Don’t Cheat Yourself • James 1:22-27

Teaching begins 19:38

Notes

The crown of life is so valuable that James is going to rough us up today.

I had to be rough with a friend once because he was lazy. Campbell McAlpine was speaking at Westminster Chapel in 1999 about biblical meditation. I invited all the guys on staff at Calvary Westminster to go with me to hear him, they all said, no.

I got one guy to come with me, and then on the day he started making noises like, I don’t want to do this. I roughed him up and said, you moron, you are coming with me. I don’t want to hear the word “no”.

He came, and within five minutes of hearing McAlpine speak, he turned to me and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

James is nicer than me, but the stakes are higher. We would give up the crown of life because we’re lazy? Not on my watch, says James.

Just as we started with Jesus, we want to keep on going until we are perfected and glorified. We want to declare war on our natural laziness.

We’re reading in James 1 from verse 22.

1. James commands us to keep on becoming doers of the word.

A. We began our Christian life by doing the word.

1. We were convinced that we were sinners, as James points out. We sin because of our own lust.

2. We were also convinced that God is good, that He is more for us than we are. He sent His only begotten Son to die for the sins of the world, that whoever believes in Him has eternal life.

3. We believed that what God has said is true. Then we acted on that word and submitted ourselves to God. We said, “Please save me. Please wash me from my sins. Please make me new.” We depended on Jesus to save us.

4. God did what He said He would do. Everyone who comes to Him through Jesus Christ receives forgiveness of sins and is born again. It is of His will that we are in Christ.

B. Now what? Continue becoming doers of that word. There’s more to do.

1. We are to continue applying the word of God to ourselves. Are we like that or do we need to change to be what God wants us to be?

2. Then we come to Jesus and say, I’m really falling short in this area. Please apply the cross to this area of my life. Please make me new here. We continue persevering and God continues doing His work in us through the Holy Spirit.

3. How we start is how we continue, by hearing the word of God and acting upon it. That’s our life for the rest of our lives until we receive His promise, the crown of life.

2. Don’t cheat yourself, says James.

A. The danger is that we can listen to the word of God and agree mentally with it. We say, “This is true, this is right, I believe this.” But we stop acting on it.

B. This cheats us. It deprives us of something valuable by depending on something that is not true as if it were true.

C. What is that valuable thing I am cheating myself out of?

1. Saving my soul, v. 21.

2. Blessing, v. 12.

3. Perseverance, which is the key to receiving all the other blessings, v. 4.

4. The crown of life, v. 12

3. How I cheat myself is to be shallow with the word of God.

A. We have a natural tendency to avoid work and be lazy. We can see that this Christian life of persevering in the word of God to be a chore, a drag.

B. We can think, “Hey, I already believe this. I got this.” C. So we don’t make the effort.

1. We don’t read the Bible. to become familiar with it. We really don’t know what the Bible says.

2. We don’t learn how to study it so we can find out answers. We have questions that don’t get answered. We stay in the dark.

3. We don’t meditate in the Bible so that word is written on our heart. We know some scripture but it’s in our head and when we fall into trials, as we do, the scripture doesn’t help because it’s not part of us.

D. James says this is like glancing in a mirror and forgetting what kind of person you are.

1. One Greek scholar gives the idea like this: He glanced at himself, and off he goes.

2. But a mirror doesn’t show you what kind of person you are, it only shows you the outside. And hey, if you look good, you must be good. That’s what the world believes. If you look like you’re doing good, you are doing good. But is that true?

E. The word of God shows us our hearts.

1. The word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

2. It tells us that man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart. We are still sinners who need to lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness. We need to depend upon Jesus according to His word.

F. So Paul says in Galatians 2:20 what kind of people we are: I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

4. When you look intently at the word, you see Jesus.

A. Look intently is the opposite of a quick glance. It means to carefully look into. This is the word used when Peter and John carefully looked into the empty tomb of Jesus.

B. In the Bible you are looking at Christ. In Psalm 40 it says, in the volume of the book it is written of me. Jesus showed the disciples all the things written about Him in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets. The whole Bible is about Jesus Christ.

C. As we read the Bible we will be looking at both His sufferings and His glory.

1. In the prophets and the gospels we look at His sufferings and His humility. The value is in Hebrews 12:3: For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

2. But also in the prophets and in Revelation we look at His glory. The value is in 2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

D. If you don’t read your Bible you cheat yourself of looking at Jesus.

5. But there’s more: the Gospel is a perfect law.

A. We have to be clear about doing the word.

1. This is not trying to obey a commandment that is impossible for you to perform. That is the old way of doing things, that is the old covenant.

2. The new covenant is Christ in you, willing and working in you for His good pleasure.

B. We have 1 John 2:7-8 Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard. On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.

C. We have Romans 8:1-4 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

D. Notice that the requirement of the law is fulfilled in us as we depend on the Holy Spirit to help us.

6. God’s goal has always been for us to bear fruit.

A. Fruit is character and doing good to others. It’s the fruit of the Spirit living in us, which is love, and us loving everybody.

B. Fruit is only possible as we abide in Jesus. John 15:4-5 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

C. When we neglect abiding in Jesus, we can do nothing useful. We bear no fruit.

D. Now, think on the last judgment. I did this during the week.

1. I was reading in Revelation 20 about the judgment of the devil. He is to be thrown into the lake of fire. There is no fruit from his life, no love. What he has done won’t last. He is literally thrown away.

2. There also in the lake of fire are the beast and the false prophet. They also did a lot of things, they ruled the world and killed people and deceived them. But no fruit. They are worthless, and they are thrown away.

3. Everyone whose name is not written in the Lamb’s book of life is thrown into the lake of fire. These people did things during their lives. They built, they made, they had families, they changed the world, some of them. But they did all they did without God. Whatever they did, there was no fruit. No love of God motivating and accomplishing. They did nothing of any value to God.

E. They cheated themselves. They deprived themselves of the crown of life.

7. So what?

A. You think you’re avoiding work when you read your Bible, you are really cheating yourself. You are thinking you need to get things done. But unless you abide in Christ, you will accomplish nothing.

B. Philippians 3:18-21 For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.

C. Decide where is your citizenship. Here, or in heaven?

D. If your citizenship is in heaven, then keep on becoming a doer of the word. Live in that perfect law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Keep looking into these things.

Let’s pray.