Chapter 67, verse 1 says, God
be merciful unto us and bless us and cause his face to shine
upon us. And the word that's after that
is Selah, and it literally means to stop and think about that.
Be merciful unto us and bless us and cause your face, Lord,
to shine upon us. That's why we're here this hour.
Tom's going to come lead us at number 143 in the hardback hymnal. Let's all stand. ? Rejoice, the Lord is King ? ?
Your Lord and King adore ? ? Rejoice, give thanks and sing ? ? And
triumph evermore ? ? Lift up your heart ? lift up your voice
rejoice again i say reach ? Jesus, the Savior reigns ? ?
The God of truth and love ? ? When he had purged our stains ? ?
He took his seat above ? ? Lift up your heart ? Lift up your
voice, rejoice again, I say rejoice! His kingdom cannot fail, He rules
o'er earth and heaven. The keys of death and hell are
to our Jesus give. Lift up your heart. Lift up your voice. Rejoice again, I say rejoice. Rejoice in glorious hope, our
Lord the Judge shall come, and take his servants up to their
eternal home. Lift up your heart, Lift up your
voice, rejoice again, I say rejoice! Michael. What a great blessing it is to
be here. And for the Lord's call to worship,
would you go to Philippians chapter one. As you, for some of us who have
no other, no hair or hoary hairs, gray hairs, The word of God becomes
more real every day, doesn't it? As you grow in grace. These words we're going to read
are my prayer every day. Verse 20, Paul's writing, he's
saying, according to my earnest expectation and my hope that
in nothing I shall be ashamed. that with all boldness as always,
so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by
life or by death. Everything I do is for the glory
of God on this earth, even my death. In verse 21, for me to
live Christ and to die gain. And you ask yourself, do you
believe that? Do you really believe that? Christ is my life. He's not the most important,
he is all of my life. I am dependent on him for everything. I always laugh, brother Maurice,
I'm depending on him for the next breath I take. He is everything. It's better
to have Christ and lived in a box under the bridge than live in
a mansion without him. But to me, to live is Christ.
And to die is gain. It's a gain. We, as believers,
we look forward to that day. That's why you say, come Lord
Jesus, come. I say this and I hope I believe
with all my heart. I hope you don't see me next
week. Because to die is gain. I thought
about this every day. The Lord moves my heart to pray
for his church and his people. And we pray for those who God
has been pleased to touch their lives with illness or trials
and tribulations. We pray that he would do that
if it be his will. But I also have to ask him every
day, Lord, if it's not your will, would you give them the faith
to believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain? To die is gain. We look forward to that day.
Young people, I know right now that sounds crazy to you, but
that's just the truth of life. Let us go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, we are so thankful for
your mercies and goodness to you, to your people. And we pray, Lord, that you would
enable us today by your power to worship you, to praise you,
and to give you all the glory. We pray, Lord, for Caleb and
your other gospel preachers this morning, that you enable them
to declare Christ truthfully, simply, and boldly, and able
them, Lord, to be faithful to you. And as your people, we ask,
Lord, give us the ears to hear it and the faith to believe it.
And not only to believe it, but to love it and to defend it. To know that Christ is life.
And that one day this will come to an end, Lord, and we will
be in the presence of you. We look forward to that day.
We especially, especially this morning, Lord, we pray for those
who sit here where your gospel is preached and remain in unbelief. Oh God, that you might be willing
today to make this the day where you visit them, give them faith
to believe and make them willing to come to Christ and that all glory would be yours. Let's all stand together once
again. We'll sing the hymn that's on the back of your bulletin.
