Meadowbrooke Church

Enduring Faith

There are moments in history, like the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr., that I find helpful to define as thresholds.  Thresholds are what you have to cross to get from one room to another by entering through a door.  The shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 was one such cultural threshold that we crossed as a nation.  Before April 20, 1999 there were 183 documented school-related shootings that included everything from suicides, gang-related incidents, and mass shootings. Since crossing that threshold on April 20th, 1999, there have been an additional 435 school shootings. 
 
There are other defining moments that have affected America, such as the attacks on September 11, 2001. The political landscape and how candidates behave has affected our nation indefinitely. Now, we find ourselves in a place where it is not always safe to talk about the political party you belong to or who you voted for without risk to friendships or more.  We have crossed a political threshold that I am not sure we will ever recover from.  
 
The 2020 COVID pandemic is another threshold our country crossed and the fruit was not the kind of unity we witnessed the days following 9/11, but anger, resentment, and unprecedented suspicion concerning just about everything.  Although the pandemic was global, it left a lasting mark upon Americans.
 
In 1993, the world wide web went mainstream, and that has affected American culture. In the early 2000’s smart phone went mainstream, and that has affected our culture. In 2023, AI went mainstream resulting in a global shift, and that is affecting our culture.  And now, truth is more difficult to discern than ever! Now, instead of helping those in need, we stare at a device that feeds us the kind of information that is literally driving us mad as a society!  If we are not staring at our phones, they are used to record acts of violence for show and entertainment. 
 
I am not sure, but it seems to me that we crossed another threshold this past week. I believe we will be able to look back to September 10, 2025 as a,pivotal shift in American culture.  I am not sure what that will look like moving forward, but all that I can say is that while my confidence is fixed upon a greater hope, my heart aches for our country. 
 
I do not know a lot about Charlie Kirk, but I did watch some of his open-air debates on some of the college campuses he visited.  While I do not agree with all of his viewpoints, I did agree with him on two fundamental core values he had before he was assassinated on Wednesday:
"When people stop talking, that's when you get violence." Charlie Kirk believed that we should be able to debate charitably even when we do not agree.
 
“Jesus saved my life. I’m a sinner.  I gave my life to Christ, and that is the most important decision I’ve ever made.” Charlie Kirk believed that Jesus was only hope for the forgiveness of sins, redemption, salvation, and eternal life.  It was reported that minutes before Kirk was shot and killed, he shared 2 Corinthians 5:15 with the crowd: “and He died for all, so that those who live would no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose on their behalf.” (2 Cor. 5:15)
 
If you believe that Jesus rose from the grave, then that ought to change everything for you.  It ought to affect the way you live your life in light of the reality that God does indeed exist and that what He has said about Himself and creation is true.  To believe and submit your life before the risen Christ, is to yield to Him as Lord over your life.  In so doing, you do not get to decide what parts of the Bible do or do not apply to you unless the Bible (the Word of God) has already made that clear.  Many of the things that Charlie said came from a conviction that the Bible was and is the Word of God. 
 
The reason why Kirk’s assassination feels like a significant threshold in history that we as a nation have crossed is because he was assassinated by someone who hated what Charlie Kirk said and stood for. What adds to the heaviness that I feel is that some within the media publicly celebrated his death and many others posted to their TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook accounts celebratory responses to his death.  This is why I posted to my Facebook account the following statement:
Timothy, a pastor in Ephesus and the recipient of two of the epistles that are included in the Bible, was beaten by an angry pagan mob, then dragged through the streets, and finally stoned to death by that same angry mob because they did not like what he said about the ungodly nature of the pagan Artemis festival; Timothy spoke up because he was a Christian. The murder of Charlie Kirk and the response of some in the media feels like that to me. I believe his assassination was more than political and that we witnessed the first martyrdom in America.
  
What I wrote is how I am processing my thoughts and feelings.  What I feel is not as or more important then what the Word of God says about what is happening in our world.  So, let’s look at James 5:7-20 to see how the Word of God can speak into what we are feeling.
 
Patiently Watch for His Returning (vv. 7-11)
Just as the farmer understands that he has no control over the germination of the seeds he plants and must wait until his crops grow and mature before they can be reaped, so it is with the return of Christ. How are we to be patient?  James tells us four ways that we are to be patient:
We are to be patient until the coming of the Lord. (v. 7a)
We are to be patient with the confidence that He is coming. (v. 7b)
We are to be patient by standing on the promise of His coming. (v. 8)
We are to be patient by enduring suffering while we wait for His coming. (v. 10)
 
We are to be patient until the coming of the Lord. (v. 7a)
The fact of the matter is that Jesus is coming back.  How do we know that? We know because He walked out of the tomb!  How will He come back?  Jesus said when He comes, He will do so with a host of angels and that His return will be visible and it will be noticed! Jesus said that when He comes, “all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matt. 24:30).  We patiently wait because although it is true that He is coming, He is “coming at an hour you do not expect” (Luke 12:40).
 
We are to be patient with the confidence that He is coming. (v. 7b)
When Jesus ascended to heaven after He had risen from death while the disciples stared off into the sky, two angels appeared and asked, “ ...and they said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven’” (Acts 1:11).  In some ways, we can do the same thing but just sitting around while staring up into the sky is not what the angels meant when they asked the disciples that question. They continued: “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.”
 
We are to be patient by standing on the promise of His coming. (v. 8)
Standing is not sitting.  What I mean by the word “Stand” is the same thing that James means with his words: “You too be patient; strengthen your hearts...”  You strengthen your heart by filling your mind with the promises of God’s word.  You do it with the kinds of promises Jesus left us with: “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many rooms; if that were not so, I would have told you, because I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you also will be” (John 14:1-3).  We strengthen our hearts by doing the kind of things we read in the Bible such as Hebrews 10:24-25, “...let’s consider how to encourage one another in love and good deeds, not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”
 
We are to be patient by enduring suffering while we wait for His coming. (v. 10)
What was it that enabled the prophets who suffered ridicule, financial hardship, beatings, and even death at the hands of the people God sent them too?  They were holding onto a better promise!  They were looking for a different city, a “city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10).  This is why Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, “choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the temporary pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward” (11:25-26).
 
While Job found himself swimming in the pain of great loss and unrelenting pain, he was surrounded by friends and a wife who only added to his burden.  Covered in sores and nothing to show of the great wealth he once enjoyed, the one person who should have been a source of encouragement said this to Job: “Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold firm your integrity? Curse God and die!’” What does the kind of patience James encourages us to have look like in the life of Job? Here is how he answered his wife: “Shall we actually accept good from God but not accept adversity” (Job 2:9-10)? 
 
How did Job endure?  He endured by first remembering that God is good, which enabled Job to endure while suffering because his eyes were focused on an infinitely good God! However, he did not only hold onto the assurance that God is good, he held onto the promise of His coming: “Yet as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last, He will take His stand on the earth. ‘Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I will see God, whom I, on my part, shall behold for myself, and whom my eyes will see, and not another. My heart faints within me!’” (Job. 19:25-27).
 
Prayerfully Live for His Returning (vv. 12-18)
Jesus is coming back, so pray!  Jesus rose from the grave, so you know that when you pray, God hears you. So, when you are suffering or when trials come your way, remember that God takes your words seriously.  How easy it is to make promises to God we do not intend to keep or have thought little about before making them when suffering.  I believe James is warning us of this very thing in verse 12, “But above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath; but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you do not fall under judgment.”
 
After I was hit by the car and found myself laying in the middle of Route 1 at the age of 16, because I sincerely believed that I might be dying and was scared, I made all kinds of promises to God.  You know how it goes: “God, if you do this, I will do that!”  I told God while lying on that busy road: “God, if you let me live, I will do whatever you want me to do.”  Instead, our first course of action should not be to talk about our suffering, not to complain about our suffering, and not to try and negotiate with God out of our suffering.  Our first response must be to pray: “Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray” (v. 13).  Are you suffering with a sickness that will not go away?  You seek out those who will pray for you: “Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (v. 14).  Are you cheerful? Well sing praises to God then!
 
Are you experiencing the discipline of the Lord because of unrepentant sin?  “Confess your sins to one another,” James instructs (v. 16). Don’t stop there though! James tells us to, “pray for one another so that you may be healed.”  What’s the point?  Jesus is coming back so do not wallow in your grief, nor ignore your sins, and do not doubt that the same God who raised Jesus from the grave, is the same God who listens when we call to Him.
 
Elijah lived in a time of rampant idolatry and corruption. Guided by God, he prayed for a drought, giving King Ahab, Jezebel, and the people of Israel a chance to repent—yet they refused. Later, Elijah confronted King Ahab and the 450 prophets of the false god Baal, challenging them to a test to reveal whose god was real. The story of God’s dramatic display of power before Elijah, the prophets, and the gathered crowd can be found in 1 Kings 18:20-46. In short, Baal did not respond, as he was no god at all, but the true God answered Elijah in a miraculous way. After this, Elijah prayed for the drought to end—and it rained abundantly (see 1 Kings 18:41-45).  Even after all of that, Elijah fled for a place to hide after Jezebel threatened his life.  One moment Elijah was courageous and bold, and then the next he was filled with fear, despair, and believed that he was all alone.
 
Why did James feel the need to use Elijah as an example? He tells us: “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours...” (v. 17).  Daniel Doriani wrote of the prophet: “Like us, he served from a position of weakness. He felt the world’s powers arrayed against him. He was prone to despair. He was not worthy, he was simply a righteous man who prayed, for individuals and for his society.”[1]
 
Conclusion
What ought to be our response?  Jesus rose from the grave! Jesus’ life and resurrection made your redemption possible! Jesus is coming back!  The God who spoke the galaxies into reality when there was nothing now invites you to come to Him, so go to Him and pray!  Bring your troubled heart, bring your sins, bring your sickness, bring your concerns for this nation, bring it all before the God of all creation!
 
Know that the same God who made your salvation possible, is the God you can bring those who need to be saved before.  If God can redeem Saul who watched and encouraged an angry mob to murder Stephen because they did not like what he said about the Bible and Jesus, then there is hope for Tyler Robinson.  If God can part seas and raise the dead, then there is hope for Decarlos Brown who murdered Iryna on that subway train!  This is the point James is making in these final verses: “My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you strays from the truth and someone turns him back, let him know that the one who has turned a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.”
 
[1] Daniel M. Doriani, James, ed. Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 201.

Temporal Faith

Imagine for a moment that eternity is like one long and endless rope.  At the beginning of that rope is a red section that is about 4 inches long representing your life from birth to death.  The average life expectancy for humans globally is 73 years and 78.4 years if you live in the United States.  To put that into perspective, 78.4 years is only 28,616 days of life... maybe.  The four-inch-long red section of an endless rope is your life. 
 
Seventy-eight years (28,616 days) may sound like a lot of time but consider that 9,450 days of your life is spent sleeping which leaves us with $19,166 days away from birth to death... if we live out our 78 days.  Not counting the time we need for sleep, permit me to provide a little perspective:
If you are 15 years old, you have about 23,141 days to go before your 78th
If you are 25 years old, you have about 19,491 days to go before your 78th
If you are 30 years old, you have about 17,666 days to go before your 78th
If you are 50 years old, you have about 10, 366 days to go before your 78th
Whatever your age is, don’t forget to consider the 5 hours and 16 minutes spent on your phone each day.
 
That red mark on that very, very long rope also represents how much time you are in the bathroom, looking for something you lost, hours you spend in education or working, and whatever else that consumes your time.  Regardless of the time you think you have left, you might not be here tomorrow. 
 
The entire epistle is James pleading with us not to be so foolish to live our lives with all our language, all our energy, and all of our passion invested in the red portion of the rope.  James calls us to live the red part of our lives on the rope of eternity!
 
So, here’s what I hope to do with the time we share. I want to devote our attention to James 4:13-16, because everything James warns us about stems from his reflections on how brief and delicate our lives truly are. When I say “temporal,” I’m referring to the fleeting and fragile nature of our existence. But before we dive into James 4:13-16, let’s take a moment to explore the verses that come before and after, setting the stage for a fuller understanding.
 
 
 
The Fruit of Temporal Living is a Life Wasted
James cautions us about five pitfalls that people can easily fall into if they live like this life is all there is. The apostle Paul echoed a similar idea, saying that if there’s no resurrection and no hope beyond death, then it would be logical to live just for the moment: “If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (1 Corinthians 15:32). Thankfully, the reality of the empty tomb affirms that what the Bible teaches about life, death, and what lies beyond is true. 
 
