It's a great joy to invite you to open your Bible with me to James chapter one. If you didn't bring a copy of scripture, there's one in the pew in front of you, same translation I'll be using. And if you don't have a copy of scripture when you go home, in your home, I would love to give you a copy of scripture in the lobby after the service. Please see me, whether you're a church member or a first time guest, I'd love to send you home with a new Bible. James chapter one. Many people know what I mean when I say the phrase muscle memory, right? Especially you men and women who have served in the military, you know exactly what I'm talking about when I talk about muscle memory. It's being trained to such a degree that it becomes your first response. You train really hard in a mundane time so that your response will be natural during an extreme situation. For example, I was first introduced to muscle memory when I was 10 years old. I didn't realize it. I mean, I'm sure I was exposed to it before then, but my parents enrolled me in a karate class in Waterford, Michigan. And it was a traditional class, a traditional school, so a lot of repetition. And our classes were 90 minutes long. For the first 10, 15 minutes, we would warm up and stretch out. Then for the next 40 minutes, we would be in straight lines, about 30 or 40 of us, no talking, not even 10-year-olds or younger. Your toes had to be on the exact same line as everyone else and the tile on the floor or the whole class would do 20 pushups on their front two knuckles. So the black belts had our attention early on. For the next 40 minutes, we would throw probably 200 to 300 combinations of blocks, punches, and kicks over and over and over and over. So why would you do that? Well, I'll tell you, as far as a 10-year-old went, I didn't like doing that. I didn't like that at all. I wanted to get to where we could spar and do some self-defense techniques and stuff like that. But they would make us go over and over and over again, throwing different blocks and punches together. Why were they doing that to us? Well, after a while, we could do that stuff without thinking. And even when I was messing around with friends or maybe competing in a tournament, I would find myself doing things out of just the training, without even thinking about it. Different combinations. That's muscle memory. If you've been in the military or have served in a capacity like that, you know what muscle memory is going all the way back to your training days, boot camp and after boot camp and the different schools you were sent to. It was to develop routines in your life, muscle memory, what to do during close combat or close quarters combat or what to do in a medical emergency so that when the extreme situation hit, You could just go right through without even giving it much thought. Muscle memory. This came to my view again just about two years ago, where I had the joy of serving as a police chaplain for the city of Chesapeake, Virginia. And when you're a police chaplain there, I don't know what it's like here, but they make you wear bulletproof vests when you're riding along, and coats, and you have a badge, and a really sweet flashlight, and they even give you boots, and pants, and all that. So you look like one of them, except you got a big, glaring word chaplain across the back, right? Which basically says, don't shoot me first. I'm the spiritual guy, right? So I loved it. It was fun to ride along with these guys. And one of my early ride-alongs, I'm just talking along with the officer I'm riding with, and he gets a call. We have to go check an alarm going off on a two-story structure. And he was meeting another police officer there, and they were gonna clear the house, so to speak, make sure all the rooms are clear. And they would do two armed police officers in case there was a problem, obviously. You just don't wanna go in by yourself. So we got to the structure, and I expected him to say, wait in the car. And he says, you wanna go? I'm like, yeah, that sounds fun. And so he introduced me to the other officer, and we went to the front door, and they went inside the front door. It was open, actually, it was ajar. And I'm like, they're like, come on in. I'm like, I get to go in on this? And he said, yeah. And then they said, you stand by the front door, and if anyone runs towards you, tackle them. I'm like, I like this job. This will be fun. And they are systematically, their muscle memory kicked in here, they systematically went through the first floor and the second floor, they cleared both floors, and it was like music. They were just, they weren't even thinking about what they were doing, and it was just beautiful to behold their training in action. And it was such a muscle memory situation that I hear them talking to each other upstairs about, where do you want to go for lunch? While they're clearing the house. By the time they get down to me, they're like, where do you want to go, chappy? He wants to go get subs today. And as they finish the first floor, they're talking about sports. Never missing a beat, and they did a great job clearing the house. That's muscle memory. It's a beautiful thing, a beautiful way that God has created our bodies that we can be programmed like that. The principle behind muscle memory is this. What is fashioned and holds true in extreme times will surely endure into the mundane times. Muscle memory. And muscle memory, a spiritual muscle memory, is what is needed in your daily trials. And this is exactly what Pastor James, here in his epistle, is trying to install in his flock's heart. As they've been scattered, as they're going through amazing trials, and these trials are bringing things out of their heart like anger towards each other, James is like, you must understand this same principle that we're calling muscle memory. That's exactly what he's doing here in James 1 in the paragraph we're considering last week, today, and Lord willing, next Sunday. Verses 19-25. Look down at verse 19. This you know, my beloved brethren, but everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. For the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility, receive the Word implanted, which is able to save your souls. But prove yourselves doers of the Word and not merely hearers who delude or deceive themselves. 