HEARERS ONLY!

HEARERS ONLY!

James 1:22-25

22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

          Sitting through an hour church service is meant to be more than self-flagellation! Some think that the pain of the pews, the discomfort of church attire and the drone of the sermon purchases for themselves some degree of redemption. Or so it seems to those of us who’s task it is to facilitate true spiritual birth and disciplined life.

          Antinomians are those who deny the validity of moral laws. They may hear them with amused interest but they will never actually do them. Of those people James was writing to, Adam Clarke’s Commentary says this: “They were downright Antinomians, who put a sort of stupid, inactive faith in the place of all moral righteousness. This is sufficiently evident from the second chapter.”

The great preacher from the past, Charles Spurgeon, commented on the frustrations of ministry: “We crossed and re-crossed a river several times by the ferry-boat with no purpose in the world but mere amusement and curiosity, to watch the simple machinery by which the same current is made to drift the boat in opposite directions from side to side. To other passengers it was a business, to us a sport.

Our hearers use our ministry in much the same manner when they come to it out of the idlest curiosity and listen to us as a means of spending a pleasant hour. That which should ferry them across to a better state of soul, they use as a mere pleasure-boat to sail up and down in, making no progress after years of hearing. It may be sport to them, but it is death to us, because we know it will before long be death to them.”

n  Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Quotable Spurgeon, (Wheaton: Harold Shaw Publishers, Inc, 1990)

Those who continue to sit in darkness while clutching a lantern are fools. The lantern is a burden to them! Only when they light the lantern can they safely navigate the darkness.

Dear Lord, let me be a doer of the word and not just a listener. AMEN