If we believe this life is all there is, then it’s logical to chase after pleasure for our own sake. This is the essence of secular hedonism—seeking fulfillment in what is immediate and self-focused, disconnected from any greater purpose. James explains that this perspective grows out of the same source as worldly wisdom, which he describes as “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (Jas. 3:14). In James 4:11–5:6, he outlines the harmful outcomes that spring from this outlook. Importantly, James directs these warnings to Christians, urging them to recognize and resist these patterns.
 
Self-centered speech (4:11-12)
Slander is a kind of speech that elevates the person doing it above others—and, ultimately, above the authority of God’s commands. The issue isn’t that Christians should never judge others; in fact, Scripture often calls us to hold one another accountable (see Matt. 7:15-16). Rather, James cautions against speech that tears down rather than builds up, words that fail to encourage others in their walk with God (see Jas. 2:8-10; Heb. 10:24-25).
 
Self-centered pursuits (4:13-16)
This kind of planning assumes that we are in complete control of our own destinies, confident that we’ll rise to greet the day as we expect. James cautions us against making life plans without seeking God’s guidance, warning that self-centered pursuits often revolve around our own abilities and ambitions rather than the purpose our Creator has for us.
 
Self-centered responsibilities (4:17):
The person who knows, “the right thing to do and does not do it” is the person who lives according to his/her own moral code.  For James, this is the Christian whose decisions are shaped by what he/she wants to do over what God’s word has said we must do.  Included in this kind of rebellion is the Christian who knows that God is leading him/her into a certain direction, but refuses to yield to God over what he/she wants.
 
Self-centered riches (5:1-3)
When we adopt the view that this life is all there is, it becomes natural to seek comfort and gain at the expense of others. James speaks especially strongly against those in the church who ignore the needs of the poor to enrich themselves. The issue isn’t money itself—after all, financial resources are vital for supporting missions and ministries. Nor does James condemn Christians simply for being wealthy. Instead, he challenges the relentless pursuit of wealth that disregards the truth that every blessing comes from God, entrusted to us for the purpose of advancing His work and serving those around us.  
 
Self-centered advantages (5:4-6)
Some members of the churches James wrote to were taking advantage of others by withholding the wages rightfully earned by their workers. This injustice stemmed from greed—a desire to live for personal pleasure, placing themselves at the center of their worlds, often at the expense of those around them (v. 5). By refusing to pay the laborers, they not only pursued selfish gain but also acted with disregard and even malice, putting the well-being of the righteous at risk. As James writes in verse 6, “You have condemned and put to death the righteous person...”
 
The Christian should know better than to live in the sorts of ways James warns us about.  These things James lists are grievous sins, and those guilty of such things should not take comfort in a salvation they might not possess.  The reason why James uses very strong language is to shock those guilty of such things out of their complacency and toward repentance. There is a judgement coming that we all must be mindful of as we live out our lives here: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive compensation for his deeds done through the body, in accordance with what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10).
 
The Fruit of Living in Light of Eternity, is a Life Well Spent
 
You do not exist for what is earthly, natural, and demonic.  You and the life you have today, in the words of James, is only “a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away” (4:14).  You are here and then you are gone, and just so you know, that is assuming that you have until your 78th birthday.  Who knows what will happen between now and tomorrow, and it assumes that you are going to be here with little to no regard that each moment is an undeserved gift from Almighty God! This is why we are admonished in these verses:
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.’ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil”
 
The kind of boasting that is evil is the kind that assumes not only will you be getting up tomorrow, but also the failure to recognize that if you do get up in the morning, that God allowed it because there is a purpose greater than your plans for work, vacation, the honey-do-list your spouse created, or the leisure you crave.
 
Dear brothers and sisters, if you are a Christian, then the God who created everything found you in your sin and spiritual deadness.  The good news is that He not only found you, but He did not leave you to your sin and in your spiritual death!  Think about what this means for you! Think about the implications! You were dead, and now you are alive!  Listen to the way Colossians 2:13-14 describes what you have experienced: “And when you were dead in your wrongdoings and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our wrongdoings, having canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”
 
Christian, do you know what this means?  You are now alive with Christ.  How did it happen?  The apostle Peter describes the miracle of new birth in his epistle: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a Holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1:9-10). Because of this, no matter what happens to you in this vapor-like life, Jesus promised that even if death comes, “not a hair of your head will perish” (Luke 21:18). 
 
Christian, because you are alive with Christ, because you belong to Him, because you have been rescued and delivered from the darkness of this world that is earthly, natural, and demonic... your citizenship is in heaven and what you do in this life is an investment for eternity.  James’ point in these verses is that you do not waste the life that God has gifted you.  You were made for joy, and that joy is only possible in Jesus (John 15:11). This is why the Christian is able to find joy in suffering knowing that this life is a vapor compared to what is ours as citizens of God’s kingdom. Remember how James begins his epistle: “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4).  The apostle Paul essentially says the same thing in Philippians 3:7-11 that has become my prayer for us as a church family:
But whatever things were gain to me, these things I have counted as loss because of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them mere rubbish, so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
 
If you make it your ambition to spend your life well by seeking to know Christ more in the way Paul describes, you will find that whatever comes into your life, that will not be what defines you.  Why? Because what defines you is Jesus and your identity in Him. Even if your dreams crumble into ashes, you will be able to dream a different dream that lines up with the heart of God.

Abiding Faith

As I was preparing for this sermon, I read something that John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T, said back in 2022 with the acquiring of HBO concerning his goals for HBO that I think was very perceptive.
It’s not hours a week, and it’s not hours a month. We need hours a day. You are competing with devices that sit in people’s hands that capture their attention every 15 seconds. I want more hours of engagement. Why are more hours of engagement important? Because you get more data and information about a customer that then allows you to do things like monetize through alternate models of advertising as well as subscriptions.
 
There’s a reason why social media platforms, streaming services, etc. are called “attention merchants.” They are working hard to capture our attention. Some people also call it “adhesiveness.” The longer they can get us to stick around, the more money they make.[1]
 
Stankey rebranded HBO to HBO Max, and under his leadership, subscriber growth more than doubled from 36 million to 76 million. 
 
Social media platforms rely on sophisticated algorithms to decide which content appears in your feed and in what order. These invisible gatekeepers shape your online experience, curating what you see and when you see it, all with the aim of keeping you engaged for longer periods.
 
What is my point?  My point is that there are pressures that you are both aware of and unaware of that seek to influence you.  There may not have been the kinds of algorithms that we have today in the day, and age, James wrote his epistle, but they were no doubt there.  There is a system that is spiritual that is opposed to God that wants to do all that it can to draw you away from Him, and that system is what the Bible calls the “world.”  We were not made for the world, but for God. It is the tension we face as Christians to be pooled by the world or to draw close to God that he addresses in these verses.
 
Going with the Current of the World is Friendship with the World (vv. 1-5)
We gravitate towards the kinds of things James lists in verses 1-5.  If comes naturally for us as a species to fight against each other. Remember what James wrote in 3:14; he said, “But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart...” your jealousy and selfish ambition is, “earthly, natural, and demonic” (v. 15).  Then in 4:1, James informs us that the source of our fighting with one another comes from that part of us the apostle John described: “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world” (1 John 2:16).
 
What James means by World is the ethics and principles that are motivated by a desire to dethrone God. The wisdom of the world encourages those who live in it to cater to what you want, give yourself everything your eyes desire and live life your way to get the most of it.  This is the wisdom of the world that James warns us of in chapter three, and it is here in chapter four that shows us how it affects everything around us. 
 
The Greek word for “quarrels” can mean battle, fights, strife, or conflicts.  What instigates this kind of fighting with one another is what James calls our “pleasures.”  This is another Greek word that you knew without knowing that you had it in your vocabulary (last week it was the Greek word “zēlos” that the NASB decided to translate “jealous”); the Greek word of “pleasures” is hēdonē from which we get the word “hedonism.” 
 
What is hedonism?  You may think that it is the pursuit of pleasure, and it certainly is that, but at its core, hedonism is the pursuit of joy. In fact, what we learn from the Bible is that we were made to pursue and experience joy.  There are scores of verses in the Bible I can show you, but for now, three should do:
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4)
 
“You will make known to me the way of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.” (Ps. 16:11)
 
“Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials...” (Jas. 1:2)
 
The Word of God encourages us to pursue joy. Blaise Pascale, the famous philosopher, observed: “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”[2]
 
We even acknowledge that we were made for joy in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  However, what we were not made for is a joy that excludes a relationship with God.  The kind of worldly wisdom and joy-seeking that leads to conflicts is a secular wisdom and the Godless pursuit of joy.  This is kind of joy seeking is secular hedonism, and it is, “earthly, natural, and demonic” (3:14).
 
What is the fruit of secular hedonism?  James provides us with a list in verses that follow:
Fact + result
 
“You lust and do not have... so you commit murder.” (v. 2a)
Fact + result
 
“You are envious and cannot obtain...  so you fight and quarrel.” (v. 2b)
 
Fact + reason
 
“You do not have... because you do not ask.” (v. 2c)
Fact + result
“You ask and do not receive...” (v. 3a)
 
Full reason
 
“...because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend what you request on your pleasures.” (v. 3b)[3]
 
What kind of joy seeking is James describing?  It is one where the pleasure and joy seeking is rooted in a world that is hostile towards God.  Secular hedonism is self-centered joy seeking that makes the one pursuing it the center of his/her universe.  So James accuses those who pursue such pleasures in verse 4 as “adulteresses.” Why?  Because he is writing to Christians who should know better that the only joy we were created for and the one that is lasting, is a joy that can only be found in God.  To seek your pleasure from this world, is to align yourself with the world by becoming its friend.  To this, James states emphatically: “do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (v. 4).
 
What do we do with verse five?  What does James mean?  There is much debate over the way this verse should be translated and some of the main versions of the English Bible show that.  Theologians are divided over whether the Greek word for “Spirit” is referring to the immaterial part of us that we also call our soul or if it is the Holy Spirit that every Christian receives at the moment he/she becomes a Christian.  Here is what I think James means by the statement: “Do you think that the Scripture says to no purpose, ‘He jealously desires the Spirit whom He has made to dwell in us”?  I think what he means is what we have seen in verses 1-4, and that is: we were made for a joy that can only be satisfied in God and the reason why He gave us a soul is the same reason He gave us the Holy Spirit, and that is to use our lives and to find our joy in Him.  In other words, we were born on this earth to know God, but because we are dead in our sins, God caused us to be born again and has given us the Holy Spirit to empower us to live for Him for the purpose of finding our joy in Him (remember that James is writing to Christians).
Abiding in the Word is Friendship with God (vv. 6-10)
So what is the solution for the kind of problem James lists for us in verses 1-5?  He provides us with the answer in verses 6-10.  It’s really found in verse 6; let’s read it slowly and thoughtfully: “But He gives a greater grace.  Therefore it says...” What says? from the same Scripture in verse 5 James referred to: “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
 
God created you; you did not create Him.  Of all the gods that people worship, there is only One who is the Creator and we were made for Him just as the apostle Paul testified before a group of idol worshipers at Mars Hill:
“He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might feel around for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His descendants.’” (Acts 17:26-28)
 
God created us to know Him, but humans are fallen, sin-cursed, and spiritually dead!  What hope is there for a humanity bent on finding their satisfaction and joy in anything or anyone but the One who created mankind in His image?  James doesn’t need to explain the gospel again to his readers because they have already heard it and received it, all that he needs is one word, and that word is “grace.”  Christian, how is it that you have gone from death to life in Jesus?  How is it that you have been called out of darkness into God’s marvelous light?  How is it that you have been born again and are now sealed by God’s Holy Spirit and are a child of God?  Just one word will do! “He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, ‘God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’”
 
Because you have received a “greater grace” there is a greater joy available to you.  Remember what it was that brought you to the cross of Christ: You came to Jesus because you were poor in spirit, you came to Him because you mourned over your sins, you came to Him because you could not save yourself.  There is no coming to Jesus if you are not willing to humble yourself before Him; it is Jesus alone who is able to save and it is only by grace that you are born again today. 
 
Because there is a greater grace, there is a greater joy to be experienced through God.  James explains where one can experience that joy through a series of imperatives.  Let’s read the passage and break these imperatives (commands) down so that you can see the point James is making: “Submit therefore to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God and He will come close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you” (vv. 7-10).
 