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. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was, what he saw staring back from the mirror. 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." A very important paragraph in this first chapter of James. So important that we're pausing and we're making three passes over this paragraph for three weeks with you and I going home with one truth to chew on for this coming week. We saw last week this first point. I call it your first response. When you are in a trial, when you find yourself in a test, and the test examples we've had up here, walked off on the stage, have been the test of relationships, struggling in relationships, or struggling with physical pain, or struggling with living with the consequences of past sin. or struggles with dealing with just the normal pressures of life. And we find ourselves under the gun, under pressure in any of these four, and suddenly we're at a point of decision. And our first response is critical. And we understood that from our study last week. We said our first response needs to be what we saw in verse 19, be quick to hear. And this is the beginning of a whole section on the importance of hearing. And remember, James writers who were scattered into these smaller groups in different regions, the way they took in God's Word was through hearing. Not all of them were literate. And obviously, those who could read only had available to them to hear the Old Testament taught in a synagogue. or to hear an epistle like this that we're reading being read at a place of worship. They're not pulling out their Ryrie and MacArthur study Bibles. The way they took in God's Word more often than not was through hearing with their attention. And James says, when you are under the gun, when you are being crushed by tests like this, your first response must be, has God spoken to this in His Word? Now we look at them and say, well, they had an opportunity to hear God's Word. Look at us. You know, we look back at the first layer of the church and we say, I wish we could have been back then. I wish we could have been with these believers. How intense they were. How sincere they were. Just one generation removed, not even a full generation from the earthly ministry of Jesus. I want to live back there. Well, do you understand that they would say to you, I want to live up there where you are. We had the Old Testament. Yes, we did. We had God's Word in that sense. But you have what? The New Testament? And because of the New Testament, you have greater clarity as to how the Old Testament was pointing to Jesus all along? And you have not only great teaching in the New Testament that completes the picture the Old Testament started, but the New Testament even tells you how to live the Christian life. You have what? Boy, that would be nice, they would say to us. The first response needs to be to hear God's Word in our tests. And if we don't start right in our tests, we won't finish well. If we don't start with Revelation, we saw last week that we will start a tailspin down into argumentation and anger, only to find ourselves fighting against the maturity we crave. finding ourselves resisting the endurance that the Spirit Himself wants to mature us in. We saw that your first response is everything. Some people say, well, I've tried reading my Bible, and it didn't work. We've got to put all that in quotation marks, don't we? You tried reading your Bible and it didn't work, so the question is, what didn't work? Was it the Bible that didn't work, or was it you? That didn't work. That brings us to what I want to talk about this morning. It's the second part of our study on this paragraph. We've seen your first response. But secondly, I want you to see today your great caution. Your great caution. And in your notes, I have this statement to launch us into this study. The true believer who is swift to hear God's Word in trials, is ever cautious of three dangers. This is what I want you to pack up and take home with you today. We're very cautious when we struggle with that pain. We're very cautious when we find ourselves in difficult relationships. Even if in those relationships we are the one receiving 100% of being sinned against. We have to be very cautious. We have to be very cautious if we find ourselves complaining and discontent once again with having to live with consequences of our sinful past. We find ourselves having to be very cautious, just enduring Monday through Friday, the responsibilities of home, of work, of community, and of ministry. We're very cautious. You say, cautious about what? Three things that every heart here is prone to indulge, including the heart on this side of the pulpit. The first danger is what we'll call compartmentalization of sin. Compartmentalization of sin. You and I are prone to compartmentalize sin in order to ease our conscience. And so look at verse 21 again. Therefore, now you understand what the therefore is, therefore, right? It immediately has us looking back to the preceding verse. And he just got done saying, you've got to hear God's Word in your trials, not react to your trials. Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness." Putting aside all filthiness, and in the New American Standard, that second all is in italics, which means it's carrying the force of that first all. Putting aside all of sin. Now, he's not talking about perfection here. You know what he's talking about? He's talking about the sin that predictably comes out of you when you're feeling this pain, or this relationship, or the pressures, or the consequences. See, you and I rarely invent new reactions. You and I are very predictable with how we struggle, how we react to the same sins. You say, no, we're not. Just ask your spouse. Not now. Okay, maybe after lunch. Everyone else in my life knows my struggles. Everyone else that's been in the same house I am knows that when Dad or when my husband is facing this kind of a test without warning, he will worry or he will become angry. This is what James is talking about. He's saying, do not give in to the temptation to compartmentalize your sin. And look at the word he uses here. Look at the phrase. It says, therefore, two English words, one Greek word. Putting aside. Putting aside. This is a great word. It's apotitheme. You say, is that supposed to mean something to me? No, but it's just fun to say. Those of you who have studied Greek, Phil, know this is one of those me... Where's Phil? Phil, this is a me verb. Me verbs are what separate the A and B students in Greek. I got a B. But what is this particular word? It's kind of an interesting word. It paints easily a picture in your mind. And Paul uses it as well, several times. It literally means to take your clothes off. It means to take what you're wearing, take this coat, and take it off. Now, when I go home for lunch, and my wife can't be here today, she's got whatever you guys have been fighting forever, and whatever I had two weeks ago, she's down now. So I'm going to go home, I'm going to have lunch with her, make fun of how much Kleenex she has used, and if I sit down at the table like this, Lori's going to say, you know what, go take your coat off, relax, church is over. When I stand up, what am I going to do? Am I going to get my pocket knife out and just cut one sleeve off and take that off? Then cut the collar off and take that off, and then cut the other sleeve and maybe a little bit up? No, you say, that's dumb. You don't take piecemeal your coat off. You take it all off at once. Or another illustration may help you. I hear there's a big game today. I don't know what they call it today, but I know that after this year, next year and following, they're changing the name to the Lions Invitational. OK? I really feel good about the changes going on. But let's say one of the football players tonight, let's say it's someone on the winning team. No comments, please. Let's say the quarterback for the winning team is all excited. They just won the Super Bowl. And he does all these interviews, and he does all the celebrating. What's next? Eventually, he's got to go home. So what's he going to do? Is he going to put his helmet back on, leave his cleats on, leave the shoulder pads on, leave everything on, his grass-stained, frozen jersey? And is he just going to jump into his minivan and drive home to his family like that? You're like, no, that would be kind of strange. You say, well, he'll take the Helmet off, right? And go home with the shoulder pads and the cleats. No, no. You say, well, he'll take the cleats and the shoulder pads off, but leave the jersey on. No, no. No, no. Season's over. Whoever wins the football game tonight, as a matter of fact, every football player needs to take the entire uniform off, leave it there, and drive home in his jeans and t-shirt and coat. That's it. Not just a little bit. Not just partial. This is taking it all off. And that's the word that he's using here. As a matter of fact, Paul will use this same word in Ephesians 4.22 where it says, put off the old man. This is the same word used in Acts 7.58 when they were stoning Stephen to death. Remember that story? And it says that they took off their cloaks and laid them at the feet of a young man named Paul. Same word being used right there. Same word that Paul uses in Colossians 3.8 about putting off the old man. It's the same word that the author of Hebrews will use in Hebrews 12.1 about laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles you. It's the same concept. It's take the whole deal off. He's saying here, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness. That word all, as it occurs at the beginning of this verse, is not a tricky word in English or in Greek. It's trying to communicate you can't be selective of what you take off. You can't take off the things that embarrass you when you explode in front of someone else. You can't say, oh, I'm going to take that one off because that embarrasses me. You can't merely take off the sin that you're afraid someone might catch you in, but keep the ones that they won't catch you in. The great caution here is do not compartmentalize sin. As the Word of God makes you aware of sin, take it off. All of it. Get it all on the table. Now, if you're reading ahead