A Manifesto for Gospel Living (Pt 1)

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well good evening. Tonight we’re starting our study in the Apostle of James and if you aren’t familiar with that or the epistle, what did I just say? The epistle of James? The epistle. So every time I say Apostle tonight I’m probably meaning to say epistle, okay? If you know nothing else about the book of James you probably have heard at least part of verse two. Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials and I want to congratulate you guys because you passed the trial of having a Seahawks game on at the same time church is happening. So you’re all here, so you already passed. And Sonya was telling me before the service started or during the meet and greet time that James is actually her favorite book so I trusted she’s particularly excited for this study. James is also a special book to me. It’s been one of my favorites for a long time. It’s actually the only book of the Bible that I’ve committed the entire book to memory.

I did that some years ago. Dave was asking me beforehand, can I still go through the whole thing? I can get all the way through Chapter 1 and well into Chapter 2. I start to stumble after that because I haven’t been brushing up on it. But some years ago, I could go through the entire book of the epistle. So it is a favorite book to me as well. But James is a very unique epistle among all the others, and it’s unique because of what it lacks. Nowhere in its five chapters do we find any doctrine pertaining to the gospel. The other epistles are full of doctrinal truths that explain the way of salvation, but not so in James. In fact, if James was the only book of the New Testament that we had, it would be pretty easy to infer that salvation is based upon good works. The Roman The Roman Catholics will point to James’ proof of the necessity of good works as part of the salvation equation.

They point to James 2.17 to support their teaching where James wrote, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Fortunately, we have other epistles full of doctrine that help illuminate what James means by real faith. For example, you know Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, it says, for by grace you’ve been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing, it’s the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no man may boast. Whatever point James is making in chapter two, it can’t be work salvation, otherwise, we would have a major contradiction among the apostles’ teachings.

It was the lack of gospel doctrine in this epistle that caused Luther in his commentary to make this comment. St. John’s Gospel and his first epistle, St. Paul’s Epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and St. Peter’s first epistle. These are the books which show the Christ and teach thee everything is needful and blessed for thee to know, even though thou never see or hear any other book or doctrine. Therefore is St. James epistle a right strawy epistle in comparison with them, for it has no gospel character to it. So what does Luther mean by calling James a strawy, S-T-R-A-W-Y epistle? During his time as a Catholic monk, as you know, Luther was severely tortured in his conscience by the impossibility of being justified by works.

The epistle James with its emphasis on works of faith, perhaps made Luther think of 1 Corinthians 3, 12 through 13 where Paul wrote, now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s works will become manifest for the day it will disclose it. Because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one had done. Perhaps that might help us understand what was in Luther’s mind when he referred to it is the strawy epistle, although I don’t think he was questioning the fact that it was part of the legitimate canon of scripture. So who wrote James?

Our first clue is found in chapter one, verse one. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. The author identifies himself as James, but as you would expect, the scholars disagree on who the James is and even if it was James, and maybe in fact it was a forgery. Is this one of the James found in the New Testament? Is it some other James not found elsewhere in the Bible? Is it someone who’s just claiming to be James? And the various scholars have made arguments for each of those cases. The two James that we find in the Bible were James, brother of John, son of Zebedee, and James, the half-brother of Jesus.

Now we can rule out James the son of Zebedee because in Acts 12-2, we’re told that he was martyred by Herod before the Epistle of James was even written, so he’s not a candidate. Now the Roman Catholics and others don’t accept that it was James’ half brother, because they don’t believe that Jesus had any brothers, half or otherwise. That would mess up their belief that Mary was a virgin her entire life on earth. Now one of the scriptural challenges to that particular belief is found in Mark 6-3 where Jesus is preaching in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. And the people who knew Jesus as the carpenter’s son are incredulous as they hear Jesus speak.

