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I. THE FATHER SPEAKS (vers. 18, 21, 24, and 25). We have a clearly-spoken Word, the Word of truth, an implanted Word, a law perfect and liberating. My Father's Word I and it is like Him! A life-giving Word: in it, God, who raiseth the dead, works by His renewing Spirit to summon out of their spiritual graves His innumerable children; "of His own will begat He us with the Word of truth." My Father's Word I and it is like Him! Who by searching can exhaust it? It will stand looking into (ver. 25). Let us be found bending over it, searching into it, meditating on it day and night: delight thyself in the law of the Lord. My Father's Word t and it is like Him! It is the kingly Word of the King of kings — the royal law — the perfect law. Obeyed, this law is perfection, for the law lived out is the life of Christ. And the world under its sway would be a perfect world. My Father's Word! and it is like Him! The law that makes free, the law that is for free souls, the law of love that casts out fear, that binds me to my Father's heart and shows that man is my brother; the law of life and love that lifts me above the slave's cowering service; the full, sweet, comforting Word, freeing me when in Christ from all condemnation, from all fear of men, of death and the future.

II. THE CHILD HEARS. Obedience is the proof of the new birth. As the prerogative of the Father is to speak out His will, which is law, so the privilege of the child is to hear His Father's good pleasure. "I will hear what God the Lord will speak." In this filial hearkening are found three marked and distinguishing features.

1. There is, first, the attentive silence of warmest affection (ver. 20). The thoughtful and loving child will be swift to hear, slow to speak.

2. The child will hear with the filial submissiveness of true humility.

3. The child will hear with eager desire and honest efforts to fulfil the Father's law. Sonship and service are proportionate — as the son, so is the service. The perfect Son yielded the perfect service. The truer and higher our childhood, the truer and higher will be our obedience. We are not to hear merely to learn, but learn that we may live. Christianity is both a science and an art: it is exact hearing of exact truth, and the appropriate embodiment of that sublime truth in worthy forms.

III. THE OBEDIENT CHILD GROWS GODLIKE. The true hearer becomes a joy to the brokenhearted and strength to the weak (ver. 27). Can it be otherwise when we sit at His feet who is a husband to the widow and a Father to the fatherless?

(J. S. Macintosh, D. D.)

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KJV: But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

WEB: But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves.