the self-denial, at times the reproach, the pressure of peers, to be able to pillow one's head in the knowledge that when we say, now I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, not simply to say, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take, but say, I know, O Lord, my soul you will take. Take it home to be with the Savior whom, having not seen, I love. But then there's a second great blessing that comes from implementation. Not only is the doer of the Word the one who will have his assurance established and strengthened, but the second great blessing is this. The doer of the Word will have his love to Christ validated and manifested.

Blessings of Implementation Identified: Love to Christ Validated and Manifested

30:06 The doer of the Word will have his love to Christ validated and manifested. Now according to 1 Peter 1.8, I want you to turn there with me, no one has saving faith in Christ who does not also have a passion of love to Christ. Notice how Peter brings the two together in verse 8 of 1 Peter 1.

30:39 Whom, having not seen, and the whom refers to Jesus Christ, the immediate antecedent at the end of verse 7. Whom, having not seen, now notice he doesn't say to these Christians, you ought to love, you will one day perhaps come to love. No, whom, having not seen, you love. On whom, though you see him not, yet believing.

31:08 They were believing upon Christ and they had love to Christ. And never in a truly regenerate heart will these things be divorced. There will always be faith in Christ and love to Christ. Never will they be separated.

31:36 That's why we must be very careful with our children. Not to tell them primarily you must come to love Jesus, but we must continually be pressing them to believe upon the Lord Jesus. For until they believe upon Him, they will have no true love to Him. But when they begin to say I do believe, I am believing upon Him, then we must look for the fruit of love to Him and say, now sweetheart, if you really believe upon Jesus, you will love Jesus.

32:07 And if you love Jesus, this is what you will do to show your love to Jesus. For Peter, there is no separation. And this text again only epitomizes the universal teaching of the Word of God. You say then, where can I go to find the love-o-meter which if hooked up to the certain part of my chest cavity will read love to Christ or no love to Christ.

32:38 There is no such instrument on the face of the earth. But the Lord Jesus has given us in His own words the measure by which to know if we love Him that takes it totally out of the realm of subjective feelings, takes it totally outside the realm of our native personality, which in some cases is more introspective, reflective, vulnerable to melancholy, others more cheerful, ambulant, outgoing, more susceptible perhaps to a shallow self-deception because of because we are not naturally reflective and introspective. Jesus gives a word that takes us all in in terms of the full spectrum of human personality and temperament. All ends and everyone in between. Listen to His words in the Gospel of John. Look at them with me.

33:32 John's Gospel, chapter 14. John's Gospel, chapter 14 and verse 15. If you love Me, you will feel all tender and gushy when you sing hymns about Me. If you love Me, you will find yourself melted to tears when you hear preaching about My suffering and My death and My agony upon the cross.

34:09 If you love Me, write in anything else you want. Jesus gave us the one non-negotiable criterion. Here it is. If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

34:26 You will be a doer. You will be one who having been made aware of My will in the preaching of My word, you will implement it. You will be a doer of that word. Further on in this chapter, verse 21.

34:46 He who has My commandments and keeps them. And the word keep means to retain with a view to obeying them, not merely retaining them, with a view to impressing others how much I know. He who has My commandments and keeps guards with a view to implementing them. He it is that loves Me.

35:10 Verse 23. Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me, he will, he will keep My word. He will keep My word. Verse 24.

35:26 He that loves Me not does not keep My words. And the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me. It's a horribly serious thing to sit here this morning and not have love to the Lord Jesus. Do you know if you do not love Him, you are under a curse from God?

35:56 We read three Lord's days ago from Galatians 1. If anyone come and preach unto you any other gospel than that which we have preached, let him be anathema, the strongest word Paul could find in his vast vocabulary of Greek words to speak of the curse of God upon a man. You know where he uses that again? In 1 Corinthians 16 and verse 22.

36:22 If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. The word agapapo is not used here, but phileo, and it's one of the reasons why the artificial distinction that there is always a hard, fast difference in the meaning of those two words breaks down. If anyone have not a genuine fondness and attachment of heart to the Lord, if you don't love Jesus, and you're self-deceived if you say you love Him and you're not a doer of the word. Folks, can I make it any simpler than that? If you don't love Jesus, you're cursed of God. How else could it be?