And they say, is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us? The Roman Catholics and others will claim that these brothers and sisters were just close friends of Jesus’ nuclear family, Or perhaps they were children Joseph brought into the marriage or maybe just nephews and nieces. And that’s how they explain that away. But it seems like this is just twisting the plain sense of the text to fit the tradition of Mary’s perpetual virginity.

Others who recognize Jesus had a half-brother reject him as the author of James because of the excellent Greek found in this book. They argue how could a Jewish carpenter’s son write such perfect Greek. To them it just seems inconceivable that James being just a carpenter’s son could have written that kind of Greek. Historical records have shown that the Palestinian Jews spoke Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. In addition, Nazareth was on a pretty busy trade route and so it’s very reasonable to believe that Jesus’ family would have been multilingual and had lots of opportunities to converse in all of those languages. There’s even more evidence to suggest the author is Jesus’ half-brother.

After initially denying Jesus was the Christ, he became eventually a believer himself, and he came to be recognized as one of the pillars of the faith over in Galatians 2.9, Paul sharing his testimony. There was a point in time when he was still questioning his calling to the Gentiles. He went to Jerusalem, to the Jerusalem Council, to make his case and say here’s why I’m going to the Gentiles, and he says I spoke to Peter and James, who were reputed to be pillars of the faith. So James, the half-brother, was a top leader in the church, early church. So it stands to reason to believe that he could have written a letter to the churches that made it into scripture.

Another argument for a Jesus half-brother being the author is just doing a textual comparison between some writings we know come from James, half brother, and the book of James. We see a speech given by James the half brother over in Acts 15 and there are certain words that show up in that speech that only show up in the book of James as well throughout all the scriptures. So again some textual evidence that hey these two people are probably the same people are speaking here. Well there’s more evidence regarding this Epistle’s authorship but and I believe the preponderance of the evidence supports the claim that the Epistle of James was written by Jesus’ half-brother, again, who was a pillar of the early church.

So who’s he writing to? Verse one, again, the Epistle of James was written to the 12 tribes in the dispersion. The reference to the 12 tribes tells us that James had Jewish believers in mind when he wrote. In addition, we know from Galatians that James’ ministry was primarily to the Jews when he and Peter and the others commissioned Paul to go off to the Gentiles. He says, you go to the Gentiles, we’ll go to the Jews. That’ll be the emphasis of our ministry. The dispersion refers to all the Jews who were scattered among the known world. At the time this epistle was written, many Jews had fled Jerusalem to avoid persecution, and in some cases just to go off and try and start some new business opportunities.

And if you go further back in Jewish history, all the way back to the division of the Kingdom of Israel after Solomon’s reign, we also see that would have contributed to the Jews being scattered far and wide. So over time, the gospel had spread and members of this dispersion had heard it and received it. So now we’ve got Jewish believers mixed in with the general population all across the known world. And it’s believed that this epistle was written somewhere between AD 44 and 49. And if that’s true, then it’s possible that James might have been the first book of the New Testament written, or certainly one of the very first books written.

So why study James? What makes it useful to us today? If there’s no doctrinal content in there, why study it? Some have called James the New Testament version of the book of Proverbs because of its style. It presents the reader with a list of examples of what Christians living looks like. It doesn’t actually belabor any one point. It just simply describes, by way of comparison, what a Christian in the wild looks like. And you just go through an example after example after example. I like to think of this epistle as the teaching notes that go with the lab portion of a course in Christianity 101. If you’ve taken science classes, probably not for high school or college.

You know, there’s sometimes a class has a lecture part and a lab part. We can think of the other epistles with the doctrinal content giving us the lecture portion. And James is now giving us the lab portion. Okay, here’s the theory of Christianity. Here’s the doctrine. Now let’s go out into the lab and we’ll see what it actually looks like.