? Come paired with Christ in all
beside ? ? No comeliness I see ? ? The one thing needful, dearest
Lord ? ? Is to be one with Thee ? the sense of thy redeeming
love into my soul convey, thyself bestow for thee alone, my all
in all, I pray. Less than thyself will not suffice
my comfort to restore. More than thyself I cannot crave,
and thou canst give no more. ? Loved of my God for Him again
? ? With love intense I'd burn ? ? Chosen of Thee, e'er time
began ? ? I'd choose Thee in return ? Please be seated. Good morning again. If you have
your Bibles, turn to James chapter one again. We're going to be
in the second part of that chapter this hour. James chapter one. And we're
going to read verse 22 through 27. But be ye doers of the word and
not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer
of the word and not a doer, he is likened to a man beholding
his natural face in a glass. For he beholdeth himself and
goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man
he was. 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. If any man among you seem to
be religious and bridle if not his tongue, but deceiveth his
own heart, this man's religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless
and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted
from the world. I've titled this message, are
we doers or are we deceived? Are we doers or are we deceived? It's found in verse 22. He says,
be you doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving your
own selves. So my question is, are we doers
or are we deceived? Now the natural man reads this
entire chapter. We covered the first part of
the first hour and you can continue reading it, The natural man would
read this and say, so this is what I have to do in order to
obtain favor with God. I just need to be a doer of God's
law. They look to Jesus as if it's some kind of a participation
trophy, their false Jesus they have in their mind. Like, like
if you just participate in the efforts, God will reward you
Jesus for your efforts. If you've ever been in a religious
organization, you know exactly that's how it is. So if, James
is writing to us only, and I do wanna specify that he's only
writing to the leg. What is he meaning by this instruction? Is he telling us how to be a
better person? Is he telling us how we can earn favor with
God? Is he telling us how we can have a relationship with
Jesus? I read that it was actually a
commercial that came on yesterday and it actually said, this is
how you have a relationship with Jesus. Go to this website. And
so naturally I went to the website, not because I wanted a relationship
with their Jesus, but I was curious. And sure enough, it was like,
you do this and God will reward you with this. You do that, God
will reward you with that. Our God does not reward us because
our efforts and because what we do. Our Lord rewarded his
son on the cross of Calvary with his elected bride, according
to the covenant of grace. So is it talking about how to
be a better person or all these other questions that it's asked?
Certainly not. This is not what James is telling us here. There
is intentionally left enough rope in this chapter, what we
just read, intentionally left enough rope for the self-righteous
religious Pharisee to hang themselves with. Intentionally left there. For the elect, there is only
found instruction and great encouragement in this passage. Only the Holy
Spirit can reveal the mysteries, these hidden things that are
in the word of God and make them clearly seen through the eyes
of faith that he only gives to his elect bride. As I mentioned
in the first hour, this passage is not written to everyone. It's
not a general It's not a general letter. This was James writing
and to the 12 tribes of Israel scattered abroad. He's writing
to the elect church. He's writing to the bride and in verse two
in this chapter, he calls them my brethren. So this is written
just to the believer. Now we use the term believer
a lot and not Christian. And the reason is because Christian
has been used so flippantly that everyone it's become desensitized
in society, if I could say it that way. But of late, some of
my family members are now using the same term believer that I
use because they're trying to make their God be in contrast,
or not contrast, but be the same God as what I have. So they're
using the term believer. So now I'm just gonna have to
start calling us the elect. I know they won't worry about
changing it then. This is who he's writing to is the elect,
the elect of God. The brethren, my brethren, So what is a believer or a Christian? What is the elect? These are
the ones who God chose in the covenant of grace, chosen before
time ever began. These are the ones who Christ
lived and died for. These are the ones whom Christ,
these are the ones who Christ has already saved. He has called
or will call. He is and will keep them forever. He has kept us. He is keeping
us and he will keep us forever. This means that he does all in
salvation and gets all the glory. The believer knows that Jesus
does not love everybody and Christ did not die for everybody to
make an offer of salvation to anybody. The believer knows that
Christ died for his elect and successfully accomplished salvation
by offering himself unto his father alone. In James chapter
one, verse 18, he says, according to his own will, begat he us. according to the sovereign will
and his sovereign grace. We know that God only deals in
absolutes and he is immutable. God has no other kind of grace,
but sovereign grace. He has an unstoppable will. He
has a perfect love. He has a holy hatred. These are
his attributes and he cannot change because he is immutable.
