Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory and Dr. Robert Jeffress.

We're dedicated to bringing you bold biblical teaching that transforms your life and strengthens your walk with God.

And you can study God's word alongside Dr. Jeffress in person on the 2026 Pathway to Victory Cruise to Alaska.

Speaker 2

Have you ever witnessed the breathtaking majesty of massive glaciers rising from crystal blue waters? Or stood in awe as bald eagles soar over snow-capped mountains?

I want you to experience these unforgettable moments with me on the Pathway to Victory Cruise to Alaska, June 13th through 20th, 2026.

Speaker 1

Join Dr. Jeffress and the Pathway to Victory family for a spectacular seven-day adventure aboard Holland America's luxurious Koningsdam.

Indulge in elegant staterooms, world-class dining, and expansive decks perfect for breathtaking views.

Visit historic ports like Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan, where wilderness and frontier history await.

Speaker 2

There's something powerful about connecting with God and fellow believers in the majesty of his untamed wilderness. I truly believe this journey will refresh you spiritually, physically and emotionally.

Speaker 1

Cabins are filling quickly, so reserve yours today. To book your spot on the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska, call 888-280-6747 or go to ptv.org now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress and I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program.

Speaker 3

On today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Look at verse 25. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, God's Word is a mirror that reveals who we are.

One who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, abides by it, not having become forgetful, but an effectual doer.

This man will be blessed in what he does.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. You know, we've all heard the expression actions speak louder than words. But when it comes to our faith, many Christians seem content to be professional listeners without ever putting God's Word into practice.

Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress explains that faith requires more than just hearing God's word. But first, let's take a minute to hear some important ministry updates.

Speaker 3

Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Okay, picture this. You're standing on the deck of a luxury cruise ship, watching a massive glacier calve into the pristine waters of Alaska while breathing in the crisp, pure ocean air. That moment of awe. Well, that's exactly what your soul has been craving. For that reason, I want you to join us on the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska. This isn't just a vacation; it's a chance to reconnect with what truly matters. So head to ptv.org right now to download the brochure. And most importantly, reserve your spot for this unforgettable journey.

Today I'm going to address a pressing personal issue that confronts every Christ follower, whether you're a new believer or a seasoned saint. Here's the problem: churches are filled with people who can quote Scripture, attend Bible studies, and defend doctrine. Even so, these same Christians remain susceptible to temptation and wonder why they've lost their spiritual fire. Well, James confronts this dangerous disconnect head-on, warning that faith without corresponding action is worthless.

If you've wondered why your spiritual life feels stuck despite your Biblical knowledge, I want to send you a brand new book called *How to Know if You're Really a Christian: A Study in the Book of James*. I'd be pleased to send a copy of this life-changing book to your home when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. We'll share more details about my book and other resources later in the program. But right now, let's turn in our Bibles to James Chapter One. I titled today's message "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall."

Speaker 2

I want you to imagine for a moment that the deacons of our church granted me a one-year sabbatical in Hawaii. Now I know it's a fantasy for me. Maybe that's a fantasy for you as well to have me gone for a year. I don't know. But let's just say, using our imagination, they said we're going to give you some time off.

And so while Amy and I are in Hawaii, I send back regular emails to the church. I'm concerned about what's happening in the church. I send suggestions for maybe new programs we ought to implement, things we need to watch out for and give attention to. And as the sabbatical draws to a close, I said, "Amy, let's go back a week early and just surprise everybody."

And so we come back and we're the ones who are surprised. We walk by the flower beds and notice that they're overgrown with weeds. We walk by our beautiful fountain and see it's just green, slimy water in there. We come into the facility and notice the carpets are dirty. The service has already started. We slip in at the back and we're shocked. There are just a handful of people. Here, the choir is off-key. They haven't rehearsed in nine months, and a speaker for the day gives a 10-minute nothing more than a motivational pep talk. We just can't believe it.

I run into our chairman of deacons and I say, "Mike, what has happened around here? Didn't you receive my emails?" He said, "Oh, yes, Pastor. In fact, every time you sent a new email, we read it to the congregation and they loved everything you said. You just have a way with words, Pastor. We listened to them. In fact, not only did we listen to them, some of our members actually memorized portions of your emails. They could quote them by heart. In fact, we had such interest in those emails, we started a discipleship university class led by Dr. Wicker on the emails of Pastor Jeffress. And we studied the historic background of those emails. We parsed every verb in the emails. Yes, we've studied them very carefully."

I said, "You tell me you've received the emails, you've studied them, you've memorized them, but did you do what I said in them?" He replied, "It never even crossed our minds."

Now, that analogy is not original with me, but it illustrates a very important truth. It's possible to love the Word of God, to read the Word of God, to defend the Word of God without...

Speaker 3

Ever doing the Word of God.

Speaker 2

We have been called to be doers of the Word of God and not hearers only. And that's the point of the passage we're going to look at today. If you have your Bibles, turn to James chapter now. Understanding the context of this letter is key to interpreting and applying it correctly. Remember, James was the leader of the Jerusalem church. He was writing to Jewish Christians who had been scattered throughout the world.

When they would come back to Jerusalem for the festivals and the feast, James noticed that there was a disparity between what these Jewish Christians professed and what they actually practiced in their faith. They were drifting away from the faith. And James said, this isn't right. You need to examine yourself and see if you're really saved or not. Here's the thing: genuine faith will produce genuine fruit. Wherever there is saving faith, there will be visible results. If there are not results, then it means your faith is worthless.

Throughout this letter, James gives several ways to test yourself to see if you are really a Christian or not. First of all, how do you respond to trials, the inevitable trials of life? Do they push you toward God or away from God? How do you respond to temptation? Do you bite that bait that Satan dangles out in front of you, or do you turn the other way? James is going to give us a third test of whether we're saved or not, and it's how we respond to the Word of God.

In verses 17 and 18, he has a general word to say about the Word of God. He says, "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow in the exercise of God's will. He brought us forth by the Word of Truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among his creatures." By God's Word, he made us spiritually alive. That's what James is saying. God's Word was central in your salvation. If you're really saved, God's Word led you to a saving knowledge and belief in Jesus Christ, and that made you a first fruit of those who are asleep.

What is that talking about? Jesus was the first one raised from the dead in his new resurrection body. First Corinthians 15 says he was among the first fruits, the sample of a greater harvest that is yet to come of all believers everywhere. God saved you by His Word. But God's Word was not only instrumental in your salvation; it's instrumental in your sanctification, that is, in becoming more like Jesus every day of your life. God's desire for your life is not just to take you to heaven one day. God wants you in this life to become more and more like Christ so that you might attract others to the gospel.

Romans 8:29 says, "For whom God foreknew he predestined to become conformed, shaped into the image of His Son." How does God shape you and me into the image of His Son? It's through the Word of God. God's Word is like a chisel that chisels away all of the attitudes and actions in our life that are not like Jesus. Or to use another analogy from Ephesians 5, God's Word is like a bar of soap that removes the grit and the grime, the sin from our life that mars the image of Christ we possess.

But you know, for soap to do its work, it can't stay in the soap dispenser. It has to come out of that soap dish and actually make contact with our body, with our lives. And so it is with the Word of God. That's the theme of verses 19 to 27: how we respond to the Word of God. Commentator Ron Blue says there are three action points in this passage. First of all, if we're truly saved, we will accept the Word of God. Secondly, we will act on the Word of God. And thirdly, we will abide in the Word of God.

Now, for the few minutes we have, let's unpack those commands in just a moment. We're to first of all accept the Word of God. Look at verse 19. "This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger." Notice the three commands there. First of all, we are to be quick to hear. You have two ears. James says, use them. Now, what else would we do with our ears? Well, people have ears to hear. That's a given. But not everyone has a heart to heed the instructions of God's Word.

You know, in the Bible, to hear God's Word and not to obey it is not to hear at all. That's why Jesus said in Matthew 11:15, "Let everyone who has ears to hear, let him hear." For example, have you ever said to your kids or your grandkids, "Did you hear what I said?" Now, what are you asking them when you ask that question? Are you saying, "Did the vibrations of my voice enter your ear and shake the little bones in your ear that would bang on the eardrum that you have in the inner ear?" Did that happen? No, that's not what you're asking. You're saying, "Did you take seriously what I said enough to do it instead of ignoring it?" That's what the Bible means when it says to be quick to hear.