The epistle of James does not tell us anything about how one gets saved, but it shows us by way of example what a saved person looks like. Others have viewed James’ series of tests one can take to examine if they have a real saving faith or not. I think Dr. MacArthur, he outlines his commentary that way as a series of tests. James is useful because it takes us from memorizing doctrinal sentences in the other epistles and throws at us real world examples to see what faith and action actually looks like. It isn’t an exhaustive list of examples, but it will suffice to give us a pretty good idea of what a true believer looks like in everyday life.

Think of it as a book, The Life of a Christian. It gives you a picture of what a Christian ought to look like. And so tonight, we’ll cover part one in this series on James, and we’re gonna see two examples then of real Christianity tonight. The first is joyfulness and trials. That’s one example. And the second is doers of the word. So let’s go ahead and dive in chapter one. First talk about joyfulness and trials, verses two through 18. The first characteristic of a person with saving faith, we find in this epistle, is how that person responds to trials. And I’m just gonna read some of the verses now, up to verse 12.

So follow along. Count it all joy, my brothers. when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and lets steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given to him, but let him ask in faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind, for that person must not suppose that he’ll receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flowering of the grass, he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. To be human is to have trials. Job observed man is born in trouble as sparks fly upwards. Psalm 34, 19 says, many are the afflictions of the righteous.

It is self evident that trials are a normal part of the human condition. The only choice we get in the matter is how we respond to them. It’s important to note that trials are not just random acts of fate that fall upon us like bad karma. There is nothing impersonal about trials at all. We’re going to see that they are personal tests given to us by a good God who wants the best for us. The only thing bad about a trial is our sometimes stinky attitude about them.

In verses two through 12, we see the inevitability of trials, the source of trials, the reason for trials, the benefit of trials, and several things we can do that will help us to pass the trial and grow stronger in our faith. The inevitability of trials is found in verse two. Count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds. It’s not if you meet, but when you meet. The word meet refers to an unexpected encounter. You’re minding your own business, going through life, and all of a sudden a trial is in your way. We don’t have to go looking for trials. They’re going to find us. We need to come to terms with the fact that trials are not out of the ordinary, but in fact are preordained.

We just don’t know when they’re gonna occur, kind of like a pop test that a teacher throws at you. The source of the trial is alluded to in verse three, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Wherever there is a test, there must be what?

A test giver, all right? Tests don’t just appear out of thin air. Verse 12 identifies the test giver for us. It says there, for when he has stood, when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised. Every trial we encounter has been given to us by God. So trials are inevitable and they come from God, but why? What is the reason for all these tests or trials? Verse three gives us the answer. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Now steadfastness can be translated as patient endurance. emphasis on the word patient there. You are not steadfast when you grit your teeth and grumble your way through a trial.

So trials produce steadfastness in us, but what’s so great about that? Because it leads to one of the benefits of trials found in verse four. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Now James is not saying that trials will lead you to some kind of a sinless perfection. That’s not what he means by perfect ink of belief. He’s not promising earthly health and prosperity. That’s not what he means by lacking in nothing. By perfect he means we are matured into Christ’s likeness. Trials have the effect of refining us and burning off the dross of worldliness so that we better reflect the image of Christ.

and nothing refers to that which is of spiritual value, not temporal things. This is not a verse for the blabbering grabbit crowd to use. In addition to becoming mature, we have an additional benefit found in verse 12. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. First Peter 1, 6-9 adds a little bit more color to what this crown of life entails. In there we find in this you rejoice, though now for a little while if necessary you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him, though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Elsewhere in the Bible, the crown is referred to as the crown of righteousness, 2 Timothy 4.8, and the crown of glory, 1 Peter 5.4. This crown is not to be confused with the reward each one receives based on the works mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3.14. The crown of life is something every believer receives and is not contingent on what we do or don’t do.