The word “submit” comes from a Greek word that also means to attach yourself to the thing or person you are submitting to.  To submit to God is not just to bow before Him, but also to attach yourself to Him.  There is another word that the Bible uses for that same idea, and that word is “abide” which comes from a Greek word that also means to “remain in.”  Attach yourself to the One you were made for! In verse 8, we are told to “Come close to God...”  So what happens when we submit to God?  We come close to Him.  This is how I can resist the devil so that he will flee from me (v. 7). This is also how I can cleanse my hand and purify my heart.
 
Listen, there is no getting closer to God if you are not willing to submit to God.  There is no lasting joy if you are not abiding in Him.  There will be no victory over sin in your life if you are not humbling yourself before Him (v. 10). 
 
What will happen as you submit to God and draw closer to Him?  You will see your sin for what it is, but instead of coasting further from Him, you will run to Him because that is where grace is to be found in your time of need! This is the point of verse 9-10, “Be miserable, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.”  What does it mean for God to exalt those who humble themselves before Him?  He will give you the kind of joy you were made for, a joy available only through His Son.
 
You were made for joy, but not the secular and godless kind that our world strives after.  You were made for a joy and pleasure that can only be known in God by abiding in His Son.  The question I have for you is this: “What or who is it that has your attention and your heart?”  Aren’t you tired of pursuing lesser “joys”?  There is a greater joy before you, but it can only be experienced by submitting yourself to God by drawing closer to Him. 
 
Let me close with something Jesus said that I think will make more sense to you in light of James 4:1-10,
“I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and dries up; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you remain in Me, and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you; remain in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”  (John 15:5-11)
 
What Jesus describes and what James addresses is the kind of faith that abides in Him.
 
[1] Ayad Akhtar, “The Singularity Is Here,” The Atlantic (11-5-21)
[2] John Piper, Desiring God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Books; 2011), 19.
[3] Daniel M. Doriani, James, ed. Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 130.

Wise Faith

Our scripture passage is about two types of wisdom, so I thought it would be fun to share with you some advice I found on the internet that I will get you into trouble if you do follow it:
 
“Carry a fork with you. If someone tries to rob you, pull it out of your pocket and say, ‘thank you Lord for this meal I’m about to have’ and charge at them with the fork.”
 
“Always say what you're thinking out loud.”
 
"Don't breathe, 100% of people who breathe die at some point."
 
"Don’t go to the doctor’s office if you only have one problem. Wait until you have four or five; that’s how you get the most bang for your buck."
 
“If life gives you lemons, squeeze the juice into a water gun and shoot other people in the eyes.”
 
"When confronted by a bear, give it a hug and tell him it'll be alright."
 
We laugh at these bits of “wisdom” I found on the internet because they are so foolish they are comical.  In James 3:13-18, we are reminded of two sources of wisdom, and of the two, we as a species gravitate to one over the other. 
 
Wisdom is the application of knowledge.  According to James 3:13-18, not all wisdom is good. 
 
The Source of Worldly Wisdom
What is worldly wisdom?  James says that it is, “earthly, natural, and demonic” (v. 15).  Well that sounds a bit harsh does it not?  Let’s dive a bit deeper into what James means here before we judge whether or not he said too much.  The kind of wisdom that is earthly, natural, and demonic is the kind that is motivated and driven by, “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition” (v. 14). 
 
So what is “bitter jealousy” and what does it look like?  The Greek word for “jealousy” is... are you ready for it?  The Greek word is “zēlos.” Do you think there may a better way to translate this word?  Of course you do, a better translation for this word is our English word “zeal”!  Zeal can be positive or negative.  The prophet Elijah was zealous for God is a good way, and that zeal was demonstrated on multiple occasions by standing against evil and speaking on behalf of God, even when it was not safe for him to do so; when his life was threatened by Queen Jezebel, Elijah prayed: “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of armies; for the sons of Israel have abandoned Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they have sought to take my life” (1 Kin. 19:10).
 
Zeal can also become a bad thing. Zeal can turn into bitterness, rivalry, and even pride.  In the case of James 3:14, it is a “harsh zeal” that places the individual at the center of his universe at whatever cost may come to those around him.  The kind of “bitter Jealousy” (harsh zeal) James is talking about is self-centered.  The person with this kind of mindset is one whose glory and mission in this world is his own. 
 
The other source for worldly wisdom is “selfish ambition.”  There is not much I need to say to make sure you understand what “selfish ambition” is.  It is the kind of thing we see every four years in America: How do I make sure I get what I want.” There is only one Greek word that is used here for “selfish ambition,” and it is “eritheia.” In ancient Greek it means strife, contentiousness, and selfishness.  It is a word that was also used by the Greek Philosopher Aristotle to describe a “self-seeking pursuit of political office by unfair means.”[1] It is used in the New Testament to describe the jealous or angry leader who, “forms a group which emotionally or physically withdraws from the rest of the church.”[2]These are the kinds of people Paul described in Philippians 1:15-17, “Some... proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking that they are causing me distress in my imprisonment.”
 
There are varying degrees that “bitter jealousy” and “selfish ambition” can come into the life of a person, but none of it is from God.  Even the best of us can cave to the kinds of vices that lead to worldly wisdom.  Consider some of the people from the Bible such as Abraham, David, and Solomon.
 
God told Abraham that he would father a child with Sarah, but because pregnancy seemed impossible to the couple, Sarah came up with another plan that was culturally acceptable.  Sarah said to her husband: “See now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please have relations with my slave woman; perhaps I will obtain children through her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai” (Gen. 16:2). So, the slave woman got pregnant and had a son and what Abraham got in return was one big giant mess that we are still dealing with today.
 
David wrote much of the Psalms that are in our Bible, and he knew his Bible pretty well!  He understood what God’s word said of Israel’s kings in Deuteronomy and most likely had memorized it.  He knew that as king, he was not to acquire the kinds of properties the kings of the other nations collected to measure their glory and strength such as many horses or many wives, nor was he to hoard silver and gold (see Deut. 17:16-20).  We know David knew this because he even wrote a song about it that included the verse: “Some praise their chariots and some their horses, but we will praise the name of the Lord, our God” (Ps. 20:7).  Yet at the height of his reign as king, he conducted a census to measure the strength of his nation instead of trusting the God who told Him that his power did not come from numbers but from God alone.
 
Can you see what Abraham and David’s stories all have in common?  They followed after the wisdom of the world instead of trusting the word of God as their source of wisdom.  Abraham wanted a son so badly and for his legacy to go on, so he took matters into his own hands and got his female slave pregnant.  David conducted a census just like the other kings did because he needed to know how he and his nation compared to other nations.  If you listen closely to the pages of scripture you can hear the serpent’s question with these men: “Has God really said...?”  
 
The wisdom of the world would lead you to an easier and wider road rather than a narrow and more difficult one.  The wisdom of the world would have you erect a house on sand instead of spending the time necessary to lay a good foundation. 
 
Heavenly Wisdom
Unlike worldly wisdom, the kind of wisdom that leads to the thriving life God created us to know and enjoy does not come from within, or from this world, or beneath; it comes from above where God is seated.  The wisdom from above is “pure, peace-loving, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy, impartial, free of hypocrisy, and full of good fruits” (v. 17).
 
From where does “heavenly wisdom” come from?  It comes from God!  Where can I gain this kind of wisdom?  From the counsel God has already given, which is His word.  We already saw in the first chapter that those of us who lack wisdom, are to ask God for it without doubting (1:5-6); the source of the kind of wisdom we need comes from the word of God.  We gain wisdom from above when we first listen to what God has said through His word and then become a doer of it by putting what we read into practice (see 1:21-25).
 
But here is the thing... there is no wisdom from above if you do not have the kind of faith that moves you to really trust the truth of God’s word.  It is one thing to say you believe the Bible to be true and another to act upon that belief.  Think for a moment about what we say we believe at Meadowbrooke; this is what we state on our webpage about the Bible:
We believe the Bible, including the Old and New Testaments, is the divine revelation, the original autographs of which were verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit, thus rendering them trustworthy and solely authoritative in faith and practice (2 Tim. 3:16, 2 Pet. 1:20-21).  The Scriptures reveal the mind of God concerning the need and the method of human redemption, the character and destiny of mankind, and are “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (Jn. 5:39, 2 Tim. 3:16-17).
 
The more important question is not if we are okay with that statement, but do we really believe it?  The Bible testifies of itself: “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).  In the book of Hebrews, we are told, “For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (4:12).  But do you really believe it to be what it claims? 
 
If you believe the Bible to be the word of God and that it is beneficial for teaching, for correcting, and training in righteousness, then how is it shaping your choices in life, what kind of influence is it having on your relationships, how does it affect how you behave and function at work?  Do you believe the Bible to be the word of God even if what it tells you to do with your life makes no sense to those around you and the rest of the world? 
Think about some of the things that God told His people to do.  God told Abraham to leave his home in Ur and promised him a child, even though he and his wife Sarah were quickly advancing in age to the point that fathering a child would be highly improbable.  The conventional wisdom of Abraham’s day suggested that he father a child through one of his servants, but that was not the promise God made to Abraham.  God promised a son that would be both his and Sarah’s, and in their old age God provided an heir. 
 
God used men who acted upon the word of God when others thought they were nuts.  Men like Moses who God commissioned to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt.  Men like Joshua who God told to march around Jericho a bunch of times while blowing seven trumpets and then on the seventh day after the seventh time around the city to shout to bring down the walls of the city. Men like Gideon who God ordered to cut his army of 32,000 soldiers down to 300 to face an army of at least 135,000; each of Gideon’s soldiers were to carrying a torch, a clay pot, and a trumpet that they would blow after breaking the clay pot at night while surround the 135,000 Midianite army and then shout: “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” and this would be the way they would defeat an army that outnumbered them by 440 to 1 (see Judges 7:1-8:10).
 
God raised a shepherd boy whose own father and brothers did not think much of to be a king over Israel, and it would be through his descendants a savior would be born who would rule the nations.  God spoke through unlikely prophets of old, and choose an unassuming and impoverished virgin girl and her fiancé to raise up the promised Messiah that she alone would be the biological parent of, and the child would grow up and live the life we could never live in a little country about the size of New Jersey for the purpose of suffering on a cross and dying under the wrath of God a death we all deserved.  This is why the apostle Paul wrote, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).
 
God’s wisdom is different!  Not only is the wisdom of God different, but it is in a whole different category than the wisdom of the world.  In what way is it different?  We are told in verse 17, “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, free of hypocrisy.”  God’s words and His ways rub against the grain of the world’s conventional wisdom and is the reason the prophet Isaiah wrote of God, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, declares the Lord” (55:8). The question for you, dear brothers and sisters, is what are you doing with it, or maybe a better question for some of you is, “What will you do with His word?” 
 
Conclusion
What wisdom is guiding you?  What wisdom is shaping your decisions? What wisdom are you applying to your marriage, your children, and your friendships?  James is not offering us an option here, for what the Holy Spirit is showing us in James is that if you belong to Jesus, then you have no business with the kind of wisdom that is earthly, natural, and demonic.  Why, because we are kingdom people! 
 
I told you that I believe what James is doing is simply applying Jesus’ sermon on the mount to everyday life.  I have shared with you repeatedly that the way you come to Jesus is as one who is poor in spirit, one who mourns over sin, and one who is meek enough to lay you pride before the cross of Christ.  These are the first three of Jesus’ beatitudes and are what theologians call, the beatitudes of need.  The fourth beatitude is the fruit of the first three: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6).
 
How can I be satisfied?  By finding my satisfaction in the One who is infinitely righteous and from whom true wisdom is found.  What does a hunger and thirst for righteousness produce when that hunger and thirst is satisfied in Jesus?  It produces what theologians call the beatitudes of action.  I will pick up on this next Sunday, but for now I think it is enough for you to see what James is doing with wisdom and our Lord’s beatitudes.  What kind of fruit does wisdom from above produce?  It is pure, peace-loving, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy, impartial, free of hypocrisy.
 
Pure: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will receive mercy” (Matt. 5:8).
 
Peace-loving: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” (Matt. 5:9).
 
Gentle (meek): “Blessed are the gentle, for they will inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5).
 
Reasonable (compliant): “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3).
 
Full of mercy: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Matt. 5:7).
 
Impartial / free of hypocrisy: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt. 4).
 
Full of good fruit: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6).
 
My question for you is what are you doing with the wisdom that comes from above?  It is the wisdom from above that calls those who follow Jesus through the narrow gate instead of the broad gate (Matt. 7:13-14).  The wisdom from above calls the Christian to build upon the rock instead of sand (Matt. 7:24-29). The wisdom from above calls us to action in such a way that we do not only call Jesus Lord but live in subjection to His lordship (Matt. 7:22-21). 
 
