[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning, everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's nice to see you after a whole hour of lost sleep still chipper and Ready to study God's Word and fortunately we're in one of what might be called the most Controversial passages and all of the new testament today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So hopefully that will keep you alert and awake and ready to Ready to learn.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's open our time together with a word of prayer
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, we praise and thank you for the great and wonderful gift of your Word, of the fellowship that we share around your Son, Jesus Christ, for the life that He gave that we might be forgiven, redeemed, returned, restored by faith alone through grace alone and Christ alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: to that place for which you've created us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We pray that this morning's study would be edifying and encouraging, even challenging, as we seek to hear what your word has to say, and so apply it, that we and our church family and this world might see the transformation that is available and you are low in Christ and we pray amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The excellent book Charles Dickens, very early on, has an important chapter entitled, called Two Life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is about Dr. Manet, who is made a prisoner in France for defying the ruthless French aristocracy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spent the best years of his life from his earliest days after having his beloved daughter until his very older years, pacing a cell and making shoes as he was imprisoned as a forgotten member of society.
[SPEAKER_00]: In so doing, almost entirely lost his mind and his humanity, only being able to mumble out his cell number and position as well as to make shoes
[SPEAKER_00]: absence of anything else to maintain any kind of sanity or productivity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very late in life, we find, and early in the novel, he's released to care to the care of the banker, Mr. Jarvis Laureate, and his loving daughter, Lucy Minette.
[SPEAKER_00]: over time, he regains his mental functions and capacity and even works as a medical doctor once again in the safe harbor of England.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was able to be called back from this insane death-like existence and brought back to being productive and carefully surrounded by the people whom he loved and loved him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But whenever anything stressful happens throughout the course of the book, he goes back.
[SPEAKER_00]: It reverts him to pacing the floors and making shoes back to his death-like past.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to use that as our opening illustration to talk about what James is dealing with.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before we do, because this is such a frequently discussed passage that causes so much difficulty for various people's theology, so much so that Martin Luther thought that it didn't belong in the Bible at all, though we would never entertain such a conclusion, we recognize that this passage causes problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: frequently abused passages become casualties in scripture discussion because they become a battleground rather than the training ground that they are meant to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as we have these fights about justification by faith through grace alone, as we have these discussions of this and arguments about this passage and others like it, it is very easy and tragically common that we lose the ability
[SPEAKER_00]: in the shuffle and the shuffle of the biblical arguments that are being made.
[SPEAKER_00]: There have been various people who thought the Bible primarily as a handbook of salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is to say that they reduced the entirety of and common throughout church history through the replacement theology through the reformers even, that the idea of that everything in the Bible exclusively relates to or only centrally relates to the doctrine of salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: from Genesis to Revelation, just how do we get saved?
[SPEAKER_00]: And thus we misread massive portions of the Bible, misunderstanding that while it is one important theme of the Bible is how a person can move from death to life by faith in Jesus Christ, that is not the soul, or even the largest theme in the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: The largest theme in the Bible without question is the glory of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: and how he will be glorified in this creation, and a significant part of that is how people become saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: But another significant part of that is how believers who are saved can grow to his glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when we confuse those two categories, we come into great problems, and it is an honest and innocent mistake, because the church has been frequently way laid or brought about into misunderstanding the entirety of the text,
[SPEAKER_00]: for focusing on what might be its most personally important theme to us in any given time period.
[SPEAKER_00]: This began early in the church as we studied today, Augustine and ended normal literal Bible interpretation for hundreds of years to come at least a thousand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, everything was subjected to the false lens of what does this have to say about spiritual or eternal salvation thus reinterpreting the word salvation not to mean what it always means saved from something, saved from what, saved from who it could be physical, the salvation of a life or a nation, it could be salvation from a pestilence, and that's more frequently what it's used as and always imputing upon that simple idea of salvation, eternal salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where this becomes such a complicated doctrine because James freely uses the word salvation, not to refer to spiritual salvation from hell, but rather to refer to salvation from the power of sin and the penalties and consequences that sin will bring, yes, even in the life of a saved person.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, today, even though we've got several verses to look at, we have to start out by looking at some major ideas, doctrines that are built from the rest of Scripture, that give us the background to be able to understand James with clarity, without the confusion of wondering if James is tragically dangling salvation in front of believers on a basis of expectation of some sort of performance standard that is found not elsewhere and really not in James.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to look at some of these big ideas and then we'll break into 2014, hopefully with clear vision and the ability to recognize how powerful James message is and how challenging it is, which is part of the reason why I think it becomes such a battleground.