Well that covers the inevitability, the source, the reason for and the benefits of trial. But from this passage we can also draw from the text what it takes for us to pass the test. First, we need to have the right attitude about trials. Count it all joy. Let’s face it, joy is not our natural inclination when trials come our way. Even though I know better, I tend to think of trials as random bits of bad luck that pop up in life and impede me from doing what I want to do. I keep getting suckered into that. I’ve been a believer for 40 plus years. I know this stuff and yet a trial pops up and I forget that that was just delivered by a loving God and I treat it as some kind of a random event.

We’ve already seen that that is not the case. Trials are truly gifts from God designed to make us into better image bearers. Making progress in the faith requires challenges along the way. Someone once observed, you can’t climb a mountain on the smooth side. Think about that. You’re trying to climb a mountain. was just perfectly smooth all the way up. How are you gonna climb that? That’s a good metaphor for what it takes to mature in the faith. It requires tests in the form of trials in order for our faith to increase, for it to grow. We see this principle of struggle designed by God in the natural world. Our muscles need hard work to grow.

I tried for years just eating Oreos and cheddar cheese and expecting my muscles to grow and it just didn’t work. I was like, that was a heart attack for my trouble. Plants are sturdier when they are stressed to a degree by the environment. You’ll often find that when a plant goes under a certain stress, the temperature change or the conditions of the soil, it’ll actually make the plant healthier. The adage, no pain, no gain is found everywhere you look. It’s a principle that God has just filled our creation with. When I begin to think rightly about trials, it can then help me to learn to appreciate them for what they are producing in me, rather than resent them as unplanned interruptions.

I have to keep in mind who they’re from and what their purpose is. Nobody wants to go through trials if there’s no point to them. Thankfully, the pain of a trial really does have gain in it when we respond rightly. Warren Wiersby in his commentary on James wrote these words, our values determine our evaluations. If we value comfort more than character, then trials will upset us. If we value the material and physical more than the spiritual, we will not be able to count it all joy. If we live only for the present and forget the future, the trials will make us bitter, not better.

I’ve always believed that perception and value are among the most decisive factors as to how we respond to situations. Jesus gives us an example of this in Hebrews 12 too, where it says, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross and despised the shame. He had a bigger picture in mind, he had a greater thing, a greater goal, something he valued more, which then allowed him to put the cross into perspective.

If we value growing in Christ as we ought, it will make it much easier to have joy when trials come our way. Secondly, we don’t have to rely on our own wisdom when facing a trial. Typically, trials bring with them uncertainty about what to do. That’s part of why we don’t like them. It throws us off our game. James tells us that we don’t have to go it alone in our trials. We can ask our Father in heaven for wisdom and He’ll supply it, verse five. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. Notice that God is neither stingy nor judgmental when we ask him for wisdom.

He’s a gracious God who gives abundantly. He doesn’t say, would you stop bugging me? You’re being a sissy. Go figure it out on your own. That’s not our God. He does not rebuke his children when they turn to him with their problems. He is the one who gave us the trials for our good and he’s the one who supplies the wisdom we need to know how to navigate through the trial. We are never abandoned to figure it out on our own. But there is a caveat, verse six through eight. But let him ask in faith with no doubting for the one who doubts is like the wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that man must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.

He is a double-minded man unstable in all his ways. In Pilgrim’s Progress there’s a character in there, there’s a man who exhibits this kind of a doubting spirit. His name is Mr. Facing Both Ways. Can you try it, how do you face both ways at the same time? But that’s this character is Mr. Facing Both Ways. It’s a humorous way of describing the kind of purses at James’ warningness against being. When we fuss at trials or doubt God’s ability to see us through them, we really are impugning his character. I mean, aren’t we? When we really fuss at that trial, that test, that gift he gave us, and we doubt him in the wisdom he can supply, we are saying something about God.

And typically we’re impugning this character. Why should we expect God to respond to that kind of a wishy-washy thinking? Well, there’s a third ingredient necessary to pass a trial, and that is to rightly understand our position before God. And we find this in verses nine through 11. let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich man in his humiliation. Because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away, for the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass and its flower falls and its beauty perishes. So also would the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Sometimes the pain of a trial is rooted in what we physically lack and sometimes by what we physically stand to lose.