The wisdom that is earthly, natural, and demonic will lead to death.  The wisdom from above will lead to the kind of living where you can truly thrive as a child of God.  Some of you may need to turn from whatever wisdom that has been guiding you, by humbling yourself before God Almighty.  I will leave you with James 4:3-4 and you can do with it what seems best in light of what we have considered today: You ask and do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend what you request on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
 
[1] Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), 151.
[2] Ibid.

Sound Faith

The title of my sermon is a play on words.  The beginning of this chapter we are told that what comes out of our mouths by way of teaching will incur a stricter judgment; therefore, anything we teach concerning God or His word must fall into the category of “sound doctrine.”  On the other hand, the noise we make with our speech is evidence of what is really in our heart. Words matter.  I will take it one step further—words matter to God.  Proverbs 18:21 puts it this way: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”  Words matter.
 
The Bible and Creation begins with words! The first words in our Bible are about the first words responsible for everything beautiful and living: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light”; and there was light’” (Gen. 1:1-3).  I love these verses in Genesis! In the beginning there was nothing but God... until He had something to say about it!  His words brought life.  Then what follows in Genesis 1 is a series of phrases like: “God said...” “God called...” What made all that exists a reality were WORDS!  Not just any words from any old mouth, the Words that came from God made everything and all of it was good. 
 
On the sixth day, God spoke more words: “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:26-27). Then, God used Words to bless the first couple by telling them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Listen to me... WORDS MATTER. 
 
Three chapters later, after God used His words to speak beauty and life into existence out of nothing, we are introduced to a serpent.  In an effort to tempt Eve to sin against God, he got her to doubt the words of God spoken to Adam: But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden—except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die” (Gen 2:16-17; NLT).  Listen carefully to what the serpent said to Eve and her husband: “Did God really say...?” and then proceeded to get Eve to doubt the word of God and His goodness towards her (see Gen. 3:1-5).
Not only does God value His words, but He is concerned about the words of people too.  Jesus even said, “I tell you that for every careless word that people speak, they will give an account of it on the day of judgement.  For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt. 12:36-37). 
  
Our Words Matter Concerning What We Say About God
Chapter 3 begins with these sobering words: “Do not become teachers in large numbers, my brothers, since you know that we who are teachers will incur a stricter judgment.”  Here is how the ESV translates this verse: “Not many of you should become teachers...”, which is the way most of the major English translations translate this verse.  What is the point?  The point is that what we say about God is serious and God takes what we say about Him seriously.  James is warning us not to take on the mantle of teacher in the Church recklessly, for those who speak on God’s behalf will be held to a stricter judgment. 
 
Many rightfully apply this verse to the serious call of pastors who are entrusted with preaching the word of God such as myself.  The passage Dr. Ed Hardesty selected to deliver at my ordination charge was from 2 Timothy 4:1-2, “I solemnly exhort you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction.”  In 2 Timothy 2:15, Paul instructed a young pastor and son in the faith with these words: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a worker who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.”
 
The Bible reserves some of the harshest words for those who use the word of God to lead others from the truth of His word. In the Old Testament, we are told that if anyone claiming to be a prophet speaks claiming to speak on God’s behalf prophetically that God did not command him to speak, was to be put to death (See Deut. 18:20-22).  Similar language is used in 2 Peter regarding false prophets who claim to speak for God when they do not:
But false prophets also appeared among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their indecent behavior, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. (2 Pet. 2:1-3)
 
There is a stricter judgment that is coming upon those who teach and claim to speak on behalf of God.  It doesn’t matter what people think or what they want, the mandate is the same: “Preach the word.”  Not just sometimes, not just when it is convenient, not even when you feel ready.  Those who have been called to equip the church are to, “preach the word” and to, “be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction.”  Why?  Because the authority is not with the one preaching, but the word he has been called to preach! 
This is why, in my opinion, whatever church you find yourself in, ought to be a church where the regular diet of preaching is expository instead of topical preaching. Permit me to give you three reasons why: 
Topical preaching is the kind of preaching where the one preaching chooses a subject and builds a sermon around that subject with verses he believes to support that subject. Expository preaching is the kind of preaching where the one preaching choses a scripture passage and builds a sermon around that particular passage, so that the point of the scripture passage becomes the point of the sermon. 
 
The difference between topical and expository preaching is that with topical preaching, the one preaching determines the point of the sermon; with expository preaching, the scripture passage determines the point of the sermon.
 
The one who regularly preaches topical sermons will never preach more than what he already knows. The one who regularly preaches expository sermons will have to study a particular passage to understand it in order to preach/teach it, forcing the one preaching to grow beyond what he already knows. 
 
Mark Dever, in his book, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, wrote the following helpful observation regarding the strengths of expository preaching:
In being committed to preach a passage of Scripture in context, expositionally—that is, taking as the point of the message the point of the passage—we should hear from God things that we didn’t intend to hear when we set out to study the passage.... And from your repentance and conversion to the latest thing the Holy Spirit has been teaching you, isn’t that what it means to be a Christian? Don’t you again and again find God challenging you and convicting you of some things you would never have thought about a year ago, as he brings to unearth the truth of your heart and the truth of his Word?
 
What Dever says next, is so insightful:
To charge someone with the spiritual oversight of a church who doesn’t in practice show a commitment to hear and to teach God’s word is to hamper the growth of the church, in essence allowing it to grow only to the level of the pastor.  The church will slowly be conformed to the pastor’s mind rather than to God’s mind.  And what we want, what as Christians we crave, are God’s words.  We want to hear and know in our souls what he has said.[1]
 
James 3:1 is to warn those who wish to or do teach, to do so faithfully to the word of God because this is the best way to serve His people and to protect the church from the wolves who would seek to harm God’s people.  However, that warning is not only for pastors and teachers and we know this because of the following verses.
 
 
Our Words Matter Concerning What We Say to Others
James 3:1 is not just for pastors, but for anyone who claims to speak on behalf of God.  Think about what we know; the heart of Jesus’ great commission includes the responsibility every Christian has for teaching: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations... teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20).   The apostle Peter wrote in epistle, “...always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, but with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15).  And what is it that we are to be ready to testify with words? In the words of the apostle Paul: “We proclaim Him, admonishing every person and teaching every person with all wisdom...” (Col 1:28).
 
Christ has gifted His church with pastors, teachers, and evangelists to help His people to speak what they have been called to say with clarity and in accordance with what God has actually said (see Eph. 4:11-13). And when we get it wrong, Christ also called men who are able to teach the word of God, to serve as elders whose responsibility includes: “holding firmly the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9).  What we say about God matters, and for those like myself, who have been entrusted with teaching the word of God, we will be held to account for the words we have spoken in His name, so we dare not be reckless with our words.
 
But it is not just what we say about God that matters to Him, it is also what we say to others in general that matters to God.  What we say can do so much good for our neighbors, but our words can bring so much harm as well. Verses 2-12 is for all who have been redeemed by Jesus and therefore born again.  James continues in verse 2, “For we all stumble in many ways.  If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to rein in the whole body as well.”  It is true that if you are a Christian that you have been born again, however, that does not mean we still do not have a nature that gravitates towards sin.  Perfection is coming for the Christian, but not until after death or a resurrection when our sin nature is finally and categorically put to death. 
 
It is true that when you placed your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as savior and Lord over your life, you were born again. When you were born again, you received what was promised in Ezekiel 36:26, in that God, “gave you a new heart and put a new spirit within you...” and replaced your heart of stone with a spiritual heart of flesh—you received a new nature.  However, we still must contend with that part of us that is tethered to our old nature of sin.  We still “stumble in many ways” and because we do, we still say stupid stuff!  We can still use our tongues to speak great harm. What Jesus said about the heart is still true of the Christian: “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil person out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart” (Luke 6:45).
 
James gives us three illustrations that convey just how powerful the tongue is and why we must exercise great caution over what comes out of our mouths:
The tongue is like the bit in a horses’ mouth. A bit weights about 2 pounds while the average weight of a horse is about 1000 pounds.  A bit is used to communicate with the horse, but if used by an unskilled and undisciplined rider, a bit can become the source of stress and anxiety for the horse.  An unskilled rider can use the horse’s bit to injure the horse.  An unskilled rider can use the horse’s bit to cause the horse to become confused.  An unskilled rider can use that little 2-pound bit to harm his 1,000-pound horse. 
 
The tongue is like the rudder on a large ship. A rudder controls the direction of a ship, it is used to avoid harmful obstacles, it contributes to fuel efficiency by minimizing drag and optimizing water flow, a rudder helps provide stability, and it is critical for the captain of the ship to maintain the right course.  However, without a skilled captain maintaining control of the rudder, it can be catastrophic to the rest of the ship.
 
The tongue is like a fire. Instead of using oxygen for life, fire consumes oxygen as fuel. In enclosed spaces, a fire depletes the available oxygen so that it can continue to kill and destroy.  The effects of a fire are also harmful, for it irritates the respiratory system, it can exacerbate heart conditions, and it can even cause certain cancers over time.
 
Think about the damage a person’s tongue can cause.  James points out that we are able to tame wild animals, but “no one among mankind can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (vv. 7-8).  The reason why we cannot tame the tongue is because our problems are deeper than what comes out of our mouths.  The irony is that there is good that can come out of our mouths, but we will spend a lifetime needing to keep what comes out of our mouths in check. We can train and tame veracious and giant creatures, but not our tongues!  James continues: “With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, who have been made in the likeness of God; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing” (vv. 9-10a).  How can we sing songs of worship about our great and awesome God and at the same time use destructive words against another person who is made in the image of the God we claim to love?  In reaction to this, James concludes: “My brothers and sisters, these things should not be this way” (v. 10b).
 
So what do we do?  How do we address the problem within for those of us who have been “born again”?  How can we make sure our words are life-giving instead of destructive?  How can we have the fruit of our words flow out of our new heart instead of our old nature?  Well the good news is that as a Christian, you have been sealed and are empowered by the Holy Spirit to live and speak in a way that is pleasing to the God who redeemed you (Eph. 1:13-14; Acts 1:8). 
 
 
 
 
Permit me to leave you with five things to remember and practice that will help
:
Remember that you are now a child of God. As a child of God, you have been sealed by His Holy Spirit and empowered to life, His way over your ways; you have been given power through the Holy Spirit to live the life God has called you into (Eph. 1:3-14; Acts 1:8).
 
Saturate your heart with God’s word. You cannot know how to live for God if you do not know what God has said about living for Him. We are told, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh” (Gal 5:16).  Whatever you are putting into your mind, you are filling your heart with, and whatever you are filling your heart with, will come out through your speech.  So, read your Bible.  Listen to songs about the things that please God. Consume more of what lines up with the things of God than what dishonors Him.
 
Be quick to listen and slow to speak. You will be less reckless with your words, if you carefully consider your words before you say them (Jas. 1:19)
 
Ask God to guide your speech by asking Him to give you wisdom in what you say (Jas. 1:5-8). When you honestly seek God for wisdom to guide your speech, besides the fact that God honors such prayers, your prayer alone will give you the kind of awareness that assists in being less reckless with your words.
 
Remember the image of God. Remember that you bear the image of the living God not to make much of yourself, but much of God.  Be mindful that regardless of a person’s performance, that person was carefully created by God to bear the image of God too, so do not curse those who were created in the image of God.
 
[1] Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (Weaton, IL: Crossway; 2021), 47.

Grounded Faith

If there was any passage in the Bible that appears to be a contradiction from what we read in other books of the Bible, it is James 2:24, which states: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” This verse seems to contradict what Paul wrote in his epistle to the Ephesians: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (2:8-9).  So which is it?  Is salvation a gift from God that can be received apart from anything we do, or is salvation something you have to work hard at keeping? 
 
In the 1980s these questions were popularized and brought to the forefront of theological discussions had in many homes and churches.  At the heart of these discussions was the question: “What does it means to believe in Jesus?”  Zane Hodges wrote his book, Absolutely Free arguing that nowhere in the Bible does it teach that belief in Jesus for eternal salvation requires a person to repent of his/her sins. Hodges went as far to say that a person can be a Christian and at the same time not love God.  In response to Zane Hodge’s book, John MacArthur wrote The Gospel According to Jesus; in his book, he argued that true salvation involves a lifelong commitment to Jesus, which is the evidence of true biblical belief.  Those who agreed with Zane Hodges labeled the teachings of people like John MacArthur as “Lordship Salvation.”  Those who agreed with John MacArthur labeled the teachings of people like Zane Hodges as “Easy Believism.” 
 
