Tony Evans - Activating God's Word in Our Lives
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Summary
The preacher drives home that God's Word is powerful and true, but it only changes us when we act on it—not just hear it. He bases this on James 1:22-25, comparing the Word to a mirror that reveals our true self, urging us to gaze intently and obey. The bottom line: hearing alone deceives us; real transformation comes from being doers who apply the Word daily, not just on Sundays.
The Word Must Be Activated by Action
For the word to work and to reach its destination, it has to be activated. It's got the truth of God in it, but it has to be activated for you to experience it. It is activated by response, where you do something. If there is no action, there is no activation. Now it's alive, but it's not working for you. It is the action that activates it.
The Danger of Being Mere Hearers
Verse 22: But prove yourselves to be doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves; for if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror, and once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. He says you can be tricked or you will be tricked or deluded: this is his word. If all you do is hear it, we will be duped; we will find no benefit from scripture, we will find no change in our lives, we will find no progress—not because we didn't hear it, but because we only heard it.
The Mirror Illustration
He introduces us to this concept of the mirror. He says, "Do not be like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror." You've heard me humorously discuss the word "man" there in Greek; it's the word "male." Don't be like a male in a mirror who looks at his face and quickly turns away. You've heard me say that's because women don't look in the mirror and quickly turn away; women hang out in multiple mirrors.
The first mirror in the bathroom shows how messed up things got last night. Then there's the vanity mirror, then there's the half mirror that they use to look back at the vanity mirror, then there's the full-body mirror, then there's the car mirror, and then there's the mirror in your purse. There are mirrors because women don’t look in the mirror and quickly turn away. That's why he says, "The man who beholds his natural face..." So, if there's a man here with a compact, we need to talk after the service. They don’t go around with lipstick all day doing this all day; I mean, women hang out in the mirror. He says when it comes to God's word, don’t be like a man; be like a woman.
You Need a Mirror to See Yourself
So let’s hop here. I want you to do me a favor, everybody in the room. Do me a favor: I want you to look at your face. I want you to look at your face. Are you seeing your face? You're not seeing your face because you can’t look at your face. The only way you know what you look like is because of a mirror. The mirror tells you what you look like.
Now, you may think you’re Halle Berry or Denzel, but the mirror will tell you the truth. In biblical days, there did not exist glass mirrors; they didn’t have glass mirrors. Mirrors with silver in them—that’s where you get the reflection back—did not exist. If you go back to look at the movies set in biblical days, you won’t see them with glass mirrors, because they didn't exist: only brass mirrors. They had to get the light to shine on the brass, and they had to keep manipulating it until they got a good reflection from the sunlight or a candle shining against the brass. They had to have the brass in the right place in order to see what they looked like.
Look Intently into the Perfect Law
This is why he says in verse 25: "But the one who looks intently at the perfect law..." In other words, the word will not reach its destination if you glance at it; you must gaze into it. The word does not do its job just because you look at it. The idea is to see your face when you go to a mirror; you go to a mirror to see your face. You want to look at you. No matter what you think you look like, if it’s a legitimate mirror, it’s not going to lie to you. It’s going to say, "Your hair's messed up; that’s a boo-boo in your eyes." It's not going to lie to you; it’s going to tell you the truth.
He says, "I want you to manipulate the word of God until I show you the real you." You may think you're all that and a bag of chips, but when you face my word, I’m going to show you your spiritual boo-boo; I’m going to show you your messed-up hair. I’m going to reveal you to you based on what the mirror shows—not what you think you are. He says, "He is to look at his face in a mirror." He is to manipulate that until he sees himself in the word—until you see you—because the Holy Spirit points you to you because you've hung out in the mirror like a woman, not like a man.
Be Doers, Not Just Hearers
One of the ways you get to hang out, he says, is by becoming a doer of the word, verse 22, and not merely a hearer. For the word to work and to reach its destination, it has to be activated. Now I talked about this before: Those of us back in the day who still had a Jerry curl had to buy a curl activator. You had to go buy a curl activator because if you didn’t activate the curl, your own hair would be all dried up. The chemicals were in there, but they had to be activated.
So if you had a Jerry curl, you needed curl activator to keep it shiny and soft; you had to activate it. The word is the word; it's got the truth of God in it, but it has to be activated for you to experience it, and it is activated by response—where you do something. If there is no action, there is no activation. Let me say it again: if there is no action, the word of God lies dormant. Now it's alive, but it's not working for you. It’s not working in you or me or us because it has not been activated by action; it is the action that activates it.
So you could say "Amen" until you’re blue in the face. If there is no action, there is no activation. He says, "Be a doer of the word and not merely a hearer." Treat the word like a crockpot, not like a microwave. A microwave is designed to do something quickly: to heat it up quick, to get it out quick. But if you notice, if you do it quick in the microwave, it gets cold quick because you just rushed that thing.
Now a crockpot, where you let it hang out there for hours and hours, saturates itself because it’s becoming a part of it. It’s not just giving you a top heat. What many Christians want is a Sunday microwave, not an all-week crockpot. Let me ask you a question: Most people or many people eat big meals on Sunday; they go out or cook a big meal. So let’s say today you stuff yourself, you are just jam-packed with some great food, but you don’t eat again until next Sunday. You’re not going to be healthy. I don’t care how good the meal is on Sunday; if Sunday is the only time you eat, you’re going to be in bad shape because a Sunday meal doesn’t sustain a life movement, and a Sunday sermon doesn’t sustain a life movement.
The Word Must Become Part of Daily Life
The word of God must become part of life; that’s why you see Psalms talk about meditating on it, thinking about it, meandering through it, because it's become—see, that takes it down. When you are acting on it, you are reminding yourself about it because the action tells you you’re doing something based on something that the word taught. This is why we put the study guide out there: to give you a tool every week to keep you in different verses and to keep you rehearsing—to keep you thinking about it.
I am not naive. I'm not naive, meaning I preach approximately 42 out of 52 Sunday mornings a year. It's 42 out of 52, okay? I know if I come to most of you next Sunday and ask you what I preached about this Sunday, you're going to say, "Uh, uh, uh, something about the Bible." I mean, I'm not naive; I'm not even going to remember what I preached about. What I'm saying is it's easy for the word to get lost because you've got an evil person that wants it lost, and you've got a fake culture that doesn't want you to take it seriously. You've got an evil person, you've got a fake culture, because it wants to deny you real life. It wants to deny us real life, and because it wants to deny us real life, it keeps us distracted with fake culture so that the real life of the word does not seep down and do the job it was designed to do.