The lowly brother described here is the person who doesn’t have much in this life. This person can tend to get down on themselves and start to grouse about how miserable life is. They might view life in terms of the haves and the have nots with them being in that latter group. It would be tempting for this person to feel sorry for themselves and be envious of other people they believe have more. To this person, James says, boast in your exaltation. He’s referring to this person’s exalted status as a child of God. He may not have much in this life, but that’s really only a short-term problem, isn’t it? That’s not gonna be that way forever.

The day is coming when he will be a full partaker in all that is Christ, and this should give him hope in the midst of trials stemming from his low station in life. And conversely, the rich man needs to be careful to not put stock in what he’s been given in his life. His peace and joy are not to be rooted in his earthly treasures because like flowering grass, it’s gonna vanish. When all this stuff is stripped away, both the rich and the lowly stand on equal footing before God. A proper understanding of this truth then will help the lowly and the rich to view their respective trials properly, which is in all humility.

To summarize this first example then that we’ve gone through on trials, trials are inevitable because God is using them to mature us into Christ’s likeness. They should be viewed joyfully as evidence of God’s love for us and plan to grow us. We can be thankful that these are open book tests, meaning we can ask God for grace and wisdom we need in them and He’ll supply it. He’ll supply it generously. Finally, we need to maintain a proper attitude of humility and surrender our will to his because he knows what’s best for us and what tests we need in order to grow. Well, at this point in the discussion on trials, James then brings in the topic of temptations.

Each trial, if you think about it, carries with it the potential to not pass the test. If a trial is a test, you can pass a test, He can fail a test, and this is where temptation comes in. Perhaps James has in mind the person who might be objecting when we say God’s the one who gives trials, this person might say, well hey, if God is the source of my trials, then it’s his fault when I sin. But starting in verse 13, James responds to that person saying, let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or a shifting shadow. I just switched into the new American standard from my memory, but you get the point. It’s interesting to note that the words tempted in verse 13 and trials in verse 2, so we’ve got trials up there in verse 2 and tempted in verse 13 are the same Greek word, pareosmos. If you look it up in the Greek, exact same word. Now this can lead to some confusion.

In verse 2, we’re told to count it all joy when we encounter trials, pareosmos, pareosmos, if Shawn can correct my Greek letter. Then we are told in verse 13 that God tempts Perosmos, no one. But aren’t trials from God? Our belief in the sovereignty of God would tell us yes. So what gives? How are we on the one hand, are we to consider it all joy? And yet then, but God’s not the one that does it to us. It creates some confusion. The word itself simply means test or testing. It does not carry any implied positive or negative connotation by itself. It’s the context that helps us determine how to interpret the meaning of this word.

When a teacher gives a student a test, the goal is to assess how well the student’s learning, right? Isn’t that the purpose of a test? The test’s purpose is to evaluate and help identify areas of further growth. Everything about the test is aimed at improving the student’s knowledge and skill. Make sense so far? Now suppose a teacher tells the students there’s going to be a test tomorrow. Suppose now that some of those students faced with hours of boring study time are tempted instead to watch TV and as a result they bomb the test the next day. I know that never happens but just hypothetically. Would those students be right to accuse the teacher of tempting them to be lazy and watch TV because they were given by virtue of the fact that the teacher gave them a test.

If he hadn’t given me the test, I wouldn’t have been tempted to watch TV, so it’s your fault that I blew the test. And that’s in essence what we end up doing into what James is arguing against. In the same way, God gives us tests called trials to assess our faith and to help us increase in it. The goal is our betterment. It’s never for our harm. But with the trial or test comes the opportunity or temptation to fail. God does not give us trials to make us fail. We fail because our fleshly desires or lusts come into play.