in verse 21, I do find it interesting, this order, therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, look at the second part of the verse that we're gonna get to in a minute. In humility, receive the word implanted, which is able to save your soul. You understand what he's saying, this order? That when you and I, even before we hear God's word, or intake God's Word through reading or preaching or teaching. Even before that happens, we are going in with a posture of, I need to take off sin that may be exposed in this. Not just what I discover when I hear God's Word from Scripture, but already the stuff I already know needs to be put off. You're coming in even before the sermon, so to speak, saying, Lord, there's things in my life that must come off. as far as sin. One commentator puts it this way, God is never satisfied with partial purity. God is never satisfied with partial goodness. God is never satisfied with partial righteousness. Let me give you a couple of examples here in your notes of how we sometimes talk or think when it comes to taking care of our sin. The first example, number one, we divide between the sacred and the secular, don't we? We tend to think, well, the parts of my life that I need to clean up first are the ones that are in the sacred part. The church stuff. But what I do while I stand at the drafting table or at the computer or out on the field or with a client that's secular. Number two, another example is we divide it up between the saved and the unsaved. Just another angle of number one. Saved and unsaved. In other words, well, let's see. The Christian part of me needs to be a certain way, but when I'm with the unsaved in the community, they don't know me as a Christian, and I've got to live with them and work with them, so it's going to be a little different there. A third example. The convenient and the inconvenient. This is when believers like you and I say in our hearts, I'll take care of the sin in my life that will be easy to take care of. But there's some other sin that's going to take a lot of work, and to be honest, I just don't have it in me right now to deal with that. The inconvenient inconvenience. A fourth example. The norm and the exception dichotomy. The norm and the exception. See, what do you mean by that? This is where we say, alright, yeah, so I get what James is saying about anger, and I'm seeing how the trials they're under, they think that's their major problem, and James is like, oh no, your trials aren't your major problem, it's what's coming out of your heart during your trials which is your major problem. It's what comes out of your heart during the struggle with relationships or pain or consequences or pressure. That's your main problem that God wants to address. But someone that looks at life through the normal and the exception is this. I understand what James is saying. But what I'm going through in my pain, in my relationships, in my pressures, in my consequences, is exceptional. If anyone's ever lived that gets to be an exception to what he's preaching and teaching here, it would definitely be me. He wasn't married to who I'm married to. He didn't have the parents I had. Didn't have the kids I had. Doesn't know the loneliness I feel. Doesn't feel the pain I feel. That's the Normandy exception. A fifth example would be the public and private. You ever hear this one? I'll deal with the private sin with less energy and urgency as I do with public sins, which could embarrass me. Usually, usually, Christians don't put pictures of themselves sinning as their profile picture. Usually. Their profile picture may have a picture of an open Bible with a cup of coffee, maybe a pocket knife laying nearby. But we don't put our private sins in those pictures. We tend to say, well, the public sin, I'll take care of that, because that embarrasses me if people see me like that. But private sin, I'll get around to that. One more example, just to get your mind tracking. What does it mean to compartmentalize sin? It's what I call the family, non-family split. You say, what do you mean by that? I can be one way at home and another way at church. I'll deal with sins at home differently than I deal with the same sin when I'm in front of other people who are not my family. See, my family knows where I struggle. They know more of where I struggle than I do. So does yours. But the people in the church lobby and the people in the lobby at Meijer don't know you struggle. So we'll just deal with the ones that our family knows about. What's the first great danger when you're in your struggle? We'll call it compartmentalization of sin. We're grabbing a hold of that word, put off, take it off, take it all off. But there's a second danger. We'll call the second danger distortion of truth. distortion of truth. Look at verse 21 again. Therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness. Filthiness and wickedness. When I was a young boy, I did what I'm sure you did as well. My dad would come home every night and on the corner of the dining room table, He would put his wallet, empty his pocket full of change out, and he carried like dollars worth of change. I could hear him in the next county when he was coming home, jiggling. He'd have two wads of keys. He'd have his pocket knife. He'd have three or four pens. And then he'd have his glasses. That was just a huge pile that somehow disappeared in his pant pockets when he was dressing up. And my dad had trifocals back then. I didn't wear glasses. So every once in a while, as a little kid, I'd wander