We, his people, his elect, rest in his immutable sovereignty
for our salvation as all our hope. The believer, the Christian,
these are those who believe Jesus does not love everybody. The
elect, those for whom Christ died for, we believe that he
died just for his people, that he was buried, that he was resurrected
because the father was satisfied with the death of his son. We,
the elect, do not attempt to change one thing about God in
any way. We do not try to bring him down
from above to make him fit into our circumstantial life in order
for us to accomplish salvation. We do not bring him up from beneath.
We do not try to crucify the Lord afresh as the scripture
speaks of. We just believe in the fullness of the eternal I
am and his glorious gospel wrought for his people according to his
will on the cross of Calvary. In John 1, verse 13, it says,
which were born, the church, the elect, which were born, not
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of the will of God. That makes it pretty simple,
doesn't it? Not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the
will of the flesh, but of God. Now, having established this
understanding of exactly whom James is speaking to, I have
five questions this morning, which I would like to answer
in these verses. Number one, are we doers of the word or are
we deceiving ourselves? Number two, are we beholding
the lamb or are we beholding ourselves? Number three, are
we blessed of God because we are looking into the perfect
law? Number four, what does it mean to broddle our tongue And
number five, do we have vain religion or do we have pure religion? Now in verse 22 again, it says,
but be ye doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourself. All of these words that James,
these exhortations, these instructions that James are giving could be
discerned as being laws given that if you was to do them, you
would find favor with God. But there's really only two types
of people in this world. Those who were elect in the covenant
of grace and those who are not. Those who are doers of the word
and those who are deceived. Those who confess that Jesus
Christ is God and those who do not know who God is. Those that
hear the word and those that cannot hear the word. The Lord
gave the parable of the sower and said, a sower went out to
sow seed. And as he was going, some of the seed fell by the
wayside and the fowls came and devoured the seed. He goes on
to say, and some fell in stony places and they could not take
root because of the stone and the sun scorched them out. Then
there was some that fell by the thorns and the thorns choked
them out. But there was some that fell
on good ground, good ground. So who is it that makes a man
to differ? It is God that gets all the glory and salvation.
It is God that sows the seed. His seed, the Lord Jesus Christ,
sows his people on the good ground and causes them to bring forth
fruit. He continues to speak in the next verse. He says, whoever
hath ears to hear, who hath ears to hear, let him hear. There
was one time I was preaching trying to proclaim the gospel
in a Baptist church, then they didn't really like what they
was hearing at all. And after the service, a woman came up
to me and she said, I have ears to hear and I can hear just fine.
And I made Jesus my choice and I made a good choice. And I don't
need you to tell me otherwise. She don't have good ground. She
has a stony place, doesn't she? But thanks be to God for his
people. He takes out that heart of stone and puts in a heart
of flesh, that good ground. And he gives us ears to hear
and he gives us eyes to see. The disciples approached the
Lord and he said, Lord, why are you speaking in parables to the people?
And he told them the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of heaven
is revealed unto you only, not unto the world, not unto others. The kingdom of heaven, the mystery
of the kingdom of heaven is only revealed unto the elect of God,
not to everyone. The next verse says, because
they seeing, see not and they hearing, Hear not. There's only
two kinds of people in God's eyes. They that can hear and
those that are deaf. And God is the one that makes
us to differ. There's only those that can see and those that are
blind. And it's God that makes man to
differ. What God sees, how God sees things is how things really
are. And if he says it, it's true. He only sees his sheep
washed in the blood and he sees the goats. and no goat has ever
been made a sheep. And thanks be to God, no sheep
can be made a goat. Someone once told me, and I mentioned
to you just a minute ago, that they chose Jesus and they made
a good choice. And she also said that she chose
according to her will. And who was I to say she didn't
have a free will? Brethren, we can't even will away a cold.
We can't will away. We can't will anything in our
life. Every time we will something
or try to attempt something to happen, how many times we fall
flat on our face? We can't control anything going
on inside of our body. Sure, we can take deep breaths
and try to regulate our heartbeat, but that doesn't change our heartbeat.
