Join Pastor Jack Hibbs as he delves into the Book of James, exploring the vital importance of being a doer of the Word and not merely a hearer. In this thought-provoking episode, Pastor Hibbs challenges believers to examine their faith closely, considering whether they are actively living it out or merely auditing their Christian journey. Through a series of analogies and biblical teachings, this episode shines a light on the need for genuine commitment to God’s Word.
Sheep need a shepherd and they really want one. Goats could care less. Goats eat anything. Sheep have got to have the proper food. Sheep have to have human intervention. Goats could care less. You’ll find them both in the same field. Be a doer of the word and not a hearer only.
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This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I’m David Jay, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God’s Word, the Bible.
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Today, more and more Christ followers are living out their faith no matter what. And one way we can help is through our website. At jackhibbs.com slash Real Radio, you’ll find access to Pastor Jack’s devotions, YouTube channel, podcasts, Facebook, live streamed events, and so much more. Again, our website is jackhibbs.com slash Real Radio. That’s jackhibbs.com slash Real Radio. And don’t forget to download the Real Life mobile app for on-the-go access to all that Pastor Jack has to offer.
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On today’s edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series now called The Book of James with the message titled Practicing the Word of Truth. Now, before it became one of the books of the New Testament, James was a letter sent to those Jews who chose to follow Christ. And as new believers, James doesn’t want them to be ignorant when it comes to the Word of God. You see, in spite of trials, in spite of testing, in spite of temptation, we must do more than hear the Word of God. We must do the Word of God. To be hearers only is to be in danger of being deceived. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that we’re to not only keep studying the Word of God, but we are to go out and do it. How? Well, simply look around and see where there is a need and begin to do what is needed. Now with his message called Practicing the Word of Truth, here’s pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.
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Hey, have you ever been in a college class or a college course and maybe you taught one? I know at the Bible College when I teach prophecy, on the list of the students’ names, on some of their names off to the side it will say audit. And it means they’re in the class, they’re sitting in the seat, they’re breathing the same air we’re breathing, but they don’t get a grade. They don’t get the test. They don’t get any kind of input or involvement. They’re an audit. They’re there of their own decision. They can do whatever they want with the data. They can take it or throw it off. They’re just there. Listen, they’re not accountable to the class. Do you understand? They’re an audit. That’s the word that’s used here. A person who comes into church and just listens. And they’re listening well. They may have even been thinking, I should have took this class. They’re there, but they’re not there. And what happens is the teacher knows, God knows they’re an audit. Nothing’s required of them because they’re not in the class. That’s frightening. Because he’s saying a person who hears and does not do is just an auditor to the word of God. And it means this. They agree with it. Their hand goes up and their head bobs with it. But they don’t do it. They do not say, God, this message I heard today, I’m going to put into life. I’m going to put into application. Now watch this. There used to be a place called the Bible Belt, south central United States. That’s gone now. It’s ruptured, quite honestly. It’s dead. What is happening in America is that there’s the suspenders. rather than the Bible. The East Coast of the United States is experiencing tremendous spiritual revival right now. Some of the fastest growing churches in America are on the East Coast of the United States. For the last 40 years, Southern California has been the mecca of spiritual growth in America. There’s great work on the West Coast. There’s great work on the East Coast. The middle is dying because of its liberal theology, by and large. Now watch this. The important thing about this is that there is a plethora of Bible teaching. You can turn on the radio and listen to any great Bible teacher. And you know what? I don’t know if I’m encouraging you to do that. In fact, I don’t know if I’m encouraging you to come back here. If you’re not going to decide, and if I’m not going to decide to be a doer, you know what you’re doing? You know what I’m doing? We are heaping upon ourselves great judgment because we know what the word says. Jesus is to whom much is given, much will be required of him. And to whom has been committed much, I will require from him all the more. You can sit down and listen to Greg Laurie, Chuck Smith, Chuck Swindoll. I mean, name them. You can do it and come at the end of the day and your life has not changed one iota. And God says, I will now hold you accountable for all that went into your ear. Well, yeah, but Lord, I forgot. That is no excuse. You listened carelessly. I implanted the word. I was hoping for fruit and for productivity out of it. And you squandered it. That is the word of God. The Bible tells us, be careful how we hear the word. Do we listen or are we being religious phonies and sitting here and taking in the message, doing Christian time with no intentions of changing? The Bible says you’re deceived. And listen to this. He says that we are like a man who looks at himself in a mirror. and then puts it down and goes away, forgetting what kind of man he is. Now watch this. He says, those, verse 23, who don’t do, but hear only. He’s like a man observing. The word observing means this. Watch this. It’s