up to the table, go through dad's loose change, play with his pocket knife. And eventually, I would do what? I would put on his glasses. And I remember just being blown away. It's called instant headache. I don't know what his problem was with his eyes, but it was instant headache. I not only couldn't see across the room, but I would be looking through the wrong focal point at my own finger. I'd count eight. All right? I mean, I just couldn't see correctly why it was a wrong prescription. I remember when I turned 41 and started to die faster, that I had to get glasses. And I just thought it was reading glasses. And the guy's like, oh, no, you're having astigmatism starting for distance vision. And then we need help with your reading. And basically, he said, yes, you are dying. And so they said, you've got to try progressive lenses. I'm like, what's that? And he said, well, it's something where you have to point your nose and your chin at what you want to focus on. And then once you're focusing this way and you get it, you start doing that until it gets clear. I'm like, oh, that sounds fun. OK. So I got a pair. And he says, it'll take two weeks before you get used to it. And I had him back in his store in two days. I'm like, this is dumb. I'm not going to wear these things. I'm looking at everyone in meetings, and I'm just smiling and trying to focus on people. And then I'm going like this. And on top of that, I couldn't see my peripheral vision. I couldn't see without moving my head. If I'm reading a book, I'm having to go like that. I'm rocking myself to sleep. That's not what I wanted to happen with reading in bed. And I said, give me bifocals. And the lady looked at me, and she goes, OK, yeah, we can do that. You know you'll look old at 42. I said, I don't care. I just don't care. I want to see clearly. You know what James was saying? Not only to them, but guess what? To us. When you're in it, when you're in those tests that reveal your heart, you must see clearly or you'll miss what's going on. And he uses two words here in the New American. It's translated filthiness. This is an interesting word. It means external grime. And can I get a parent to say amen? You know what this is. It's not that, oh, I got a little grass stain on my knee. It's like, these were blue jeans. Now they are green jeans. Or I drive by a place of business every day coming here to the office, and there's a guy that walks around, they repair cars, and he's always wearing the same overall suit to work in, and it started out blue, I promise you, but it's black with grease. And I'm like admiring, and I'm like, that guy knows his way around in a car. And I'm also saying, but I'm probably not going to get much closer than a handshake on him. That might not smell good, right? There's a grime. It saturates it. That's the idea here of filthiness. It's not just little spots. It's all over. And then it says here in verse 21 again, it says in the New American, all that remains of wickedness. A better translation would be an overflow of wickedness. Or an excess of sin. And it's a different word, kikia. My favorite commentary on James puts it this way, this is talking about sin's persistence and disguises. What do you mean by that? Well, let's walk over here to one of these case studies. Let's come over to the relationship one again. You're in conflict with someone or someone's coming after you. You didn't attack them, they're coming after you. Or you find yourself now just in it with someone. It's difficult. It's predictable. The relationships are hard here at work or in the setting. And you're like, I know what I struggle with. I know what I struggle with. I struggle with wanting to swing back. Wanting to get snarky back. So that's what I've got to deal with. And you know what James is saying? Yeah, take that off. But realize there's probably more there than you realize in addition to your snarkiness. It could be things like, yeah, well, in addition to snapping back, I'd never realized it, but I'm also trying to build a team with me that they'll agree with me about this person. I didn't realize I was doing that. And not only that, I stopped reaching out for this person out of a ministry concern if they have a need. I didn't realize I'd do that. I just thought I was getting snappy. James is saying, take off the obvious and be aware that there's probably more you're not aware of. And the Word will reveal that to you. So he's saying here, not only don't compartmentalize sin, but don't miss the obvious. Don't let your heart tell you there's only one issue in each trial for you to work on. Your sin is all throughout that trial. It's persistent in its disguise. And only the Word will reveal. As a matter of fact, I give you a fact here in your notes. The clarity of personal application is easily missed when it comes to God's Word. You might nod your head even at the concept of putting off, of taking off. But as actually doing it, in your test can be so easily missed it's like you're wearing the wrong glasses. There's an illustration of this that's worth taking time to look at. Hold your finger here and go with me to Ezekiel 14. Back in the Old Testament. Ezekiel 14. God's saying to Ezekiel, hey, the elders of the nation are coming and they want to hear from Me and they're going to ask you, can they hear from Me? And you tell them, I don't want to talk to you about what you want to talk about. I have something else I want to say to you. That's what God's saying to Ezekiel. And the elders came. Verse 1, Then some elders of