Far from being a modern controversy, the argument between Hodges and MacArthur was simply an old theological debate dressed in newer garb.  I do not have the time to give a history lesson as to what led up to Hodges and MacArthur duking it out in the form of books, but you should know about the idea ‘if you just believe and say a prayer, that you will be “saved.”’  There is a theological stream that led to language you are probably familiar with, such as: “Ten said ‘Yes’ to Jesus!”  Or you may have had someone in your life encourage you to repeat a prayer, for if you just say the words, you can be saved just so long as you believe the words to be true in your mind.
 
In 1763, a well-known Scottish author and pastor named Robert Sandeman (1718–1771) arrived in Danbury, Connecticut. His central teaching was that “bare assent to the work of Christ alone is necessary for salvation.” In other words, Sandeman argued that simply believing in Jesus was enough to be saved—you didn’t have to follow Him or demonstrate love for Him. In Sandeman’s view, requiring evidence of love or a changed life made works a necessary part of salvation, which he firmly rejected.
 
By the time Sandeman set foot in Connecticut, his writings and ideas had already spread widely through American churches. Ezra Stiles, who befriended Sandeman and would later become president of Yale University, remarked, “I believe he has sown a seed in America which will up and grow, though I have no apprehension of any great ill effect.”[1]
 
Sandeman’s doctrine, which came to be known as “Sandemanianism” and is now often labeled “easy-believism,” was more than a theological curiosity—it ignited debate and concern that ripple through the church to this day. What academic circles now call “Free Grace Theology” became the very ground upon which Zane Hodges and John MacArthur sparred. The warnings of giants like John Wesley (an Arminian) and Andrew Fuller (a Calvinist), echo through history: Sandemanianism, they cautioned, might lull the church into a shallow faith, one that confuses mere intellectual agreement with living trust. Its legacy remains, challenging and shaping the contours of American evangelicalism across generations.  
 
My hope today is not that you are more informed, but that you are more grounded in the Bible.  At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I think; what matters is what does the Bible have to say about it!  So, let us turn to our text this morning to find out.
 
A Grounded Faith is an Active Faith (vv. 14-17)
James askes a question in verse 14, “What use is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works?  Can that faith save him?”  He then gives us an example of what a faith devoid of works looks like in real-time: “If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that” (v. 15)?  What is James getting at in these verses?  He is picking up on what He said in 2:1-13 and forcing us to take a long, hard look into the mirror of God’s word to examine our hearts. 
 
If you say that your faith is in Jesus as the One who died for your sins and rose from the grave, then how can you pass by a brother or sister who shares your faith in Jesus who is in need and do nothing to help that person?  Genuine faith will result in genuine, although not perfect, love for those who share in your faith in Jesus?  Just so you know, James is not the only one who asks this question.  The apostle John had some things to say about a faith grounded in Jesus being an active faith: “Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. By this the love of God was revealed in us, that God has sent His only Son into the world so that we may live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:7-10).  Where on earth did John and James get their understanding of genuine faith from?  They both got it from Jesus, who said, “I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another(John 13:34). 
 
Again, John wrote in his epistle, “This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments remains in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He remains in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us” (1 John 3:23-24).  But, John and James are not the only ones who understood that a faith grounded in Jesus was an active faith, for the apostle Paul wrote: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Eph. 2:8-10). 
 
Listen, salvation is the free gift of God made available through His Son that you cannot earn or work for.  However, when you are genuinely saved by Jesus, you are then “born again” (John 3:1-21).  When you are “born again” you go from being spiritually dead, to being made spiritually alive with Jesus (Eph. 2:1-6).  The evidence that you are alive with Christ is a faith that is living!  In the words of Paul, and in light of our salvation that is from God, you are to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called...”  Paul did not stop there, he continued: “walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love” (Eph. 4:1-2). 
 
The clearest sign of being born again is a life transformed—a faith that is alive, first in love for God and then in love for others. This is why Jesus described a coming day of judgment, when all people will be separated into two groups: the sheep on His right and the goats on His left. The difference between them will be revealed in how they responded, with love and compassion, to those in need.  Jesus will say to the sheep, “Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me’ (Matt. 25:34-36).  Those who ignored the brother or sister who was hungry, thirsty, need shelter, needed clothing, was sick and needed care, or was in prison... will hear these words: “Depart from Me, you accursed people, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.... Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for Me, either.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (25:41, 45-46).
A Grounded Faith is a Sacrificial Faith (vv. 18-26)
When it comes to what read in James and what we read in Paul’s letters, Timothy Keller said when looking at something with only one eye, you lose depth perception. To appreciate something for what it really is, you need two eyes. Why? Because each eye is looking from a slightly different perspective at the same object, and as a result you see it better.”[2]  The problem with Robert Sandeman, Zane Hodges, and Free Grace Theology is that they are only looking at Scripture with one eye, and in doing so, their sermons and books suffer from a distorted theological depth perception problem.  Do you want to know one way you can make sure you have both eyes open?  Have one eye on the text you are reading and the other on the rest of Scripture.  James is not saying works first then faith later; what he is saying is that a faith that has generated new life in God is a faith that acts on the belief it rests in. 
 
To say you believe is easy; to act upon your belief is evidence that you believe.  This is James’ point in verse 18, “But someone may well say, ‘You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.’”  Let me share an illustration from our family that may help you understand what James is saying here.  Recently our family went on an Alaskan cruse; we probably never would have gone on a cruise during this season in our lives had it not been for my mother and step-father inviting us to go with them with all expenses paid on our behalf.  Not only was the cruise paid for, but all of our travel expenses were paid for too!  The package that my mother and stepfather paid for included all of our meals, and that the cruise line provided a medallion that we could either wear around our neck, or our wrist, which functioned as a pass for just about everything, including anything we wanted to eat or drink.  We were told that we could order anything we wanted from an app on our phones that was synced to our medallion and that a server would deliver the food to us no mater were we were.  All of it was paid for and I did not have to do a thing to earn it.  However, my belief that was true was evidenced by acting upon the gift that was bought and paid for on my behalf.   
 
The difference between my experience on the Alaskan cruise and being born again, is that with my salvation came a new nature that involved a heart change.  So what happened when I genuinely believed the gospel of Jesus Christ? I received the promise of Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” I received the circumcision of the heart promised in Deuteronomy 30:6 that frees me up to “Love God with all my heart and all of my soul, so that I may live.”  Here is how the NLT translates this verse: “The Lord your God will change your heart and the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live!”
 
James is saying that if you really believe what you say you believe, then the evidence that you really do believe will be seen in your actions. But James is not just talking about acting in light of what you believe, no... he is talking about something more than intellect and actions.  Notice what he says in verse 19, “You believe that God is one.  You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.”  Do you see what James is doing here?  The demons do not have a theological problem when it comes to their intellect, but they do have a heart problem! The fruit of genuine belief that involves the mind and heart are actions that reveal that a spiritual resurrection has taken place and that you have gone from death to life.
 
Faith without action reveals a deeper issue—a problem of the heart. If faith shows no signs of life, it isn’t truly alive. To illustrate this, James points to two powerful examples from Scripture: Abraham and Rahab. Both demonstrated their genuine belief in God not just through words, but through courageous acts of obedience. They trusted God so completely that they were willing to risk everything, proving that living faith always moves us to action, even when it requires sacrifice.   
 
Conclusion
Consider Abraham’s journey—a life seasoned with trials and tests, both by circumstance and by his own choices. For years, Abraham and Sarah hoped and longed for the promise of an heir to become their reality.  Miraculously God fulfilled His promise to the elderly couple and when we reach the dramatic moment in Genesis 22 that James refers to, God commanded Abraham to do the unthinkable—sacrifice Isaac. Abraham’s faith had been forged in the furnace of experience. He was finally able to trust God, even when the command seemed impossible to understand.
 
When Abraham, Isaac, and their servants arrived at the mountain, Abraham told his servants, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the boy will go over there; and we will worship and return to you” (Gen. 22:5). Despite the looming test, Abraham expressed confidence that both he and Isaac would return. This conviction shows that Abraham’s faith wasn’t just a matter of words—he truly believed that God was both good and powerful enough to raise the dead if necessary.
 
James continues in verse 25, “In the same way, was Rahab the prostitute not justified by works also when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?”  The messengers were spies that Joshua sent into Jericho to assess what they were up against. When the king of Jericho learned that the spies were in Jericho, he searched for them, but Rahab hid them.  Before she helped them escape undetected, she said to them:
“I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have despaired because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt.... When we heard these reports, our hearts melted and no courage remained in anyone any longer because of you; for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth below.” (Josh. 2:9-11)
 
The evidence that she really did believe what she said about the God of the Hebrews is seen in her hiding the spies and then helping them escape at great personal risk to herself. 
 
Abraham was told to sacrifice his son, but he did not have to because God provided a sacrifice in place of Isaac.  Many years later, the Son of God would climb up to the top of Golgotha out of obedience to His Father to die for sins we are guilty of.  Jesus died to redeem and make you new for “good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).  Rahab hid and protected the spies when there was no law requiring her to do so.  In so doing, her life was not only spared, but God had a greater purpose she could not have been aware existed, to include her great grandchild being King David, and from David would come the promises King of kings, the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
So, I leave you with a few questions: 
What is your Isaac that God is asking you to place upon His altar of sacrifice and why have you been reluctant to do so?
 
What is your Jericho that God is asking you to forsake, and why have you been reluctant to let it go?
 
Remember that God is asking these things of you because He is both holy and good.  You say that you believe God to be so, therefore trust Him by obeying Him.  Christian, God loves you and He ultimately intends good for you.
 
[1] https://www.therestorationmovement.com/_states/connecticut/sandeman.htm
[2] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

Impartial Faith

I want to piggyback off the final two verses from the first chapter in James that we looked at last week, which states: “If anyone thinks himself to be religious, yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (1:26-27).  From these two verses, I have two questions that help us make more sense of the verses that follow in James 2:1-13.  The first question we need to ask is this: What makes faith worthless?  The person who says that he/she believes and follows Jesus yet has not bridled their tongue.  The second question is this: If undefiled religion is to visit orphans and widows in their distress, what is defiled religion? It is a person of faith who claims to follow Jesus but ignores the most vulnerable of society: Widows and orphans. 
 
In the first century, widows and orphans were vulnerable.  Widows faced economic hardships without a male in the home to provide.  Orphans lacked the protection of a father. Widows without children were at times isolated and ostracized.  Orphans often were without the tender care of their mothers.  In many ways, widows and orphans were marginalized in society.  For the first century church, the care of widows and orphans was a social justice issue that the first century church understood needed to be address as we are all commanded to address: “Learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, obtain justice for the orphan, plead for the widow’s case” (Isa. 1:17).  Because the needs of the widows and orphans grew, and were beginning to be overlooked, the leaders in the first century church charged a group of men with the task of looking after such people (see Acts 6:1-6).
 
So why is this important when our text this morning is James 2:1-13?  Because a faith that rests in Jesus is one that responds to the needs of the marginalized.  When a person goes from spiritual death to spiritual life and is born again, there are two levels of love that begin to flow through the spiritual veins of the one who is now a living and breathing child of God, and that is a love for God and a love for one’s neighbor.  When you are born again your new love for God begins to flow to the point of overflowing to the point that it is expressed in the Christian’s horizontal relationships.  This is why when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment” (Matt. 22:37).  However, Jesus did not stop there, He continued: “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets”
 
James was no doubt aware of Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees’ question concerning the greatest commandment.  The first four commandments concern our love and relationship with God and the final six commandments concern our love and relationship with our neighbors.  Jesus begins with the greatest commandment because how we treat our neighbor reflects the condition of our relationship with God.  This is why James wrote in verse 10, “For whoever keeps the whole Law, yet stumbles in one point, has become guilty of all.”  The NLT translates this verse in a way that ought to help you get the point James is making: “For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws.” In other words each of the Ten Commandments are inter-connected.   It is not segmented or impartial just like genuine and saving faith is not impartial. 
 
Impartial Faith is Gracious (vv. 1-5)
I am not sure what was going on in these churches of the Christians James was writing to, but it seems that something was off relationally concerning how they treated one another. Apparently, the rich were treated with some level of favoritism over the poor.  We know this because of what James writes in verses 1, “My brothers and sisters, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.”  James did not write this to keep these Christians from showing favoritism but was forbidding them from doing what they already were doing.  If you are a Christian, then you are a “bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 1). 
 