Our heart's still doing exactly what it's purposed to do. We
can't will anything. And the believer doesn't want
to will. The believer rests in the will of God and the purpose
of God. That's the difference. The believer rests knowing that
God does the choosing. Can the Ethiopian change the
color of his skin or can the leopard change his spots? There
are only the elect and there are only those who are damned
before the world ever began. There is only, there are only
the elect and there is only those who are damned before the world
ever began. It's that simple. And God is the one that did the
choosing and God is the one that did the saving. He said, Jacob
have I loved and Esau have I hated. Jesus said to the Pharisees,
why do you not understand my speech? Because you cannot hear
my word. You cannot hear it. Salvation
is a gift that God gives unto his people alone. Salvation was
wrought on the cross of Calvary. It's not something that we merit
or something that we earn. Salvation is something that Jesus
Christ earned and he bestows it upon his people. Brethren,
we are totally depraved, totally depraved, all the way back from
the garden, aren't we? Completely depraved. There isn't a little
bit of goodness in us. Our righteousness is as filthy rags. We need a
substitute. And we know that all that God
has to do because of our depravity to send us to hell is just leave
us to ourself, to never pass by and say, seek ye my face,
to never pass by and say, look, and give us eyes of faith to
see. Thank God for the interjection
of the gospel. In Ephesians chapter two, verse
four, he says, but God. He just leaves us right there.
We go to hell, but God is our hope. Who is rich in what? Wrath? No, the wrath of God was appeased
on the cross of Calvary. Put away was our sin because
our Lord Jesus Christ endured the full wrath of God. Therefore,
God is rich in mercy. He's rich in mercy for his great
love wherewith he loved us. When did he do that? When did
he love us? Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened
us together with Christ by grace ye are saved. So who, who is
a doer of the word? those who have been quickened,
those who have been made alive, those that obey His word because
He has made them to do so and hath not left them to themselves.
He said that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus.
Now understand, we can open our mouth and say Lord Jesus, but
He has to give you the heart to confess who the Lord Jesus
is, that Jesus Christ is God to the glory of God the Father.
Those who believe the record, those who believe what the father
said about his son, the record that the father give of his son,
they're the ones that are believers. What did the Lord say about his
son? This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. A doer constantly confesses this. That's what he said. The word
confesseth, E-T-H at the end means continually, means he doesn't
stop. we constantly confess that our
hope is only in the shed blood of Jesus Christ alone. Christ
told the Pharisees in John chapter 10, but you believe not because
he gives us the cause and effect here. You believe not because
you're not my sheep. He didn't say you're not my sheep
because you believe not. He said, you believe not because
you're not my sheep. As I said unto you, my sheep
hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. And I give
unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall
any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them
me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out
of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one." Those
that do not believe this simple, precious truth are deceiving
themselves, as James mentioned right here. They're not doers,
they're deceiving themselves. And that's what Isaiah was talking
about whenever he said, we have made a covenant with death and
with hell we are in agreement. Brethren, be not deceived. God
is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he also reap. If we are a doer of the word,
if we are a doer of the word, God hath made us thus and he
gets all the glory. If we are a doer of the word,
God hath made unto us Christ all wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption, and he gets all the glory. If we are deceiving
ourselves, if we are deceiving ourselves and not looking to
Christ, we are completely to blame for it, and God gets all
the glory. Ephesians chapter two, verse
one, brethren, we can rejoice in knowing you who the church,
his people, his elect, you hath he quickened who were dead in
trespasses and in sin. Quickened means that you're no
longer deceived. You've been made alive. See that you're either
dead or you're alive. It's that simple. And if you're
alive, you can see and you can hear. If you're alive, then you're
no longer deceived. You hath he quickened who were
dead in trespasses and in sin. Now, my second question is, are
we beholding the Lamb or are we beholding ourself? In verse
23 of our text, he says, for if any be a hearer of the word
and not a doer, he is likened to a man beholding his natural
face in a glass, for he beholdeth himself and goeth his way, and
straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. beholding his own face in a glass. That is what we do as men by
nature. We go our own way if left to
ourself and we see ourself getting better and getting better and
getting better by nature. If all the Lord has to do is
leave us to ourself to believe that and we completely forget
what kind of man we really are. There's only two kinds of people,
those that are looking to Christ, and those who are blind looking
to themselves, those who are beholding Christ and those who
are beholding themselves. Those who are begging to hear
one more time, Lord, let me hear your gospel one more time with
the heart, not just the natural ears, but let me see your face
one more time. Those that cry, leave me not
to myself. I am nothing. And those that
say me and God have a good thing going. Everything's all right. All men love darkness rather
than light because their deeds are evil. Their imagination is
vanity and on vain things all the time. If a man says me and
God has a good thing going, they do not know who God is. Men behold themselves and compare
themselves to others to justify themselves. If you compare yourself
to the balance of God, you will see that you have come up short.