Israel came to Me and sat down before Me. And the word of the Lord came to Me, saying, Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts and have put right before their faces the stumbling block of their iniquity. Should I be consulted by them at all? Therefore speak to them and tell them, thus says the Lord God, any man of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart puts right before his face the stumbling block of his iniquity. And then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will be brought to give him an answer in the matter in view of the multitude of his idols. in order to lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel who are estranged from me through their idols." And again, in verse 7, he's going to talk about idols of the heart that put right before your face the occasion of your stumbling. So what does this mean? Summarize it real quickly. It means that when I allow something else in my life to be more important to me than God Himself, then what I have started to do is worship an idol. It's in my heart. But when I'm worshiping an idol of my heart, be it another person or a position or a thing, then to use the wording from Ezekiel 14, I'm putting right before my face the occasion of my stumbling. And I don't realize it. And when something's right in front of your face, you understand you look at every relationship through that idol, even the strained ones. When you're facing a physical pain, you're looking at this pain through the occasion of your sin, your stumbling. When you're going through difficulty because of being content, because you're having to live with sin consequences, you're looking at all this through your idol. Or when you come over here and you're dealing with the pressures of life, you're looking at the pressures of your week through your idol, the occasion of your stumbling. That's exactly what Ezekiel is saying, and James agrees. We need to become aware that we're doing this, and most believers aren't. They're like, I know what I need to deal with. That's only a little bit of it. You know, those of you playing, when my son played football, I was like, I never played football. Don't really have, I mean, outside of flag football, I never got into that. My son got into a tackle league in Chesapeake, Virginia. And I was like, Jerry, what's it like? You have a little window in a helmet, little window, and then you cover that with metal grid. How do you see the plays unfolding on the field? He goes, Dad, after a while, you don't even notice you're wearing it. You can see everything unfolding, and you don't realize you're looking through that. Well, that's good on a football field. That's bad. in your relationships. It's bad in your pain, in your consequences, and in your pressures. There's a distortion of truth. But what's the third caution as we finish? The third caution is in verse 22. We'll call it deception of self. Deception of self. Look at verse 22. Prove yourselves doers of the Word and not merely hearers who delude themselves." Or some of your translations say correctly, deceive themselves. You know, the sad thing is with many believers today in churches like ours and pews like these and pulpits like this, we can really start to believe our own headlines. that we write about ourselves. People say you're a good Christian, you're faithful to church, and you start believing that. I start believing that. People say, my, that man or that woman is a serious student of the Word. You see their books? They're serious about church. Have you noticed their attendance in the driveway? It's empty whenever church is going on. You know, they're part of a church that used to have a school and have a lot of other things going on and busy parking lots, and suddenly we start writing our own narrative, our own headlines, and we start believing it, that everything's okay. But James is saying here, you know it's possible to be very intent, even busy and present in a ministry like ours, and still be deceived. He says here, They deceive themselves. Some have translated it this way. It's just a wrong conclusion because of wrong reasoning. And some have even said this is the same way you would refer to a mathematical miscalculation. Interesting word. So someone asks the question to you. Are you a hearer of the Word of God? which normally we'd say that's good, but then they ask the rest of the question, or are you a doer? And suddenly hearing and doing find themselves somewhat at odds. There are some who are only hearers, which it has to start there, but then there's another type of a Christian that's a doer. Now if you're a doer, what does that presuppose? that you're also a hearer who took it to the next level. It has to start with hearing. One group stops with it, the other one goes the next step to being a doer. That's the question James is asking his readers, and watch this, he's asking us today. Through his pen, the Holy Spirit is asking you this morning, are you a hearer or a doer? You say, well how do I answer that? The way he answers that is he gives us one of the best known illustrations in the epistles. In verse 23 and 24, he gives us the illustration of a mirror. Now their mirrors back then weren't made of glass like ours. They were polished metal. You couldn't get a real clear look at yourself, but good enough to fix your hair. Maybe I shouldn't tell you about the research I did that discovered that Women spend an average of five years of their life in front of a mirror. Did you know that? And they broke it down further, and I'm just not going to touch that. But let's just be fair. The guys might say to our wives, did you hear that? You spend five years of your life in front of the mirror. Our wives want to say back to us, it would be great if you spent at least a week. So maybe we can meet in the middle. I digress. He uses a mirror illustration here. Look at verses 23 and 24. 