To be a bond-servant is to be a slave of Christ; the bond-servant of Jesus means that you are neither free nor hired, but property of your Master.  Don’t think of slavery to Jesus as something degrading, for in slavery to Jesus is where true freedom is known.  However, to be a bond-servant of Christ and to show favoritism by treating one person more valuable than the other is a contradiction – especially the kind of favoritism James was addressing related to the way the rich were treated over the poor.  We know this because of the verses that follow:
For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and is dressed in bright clothes, and a poor man in dirty clothes also comes in, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the bright clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? (vv. 2-4)
 
The gold ring on a person’s finger was worn by the upper-level Roman “equestrian” class. Those with a gold-ring were not only wealthy, but were highly influential.  Now think of what it would have been like if you were a marginalized Christian Jew, who had an upper-level Roman citizen walk into your church service who also claimed to be a brother or sister in Christ?  You might be tempted to think that if you could just get close to this person, that may help in your standing in society!  Surely close friendship with the person who wore the gold-ring would be a better use of your time than friendship with another poor and marginalized Christian.  To treat one person with more honor than the other because of their social status in this world is to discount the fact that regardless of their social standing, all people bear the image of God and should be treated as such.
 
What made the situation even more grievous is that this kind of favoritism was going on among Christians whose salvation had nothing to do with their standing in society.  The apostle Paul addressed some of the same issues within the Corinthian church when he wrote the following:
For consider your calling, brothers and sisters, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the insignificant things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no human may boast before God.
 
So in response to this kind of favoritism, James admonished these Christians: “Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters: did God not choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?” In other words, the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, all have the same thing in common from the moment of birth: We are all born alienated from God and are by nature dead in our sins.  Yet, Jesus found us and died for us, and it is through His redeeming work that regardless of your social status, your tribe, or what part of the world you were born in or currently live... He died for sinners such as us! 
 
Impartial Faith is Loving (vv. 5-9)
The same grace the rich are in dire need to receive, is the same grace available to the poor.  The same grace that is available to the Jew is also available to the Gentile!  The thing that the apostle Peter had a difficult time wrapping his mind around initially was that salvation was equally made available to Gentiles, and that Jesus is equally the Lamb of God, the Lion of Judah, and the Messiah to the Jew as He is to those who grew up eating ham sandwiches, peperoni pizza, Italian hoagies, fried shrimp, and even pork feet.  A Jew would not even go into the home of a Gentile because they were considered “unclean.”  Peter was one such Jew until God rebuked him and told him not to label unclean what God has made clean (see Acts 10:9ff).  After Peter was sent into the home of a Gentile and witnessed God’s saving work in the entire household of Cornelious, he responded: “Opening his mouth, Peter said: “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him” (Acts 10:34-35).
 
Peter’s issue was that he could not see how the God of the Hebrews could love and save unclean Gentiles.  Peter’s sin was really not that different than the favoritism that was shown for the rich over the poor in the churches James wrote his epistle to.  It is nothing new that the poor are marginalized or forgotten in the world.  Consider the Netflix documentary titled Gone Girls; Rex Heuermann was able to murder scores of prostitutes because they were not treated with the same value as other women.  It is estimated that 50 million people live in slavery in our world on this very day. Consider the following statistics related to the 50 million slaves that exist in our world today:
6 million victims of human trafficking worldwide.
23% of these victims (roughly 6.3 million people)are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation.
78% of those trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation are women and girls and 22% are men and boys.
92% of sex trafficking victims are adults, and 8% are children. 
 
Add to this that in 2024, there was an estimated 1.14 million abortions in the United States alone!  We live in a world that that does not value human life.  Regarding the partialism that James addressed, he was not surprised that it was happening in a fallen world, he was heartbroken that it was happening among those who claimed to follow Jesus.   Why?  Because of all people, we who are the redeemed of the Lord Jesus, ought to understand that we bear the image of the living God.  To dehumanize a person based on their social or economic status is not only evil, but such behavior blasphemes the Name of the God whose image we reflect (v. 7-8).
 
You can say that you love God all that you want, but according to James 2:9, if you show partiality, you are committing sin by violating the commandments concerning the way we must love our neighbor.  In James’ view (as is true in the rest of the Bible), if you do not love your neighbor, can you really say that you love the God who sent His son to die for that person?  Can James be any clearer: “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the Law as violators” (v. 9).  
 
Impartial Faith is Merciful (vv. 10-13)
Christian, we are a people who have received mercy, and it was not ordinary mercy you received. The mercy you received is not like the mercy a police officer may have shown you by refraining from writing you the ticket you deserved.  The apostle Paul described the kind of mercy you received in this way: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)...”  The mercy we have received is “rich” and it is a mercy we did not deserve, nor could we earn. 
 
Now, just so you know, verse 10 was written within the context of dehumanizing, ignoring, or treating as less important the “poor” because they do not have the influence that the “wealthy” have.  I have and will continue to use verse 10 when I share the gospel with others, which states: “For whoever keeps the whole Law, yet stumbles in one point, has become guilty of all.”  In other words, if you are feeling good about not violating the first and second commandments because you do not bow down to any idol in worship and claim to worship God alone, but break any of the other commandments, you are guilty of being a commandment breaker. 
 
What does it mean to break any one of God’s commandments?  James tells us in verse 11, “For He who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ Now if you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a violator of the Law.” Jesus said that if you look at another woman with lust, you are guilty of adultery (see Matt. 5:27-28), and He also said that if you hate or verbally abuse another person, you are also guilty of murder (see Matt. 5:21-22).  What’s the point?  The point is that we have sinned, still sin, and will sin; it is for all our sins that Jesus was crucified, bled, and slaughtered.  The prophet Isaiah wrote of Jesus: “But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings; the punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5); the apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a Tree...’” We have been forgiven of so much, and the price paid upon His cross was, is, and will always be enough!  Because of the rich mercy we continue to receive, James issues a command in verses 12-13, “So speak, and so act, as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom.  For judgment will be merciless to the one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.” What is the law of freedom?  It is the royal law of love!  Why did you receive mercy?  You received mercy and now you are born again Christian, “...because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5).
 
Conclusion
Because of the mercy we have received, the fruit of our faith is to be saturated by the grace, love, and mercy we received in the way we treat our neighbors.  In case you are not clear on what that looks like, Jesus could not have made it any clearer: “I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples: if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
 
The sin of partiality is not only in how we treat the wealthy over the poor.  The sin of partiality comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  It can come in how we value a person based on the color of their skin or ethnicity. It can also come in how we rightfully stand against abortion while remaining silent regarding the sexual exploitation of children.  We ought not to be surprised when the sin of partiality is present in our world, but it ought to grieve our hearts when it finds its way into Christ’s church.  We who have received the grace, love, and mercy of God through Jesus Christ ought to be known as a people whose words and actions embody the essence of the grace, love, and mercy we freely received.

Tangible Faith

What we know of James is that he and his brothers did not believe that his half-brother and the oldest of his siblings was all that He claimed to be (John 7:5).  It most likely was not until after Jesus’ resurrection that James finally did believe. However, based on what we read in these verses, I am curious if James was present when Jesus preached His sermon on the mount?  James seems to be the sermon on the mount applied to life.
 
I can’t prove it, but I believe James 1:19-27 is the first four beatitudes applied to life.  Think about the first four beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-6):
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
“Blessed are the gentle, for they will inherit the earth.”
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”
 
Permit me to share some of my initial takeaways from James 1:19-27 and then share how the first four beatitudes fit into these verses.
Each of us live with a nature that we wish we did not have to contend with. For some, it is lust. For others, it is anger.  If it is not lust or anger, it is something else.  When it came to lust and anger, Jesus told us in His Sermon on the Mount to take radical action to fight against such sins that come from within (see Matt. 5:21-30).  The apostle John wrote of our struggle with sin: “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9).  It would really be great if we didn’t have to wrestle and contend with our sin though!
 
God’s Word promises us that our fight with sin can be won with the Word of God. In fact, the battle with sin is first won or lost in the mind; listen to 2 Corinthains 10:3-5, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not wage battle according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” James states, “ridding yourselves of all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).  You cannot win against your sin apart from the Word of God.
 
To believe the Bible to be the Word of God is good, but you cannot progress and grow in your relationship with God if you do not act upon His Word as it is contained in the Bible. The only way to move forward in your faith as a Christian is to hear the Word of God and then act upon the Word of God by doing what it tells you to do.  In the case of James 1:26-27, you have not really heard the Word of God if it has not affected your speech (v. 26).  You have not really heard the Word of God is you are not looking for ways to love others.  It is not enough to believe what the Bible says about the damage your words can do, the only way you will be able to start addressing the problem of your tongue is to, in the words of James, “bridle his tongue” (v. 26).
 
What God Has Said is More Important Than Your Feelings (vv. 19-21)
We live in a world filled with people who are slow to hear, quick to speak, and at the flip of a switch... explode with anger.  We easily respond to the wounding of our pride with anger.  Ecclesiastes 7:9 says of angry people: “Do not be eager in your spirit to be angry, for anger resides in the heart of fools.”  If Ecclesiastes is true, and I believe that it is, then we live in a nation of fools.  There is a righteous anger that ought to be felt and at times expressed, when necessary, but the kind of anger we see all around us has more to do with feeling triggered, hurt feelings, and whatever entitlements we think belong to us.  We will look at James 4:14 later in this sermon series, but for now, we are told: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away.”
 
What is uncomfortable about the epistle of James is that it forces us to consider the simple reality that all of us are here one moment and then we are gone.  You may have 76 years like Ozzy Ozborne or 71 years like Hulk Hogan, or... you may only have until tomorrow!  The question James wants us to ask and that he answers is this: What are you chasing after and why?  Why are you so slow to listen? Why are you so quick to speak? Why are you quick to get angry?
 
This is why Jesus started his sermon on the mount with the first step towards the life you were born to experience: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3).  To be “poor in spirit” is to recognize just how far short you fall from being right before the only One who matters—namely God. To be “poor in spirit” is to recognize that you cannot help yourself. To be “poor in spirit” is to be fully aware that you need a righteousness that you cannot generate. 
 
If you are genuinely poor in spirit, you will mourn over the sin that offended a holy God, alienated you from Him, and is the reason for the mess that is your life.  There is no coming to God unless you see your sin for what it really is, and if you see it for what it is, then you will come to him with the very keen awareness that your only hope is outside of yourself. 
 
If you really do mourn over your sin while aware that you need God to do the saving, then you will be meek.  The choice of the NASB to translate “praus” to gentle in Matthew 5:5 was a poor discission by the translators.  Every other major version of the Bible translates this world “meek” or “humble.”  To be see yourself for what you really are, and if you see yourself for what you really are, you will not be too impressed with yourself. 
 
So, James states in verses 21, “Therefore, ridding yourselves of all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility [prautēs] receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.” The word James uses in verse 21 for humility comes from the same root that Jesus used in His third beatitude! If you received the word, you received the gospel.  If you received the gospel, you have been born again and the power that raised Jesus from the grave, is the same power that now resides in you in the person of the Holy Spirit who indwells and seals you (see Eph. 1:13-14; 3:20-21). 
 
How do I address the filthiness and wickedness that remains in me?  Be quick to hear what the Word of God says about it, keep your mouth shut by accepting it, and instead of responding in anger, respond in humility.  Who cares about your feelings, what you ought to really care about is what has God said and why does it matter?      
 
What God Wants to Do in Your Life is Greater than What You Know (vv. 22-25)
If I understand the Christian life and how it is that God brings change in our lives, it seems to me that for God to accomplish what He needs to in my life, He must wound my ego by exposing my thoughts and the intentions of my heart.  James exhorts us in verse 22, “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves.”  The author of Hebrews said of the Word of God: “For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).
 
What James states in verse 19 is primarily how it is that God uses His word in the lives of His people to live and finish well.  Why does God want this for your life?  Well, again, in verse 18, God used His word (the gospel) so that we can become born again, “so that we would be a kind of a first fruits among His creatures” (v. 18).  Here is the thing about first fruits: The Israelites were commanded to give God the first fruits of their crops which was the best of their crops.  If you are a Christian, you are God’s first fruits, which means you are of great value to Him, and what He wants for you is to thrive as His child! 
 
If you are a Christian, then it is true that you, at one time, arrived at the cross of Christ as one who was poor in spirit, one who mourned over your sin, and one who died to the any notion that you were able to save yourself by laying down your pride to embrace the cross of Christ as the only hope of your salvation and redemption.  So what has changed since then?  Not a thing! The evidence that the gospel has germinated and taken root in your life is that you are still poor in spirit, that you still mourn over your sin, and that you are still aware that it is only by the grace of God that you have been saved, are saved, and will be saved. 
 