37:33 The Father who loved the pre-incarnate Word from all eternity, dwelling face to face in the mystery of inner Trinitarian and commune. And He sends him to join to that eternal word, true humanity. The Word became flesh while ever remaining what He ever was, God of God, light of lights. He takes to Himself something He had never had before, true human soul and body.

38:10 How the Father's love, may I say it reverently, must have increased and intensified, and that's a biblical concept because Jesus said, therefore doth my Father love me because, and then He describes His unfolding acts of obedience with every new step of obedience. The Father's love to the Son was increased. He stood in Jordan's waters and the voice of heaven says, this is my Son, my beloved one. The Mount of Transfiguration, how must He now love Him as He's taken Him back to His right hand in His glorified but eternally scarred humanity. For they shall look on Him whom they pierced. John says, I saw as it were a Lamb slain in the midst of the throne. Can you see why the Father has no patience for those who refuse to love His Son?

39:16 He sees in Him all that is lovely and lovable and worthy of the love of the creatures for whom He left heaven on a mission of mercy. And when you are sins and you're peers for Christ, no wonder God says, if anyone loves not the Lord, let him be a curse. If you don't love Christ, you're under a curse. I'm not sure if I love Him. Here's the test. If you love Him, you'll keep His commandments. You'll be a doer of the Word.

40:07 You'll never so do it that you won't need to pray daily, Oh God, wash me afresh in the blood of Christ. You will never so obey Him that you will say, Romans 7, 14 to the end is a passage that is of no relevance to me. No. To the end of your days you will say, I find that to me who would do good, evil is present with me.

40:35 Oh wretched man, what a wretched man that I am. I love Him and I know I love Him because I'm committed to obey Him. And when obedience means I must do something akin to whacking off a right hand and throwing it from me and gouging out a right eye and casting it from me, and when it means I must have the dearest relations of father, mother, brother, sister, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, desire, I'm ready for the sword for he that loves father, mother, brother, sister more than me is not worthy of me. My folks, these are the words of Jesus. This kind of Christianity that gets all this blessing from the cross of Christ and the resurrection of Christ and the return of Christ but knows nothing of attachment in love to Christ or knows nothing of a love that produces a pattern of implementing the word of Christ is utterly foreign to the Bible. It's as heretical and damnable as the lies of the little white man in his white gown with his beanie.

41:55 And in many ways it's more deceptive because it can be found in a context where the cross is set forward with much greater clarity as the only hope of sinners and where sinners are called to repentance and faith. But if that professed repentance and faith has not made you a doer of the word, then your professed love to Christ is not validated and it certainly is not being manifested. But you see, a doer of the word, one whose pattern and drift of life is, once he discerns the will of God in the word of God, cries for grace to run in the way of his commandments to do as we saw last week when we looked at the Psalmist, I fought on my way, on my ways, and I turned my feet unto thy statutes. I made haste and delayed not to keep thy commandments. Then there is a third and wonderful blessing that comes from implementation of the word preached. The doer of the word will not only have his assurance established and strengthened, his love to Christ validated and manifested, but thirdly, and this is one of the things that most greatly troubles me at this present time

Blessings of Implementation Identified: Growth in Grace Secured and Increased

43:22 in the life of Trinity Baptist Church, the doer of the word will have his growth in grace secured and increased. The doer of the word will have his growth in grace secured and increased. When James says, this man who is a doer of the word shall be blessed in his doing, one of the blessings found in the path of doing is that our growth in grace is both secured and increased. Now that we are to grow in grace is clearly a gospel duty.

44:02 None would debate that who believes the Bible. Take the simple command of Peter in 2 Peter 3.18, but grow in grace in the knowledge of our living Savior Jesus Christ. It is a mandate.

44:19 Take the whole teaching of the central part of Ephesians 4, the first 17, 16 verses where we have that beautiful picture of the body and all the individual part unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. But you see, growth is not automatic. You have the tragedy of 1 Corinthians 3 where Paul has to address people who have stunted growth. And I direct your attention particularly to Hebrews chapter 5 where the writer to the Hebrews addresses a similar concern.

45:01 Having spoken of the Lord Jesus as a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, he says in verse 11, of whom we have many things to say and hard of interpretation. And why are they hard of interpretation? Because the things in themselves are abstruse? No, they are hard of interpretation seeing you have become dull of hearing.