no shock to us. He looks and he says, I know me. This is me. I can see my wrinkles. I can see my freckles. I can see this. I can see that. It’s me. I’m well-versed with what I’m seeing. Why? It’s me. Why? I look at me more than anybody. I get up in the morning. I look at me. I make sure me is dressed. I make sure that this or that, it’s me. He’s saying a person who’s familiar with the Word of God is like a man who’s familiar with his own face. But here he makes a horrible miscalculation. He puts down the mirror and walks away and forgets what kind of man he was. Now watch this. Why did James say this? Because in James’s town at this time of biblical times, Socrates, of course, is very popular. And guess what? Socrates had said this concerning the handheld mirror. He said, all of my students will carry with them a mirror. Socrates. If you’re a student of Socrates, you had to carry a handheld mirror. That’s the exact same word James used. Why? Because Socrates says, you look in the mirror, and if you like what you see, then live a good life and keep your face that way. If you like what you see, live a good life and keep your face that way. Because he went on to say that if you live a hard life, it will weather your face. Then Socrates says, if you look into a mirror and you do not like what you see, then work on your heart. Change and have your heart renewed, and it will affect, eventually, the way you look on the outside. So you win either way, if you what? Apply yourself to what you hear. James picks up that popular notion and understanding of the people of the time and uses the very word about a mirror to And here’s the frightening part, people. He looks at his natural face. The word in the Greek is his face of nativity. The face that he was born with. Now watch this. There are three general camps of knowledge or understanding from the Greek scholars of history, the best, and this is the conclusion they’ve come to. No one knows the meaning of the verse. They can only come close. So are you ready for this? Everybody listening? Are you hearing this? This is serious, and I have to confess, frightening. He beholds his natural face. Number one, their understanding of it is this, that the person is not a Christian at all. That’s why it uses the term natural face. That he looks and recognizes himself, he’s natural. Yet he has a propensity to do religious or be religious, so he’s a hypocrite who’s been fooled. He’s not applying the word. He sees his own face, the face of this world, and he’s trying to do religious things. He’s a religious person, but he doesn’t know God. That’s the definition of the word. A second definition is this. He’s a Christian, but he’s very wayward from God, and he has a spiritual face, But he only focuses on his natural faith. Oh, I need this. Oh, I need that. More of this. More of that. La-di-da. Temporal view of life and does not do spiritual things. He’s backslidden. He’s a backslidden Christian. The third understanding, there’s only three of them, and none of them are very comforting. This person is a Christian who has severely miscalculated the word of God, has become an auditor-type listener, and does not apply the Bible to his life. His end is debatable. That’s the definition for natural faith. None of it brings us any comfort. I get the feeling James didn’t want to bring us any comfort here. all of you, we all look so nice today, and our shirts are pressed, and our dresses are nice and bright, and all this and that, and the other thing, and the fact of the matter is, James loves you so much, he pulled back his slingshot and hit us right between the eyes this morning. It doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It doesn’t matter what color you are. It doesn’t matter what you think about what. The thing is, James says, show me you’re a Christian. And all of our hands go up, and all of our heads bob up and down, and the world says, show me a Christian. Show me those who are just like Jesus. The Bible tells us in 1 John, as Christ was in the world, so are we now. But you know what we do? We’re like a place where I used to hate. Growing up, I remember my parents, it’s so traumatic. I remember even the clothes I had on. It was evening time, so I got a bath. I remember my parents, my mom put me in these pajamas that we all used to wear, those of us who were born forever ago, with the feet in them. They got the little rubber bumps on the feet, the little zipper up the middle. It looked like a bunny suit. And you could hear the kid walking miles away with a kind of pajama on, you know? And I remember getting drug off to a place. It was a smorgasbord. And I remember at this one place, we were in a booth, and you can see on the table, the table’s covered in plates. There’s Italian food, Chinese, Japanese, French, German. I mean, it’s all kinds of food, and I couldn’t stand the smell. I was so picky anyway. I didn’t want to eat the things that made me sick. It was called Sir George’s Smorgasbord. It was like… No! We’re going to Sir George’s. No! No! What are we eating? I don’t know. Just keep it coming. Sampling everything, not knowing what you’re eating at all. Coming away with, as you drive away, oh boy, that was good. What was good? Well, you know that thing? It was that thing wrapped up. I don’t know. It was good. What thing? I didn’t see that thing. It’s like whatever. And listen, we live in an area, we live in a place where we can turn on radio, we can do all kinds, we can sample all kinds of teaching. Oh man, I got a little bit of Swindoll, got a little Smith, got a little Graham, got a little Laurie, got a little this. Hey, what’s changing your life? Is it changing you? Hey, get a verse. That’s why it’s in your bulletin from now on. Cut it out, put it on your right hand, your forehead or your dashboard. Memorize it and do it Or else, we’re like a man who looks at himself in a mirror and says, I’m a Christian. Got my little Christian fish on my lapel. Got a Christian coffee cup. Got a Christian shirt on. And everything around you is saved but you yourself. You walk out into the world and you just don’t do it. This is hard stuff.