You will see that you are dead, that there is no hope outside
of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you are a wretched, vile, putrid
sinner and you need a substitute. But if left to yourself, you
will compare yourself to others and you will fall more and more
in love with yourself. Men, worship and serve the creature. What's the creature? This is
the creature. Men worship and serve the creature
more than the creator for their deeds are evil. If this man,
if this individual I'm speaking of can even acknowledge that
he makes a mistake, his natural response will be, well, at least
I'm not as bad as they are, or at least I'm not as bad as they
are. Brethren, when we come into this place, we're not looking
to our right and to our left to justify our lives, are we?
We're crying out for mercy. Lord, have mercy upon me, the
sinner. That's exactly what the publican did. You remember the
story about how the Pharisee stood before the Lord and the
temple said, Lord, I thank thee that I'm not like this man. And
I'm not like that man. I'm not like him over there.
I tithe. I do all these fasts weekly. He said, Lord, I thank you. I'm
not like this publican over here. I'm better than these men are.
I have a righteousness. Thank you for my righteousness
that I have earned. What did the publican do? The publican
smote upon his breast and wouldn't even look up. You know why? God
had made him a sinner. He said, have mercy on me, the
sinner. It's a personal thing, isn't
it? When the Lord shows you that you're a sinner, you need a personal
Savior. You don't need a general Jesus.
You need the Lord Jesus Christ to come in and arrest you and
save you. Stands there like the Pharisee.
He's not beholding the lamb, is he? He's beholding himself. Now, if you've been made a sinner,
that means the Lord has revealed unto you that you are nothing
but sin and everything you do is sin. I was speaking to Abigail
the other day and we was talking about what is, what does it mean
to be a sinner? And I said, well, you're nothing
but sin. And the Lord gave me this analogy. A dog does not bark
to become a dog. It barks because it is a dog.
A cat does not meow to become a cat. A cat meows because it
is a cat. Am I right? You're not a sinner
because of what you do. You're a sinner because of what
you are. You're a sinner because of who you are. Therefore you
sin. Therefore you bark. Therefore,
you meow. Everything that we are in God's
eyes is filthy rags, is polluted maggots in our own polluted blood.
That's how bad we are in the Lord Jesus Christ's eyes. We
have no hope in ourself for salvation. He has to do everything. And
he did in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why John
the Baptist said, behold, the lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world. So how do the elect behold the
lamb of God? We agree with God against ourselves. We side, we take sides with God
and turn around and point at ourself and says, he's wrong
and you're right. That's what we do. We beg the father to only
see the righteousness of his dear son. We desire more than
anything else for God to cause us to behold his lamb, to see
the Lord Jesus Christ, our center substitute. In Psalm 27, verse
eight, the scripture says, when thou said, seek ye my face, my
heart said unto thee, thy face, Lord, will I seek. See, the Lord
gets all the glory in salvation. And the only reason you're seeking
God's face, if you are, is because he said, seek ye my face. The
Lord only reveals his lamb to his people. The Lord only causes
his people to seek his face and the Lord only reveals his lamb
to his people. Did you know the Lord has never
revealed Jesus Christ to anyone but his people? Did you know
that? They did not see Jesus Christ in Jesus Christ. Think
about that. God was speaking to them physically
right in front of them and they could not see God. The Lord has
only revealed himself to his people. That brings me to my next point,
question three. Are we blessed of God because
we are looking into the perfect law? In verse 25, he says, but
whoso looketh, that's a continual looking, 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. continually looking into the
perfect law. Now the law is, the law is the
Lord's mirror. It's not our mirror that we just
mentioned before about how a man is beholding himself in a glass.