Secondly, to accept God's word means to be slow to speak. Accepting God's word means being slow to speak. Now, he's not talking about controlling your speech. He's going to do that at length when we get to chapter three. Boy, talk about a convicting subject—learning to control your words. But that's not what he has in mind here when he says to be slow to speak; he's talking about being slow to excuse your disobedience. Our natural response to hearing something from God is to argue with him about it, giving reasons why we can't obey his commands. He said, "Be slow to speak."

And then thirdly, be slow to anger. Again, this isn't just a general kind of anger he's talking about that would be out of place. The anger he's talking about is an anger that comes from the conviction of God's Spirit. When we read his word about sin that needs to be eradicated from our life, you know, some of the angriest people I know and have known are people who are under the most conviction by God about their sin. If you have a mate who's perpetually angry, or children or parents—not all the time, but many times—it's because of their rebellion against God's Word and God's will for their life.

He goes on to say in verse 21, to accept the word of God means to receive the word of God. Look at verse 21. "Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility, receive the word implanted which is able to save your soul." Would you underline that word "filthiness" in verse 21? To accept the word of God, you have to remove all filthiness. That word "filthiness" in Greek is the word "rupos." Now, I don't want to get too gross right before lunch here, but the word "rupos" refers to the buildup of wax in a person's ear. Do you ever deal with earwax? If you don't deal with it, you're probably not hearing anything I'm saying today. Because earwax keeps you from hearing.

There comes a point in which you need to get that Q-tip out and remove the stuff that is in your ear if you want to hear completely. Well, James likens that to moral filthiness. If you want to hear God speak to you, part of accepting God's word is removing the spiritual wax, the filthiness that keeps you from truly hearing God. Many people can't hear from God when they read the Bible. They can't hear from God because they've had this sin that has built up in their life that makes them spiritually deaf.

The word implanted, he goes on to say in verse 21. To accept God's word means to allow the Word to be implanted. Just like a seed is implanted in soil, before it can grow, we need to let the word of God become implanted in our hearts. What does that mean? You know, this brings to mind Jesus' parable in Matthew 13. James' older brother, Jesus, remember the parable he told about the sower of seed and the soil? In Jesus' day, if you wanted to plant seeds, you would take a bag of seeds and you would just walk down paths and just start spreading the seed.

Jesus described four types of soil on which the seed, representing the word of God, fell. There were four different types of soil. Remember that? That represent the condition of the human heart. He said, as the sower went out and scattered the seed, some of it fell on hard ground. Hard ground was ground that had become compacted because of the foot traffic on the path. That seed couldn't penetrate the soil, so it never grew anything. The birds came and ate it. The seed also fell on what Jesus called thin soil. This is soil that looked rich and deep, but underneath the soil was a bed of limestone so that the plant could never grow strong roots that would get the nourishment that it needed. When the sun came out, the leaf would wither up and die.

Some of the seed fell on weed-infested soil. Again, it began to take root, but there was already a network of weeds in that soil that strangled the life out of the seed. Some of the seed, though, fell on good soil. It was soil that was soft, not hard. It was deep, not thin. It was clean, not weed-infested. This is the seed that brought forth fruit. In the same way, God's word can fall on different types of hearts. Some of the hearts are so hard that the Word of God can't penetrate it. Some are thin; that is, their hearts don't have depth to them to produce much fruit. When trials come, they wither up in their faith. Sometimes God's word falls on hearts that are so concerned, Jesus said, with the worries and the riches of this world, that those things strangle the spiritual life out of the Word of God.

Who's responsible for the condition of your heart?

Speaker 3

My heart?

Speaker 2

We are. We cultivate the kind of heart that receives the Word of God. And that's why it's very important that we have a heart that is open to the Word of God. In Psalm 119, verse 18, remember what the psalmist said: "Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things out of your law." That I may what? Know your word? No. Defend your word? No. Open my eyes that I may see so that I may live and obey your word.

Verse 17. The best thing you can do to keep your heart ready to receive the Word of God is to make sure you're obeying what you already know to be true. The most dangerous thing you can do to your spiritual heart is to engage in selective obedience to God. Let me explain what I mean by that.

Let's just suppose for a moment. You go to the doctor complaining of chronic fatigue and shortness of breath. Your doctor does a series of tests and he comes back and says, "Man, you've got lots of problems. Your cholesterol is through the roof, you've got plaque blocking your arteries, and you've got a weak heart muscle. You better make some changes." You say, "Well, doctor, I'll do whatever you want me to." He says, "Okay, you're going to take a cholesterol tablet every day to deal with that. You have to engage in a vigorous exercise program, and you need to start a low-fat diet."