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. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was." This is the mirror illustration. What do I see here? First of all, I see an initial earnestness. An initial earnestness. Now be careful. A lot of times, you and I have been taught from this passage and these verses, that the first guy, the bad guy in this illustration, just does a little glance, whereas the next person studies it carefully and responds. That's not an accurate way to look at the story. This Word that we're seeing, He looks. He looks in this mirror. He's like a man who looks at his natural face. This is a very steady, careful gaze. There's nothing soft about this. This is no glance over the shoulder as you keep moving. It's literally to put your mind down upon something. What I'm calling this is initial earnestness. There are a lot of believers, like you and like me, who enjoy the academic. We enjoy the challenge of being pressed into deeper study of God's Word. So much so that we even enjoy teaching God's Word. And you have to prepare in order to teach, because you can't teach what you don't... you can't give away what you don't have. Some of us look at Bible study and the careful study of Scripture as a hobby. Some look at it as an opportunity to get arguments together for a debate. Others look at our study of Scripture as merely to put a convincing veneer on us. Some of us study Scripture because our heroes study Scripture and we want to be like them. All of these find us getting in Scripture and not just with a glance. We're staring down and we're pondering and we want to know. I call that an initial earnestness. And Dr. R. Kent Hughes, again, I quote him so often when he was pastoring at College Church in Wheaton, said it this way to his congregation, it is natural to imagine that the accumulation of biblical knowledge is not just the main thing, but the only thing. Well, being the kind of person who thrills to open a book, who gets a sensual thrill from turning the pages, and enjoys the esoteric language of theology, it is so easy to imagine that by reading books on spiritual subjects, great virtue will course through our soul, like the primitives who thought they could imbibe others' powers by drinking their blood." Just the intake itself is not sufficient. As a matter of fact, another commentator says, if this is as far as it goes as hearing the Word of God, even with great interest, and it goes no further, Homer Kent puts it this way, this episode was a complete waste of time and effort. It could have been disposed with. End quote. Hearing is not enough. And the mirror is teaching us that, but it takes us, number two, to a predictable forgetfulness. A predictable forgetfulness. Again, look at verse 24. For once he has looked at himself and gone away. The construction here of gone away is a perfect action. It means, you know what? I've done it. I've done the hearing. I've given my attention to God's Word even intensely, but I am with resolute pace leaving the scene now. Church is over. Devotions are done. And there's no thought as they go up the stairs into the rest of their day of what they just heard It's a predictable forgetfulness. We see this again in Ezekiel 33 where God says to Ezekiel, yeah, they're coming to hear you preach, but it's only because you're like a pretty love song. And then they go away unchanged. Remember that? Our Lord will speak to this in the parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13 as well. But after predictable forgetfulness, there's a certain stagnation. They've forgotten what kind of person he was. In other words, when we're not in the moment of hearing God's Word preached or taught or studying it for ourselves, it's out of sight, it's out of our moments, it's out of our mind, and now we are out of touch with what God wants to do in our lives. Ron Blue puts it this way in his commentary, the growing numbers of sermon sippers who flit from one doctrinal dessert to another like helpless hummingbirds are deceiving themselves. So someone might say to James or to us today, I've tried reading the Bible and it didn't work. What didn't work? The Bible or you? He's helping us by pointing out three cautions. the compartmentalization of sin, the distortion of truth, and the deception of self. These confront every single one of us every time we open our Bible in the midst of an extreme or mundane test. The bottom line is this, I miss the word of God's transforming power in my life. You say, well, this sounds like this is a warning week. It is. It's the second in a row. Next week, Lord willing, we're going to come back and pick up the rest of the paragraph we haven't commented yet on, and we're going to call it your constant pursuit. What is your plan? And James is just going to lay it out for us positively next week. What is your plan? Every time you are exposed to the word of God, either through reading or preaching or teaching, you follow his plan. you'll finally cross over from being a hearer to a hearer-doer. Anytime God warns you, brothers and sisters, every time God opens your eyes to your own heart, it's a mercy from a loving Father who still rescues you from you.