[SPEAKER_00]: because should the church apply these challenging and important lessons we will see transformation in our church family as well as again beyond the walls of the church that God desires and intends.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's important that we get this laid out correctly at the beginning and then we'll look at James 214 through 17 and close with James 2 18 through 26.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, here are the big important steps that you must understand, because James assumes that his readers understood them, and we're going to go over them very briefly, but I would love to help talk about or encourage you to examine these documents for your own.
[SPEAKER_00]: That starts with because it often, it always does when we're talking about our salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It starts with the gospel, the gospel of salvation very specifically, because gospel just means good news.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a gospel of the kingdom, there's all sorts of good news in the Bible, but the gospel of how a person moves from life or from death to life, how a person is saved from an eternity and how is the gospel that we'll talk about today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we'll look at the doctrine of eternal security, different than perseverance of the saints, different than some of the other perspectives that have been put forth in history, the absolute security of the person, based not upon our performance, but on the character and nature of the work of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll look at the three phases of salvation, that is three different ways that salvation is used in terms of spiritual salvation in the life of the believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, we'll look at the seven deaths of the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got a lot of things that get touched by this passage that we need to reinforce or encourage us to understand in order to come to a right to
[SPEAKER_00]: perspective and of course that all starts for us with the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, the Bible's perspective on how salvation is contained is very, very clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, God created a perfect world with perfect people to live in it, Adam and Eve.
[SPEAKER_00]: and Adam and Eve, rebelled against God under the influence of Satan.
[SPEAKER_00]: They ate of the fruit that he had forbidden them to eat of, and they, in so doing, they truly did come to no experientially evil within their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: This did not end their ability to make choices or their personality or personhood, but it did bring them into a broken relationship with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God, being eternally loving and just as loving and merciful, but also having His justice and His righteousness as a mutable and unchangeable parts of His character could not be associated with humanity in this sinful and rebellious state.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see the reality of the consequence of sin, sending against an eternal, righteous and holy God, is eternal judgment or eternal spiritual parteness from Him as we'll see in a moment,
[SPEAKER_00]: something that the Bible calls death, one of the ways that Bible uses the word death.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, we find that there was a barrier of sin separating a holy God from sinful man.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was nothing that mankind could do to overcome that barrier between us.
[SPEAKER_00]: whether that was through sacramentalism or church sacraments or traditions, or obeying the 10 commandments, doing better every day, maybe better tomorrow than yesterday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even through the noble act of loving your neighbor as yourself, it could not undo the sin barrier that existed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Church attendance, well again, important for spiritual growth, does nothing to rectify the relationship or broken relationship with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Neither water baptism does anything to break down or bring a person to salvation, but rather celebrates the salvation that the Lord has given.