So then, God gives trials to make us grow and succeed in faith, but our flesh works against that goal and thus temptation to sin arises in the trial. James is simply pointing out that we can never blame God if we fail the trial he gives us. Now we can be sure of this because Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10-13 and you guys know this, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. We must own our failure to pass a trial. When we don’t pass it, that is on us.

James goes on then to explicitly, explain explicitly how the process from temptation to sin occurs. Look at verse 14. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin and sin when it’s fully grown brings forth death. Let’s consider an example of how this works you can kind of see it in real world how this works. Let’s consider an example let’s say that you are in the the fast checkout line at the grocery store and there’s a sign overhead that says this line is for people with ten items or less and you You notice that someone up ahead of you clearly has more than ten items in their basket.

Now again, this is just hypothetical. This would never happen in the real world, but follow the example. All of a sudden, God has just thrown a pop-up test on patients at you. What are you going to do? Somewhere in the back regions of your conscience, you recall a sermon that you heard on patients, and you’ve already decided in the past that you need to work on your patients some more. As one said, don’t ever pray for patience, because you’re going to get lots of opportunity to work on it. Well as you’re pondering in your mind, this need to be more patient, all of a sudden you kind of catch yourself trying to count how many items are in the violator’s cart.

As the numbers start to grow, 11, 15, 20, you start to get a little hot under the collar. It’s starting to bug you. But being a good Godly Christian, you know, remembering the patient’s sermon, you’re trying to settle yourself down, 25, 30. Finally, you can’t take it anymore and you make some rude comment about the other person’s lack of arithmetic skills. And then a brief tit for tat conversation ensues before you both finalize your purchases and head home. What happened? With the test of patience came a temptation to tell the other person how rude they are in a not so kind way. The test, parosmos, was from God.

The temptation, parosmos, happened because you were lured in by your own sense of righteous indignation. That righteous indignation conceived an unkind thought which birthed a sinful remark. To reiterate and emphasize God’s good and pure modus for testing us, James adds, verse 16 and 17, do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James caps his current thought by reminding us of the true nature of God. He is the source of all that is good and perfect. He does not try to lure his people into sin.

Now, Father of Lights, that was a phrase, a Jewish title for God, that embodied him as the creator who gave light in the form of the sun, the moon, and the stars. But unlike these sources of light, which can fade and can cause shifting shadows, James says that the light that comes directly from the Father never varies, nor causes any shadow. James is stressing here the point of God’s purity and his unchangeableness. I mean, it’s really hard for us to imagine some kind of a light that’s so penetrating that it can’t even cast a shadow. I mean, we know from physics, basic physics, that light is a particle, photon particles traveling in a straight line in any object that gets in the way.

The light’s gonna go past it, and it’s gonna cast a shadow. Unless you’re into quantum physics, Tim in the back there, he knows quantum theory, which says light can be a particle in a way, but that’s a different discussion. But treated as photons traveling in a straight line, it casts a shadow. And what kind of a light? doesn’t cast a shadow. And I personally, as a sidebar, and this is just an opinion, and this is not gospel, when Christ returns, and we’re told that everybody’s gonna see, be at the same time Christ returned, and I’ve heard preachers say, well, people are saying, wait, if I’m in China, whatever he’s coming in over Washington or something, how’s China gonna see him?

And people have tried to say, well, now with the age of technology, he’ll be on CNN and so everybody will get to see them. I think God’s light is such that everybody on earth will be able to see Jesus at the same time. Somehow that light will engulf the globe and everybody will be aware.

But anyhow, you can throw that opinion out if you want. That’s just my opinion. It’s interesting to note how James switches from the talking about trials to also using the word gifts. We talk a lot at TEC about viewing all that comes from God’s hand as gift. James seems to be indicating that trials, when viewed properly, should be considered as gifts because of what they’re intended to do for us and who would consider it all joy when they receive gifts from God. You can see the problem is not the trials. The problem is the way we view trials, our understanding of them. That’s what keeps us from having the joy that we’re supposed to.

