“22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
Both Peter and Judas heard the same preaching. They both spent years studying the word of God with the best teacher imaginable. They both heard the word of God from God Himself as intended. They talked about it with him when they were at home and when they walked along the road, when they lay down and when they got up. There was nothing lacking in their instruction. There was nothing lacking in the example before them, and yet there is no doubt that Peter received a rich welcome into glory while Judas is a son of perdition, as Jesus called him. What was the difference between these two men?
If you care about your soul, that question should matter to you. You can listen to faithful preaching and end up like Judas. You can talk about the Scriptures and end up like Judas. You can belong to a faithful church and end up like Judas.
Judas didn’t think that he was building his house on sand as he listened to the Sermon on the Mount. He didn’t hear Jesus’ teaching on the sheep and goats and think, “wait, I’m a goat?” He listened, but Jesus’ word never found a home in him. He was a deceived listener.
There are plenty of deceived listeners. The burden of this message is to ensure that you are not one. How do you know that you aren’t one? Well, deceived listeners only listen. Obedient listeners listen with an ear to obey. That’s the claim of this sermon: deceived listeners only listen. Obedient listeners listen with an ear to obey.
We will study this in two points. First: deceived listening. Second: obedient listening. In the first sentence of verse 22, we see deceived listening. In the second sentence of verse 22, we see obedient listening.
First: deceived listening. You are the target audience for this verse because you listen to God’s word. This verse wasn’t written for people who refuse to listen. This is a warning for listeners.
Take this warning, like all God’s warnings, as a sign of care. The weather service issues wind chill warnings when it is bitterly cold because they care. They don’t want children to get frostbite. They care and so they warn.
God cares and so He warns. He warns you not to be a deceived listener. Can you imagine anything more tragic than a man assuming that he is right with God when he isn’t? Wouldn’t you want to shake that man out of his assumption? That’s what the Holy Spirit is doing in this verse.
You might need to be shook. You might think you are genuine when you aren’t. You might be dead in your sins even though you know a lot about Jesus. You might be deceived right now as you are listening to God’s word preached. That was James concern in this verse; “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
Some people listen to God’s word with no compulsion to obey what they hear. They listen and they like this preacher but not as much as another one but it doesn’t really matter because they feel no obligation towards God as they listen to either man. They might happen to like a particular preacher because they mesh with his personality but they have no sense that they will answer to God for what they’ve heard from him from God’s word. These people read the Bible and they are captivated by some of its characters—it contains some fascinating men and women—but they have no sense that they too are characters not in their own stories but in God’s story.
Don’t listen that way. Don’t listen to God’s word with no compulsion to obey. That’s deceived listening. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.”
The compulsion to obey is a mark of the Holy Spirit’s work in your life. The deceived man listens with a very different spirit about him. Here are four marks of the deceived man.
First, the deceived man listens with a disinterested spirit. I’m not saying that you are deceived if you are ever bored in a sermon. I’m saying that you are deceived if you think God’s word has nothing to do with you.
I can listen with interest to a talk on the culture of baseball in South Korea, but I am disinterested in the sense that is has nothing to do with me. I can find it interesting, but I have no personal stake in it; that makes me a disinterested party. Deceived men, women, and children hear God’s word as disinterested parties.
They hear it the way certain Israelites heard it in Jeremiah’s day. Jeremiah said, “for twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah until this very day—the word of the Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened. And though the Lord has sent all his servants the prophets to you again and again, you have not listened or paid any attention.”
They heard the word. They might have found what Jeremiah had to say interesting, but they listened like disinterested parties. They listened as if the word had nothing to do with them.
Do you hear God’s word about marriage as if it has nothing to do with you? “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Husbands, do you think that is a word for you or do you hear it with the same level of involvement as if it were words about the use of okra in Ozark cuisine? Do you listen as a disinterested party?
If you hear God’s word as a disinterested party, take this warning, “do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.” Take a warning from history. See what happened to Manasseh who listened as a disinterested party. “The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. So the Lord brought against them the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.”
God spoke to Manasseh and Manasseh acted as if God’s word had nothing to do with him. God’s word has something to do with you. Do you see that?
The deceived man listens with a disinterested spirit. He also listens with a selfish spirit. He listens with an ear towards what’s best for him not with an ear towards obedience.
The rich young ruler is a picture of this. He asked Jesus, “good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Now there is nothing wrong in the least with wanting eternal life. That proper self-interest is not selfishness. Jesus asked this young man if he knew the commandments. He told Jesus that he had kept them all since he was little. Jesus didn’t condemn him as a self-righteous liar. He loved him. As Mark wrote, ‘Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.’
When that young man heard the word, he heard it with selfishness. He was doing a cost-benefit analysis as he listened. ‘I can obey this word or I can be rich.’ His heart was selfish, not obedient.
You see a picture of this same selfishness in the parable of the sower. You see it in the seed that falls among the thorns. These people hear the word, but once they see that the word costs them something, they lose interest. They love the way of the world and they can’t have both the way of the world and God and so they do what they think is best for them; they choose the way of the world. They love sin and they can’t have both sin and God and so they do what they think is best for them; they choose sin. Obedience is never a variable at work in these people’s equations because obedience is about pleasing someone other than yourself.
The deceived man listens with a disinterested spirit. He listens with a selfish spirit. He also listens with a proud spirit. The Pharisees are a vivid picture of this. When they came to listen to John the Baptist preach, John told them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”
John knew those men couldn’t hear his message of repentance because they were proud. They didn’t think they needed to repent.
You see their prideful spirit in their response to Jesus. When they sent guards to arrest Jesus, the guards listened to Jesus teach and they saw no reason to arrest him. When they returned emptyhanded, the Pharisees asked, ‘“Why didn’t you bring him in?” “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied. “You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”’
The Pharisees thought you needed to be pretty foolish and ignorant to accept what Jesus had to say. ‘Of course, the common people believe him; they believe anything. I’m too good to need Jesus.’ That’s prideful listening.
Jesus called them out on it time and time again. Here is just one instance. Jesus had healed a man who was born blind. The Pharisees found out about it and they interviewed the man. It was actually more of an interrogation. They asked the man how he was healed. They asked again and again because they were looking to condemn Jesus. They asked him to repeat the story so many times that the man said, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” That sent them through the roof. They wound up condemning the man saying, “you were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” Then they expelled him from the synagogue.
Jesus found that man born blind and explained the situation to him. He said, ‘“For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?” Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”’
Jesus called them prideful listeners. ‘You are too proud to hear what I have to say. You think you see things clearly and that is keeping you from seeing clearly.’ Are you too proud to hear what Jesus has to say? Do you think you see everything clearly with no room for improvement? That attitude will keep you from seeing clearly.
Are you too proud to listen to Jesus? Are you too proud to accept his teaching that you are so hopeless that you must be born again? This book of James is humility for a prideful age. If you are a prideful listener, humble yourself. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.”
The deceived man listens with a disinterested spirit. He listens with a selfish spirit. He listens with a proud spirit. Finally, for this list, he listens with a defensive spirit.
Herod had a defensive spirit. John the Baptist spoke God’s word to him. Herod had married his brother’s wife. It was an unlawful remarriage because there was no just cause for the divorce. Herod and this lady wanted to shack up; she was married; the divorce took care of that. John the Baptist called them to repent. The gospels tell us that Herod wanted to kill John, but he knew it would be politically foolish, so he just threw him in prison. That’s defensive listening. ‘I won’t hear what you have to say because it steps on my toes.’
You see another example of this in the Sanhedrin. Stephen explained their history to them; he explained how the Old Testament, which they believed, gave any number of reasons why they should believe that this Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited Messiah. They listened and when they had finished listening, Luke tells us, “they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him… they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.” That’s defensive listening.
The history of the church is full of examples of men, women, and children listening with a defensive spirit, with a proud spirit, with a selfish spirit, and with a disinterested spirit. Other than Herod, all the examples I’ve given were examples of people who considered themselves God’s people and who were largely considered to be God’s people. This is a warning for us, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourself.”
How do you know that you aren’t just deceiving yourself even as you are listening to this word preached? How do you know that you have received with meekness the, “implanted word, which is able to save your souls,” as James began this plea? That’s our second point: obedient listening.
The obedient spirit is very different from the disinterested, selfish, prideful, defensive spirit. The obedient spirit listens to the same word differently.
Both Judas and Peter listened to the same word. Judas listened with disinterest. He thought the call to be born again had nothing to do with him. He listened selfishly. He wanted to know what he could get out of Jesus. He listened pridefully. He thought he knew better than Jesus. He listened defensively. It is clear that Jesus’ word offended him.
Peter listened differently. At times he was slow to understand, but he was never disinterested. He knew that what Jesus said had to do with him. When Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven,” Peter wanted to know where that left him. He wasn’t rich. What chance did he have to enter the kingdom? He said, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Peter listened to Jesus’ word as if it had something to do with him.
Peter certainly acted selfishly at times, but he didn’t listen selfishly. He wasn’t constantly doing a cost-benefit analysis as he listened to Jesus. When scores of disciples left because Jesus’ word cost them too much, Peter told Jesus that he wasn’t going to leave. He said, “where else will we go? You have the words of eternal life?” Peter didn’t just listen to the parts he liked and ignore the rest. He accepted all of it no matter what it cost him.
Peter acted pridefully at times. He put himself forward. He didn’t listen pridefully. He wasn’t too proud to ask Jesus for clarification if he didn’t understand. He wasn’t too proud to admit that he was a sinner who didn’t deserve Jesus’ attention. Shortly after they met, he told Jesus, “go away from me Lord for I am a sinful man.” Peter wasn’t too proud to hear what Jesus said.
Peter was certainly headstrong; he was certainly stubborn, but he wasn’t a defensive listener. He accepted the hard words of Jesus as wounds from a friend. He knew what Jesus meant when he asked him three times, “do you love me?” and he wept.
Judas and Peter both heard the word of God. One listened, but was deceived. The other listened and obeyed. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
The compulsion to obey is the hallmark of obedient listening. This compulsion is the work of the Spirit. This is the law written on your heart as Jeremiah put it. If you are a parent, I’m sure that you’ve wished that you could put the impulse to obey into your children. That’s what God when He puts His Spirit in us.
Do you have this compulsion to obey? Do you read Psalm 23, “the Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want,” and know that you should stop grumbling because the Lord is your shepherd? Do you know that the most fitting thing in the world is for you to be content because the Lord is your Shepherd?
Do you read Matthew 5:44, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” and have a sense that, that is right even though you might not want to do it? Do you ask for God’s help to do that rather or do you just ignore that commandment? Do you want to know how to do love your enemies, what that means and what that doesn’t, or does that word find no home in you?
Don’t imagine that you are deceived if you find some of Jesus’ commands hard to keep but you want to keep them; don’t imagine that you are deceived if you want to obey but are often scared to do so; be warned that you are deceived if you hear God’s word with no compulsion to obey.
If you call Jesus, ‘lord,’ with no sense that you must obey him, then listen to him; he said, ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.’
If you have no desire to obey God, you aren’t one of His children. Until you are, all your listening will be an act of self-deception. Stop listening that way. Listen obediently. Start by being not just a hearer but a doer of the word. The word says, “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Obey that command tonight. Become a child of God.
If you have obeyed that word, then keep obeying the word. You read the word to obey the word. If you read but don’t obey, you are on the road to pride. That’s why Paul said, “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” There are a lot of Christians who are puffed up because they seem to think that merely hearing means they are growing. They think they are mature Christians because they’ve learned a lot of Biblical information. Merely hearing doesn’t mean you are growing. Doing means that you are growing. Now doing is more uncomfortable than hearing but growth always lies outside your comfort zone.
If you are a Christian, you were saved by someone who did the word even though it was outside his comfort zone. Jesus didn’t save you by merely knowing the word of God. He saved you by doing the word of God. He didn’t save you just to hear the word of God. He saved you to do the word of God. Amen.