My God and My Country

Word of God

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God

Matthew 4:4

The Epistle of James 1:22

(Study notes by Matthew Henry Edited by Doktor Riktor Von Zhadess)

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

Brethren:

Hearing is in order to doing; the most attentive and the most frequent hearing of the word of God will not avail us, unless we be also doers of it. If we were to hear a sermon every day of the week, and an angel from heaven were the preacher, yet, if we rested in bare hearing, it would never bring us to heaven. Therefore the apostle insists much upon it (and, without doubt, it is indispensably necessary) that we practice what we hear. "There must be inward practice by meditation, and outward practice in true obedience.’’ - Baxter. It is not enough to remember what we hear, and to be able to repeat it, and to give testimony to it, and commend it, and write it, and preserve what we have written; that which all this is in order to, and which crowns the rest, is that we be doers of the word.

Note then, that bare hearers are self-deceivers; the original word, paralogizomenoi, signifies men’s arguing sophistically to themselves; their reasoning is manifestly deceitful and false when they would make one part of their work discharge them from the obligation they lie under to another, or persuade themselves that filling their heads with notions is sufficient, though their hearts be empty of good affections and resolutions, and their lives fruitless of good works. Self-deceit will be found the worst deceit at last.

Take heed then my brethren lest you fall into self delusions, and self inflation of one’s own importance. Be not like those, whom our Savior likened the pharisees and scribes, comparing them to white washed graves: Clean on the outside, but inwardly filled with the bones of the dead.