Well, you're all enthused about doing that for a little while, but pretty soon you notice you just can't bring yourself to exercise. It doesn't work with your schedule, so you cut that out. Secondly, you can't stand that low-fat diet anymore, so you cut that out and you say, "Well, I'm going to still take my cholesterol tablet." Now, what happens to you when you do that?

Two things. One's obvious. You have now deprived yourself of the benefits of exercise and a low-fat diet. But something even more sinister happens. You've developed a habit of selectively obeying what your doctor tells you to do. You've learned how to tune him out, to say no to him. What if he comes to you later on and says something more serious? You need to have a stent put in or you need a heart transplant. You can easily, having developed a sense of disobedience, ignore what he says about something serious.

It's the same way with God. When we selectively obey God, when we obey God when it's easy, then we develop a resistance to hearing God's voice speak through His Word. Again, selective obedience is one of the most dangerous things you can do for the well-being of your spiritual heart. We need to accept God's Word. That means being receptive to it.

I think of Paul's words about the Thessalonians in 1st Thessalonians 2:13. He said, "For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you receive the Word of God which you heard from us, you accept it for what it really is: not the mere words of man, but the Word of God which works in you who believe." We need to accept the Word of God.

Secondly, we need to act on the Word of God. Look at verse 22. Once we've accepted God's word, once we've welcomed it into our hearts to do its work, we need to act on the Word of God. Look at verse 22: "But prove yourselves doers of the Word and not merely hearers who delude themselves."

I want you to listen to this very carefully. It's worth the price of the sermon. The best quote I've come across in years comes from the late Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe. He said, "Many people have the mistaken idea that hearing a good sermon or Bible study is what makes them grow and gets God's blessings. It is not the hearing, but the doing that brings the blessing. Too many Christians mark their Bibles, but their Bibles never mark them." If you think you are spiritual because you have heard the Word of God...

Speaker 3

Then you are only kidding yourselves.

Speaker 2

Isn't that what James says? If you think hearing the word of God is enough, you are deluding yourself is what the Scripture says. You are deceiving yourself. Don't be deceived.

Do you know Satan really doesn't care that much whether you come to the worship services of First Baptist Church, Dallas? He doesn't care that much if you come. What causes him to shake in his boots? Is the possibility that you might apply on Monday something you heard on Sunday? No, don't be just hearers of the Word. Be doers of the Word.

In fact, he gives this illustration. Look at verse 23. 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. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.

Speaker 3

When we look into a mirror, we can see all of our flaws and imperfections. But once we walk away from the mirror, we tend to get distracted. And we're going to address this powerful metaphor in greater detail. So please keep listening.

First, I'd like to remind you that Pathway to Victory is offering a brand new book that's perfect for group discussion or to read in your private devotions. It's called *How to Know if You're Really Saved: A Study in the Book of James*. Over and over again, James reinforces that life is hard, but he doesn't stop there. James teaches us that our hardships produce endurance and resilience. In the end, our various trials expose whether or not our salvation in Christ is authentic.

Let this study in the Book of James strengthen you and your family's walk with Christ so that you can be a light in the darkness and daily live out the purpose God has for you. Nothing will bring you more satisfaction and joy than knowing and obeying the wonderful Word of God.

To receive a copy of my book on James, just follow the simple instructions from David. It's yours when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Thanks for giving generously to Pathway to Victory. Your contribution to this nonprofit ministry becomes a lifeline for those who are hearing the truth of God's Word for the first time. And because of your partnership, we're bringing light and life into the dark places of our world.

Thanks so much. Here's David to tell you more.

Speaker 1

When you get in touch with Pathway to Victory and give a generous gift, you're invited to request how to know if you're really saved. That's the brand new book by Dr. Robert Jeffress. Simply call 866-999-2965 or visit our website at ptv.org, and as you give $75 or more, you'll also receive the complete set of unabridged messages for this new teaching series, how to know if you're really saved. They come on both DVD, video, and MP3 format audio discs so you can watch them with your small group Bible study or listen in your car, and you'll also receive the companion study guide.

Again, call 866-999-2965 or visit our website at ptv.org. If you'd prefer to write, here's the address: P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. That's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins. Join us again next time for part two of the message "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall," right here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.

You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word.

To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.