Well, that’s the first example that James gave us of what a saving faith looks like. They have joy in trials. Let’s move on then quickly to the second example that he gives us, and that is doers of the word, verses 18 through 25. This next set of verses seems to center on the importance of letting the word of God richly dwell in us and then doing something with it. about our walk of faith is to flow from careful attention to the word. In accordance with the will of God, it is by the word of God that everything was created and by it all things are sustained. Verses 18 through 19a. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. And I believe, I could be wrong, but I believe that first part of verse 19 really ties back to 18.

I think it should read, knowing this, knowing this, then we would move on. Everything God is doing through his word is marching towards the fulfillment of his plan for a new heaven and a new earth. A necessary step in that process is to sanctify a people by his word. James refers to these people as the first fruits of his creatures. All who have a true saving faith make up the group that referred to here then as first fruits. James is saying this big picture thinking, this end view of what God’s working towards should have ramifications in how we live now. Knowing what God’s long range plan is, James proceeds to list some of the ways that this knowledge of what God’s doing should affect our actions.

He lists talking too much, listening too little, simmering anger, filthiness, and rampant wickedness as examples of cultural maladies that all stem from the same root problem, not receiving the word implanted which can save your souls. And then picking up in 19b, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the word implanted which is able to save your souls. Now perhaps James had some divine foreknowledge that someday we would have Facebook when he wrote Be Slow to Speak.

Proverbs 10.19 is fulfilled every day in the digital land that Zuckerberg created. When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. In the context of this passage, when James says to be quick to hear, I don’t think he’s saying that we need to listen to each other more, although that’s not a bad communication principle, because a fool does not become wise just because he listens to other fools. I believe James’ admonition is to listen more to what the word of God is saying. It’s only as we understand God’s word better that we will have something useful to say when it is time to speak.

As our thinking coalesces around what the word says, we will see then a decrease in anger. The more we debate our own opinions, the greater the chance there is that anger then will take over. James goes on to make the obvious point that anger is never going to bring about the righteousness of God. That’s a fitting warning for those of us that like to engage the culture with our words. Jesus said, they will know you are Christians by your fight, right? No, by your love. And yet, so often we engage the world out there with words and angry words at that. And as a result, we wonder why we don’t have the impact that we could have, should have.

Now, in addition to controlling our mouths, the word of God will lead us away from what James calls filthiness and rampant wickedness. It should come as no surprise that as our culture reveres the Bible less, there has been a corresponding increase in all matters of filthiness and wickedness. You have to have come out from underneath a rock if you cannot see what’s going on in our culture in this slide. A few of us here are old enough where we’ve lived through and seen the 60s revolution and all of the downstream effects of that. And it’s amazing to me today to see the effects of the filthiness and the wickedness.

And I mean, look at the Women’s Liberation Movement and now I’m thinking, you gotta be careful here, but women being free to walk around without clothing clothing does not seem to me to have advanced the cause of women. And yet, this is kind of the degradation, the filthiness, the wickedness, just how sin works. It just makes us stupid. By way of common grace, God allowed for some level of self-control even among unbelievers because of the widespread cultural respect for the Bible that once existed. Even in our culture, even though not everybody is Christians and the majority haven’t been yet the Bible once had much more influence in our culture.

Most people cared about what the Bible said. Even the evildoers were doing it in the shadows in the dark because of the biblical influence in our culture. But as that influence has diminished, they’re coming out of the dark and now they’re parading proudly out there and just again showing their depravity to no end. As that respect for the Bible is eroded, the depths of depravity man will stoop to have increased dramatically. We are increasingly becoming a culture that knows not God. Several times in the Bible we see that phrase used, and they knew not God. And our culture is quickly getting to that point where we’ll be able to say, and they knew not God.