In the mind of James, and every other person who contributed to the Bible, those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn over their sins, and those who let go of their pride come to Christ, it is not enough to only hear the word of God!  Why? Because when a person is born again, something happened that happens to all people who are alive: you are now hungry and thirsty.  But hungry and thirsty for what? Hungry and thirsty for the righteousness of God.  After the first, second, and third beatitude, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6).
 
When you are hungry and when you are thirsty for the word of God, it is not enough to just listen to the word of God.  This is the point of verses 23-25, “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a 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 hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
 
God uses His word to form and shape His people through the power of His Holy Spirit.  To listen to His word intently will mean that you must let God’s word challenge your assumptions about who He is, how you live your life, and the world you live in.  This is why we must be both slow to speak and slow to anger.  What does that mean?  Well, if you do not like what God’s word says because of what you would like God’s word to say, you must yield your life, heart, and soul to it.  When the word of God confronts you, when it challenges your assumptions, and when it calls you to action, your best course of action is to yield to it knowing that God wants to accomplish His good will in and through your life for your joy and His glory.  This is how you address, “...all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness” in your life; this is what it means to be a doer of the word, and not just a hearer who deceives his/herself.  This will not happen in your life if you are passive about His word.
 
God Wants to Change Your Heart for Your Joy and the Good of the World (vv. 26-27)
Think for a moment about your life. Are you satisfied and happy with what comes out of your mouth?  Are you content with the way things are now?  What kind of mark do you want to leave in this world when you are gone?  What are you doing now, Christian?  What is your “religion” really worth?  How much of the world has left or is leaving its mark on you? 
 
If you think that verses 26-27 are only about what comes out of your mouth or to what extent you help those in need, then you have completely missed the point!  James is taking something Jesus said and is showing us what that looks like in day-to-day life; here is what Jesus said: “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person” (Matt. 15:18).  Against the backdrop of Matthew 15:18, think carefully about what James is addressing in verses 26-27, “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
 
So, how are you doing Christian?  What does your speech and how you treat others really say about your faith in Jesus?  When Jesus said what He said in Matthew 15:18, He said of the Pharisees of His day: “You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me...” (Matthew 15:7-8). If James was with us during our worship service today, I think he would ask what the Holy Spirit may be asking you right now, and that question is this: “How is your heart?” 
 
Conclusion
Listen to me now, the epistle of James is written to those who identify as Christians. James considered those to whom he wrote his letter as “brothers” and “sisters.”  What this means is that as a Christian, it is possible to have an unbridled tongue and to ignore orphans and widows for a season in your life as a Christian. The reason why James warns us of the dangers of being slow to listen, quick to speak, and easily angered is because those dangers exist for the one who has been born again. As a Christian, it is possible to be “carried away and enticed by your own lust resulting in your own sin” (v. 14). 
 
It is possible that although you are a Christian, that you have entered a season where your heart has grown far from God because you have been carried away by a desire to sin.  If that is you, then Joel 2:12-13 is for you, “‘Yet even now,” declares the Lord, ‘Return to Me with all your heart, And with fasting, weeping, and mourning; and tear your heart and not merely your garments.’ Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in mercy and relenting of catastrophe.”   
 
An outward expression of repentance in the Bible involved the tearing of one’s garment.  God is not interested in what you do on the outside as much as what you are doing about the inside.  To tear your heart is to allow the word of God to speak into your heart, and if there is anything there that needs to be addressed, to address it.  It is to take the mirror of God’s word before your heart and to do something about what is seen in the mirror.  Dear Christian, what is the mirror of God’s word telling you this morning?  What are you willing to do to address what the mirror of God’s word is showing you? 
 
It is not enough to only hear God’s word; you must do something about what it is exposing, because God is for your joy more than you can ever know.  The first step is to repent by bringing whatever it is that you see before God and to commit to turning from that sin. The next step is to assess how it is that you got where you are, and to change the pattern of your life to line your heart up more with the things that please the God who saved you.  Instead of standing and staring at the things that displease the Lord, turn from your sins to His Son. 

Tempered Faith

There are two quotes that have stuck with me that have helped me over the years: The first is from AW Tozer who said, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.”  The second is from John Bunyan who said,
“Conversion is not the smooth, easy-going process some men seem to think... It is wounding work, this breaking of the hearts, but without wounding there is no saving... Where there is grafting there will always be a cutting, the graft must be let in with a wound; to stick it onto the outside or to tie it on with a string would be of no use. Heart must be set to heart and back to back or there will be no sap from root to branch. And this, I say, must be done by a wound, by a cut.”[1]
 
Throughout the Bible, I see the wisdom of Tozer and Bunyan’s counsel as it relates to the hard stuff we experience in life.  As much as God has used AW Tozer and John Bunyan, the real question is this: What has God said about the trials that will come and do we trust and believe Him enough to turn to Him even when we do not understand how He will work it out of our good?  It is to James that we now turn our attention to discover what God has said about it. 
 
God’s Will for the Christian’s Life is to Finish Well
God’s will for the life of the Christian is to receive the crown of life.  What is the crown of life you ask?  Ironically, it is a type of “victor’s crown” that the Christian will receive after he/she has died.  During the Isthmian games a crown in the form of a wreath would be awarded the victor who finished whatever event a Greek male athlete participated in. Like the Olympics of today, only the best of the best would compete after training harder than anything else in their lives in the hope that they could receive the coveted crown. Borrowing language from the games, Paul wrote of the Christian life: “Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. So they do it to obtain a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way as not to run aimlessly; I box in such a way, as to avoid hitting air; but I strictly discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:25–27).  Just before he was executed, Paul wrote to Timothy: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7-8).  The crown of life is eternal life with Jesus.
 
At first glance, it sounds like James is telling us that in order to receive the crown of life, we have got to dig deep and persevere.  This makes our salvation sound like we have to work for our salvation.  This is not what James is saying at all, and we know this because of verse 18, which states: “In the exercise of His will He gave us birth by the word of truth...”  The “word of truth” is the gospel of Jesus Christ that saves.  It is of this gospel that Paul wrote in Romans, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes...” (Rom. 1:16).  It was because of God’s will that we went from spiritual death to spiritual life, and the evidence that we are now spiritually alive is with the life we are living today.  Listen to what Jesus said in John 1:12-13, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.”  In John 10:16, Jesus said that the evidence of those who belong to Him is in how they respond to Him: “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will listen to My voice; and they will become one flock, with one shepherd” (John 10:16). 
 
So here is the rub that is very important that you not only hear me say, but that you take it to heart.  The one who perseveres to the end... even under and through various trials, is the one who was truly born again when they heard the gospel of Jesus Christ; it was in the moment that you were born again that you went from being spiritually dead to being alive with Christ!  The crown of life is given not based on your merit, but because of your relationship with Jesus.  It was His sinless life, His sacrificial death, and His victory over death that secured, secures, and will secure your salvation.  The crown of life is awarded on the basis of your relationship with Jesus with the understanding that His merit is all that you need!  The crown of life is not given to those who have good intentions, it is not given to those who are religious, it is not given because of some prayer you said, it is not given because you started out well, for it is given because you have been born again!  Here is what the apostle John said of those who do not persevere until the end: “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be evident that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). 
 
If you are wondering how you can know that you belong to Jesus and that you are indeed born again, James provides us with four words: “...those who love Him.”  The evidence that you have been born again besides the fact that you will persevere under trial, is that you love Him.  This is why Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed” (1 Cor. 16:22).   If you have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and have been born again as a result, you will love Jesus... which is evidence that God first loved you (1 John 4:9-19).
 
Now, when it comes to the trials in life (v. 12) and the temptation(s) we all face, what purpose do they serve in the Christian life?  James seems to indicate that “trials” are both allowed and designed by God while temptation comes from within and is used by the devil and his demons.  What you cannot see in your English Bible is that the root of the Greek word for “trial” (peirasmos) and the root for “temptation” (peirazō) comes from the same Greek root and both words can be translated “test” or “tempt.”
 
Trials are Designed by God to Ultimately Bless the Christian (vv. 12-13)
So how do we make sense of these verses? Permit me to offer you an alternate translation of verse 13 that I think will open these verses up for you in a way that ought to help.  Here is what I think is a better and more helpful way to translate James 1:13,
No one is to say when he is tested, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.”
 
How do we know that God does not tempt us?  We know because He is a God of love, we know because He is good, and we know because He is holy! Because God is infinitely good, James states in verse 17, “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.”  Not only is God good, but because He is God, He has not, does not, and will not change. 
 
Because God is good, every trial that God brings or allows into your life is designed to strengthen your faith... not destroy your it.  This is why James can say in verse 12 that when the trials do come, you can receive them knowing that such trials will ultimately serve for your blessing.  How do I know that?  For starters, it is the pattern we see with God in the way that He has always dealt with His people.
 
Consider Abraham as one example of how God will use and bring trials into the lives of His people to do the kind of thing that needs to happen in the life of the one who belongs to Him.  After Issac was born and old enough to know better, God told Abraham to take his only son and to offer him as a burnt offering (Gen. 22). What was the purpose of the testing? For starters, to show Abraham that his identity was not to be found in the son he and Sarah had longed for and prayed for their entire lives.  Did God make Abraham go through with the slaughtering of his only son?  Nope.  Abraham would have done it, but God stopped him and then said to him: “For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me” (v. 12).
 
For most of Abraham’s life, he struggled to trust God.  All throughout Abraham’s life God used the various trials in Abraham and Sarah’s lives that God brought, allowed, and even the trials Abraham brought upon himself to temper his faith to the point that by the time we come to Genesis 22, he knew he could trust God even when doing so did not make sense, such as God’s instructions to sacrifice Isaac.  How do I know this, besides the fact that Abraham was so committed to obeying God that God had to stop him from following through with sacrificing Isaac?  Here is how I know: When Abraham, Isaac, and his servants arrived at the mountain where Abraham was to follow through with God’s instructions, Abraham said to his servants something that reveals that something had changed in his heart; here is what he said: “Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey, and I and the boy will go over there; and we will worship and return to you” (Gen. 22:5).  God told him to sacrifice Isaac, and the reason why Abraham was willing to go through with it was because over the years God was tempering Abraham’s faith to the point that he knew God well enough to know that the God who told him to kill his son was both good and able to raise the dead.  Abraham’s action was the evidence that his faith in God was not just lip service (see Jas. 2:20-23).
 
Temptation to Sin Comes from Within and Is Used by Satan to Destroy the Christian
When the trials come, the primary danger we face in such moments is from within.  Suffering can serve as a catalyst to deepen your relationship with God, or it can cause you to doubt the wisdom, goodness, and sovereignty of God.
 
To be tempted is not sin, but it is what you do with the temptation.  Notice what James says in verses 14-15, “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it has run its course, brings forth death” (Jas. 1:14–15). 
 
God does not tempt, but He does test.  His testing often comes in the form of trials that serve to temper our faith for the purpose of making it stronger.  Sin comes from within us, and whatever forms the temptation is that we are faced gives birth to sin when we are “carried away and enticed” by our own sin nature.  Facing the temptation is not the sin, but giving into the temptation is.  James tells us that when temptation comes (and it will), the downward progression leading to the act of sinning begins with a decision that involves both the mind and the heart.  Giving into the temptation to sin begins when you decide to dwell on the temptation instead of run from it. The next step is to be “carried away and enticed” by your own lust (this is when both your heart and mind are lured by your own lust). Our lust comes from the sin nature that is within all of us, and when left unchecked... it gives birth to sin.  Robert Plummer put it this way in his commentary on James: “...just as conception leads naturally to childbirth, giving free rein to sinful inclinations naturally results in discrete moral transgressions. Just as water runs downhill, so evil desire, if allowed to pursue its “gravitational inclination,” runs down into sinful activity.”[2]  Where does unchecked sin inevitably lead?  It leads to death.
 
Listen, most of the temptation we face comes by way of our own doing because of our own lustful desires.  The devil is just one person and can only be at one place at a time.  His demons are many, but they are also limited by their number and ability.  However, Satan is also known as the “Tempter” for a reason.  He is real and he wants to use temptation as a way to destroy your faith. The greater threat you face through is not the devil but your own heart and passions.  To “follow your passion” is horrible advice if it is not tethered to the will of God for your life that you can only know and discern through His word and prayer.
 