He's not using God's mirror and God's scale in the balance. He's
seeing what he wants to see, a fabricated God in his mind. God's law, if it shines upon
you, you will see yourself as the chief sinner, the one that
needs salvation. That's what God's law does. It
causes us to see our wretched, our wretched, sinful state. And
we know the wages of sin is death. And because of our sin, God demands
justice. We cannot keep the law of God
in any way. It is holy and we are other than
he is. Looking at the perfect law of
liberty is seeing yourself as God sees you. and fleeing to
Christ, the sinner substitute. Looking at the perfect law of
liberty is seeing yourself as God sees you and fleeing to Christ,
the substitute for sinners. That is the only way that the
law can bring liberty, is when you see yourself as you are,
you see Christ as he is. Romans chapter eight, verse three
says, for what the law could not do in that it was weak to
the flesh, God sent forth his son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness
of the law might be fulfilled in us. There's our liberty in
the law. Jesus Christ fulfilled it. Who walked not after the
flesh, but after the spirit. How can it be that I walk not
after the flesh? How can that be? We side with God against
ourselves. We confess Christ. We confess
him as all our hope and salvation. This is the only way God's law
can bring liberty. So how does it mean that we walk
not after the flesh because he's given us a faith to see him? If Christ is your only confession,
he has given you repentance towards God and faith with the Lord Jesus
Christ. We need this substitute who fulfill God's law and put
away our sin, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Galatians chapter
four says, but when the fullness of time had come, that's the
same way of saying, and it came to pass and it came to pass.
When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his son,
made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them that were
under the law, that we might receive the adoptions of son.
Well, how did he do that? Hebrews 9.12 tells us, by his
own blood, he entered once in the holy place, having obtained.
It doesn't say trying to obtain, does it? He's not trying or hoping
for anything, having obtained eternal redemption for us, his
people. Therefore, it is not what we
produce that causes us to be blessed, but we are blessed because
of what Christ has done. Christ is the blessing and he
gives faith unto his people and we believe him and Christ gets
all the glory. A man blessed in his deed just
simply means you get to rest in the finished work of Christ.
That's the blessing. Resting in Christ is the blessing. I was told a story recently and
you can, if anybody's heard this story and I'm telling it wrong,
you correct me after service. I'll be happy to hear you. But
the way that I heard it was like this. There was a widow woman
who was very poor and she was going to receive a visitor into
her house. And when the widow woman went to get food, all she
had left was some bread and some water. And she set it up on the
table and she began to cry. And the visitor said, well, that's
okay. I don't mind to eat bread and water. She said, no, these
are tears of joy. See, we have Christ and all this too. And
to the believer, that's our mentality. When the Lord shuts us up to
his gospel, we see that all these other things, they don't mean
anything, do they? Christ is all. We have Christ,
brethren, and all these other things. Look at verse 26. If any man
among you seem to be religious and bridle if not his tongue,
but deceiveth his own heart, This man's religion is vain.
Notice that this bridling of the tongue has something to do
with deceiving our own heart or not deceiving our own heart.
That's very important. The fourth question I had for
us is how or what does it mean to bridle our tongue? In religion,
it was always about what words come out of your mouth, but James
is not speaking of the possibilities here of offending someone by
speaking perversely or using profanity. Speaking perversely
is what we do by nature. We're born in sin, shapen into
iniquity. Our heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. And with the mouth, whatever's
in our heart is what comes out of our mouth, the scripture says.
James is instructing the believer to never confess that Christ
was not enough in salvation. That's what it means to bridle
your tongue. Never confess that Christ was
not enough in salvation. Have you ever seen a horse born
having a bridle in its mouth? Of course not. A bridle is evidence
of ownership. His master had to put that bridle
in his mouth, didn't he, or her? To bridle our tongue is to confess
everything we have observed this hour already, to confess Jesus
Christ as all our wisdom, confessing we know nothing save Jesus Christ
and him crucified. Confessing Christ as all of our
righteousness, we have no righteousness outside of Christ. Confessing
Christ as all of our sanctification, it is God that has made us holy
and set us apart in the life, the death, the burial, and the
resurrection of his dear son, Jesus Christ, for his people.