True saving faith does not acquiesce to the culture, but humbly submits itself to what the word implanted says, no matter what the cost may be. Christians must be ever wary of becoming the proverbial frog in the kettle, lest they start letting the culture transform them rather than the word of God. Now this does not mean that we isolate ourselves from the world, but we must be mindful of how easy it is for us to begin making compromises in order to fit into our world. James continues his discussion on the word of God by stating that it isn’t enough to be just a hearer of God’s word, but you must be a doer. Now clearly obedience to the word is being a doer, but I think James may actually have more in mind than simple obedience.

Verse 22, but be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves, for if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he’s like a man who looks naturally, intently at his natural face in the mirror, For he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres, being no here who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. And then a few verses down, he says, a part of what makes up true religion is caring for orphans and widows, verse 26 there. If anyone thinks he is religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.

Religion is pure and undefiled before God. The Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself on stain from the world. And then if you’ll let me, I’ll refer to chapter two, just jump ahead of chapter, you don’t have to go there right now. He makes the statement that faith without works is dead. You put all this together and it appears that James is trying to stress the point that saving faith knows the word and then does something with it. The point of our salvation isn’t just to have a bunch of truth sentences in our heads. Yea, that I memorized the book of James, but that in and of itself is not enough.

There’s a doing part. As if to reinforce this call to doing, he actually takes a shot at religious talkers. In verse 26, he calls out those who think they are religious and are very wordy about it. There’s no indication there that he’s condemning them for what they’re saying, but rather for being all talk and no show. A few verses back, we read his admonition to those who were just hearers of the word and not doers. Now he’s calling out those who are presumably talkers of the word, but not doers. James is making the point that saving faith is a call to action. It includes things like keeping oneself on stain by the world as he points out, but it involves so much more as taking care of the needy as an example.

Now this kind of talk can make some people in the camps that some of us have come from nervous. This starts to sound like a call to social gospel. The fear is that this kind of talk will lead to less gospel presentations and more soup kitchen work. This is a false dichotomy that we’re presented with. It’s like you gotta do one of the other, you gotta do soup kitchens or DE visits on Thursday night. You can’t do both. False dichotomy. Caring for the needs of people is not the alternative to presenting the, or preaching the gospel, it’s the outflow of preaching the gospel. Doesn’t Jesus commend those who gave out cups of cold water in his name and went out and visited prisoners in prison?

When did the church surrender ministering to the needy to the unbelievers? When did that happen? It was the Christian organizations and the churches of the past that were taking care of the needs. And now we’ve somehow allowed that to be taken over by the pagan institutions.

Well, those are just two examples of saving faith. In the subsequent parts of the series to come, James is gonna continue to rock our boat and force us to examine the evidence of faith in our own lives. Nowhere has he said or implied that works are necessary onto salvation, but he is making the case that genuine faith ought to be evident by the works we do. Of course the work we do must be through the power of the Holy Spirit and not the flesh, but work we must. It’s high time for lovers of God’s word to take it from the lecture hall and into the lab of everyday life where its power can then be made manifest for all to see.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this study we’ve had tonight and the strong admonition from James, a loving kick in the behind as it were, calling us into action, calling us first to understand that you are the one who sends us trials to shape us and to grow our faith and to make us stronger. We ask that you would help us, Father, as this week proceeds and trials certainly come, that we would respond better, that we would respond with more joy, that we would see them as gifts, that we would pass the tests. And then Father, we pray that you would open up our eyes to see the needs around us, the opportunities that are there to take the gospel out into the world.

Certainly the proclamation of the gospel, the truths that we find, but then Father, also the feeding and the caring for and demonstrating what true love looks like, that we might see the influence of the church begin to grow again in our community as we set the standard as we lead out in what love and care really look like. Father, thank you for all of your good gifts. Thank you for this body of believers. As we head home tonight, keep us safe, and for the rest of the week, may again to be filled with opportunity and blessings from you. We just pray all this in your Son, Jesus’ name, amen.