Conclusion
Every time Abraham trusted his own heart or caved to his own fears, he was “carried away and enticed by his own lust.” The same can be said about Adam and Eve, the Hebrews in the wilderness, King David, and every other person we read about in the Bible. It wasn’t until Abraham trusted in a good and sovereign God to lead him that he experienced the blessing God wanted for him. For Abraham, that blessing did not come when he wanted, but arrived when God knew Abraham was ready for it.  All sin comes by way of trusting what you think is right, instead of believing God and trusting Him for what He has declared is right. 
 
So, how do we face the trials of life and at the same time resist the temptation to sin?  James offers us some help in verses 16-17.
Don’t be deceived. Instead of trusting in what you desire, trust in the goodness of God and what He had declared to be good. “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above...” (v. 17a), so trust the One who is good and wants good for you.
 
Focus on God’s unchanging character instead of your desires. James tells us that all that is good comes from, “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (v. 17b). We change all the time, our emotions ebb and flow, what we think is right one day may change the next day, but God does not change! His character remains the same. Instead of being carried away by your sin, turn to the God who does not change and trust Him.
 
Trust God’s Word. It is because of His word that you have been born again when you heard the gospel. Tony Evens put it this way: “For many, the Bible is like the queen of England. It’s held in high esteem but wields no power over them personally. What Scripture accomplished for your salvation, though, it can accomplish for your sanctification.”[3]  When faced by temptation, Jesus used the Word of God to combat the devil; you can and ought to do the same.
 
Know that God loves you. God called you by the “word of truth,” and He did it because He loves you. According to James 1:18, God gave you a new birth for the purpose of being His “first fruits among His creatures.”  God instructed His people to give the first fruits of their possessions back to Him; for the Hebrew people, the first fruits were the best and first from their harvest. To be God’s first fruits among His creatures means that you are loved and treasured by Him! What He is doing in your life today, is for the purpose of something greater tomorrow that will ultimately lead to your sanctification and then glorification as His son/daughter.  His “no” from His Word is for your good, your joy, and ultimately your thriving.       
 
 
 
[1] John Piper, The Hidden Smile of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books; 2001), 65.
[2] Robert L. Plummer, “James,” in Hebrews–Revelation, ed. Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, vol. XII, ESV Expository Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 234.
[3] Tony Evans, The Tony Evans Bible Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2019), 1339.

Real Faith

Through every sentence and paragraph that makes up James’s epistle, it oozes with wisdom as to how the Christian can live out his/her faith.  The epistle helps us understand what faith looks like while suffering, how it responds to both poverty and wealth, how faith in Jesus impacts our speech, and how our faith as Christians helps us navigate life in our upside-down world. 
 
The group of Christians James addressed his letter to were Jewish Christians who understood what it meant to be a marginalized people, even before faith in Jesus; but after belief in Jesus as the promised Messiah, they were also ostracized by members of their community, and for some, their own family members. 
 
So, who was James? Let me begin by stating the two things that we know about the person who wrote this epistle: 1) James was the half-brother of Jesus, and 2) he did not believe in Jesus until he witnessed His resurrection.  Here is why I am mostly certain that James, the half-brother of Jesus (and not the apostle James) wrote this epistle:
The apostle James died by execution under Herod before this epistle was written (Acts 12:1-2), and the James mentioned in Galatians 2 and Acts 15 is the brother of Jesus who became a predominant leader in the Jerusalem church.
 
We are told in the gospels that Jesus had biological brothers who were born to Joseph and Mary after Jesus’ birth who did not fully believe in Jesus even though they grew up with Jesus (see Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; John 7:3-5).
 
Jesus appeared to his brother, James, and then to the rest of His brothers, after his resurrection (see 1 Cor. 15:6-7).
 
However, when James did finally believe in Jesus, he was all-in on who his older brother claimed to be, and his belief was backed up by his life, actions, and convictions.  Not only was James all-in when it came to Jesus, but how he introduced himself in his epistle tells us a lot about who he was as a man of God: “James, a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad...” (v. 1).
 
James does not introduce himself as the half-brother of Jesus, but as a “bond-servant” of God.  The Greek word for “bond-servant” is doulos, and it literally means “slave.”  In other words, James’ authority as a leader does not come from his biological relationship to Jesus, but his submission to the Lordship of Christ, not as his older brother, but as the King of kings and Lord of lords.  The other thing to note here is that James places “God” and “the Lord Jesus” side-by-side, implying that Jesus’ words before James believed are the truth that he has since bowed his knee too (see John 10:30). 
 
I believe that James finally believed that his brother was the Messiah when Jesus appeared to him after He rose from the dead (1 Cor. 15:6-7), which is a good reminder right from the very beginning of James, that no one who has truly encountered the resurrected Christ can remain unchanged by an encounter with the living Christ.  James went from a doubter who grew up with Jesus to a believer who would identify himself as a slave to God, and held Jesus as the Lord over his life.   
 
The dispersed Christians James addressed his letter to most likely include hundreds of Christians who fled Jerusalem as a result of the stoning of Stephen and the great persecution Saul (before his conversion and was renamed “Paul”) and others brought upon the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem.  I think James originally addressed his letter to those we read about in Acts 8:1-3,
“Now Saul approved of putting Stephen to death. And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except for the apostles. Some devout men buried Stephen, and mourned loudly for him. But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house; and he would drag away men and women and put them in prison.”
 
It was to these Christians (and others), and now to us, that James’ letter addresses.  The two great themes that are repeated through this epistle are faith (a word used at least 14 times) and obedience to God as the fruit of genuine faith (there over 50 imperatives given throughout James regarding this).  This is the reason for the title of my sermon series: Faith and Works.  There were other titles I thought of while preparing for this sermon series that came to mind, such as: Faith-Acts, Faith-Works, but settled for Faith and Works.  If you are looking for a verse that encapsulates the theme of James, I submit to you James 2:17, “In the same way, faith also, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.”
 
With the time that I have left, I would like to direct your attention to three categories that James addresses in verses 2-11 that set the tone for the rest of the epistle: 1) suffering and joy (vv. 2-4), 2) wisdom and knowledge (vv. 5-8), and 3) poverty and wealth (vv. 9-11).
 
Suffering and Joy are Compatible (vv. 1-4)
Suffering and joy sound just as incompatible as water and oil do they not?  Whoever wanted to sign up for a healthy dose of suffering?  You might be thinking to yourself: “Jesus did.”  You are correct in thinking so, but do not forget that on the eve of His suffering, we are told our Lord prayed while in agony over what He was about to suffer: “And being in agony, He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground” (Luke 22:44).  Jesus even included in His prayer, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done” (22:42).
 
The world tends to look at joy and suffering as incomparable, but James gives us a different perspective, he informs these dispersed Jewish Christians who have lost their homes and loved ones, “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials...” Notice that James does not use the word “some” but the word “all” when it comes to the level of joy that we should have over the “various trials” we will experience in life.  
 
Why should we consider it “all joy” when things get difficult in life? On the surface, it sounds like James is giving us the same advice Bobby McFerrin gave us in the late 80’s with his one-hit-wonder song, Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Some of you remember the song:
Here's a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry, be happy
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy
 
Ain't got no cash, ain't got no style
Ain't got no one to make you smile
Don't worry, be happy
Cos when you worry, your face will frown
And that will bring everybody down
So don't worry, be happy
 
Did you know that McFerrin’s song was number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for two weeks straight and that he received a Grammy for Song of the Year for that song?  If James told these Christians the same thing Bobby McFerrin wrote in his song, they would have assumed that James was out of touch at best, and crazy at worse!  Thankfully, James is not telling Christians who face the various trials that come our way to fake a smile and repeat to ourselves: “Don’t worry, be happy.”  That just will not work!  James also experienced the fear his dear brothers and sisters experienced when persecution came into their city, and he no doubt felt the loss of dear Stephen when he had his head and body crushed under a barrage of rocks that resulted in Stephen’s martyrdom (see Acts 7). 
 
James is not talking about putting a smile on your face or faking your joy after receiving news of a terminal illness, the loss of a job, or the death of a loved one.  He is reminding us that there is purpose behind our suffering even when it is brought to us by the hands of evil men or rouge cells in your body. Behind your suffering is a good God who does not waste your tears nor your hurts.  What James wants these Christians to understand, and what the Spirit of God wants us to know, is that the various trials you will experience are allowed into your life by design and with purpose.  Consider what two other apostles had to say about the purpose of suffering in the Christian life:
The Apostle Peter: “In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which perishes though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ...” (1 Pet. 1:6–7)
 
The Apostle Paul: “...but we also celebrate in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Rom. 5:3–5)
 
It is also important to note that James informs us that trials will come.  The question is not “if” they come, but “when” they come (v. 2). We will come back to the significance of verses 3-4 next week when we look at verse 12, but for now you should know that your trials are producing something in you dear Christian. What those trials are producing is the kind of endurance that is fueled by hope because what others mean for evil, or what the hard things in life will ultimately be used for is not your demise or destruction, but your good, because such trials are allowed for two purposes in your life: God’s glory and your good.  What else could verse 4 mean?  Such trials are wielded by the Almighty to bring about the following in your life: “...that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” 
 
Again, we will unpack this truth a bit more next week, but for now, think of “trials” as “trails” that God has purposed to use, to bring about verse 12 in your life: “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”
 
Wisdom for Life is Found in God (vv. 5-8)
When we walk through the various trials that will come, such painful experiences can throw us through a tailspin.  This is why some “deconstruct” their faith and walk away from the Christian faith and ask questions like: “How can a good God allow such and such into my life?”  You can look at your circumstances and draw from those things your own conclusions without any regard for how God intends to use such trials to produce something much more lasting and beautiful in your life. 
 
Think about how easy it is to walk through your suffering and the hard things of life with little regard to seek wisdom from the One who has called us to walk through such trials.  The point of verses 5-8 is that all of life requires a greater wisdom that can only come from the One whose knowledge and understanding of your life and the world is infinite.  The fact of the matter is that you really do not know what is coming in while you sit and listen to this sermon.  You do not know if there is some rogue cell in your body that threatens certain parts of your body.  On a Monday (June 30th) I was told that my uncle was in hospice and by Thursday morning (July 3rd) he was dead.  This is why Jesus said, “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky, that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather crops into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more important than they” (Matt. 6:25–26)?  Jesus did not just tell us to not worry but provided the best way to fight and push back our anxiety: “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you” (Matt. 6::33).
 
Listen, when the trials come in the form of waves or even tsunamis, if your faith is not tethered to the One who is sovereign over such waves, you will be “driven and tossed by the wind” (Jas. 1:6).  The point James is making in verse 5 is that we do what Jesus told us to do: Don’t lean onto your own understanding in the midst of your trial but seek wisdom from the God who wants to use your trials to produce what is lacking in you.  Instead of asking, “Why me?”  You ought to ask: “Lord, please use this trial in a way that helps me know and understand you more so that I can live the life you have called me to live better.”  Instead of running to your own conclusions, seek wisdom from the One who sees the whole picture of your life.  Instead of running to whatever solution you think is best, run to Him who knows what is best!
 
Our Treasure is Not Earthly (vv. 9-11)
Finally, regardless of what you have in your bank account, your position and status before God has nothing to do with what the world thinks of you but what God thinks of you.  The real question is not how much you have of this world, but how much of your heart does the Lord have of you?  What is your so-called “faith”?  Is it just religion?  Where or who is your treasure?  Most of those to whom James was writing, were poor. With the persecution that came to Jerusalem, they had lost their income, property, and social status.  However, there were some who were wealthy. 
 
For those who are poor, it is easy to conclude that God has forgotten them.  For those who are wealthy, it is easy to forget God.  The danger for both groups of people is to become spiritually near-sighted to the point that you fail to set your eyes on what it is that you did not work for and cannot lose.  How can you experience joy in suffering?  Where does lasting wisdom really come from, wisdom that guides rather than blinds?  It comes from setting our eyes upon that which has been given and promised to those who have been truly saved by the grace of God through faith in His Son, to receive the gift of salvation that you cannot work for or earn. 
 
Those who share in James’ status as “bond-servants of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 1), are heirs of Him who spoke and owns the cattle on a thousand hills!  The poor are to glorify in their high position as those whose inheritance and status is found in the King of kings and Lord of lords! The rich person who also is a “bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,” must hold his/her wealth with an open hand in a way that honors God and serves His people. Why? Well, in the words of the famous missionary, CT Studd: “Only one life, 'twill soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last.”
 
Let me leave you with this final thought: When you are going through the hard stuff, know that because of your identity as a Christian, that God is more interested in your good than you can ever wrap your mind around.  When the trials come, because you are a Christian this much is true: “You are more sinful than you know and more loved than you imagine.”