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You’re listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. You know, to hear more episodes and maybe catch up in the series, just go to jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. And for now, let’s get back to our teaching. Once again, here’s Pastor Jack.
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Verse 24, when he makes his fatal mistake, he says he forgets. All of us are guilty of this. When you sit in a message or you hear a service or you listen to a tape or a radio program, and then somebody, you might even say, man, did you hear that radio program? Did you hear? It was so, what did he talk about? You know, I don’t know, but it was, I remember it being really good. It’s been flushed. It’s gone. It would have been better not to have heard it all. I have labored over this message, wondering how I was going to deliver this news. More importantly, if we quoted one verse today from the scripture, if we open up our Bibles for a moment, how would you and I receive this truth? This cuts to our hearts. Right now, the hypocrite who never thought themselves to be a hypocrite is saying, could this be me? Right now, the Christian who sees himself in the mirror is very committed. is wondering what do I do to forward the gospel of Christ around the world? And do people in my community know that I’m a Christian at all? You might say, you know what, Jack, that’s pretty mean because you know what? People come and they listen and people hear you. And you know what? It’s not mean. Person who teaches the word of God is in trouble more than anyone who hears because he will receive the greater judgment. This stuff scares me to death. There’s no pussyfooting around this. Are you a Christian? Then finally in verse 25, he says, this is the end or the fate of a Christian, a real one. He says, but he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, This one will be blessed in what he does. I love this last sentence. This one will be blessed. It’s as though God is looking to and fro throughout all the earth, waiting and eager to show himself mighty on behalf of those whose hearts are right toward him. He’s looking.
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Man, where are they?
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Oh, there’s one. There’s one. Gabriel, Michael, this one. What does he want to do with this one? Bless him. That’s what it says. You want to be blessed? Do you want to be blessed? You want to just have a blessed life? Blessed is the word. Oh, how happy. You want to be happy? Don’t tell me you don’t want to be happy. You want to be happy. God says, you know what? I want you happy too. I want you so happy. I want you skipping. I want you so happy. Oh, you want to be happy? Oh, yes, I want to be happy. God wants you more happy than you want to be happy. You want to be joy-filled? Fill with joy. Oh, yes, God wants you filled with more joy than you can handle. Oh, do you want to remember what you hear concerning the word of God? God wants you to remember more than what you want to remember. He’s here to help you. He’s more for you than you think. And he goes, I want to bless you. And it sounds like he’s shopping, doesn’t it? This one, this one, this one. He’s looking. He’s looking. It’s almost as though he’s pleading. Please, he says, will you follow my word because your life will be so blessed and I’m going to bless you back and you’ll be effective and you’ll be a doer, not just a hearer, and your life will be so radically changed, you won’t even be able to contain it all. Will you please let me bless you? That’s what he’s saying. Gee, I don’t want to disappoint them. On the way in here this morning, I heard that somebody up north won the California lotto for this week. It was, I think, 16 million bucks. They announced it on KNX News, one number holder. And obviously this guy is happy about it, I would think. Unless he falls into those statistics we talked about a couple weeks ago. Well, the system was built that somebody would benefit from it. And God says, you know what? I’m not into lotto. I’m into you, each of us being blessed beyond measure. In my life, I have to ask myself, if I’m not being blessed, then am I a forgetful hearer? Am I really trusting in his word and believing in what he has said? I have to examine myself in the mirror of God, the perfect law of liberty. Then the word, and we’ll be done with this. The word is, but this is the one who’s blessed. He looks into the word of God. He continues. He doesn’t forget. He does. Watch. The word look in Greek is to come down from where you’re at and you’re thinking and to lay down and get alongside the word of God. To lay down? It means to get eye level with the word of God down on the floor. The word means to lay down next to the word of God. That’s cool. to lay down. It assumes it’s a humble position. Now, I took a ruler out, and I measured the eye level to my five-pound Yorkshire Terrier to the ground at seven inches. His eyes are at seven inches. You walk around the earth at seven inches of eye level. You know what? I lay down there with him. Ankles go by. They looked like rockets. And the kitchen table, you can see everything underneath it. You look out in the backyard and it’s like looking out in the Yosemite or something. When you’re that little. Seven inches off the ground. My dog sees everything at seven inches. That’s law. This word’s lower. It means to lay down. And he’s been laying down before sleeping. And it means to, this word, come down from where you’re at and get level with the word of God. He was sleeping and he’s going… Dreaming in his sleep. Feet are going all out of sync. One of them’s going, one’s going quick, one’s hardly going at all. What’s he thinking? In his mind, I’m sure he’s like rescuing poodles and saving Pomeranians. And