45:32 You've become lazy in your ears. For when by reason of the time, enough time has passed in which you have been sitting under the ministry of the word, you've been obeying the injunction given later in the epistle, you've not been forsaking the assembling of yourselves together and the word of God which is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword has been preached and taught to you. And by reason of the time teachers, you ought to have reached the maturity of understanding and spiritual stature for to be a teacher in the church are inseparable. It's not enough to have a well-furnished head and a nice fluid tongue. You better have a character that embodies what the head articulates through that tongue or keep your mouth shut or you increase your damnation. When the day dawns on the professing church of Christ when she is as insistent upon the graces needed in her public teachers as she is upon her gifts, a new day of blessing will break upon us.

46:52 But that aside, by reason of the time when you ought to be teachers, you've heard enough truth to know, enough truth to make you stand above the world. As someone who has grown in grace in the language of John, I write unto you young men because you are young. And the word of God has taken up root in you and it's made you strong. That's what the writer to the Hebrews is talking about.

47:32 Enough time has passed. You ought to be teachers. But he said, Alas, you have need that someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God. And to become such as have need of milk and not of solid food.

47:51 When you ought to be sitting at the table, if not with fork and knife, at least with your grubby fat little hands breaking off chunks of mom and daddy's meat and vegetables and stuffing it in your mouth when you don't miss your nose and your ear. And the time has come when you ought to be having solid food. Mama's still propping the bottle up in your mouth. You want to babu?

48:16 Mama me have babu. That's what he's saying to them. Now that would be tragic if that happened to our natural children or grandchildren. When they ought to be beyond the...

48:30 Verse 13. For everyone who partakes of milk is inexperienced in the word of righteousness. And I know the debate over the precise meaning of the phrase and I'm not going to open the debate let alone seek to resolve it. But the key is this.

48:54 Everyone that partakes of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness for he is a babe. But solid food is for full-grown men. How did they become such? What is the evidence that they are such?

49:11 Even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil. In other words, when they hear the word of God, they hear with a view to receiving and implementing its moral and ethical directives. You see that? Their senses are exercised to discern good.

49:42 They become gurus in ethical questions of a naughty nature. As they do, they become strong in grace and it has relatively little to do with native intellect, IQ and brain power. I have seen men who spiritually were six foot six, 280 pounds of spiritual bone and sinew and muscle and with a mind spiritually of a university professor and they never made it through high school. And I've seen others who perhaps graduated with honors even in their post-graduate work who were five foot one, 98 pounds and could hardly carry themselves up a flight of stairs. And when you get to know the situation close enough, you find out here was the difference. One heard the word and wherever it touched his life

51:10 in the discerning of good and evil and his sensitivity was heightened and the sense of moral integrity was strengthened and his love to Christ was not grieved and quenched by ethical controversies and in the context of a good conscience he was able to pray with fervor and commune with his Savior and find more supplies of grace to take the next steps of obedience in the refusal of evil and in the choice of good. I say one of my greatest burdens right now is right here. There are not a few of you in this place enough time has passed when you ought to take new converts and young believers who enter this place under your wing and bring them on to maturity. You can't do it. In fact, some of us hope they don't get too close to some of you because if they do and find you've been under this ministry for five or ten years and see your shoddy life it may undermine their confidence that there's anything different in this place. You say, Pastor, you're speaking very plainly.

52:27 Yes, life's too short to dabble to dabble in flattery. Your responsibilities and mine are great. We sat in the previous hour and there's not a one of us who could go away and say we don't understand the burden of God in Isaiah 1. Don't play church.

52:54 Written over that one hour later and some of you have heard that emphasis in the past few times and yet you sit here this morning and you don't have the conscience of your own kids on your side. When you lead family worship you're making cynics of your kids. Why? Because they hear you lose your temper and you don't confess it to them and to your wife.

53:29 They see the other expressions of your shoddy lifestyle that go on unchecked, undealt with, unaltered, week in, week out, year in, year out while all the while you take your place here every time the doors are open and you greet the pastors and you're making cynics of your own children. Brethren, these things ought not to be. The doer of the word should be blessed in his doing and the third great blessing of being a doer of the word is that our growth in grace is secured and increased. And then I would be unfaithful did I not take just my remaining five minutes to take up that last head, the ability for implementation highlighted. The ability for implementation highlighted. And I use the word highlighted deliberately. All along I've assumed and I have from time to time emphasized that this doing of the word that is to follow our hearing, this implementation is to be done out of love to Christ in the strength and grace of Christ.