It's to confess that Christ is all our redemption. We could
not be redeemed on our own, and we certainly could not redeem
ourselves being dead in trespasses and in sin. Jesus Christ, our
kinsman redeemer, successfully redeemed his elect bride once
and for all. Brethren, if this is your confession,
your tongue has been bridled. That's what it means to have
your tongue bridled. Now, in closing, last question I have
for us this morning is, Do we have vain religion or do we have
pure religion? In this verse, he talked about
a man that does not bridle his tongue. His religion is vain. But in verse 27, he says, pure
religion and undefiled before God and the father is this, to
visit the fatherless and widows and their affliction and to keep
himself unspotted from the world. Now, most men are religious in
some way, shape or form. And the previous verse tells
us the opposite of pure religion is vain religion. So what does
it mean to have vain religion? Well, they're the ones that don't
have their tongue bridled by God. They are not confessing that
Christ is all. This verse tells us to have pure religion and
exactly what it is, to visit the fatherless and widows in
their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Now, surely James must mean that we need to do more humanitarian
efforts, right? That we need to do more things according to the
flesh in our community to try to meet the needs of others.
Now, brethren, those are good things to do. They're positive
things to do, I should say, but they have no bearing or no merit
on our salvation whatsoever. Our salvation has already been
accomplished in the finished work of cross before the foundation
of the world, before time ever began. So James is not saying
this sarcastically, he's saying this literally. Brethren, we're
visiting the fatherless right now. Brethren, we're visiting
the widow right this moment. See, the fatherless are orphans
and the widows are husbandless. They have been widowed because
they have no husband any longer, he died. This affliction, it
says, visit them in their affliction. There is no one more afflicted
than a sinner. Whenever you see your sin, you've been afflicted
by God. Job complained about his light
afflictions, but when God showed Job who he was and who Job was,
he said, I'm vile and I should have never opened my mouth up.
I've been afflicted now. I see myself the sinner. He saw
himself without righteousness as the orphan, as the one widowed. needing a husband, needing a
father. And thanks be to God, Christ
is our husband. Christ is our father. He is the
one who has presented us to his father as spotless. After Christ's
death, God the father resurrected his son and presented him, presented
us in the person of Jesus Christ as a perfectly spotless bride. This is how we are kept as spotless
in this world because how God sees things is how they really
are. And God sees his people as spotless. It's already been
accomplished through the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. All this that has been accomplished
is now being executed in life. And it is accomplished in this
life by the preaching of the gospel. It's already been accomplished
in eternity. but the Lord's allowing it to come to pass in time by
the preaching of the gospel. So this is how we know that we
are doers and that we are not deceived. A doer is someone who
Christ is causing to confess that he is all in salvation and
that they are nothing. Causing them to confess that
Christ is all and that their righteousness is just filthy
rags, that they are the chief of sinners. This is what a doer
does. A doer does nothing. A doer does nothing but rest
in the finished work of Jesus Christ. So how do we know that
we're doers? Because we're doing nothing but
resting in the Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Father, thank you for your
word. Pray that you'll bless it. In
Christ's name. Amen. Number 27 in the spiral hymnal.
Let's all stand together. ? Free from the law's great curse
? ? In Jesus we are free ? ? For Christ became a curse for us
? ? And died upon the tree ? ? The rituals of the law ? and all
the law's commands have been fulfilled in Christ the Lord,
established by his hands. No covenant with the law can
now with us exist. Complete in Christ we stand by
grace, both free and ever blessed. No more the dread of wrath. No more constrained by fear We
worship and we serve our God With gratitude and cheer In Jesus
we are free In Jesus we are free. Free from all sin and from all
guilt. We live in liberty. We'll join the happy song. with all the blood bought from,
and sing the praises of the Lamb, whose grace makes us His own.