here I come. I’m from Yorkshire. I’m Sir Scruffy. What’s he thinking? He’s dreaming. His body’s moving. He’s floundering around. He’s down as low as you can go. And that’s the meaning of the word. To get alongside the Bible, look right into it, and say, what are you thinking? What do you want me to do? What can I know? What can I know and do? Talk to me, Bible. Get alongside of it. Get off of the place where you’re at. Well, this is why I’m in ministry. Hey, you’re messed up. Get down. Well, this is why I go to church. There’s some business going on there. Get down. Well, I go there for my conscience. My father, my grandfather, my grandfather’s father go to. I’m going to church. Get down to the Bible and say, God, Help me not to be deceived. It’s a do. And those who do, because God blesses obedience, truly is. It’s as different, and you can close your Bible, as a sheep is from a goat. Sheep need a shepherd, and they really want one. Goats could care less. Goats eat anything. Sheep have got to have the proper food. Sheep have to have human intervention. Goats could care less. You’ll find them both in the same field. One does sheepy things because they’re sheep. Goats will do anything because they’re a goat. Be a doer of the word and not a hearer only. Deceive in yourself. Let’s be careful. Lord, we do ask that your word would be ever before our eyes. And as we look into the perfect law of liberty, we must confess that we know much more than what we do. And that brings to us now an awareness of our great need to ask of you, Lord, to forgive us, to seek your power and your strength, and that we might be doers. So, Father, we give you our hearts today. We ask you to help us to not be deceived. While heads are bowed and eyes are closed this morning, carefully listen. Maybe you’ve sat in here for maybe months, maybe weeks, maybe years, and you’ve always assumed that you’re a Christian. But do people who know you assume you’re a Christian too? Do they know it? Are they sure of it? What witness do you have? It is possible, friend, according to the Bible, that we’ve been deceived and the commitment that we’ve made was never a commitment at all because only commitments bring change. The Bible says that if you say you know God and you love Him, says 1 John, but sin and live in sin, the truth is not in you and you are a liar. Maybe this morning you’ve woken up to the reality, I need Jesus for real. If you would agree with this prayer, then you would just tell him, yes, and that is, Jesus, I want you to come into my life and save me from my sins and make my life brand new. And Lord, I want to have a new direction and I don’t want to be deceived anymore. I want to have an incredible life starting now. It’s never too late. We ask it in Jesus’ name and all God’s people said, amen.
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Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio with his message called Practicing the Word of Truth. We’re glad you are with us today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack’s series called The Book of James. It’s a series on being doers of the Word of God and not just hearers only. And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.
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So as you heard from our broadcast, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And if you’d like to know what a commitment to Christ can mean in your life personally, we would love to help you out with that. Go to jackhibbs.com slash know God. That’s K-N-O-W, God. And there you’ll be guided through what a commitment to Christ can mean in your life and the freedom that you’ll find in knowing God. Don’t miss out. That’s the Know God tab at jackhibbs.com.
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Well, hey, everybody, this is Pastor Jack here, and I want to encourage you to get a great book. Now, listen up. I know there’s a lot of books out there, and we certainly do push a lot of books on this program because we want you to grow, and you should have a great library. Well, listen, One Day Nearer is a book written by Steve Miller, a dear friend of mine and a great author, and here’s the kick. It’s a 365-day book. devotion, one for every day, and all of it is themed around being prepared to meet the Lord Jesus Christ, how to be looking for him, how to be walking in light of his return. What are the scriptures that should encourage us? All of this in this fantastic book, One Day Nearer, by my good friend, Steve Miller.
SPEAKER 02 :
Get a copy for yourselves, please, and grow. One Day Nearer by Steve Miller, available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com slash real radio. That’s jackhibbs.com slash real radio. Did you know there’s an easy way to stay informed on the latest biblical events shaping our world today? Check out the Happening Now section at jackhibbs.com. Now, these live events feature Pastor Jack Hibbs alongside special guests diving into current events, cultural shifts, and how they align with biblical prophecy. It’s a unique blend of Bible teaching and real-time analysis that helps you make sense of today’s headlines through the lens of Scripture. Happening Now is not just about information. It’s about equipping you with the truth and encouraging you to stand firm in your faith, no matter what’s happening around you. These discussions are eye-opening, they’re thought-provoking, and they’re a great way to stay spiritually grounded in a rapidly changing world. Whether you watch live or catch up on past events, Happening Now will help keep you connected to God’s Word and what’s going on in the world today. Visit jackhibbs.com and click on Happening Now. Don’t just watch the news. Understand it from a biblical perspective. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We’ll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