Ability for Implementation Highlighted: Dependence on Christ

54:50 But I don't want to close without highlighting that very truth. None of the mental, emotional, volitional faculties are suspended or negated but they are fully engaged in this implementation. That's why the psalmist could say I thought, his mind was at work, on my ways. He was being honest about the patterns of his life.

55:15 And I turned my feet onto your ponies. He was fully engaged in all the faculties of his redeemed humanity. James says, the doer of the word and he doesn't say the doer that is he who does in the strength of Christ. No, he just says the doer of the word shall be blessed.

55:38 But taking the total witness of scripture, we know that the ability for implementation is ultimately that ability that flows out of a vital union with the Lord Jesus. Let me quote just several texts with very little comment that make this so clear. Jesus said in John 15, 5 severed from me, cut off from me, you can do nothing. That is, we can do nothing is of true fruit bearing unto God.

56:14 And yet Philippians 4, 13 Paul says, I can do all things in him who strengthens me. I can do. Are you bragging Paul? Yes.

56:32 Are you proud? No. Listen to the rest of my statement through him who strengthens me. Well, do you do it or does he do it?

56:42 I do it, but by the strength which he supplies. In him who strengthens me. We're back to Philippians 2, 12 and 13. So then my beloved, as you've always obeyed.

56:55 He says, you obeyed. And he didn't pause to say in the strength of Christ, by the grace of Christ. He says, so then beloved, as you've always obeyed. He said, you obeyed.

57:06 Not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence. Work marshalties and bend of your salvation. Verse 13, for it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. There's the truth again.

57:34 None of my faculties are suspended, but the ability for implementation ultimately does not rest in me. It rests in the living God and in his son and in the virtue of my union with him in prayerful dependence upon his grace to be a doer of the word. And I close with a reference to Hebrews 13, 20 and 21. Think of the book of Hebrews.

58:05 Those of you familiar at all with its contents, think of all of the sober warnings, all of the intense exhortations, running with endurance the race that is set before us, enduring unto blood if necessary in the course of persevering faith. I tell you the duties laid upon poor frail humanity in the book of Hebrews are neither few nor easy. But notice the note on which he closes in verse 20 of chapter 13. Now the God of peace who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus, make you perfect in every good thing to do his will, working enough that which is well-pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. 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.

59:21 I come in here and all I heard this morning was duty, duty, duty. I want to hear Christ preached. I tell you, folks, I'm getting sick and tired of that cop-out. You want Christ glorified?

59:31 Do you really want Him glorified? Here's how He's glorified. He is glorified when it is evident that He is working in you. And when will it be evident that He's working in you, that which is well-pleasing in His sight?

59:51 When the pattern of your life is to be a doer of the Word. And only then. And all this pious nonsense. Oh, I want Christ preached.

60:04 What do you mean? 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 duty? 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.

60:36 No, teaching them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you. 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.

61:09 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 and is not subject to the law of God. Neither, indeed, can it be. You need to go to Jesus, mediator of the new covenant, and ask Him to do in you what you cannot do for yourself.

Concluding Exhortation and Prayer

61:30 Take out the heart of flesh, give a heart of stone, and 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, but 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. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank You for Your Holy Word. We thank You that it is a lamp to our feet and a light to our pathway.

62:28 And we pray that the Holy Spirit will attest to His own truth every verse quoted in our ears, every verse expounded insofar as Your mind has been rightly set forth from those texts. O God, be merciful to the self-deluded amongst us. We don't want to see them go to the judgment clinging to a lie. Lord, have mercy.

63:02 Have mercy, we pray. And be gracious to each one who is united to Your Son, that there will be a renewed determination that we shall indeed be men and women, boys and girls, who are determined to be doers of the Word and not hearers only, knowing according to Your own covenantal promise we shall be blessed in our doing, blessed with a strengthened, well-grounded assurance that we are Yours, blessed with increased growth in grace, blessed with the validation and manifestation of true love to Your dear Son, sealed then Your Word to our hearts we plead, in Jesus' name. Amen.