[SPEAKER_00]: These ideas of things that we could do works of our hands that could overcome sin is simply irrational and impossible, as we've used as the example many times in the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're running around murdering five people, you won't have no quarter before the judge by saying that you drove between the locations under the speed limit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter what you've done right.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've offended the righteousness of God, making that go away or placating that, in any way, is impossible by human effort.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, the Lord God sent the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God,
[SPEAKER_00]: for our sins forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: He broke down that barrier of sin that was impossible for us to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, God poured out the Father, poured out that punishment on Jesus Christ the Son in our place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because He too is eternal God of eternal God, He was able to make a one-time payment that permanently and eternally satisfied the righteousness of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's important for us to understand, is the central point of the gospel, is that because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross, you and I can approach Him, and there's a very specific way in which God says, we must approach Him, and it is by faith alone or by trust in the hand, which we, sorry, trust here is the statement, as the hand by which we reach out and accept that eternal life offered freely in Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing we could do to earn merit or deserve that salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith is an unmeritorious response to someone else giving or providing something for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't get credit for doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no good work, in fact, there's no work at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith is the opposite of a work that you would do with your own hands or your own behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible is extraordinarily plain that this is not a faith plus works gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if you try to add works to it, you devalue or show that you do not correctly value the eternal power and value of the blood of Christ or the work of Jesus Christ at the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost as if you were to give me a very valuable home or car that I could never afford on my own, but you gave it out of my grace, gave it to me out of grace, and then I responded
[SPEAKER_00]: come wrapper in here somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here, take that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're square.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it might be a warm and loving gesture, but it just shows that I don't understand the value of the gift that you gave me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore, God demands that we accept this gift by faith alone, showing that we also understand that we made no contribution.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there is the importance of repentance.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, repentance is not an action either.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a change of mind, really, throughout Scripture, changing your mind about something.
[SPEAKER_00]: So biblical repentance is not repenting of sin, although that is a valuable thing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you must repent of is the dead works
[SPEAKER_00]: show yourself before God with.
[SPEAKER_00]: By repenting of trying to show that I should go to heaven because I'm a good person or I should go to heaven because I did these baptism, loving my neighbor, whatever else it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We repent of that and recognize that it's by Christ's work alone, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins and that he rose from the dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we placed faith in that, we had to change our mind about who Jesus Christ was, what he did and what we could do to reach up to God's goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: and in so doing we find that all of our sins, past, present and future are paid and full by the eternally powerful blood of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then and then alone can we be embraced by the love of the God of the universe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then alone are we in a position born again made new creatures and able to live to his glory that also not by our own power or doing but by a constant recognition that Jesus provides it all and that brings us to this next question that's often discussed is can a believer then
[SPEAKER_00]: lose that salvation in any way, is a heavy nuanced discussion, I recognize that, but the scripture is extraordinarily plain.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are in, once you've placed your faith in Christ, the triple grip of grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: John 10, 27 to 30, Jesus speaking says, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I give them, as a present tense, I am giving them constantly eternal life, and they shall never perish, never means never.
[SPEAKER_00]: Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: No external force could rob you of what God has given you in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: My father, Jesus speaking of the first person of the Trinity, says, who has given them to me, all who believe, is greater than all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I and my father are one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you find that if you have placed faith in Jesus Christ, if you've trusted him for salvation, then you find yourselves safely and wholly held within the eternally powerful hands of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: But not only that, the grip of the Father wraps his hands around those of Christ, that's the double grip of grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, Scripture affirms there is a third grip upon you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ephesians 430 being only one of the passages we could look at that says, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were past tense, completed action sealed for the day of redemption, looking forward to the day when you go to be with Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are sealed unto that day unquestionably.
[SPEAKER_00]: This gives us the picture of a wax seal in the Old Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could think of a seal of a medicine bottle, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You open it up, you crack open the outer seal, and there's another seal inside, making sure that the contents is safe, fresh, and authentic to what was on the outside of the bottle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you believe her, if you've trusted in Jesus Christ today, are held in the triple grip of God's grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not about our performance that ensures the security or the salvation of the believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is about the very character, nature, and work of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And any questioning of that is not a questioning of whether or not we could do it, the answer is you couldn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: But whether he did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's important.
[SPEAKER_00]: James would have known about this discourse, even though it hadn't been written as the brother of Jesus Christ and the main leader of the church, we can be quite confident that combined with the supernatural gifting put upon him by the Holy Spirit as he was active in the first church, would have made this an absolutely sure thing in his mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: But not only that, he came from a perspective of the kind of family love of God already.
[SPEAKER_00]: Knowing that when God calls you as child, he does not send his children away, and it's so important because without a confidence in God's love and His power to save you, you are very most.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's failed to grow as you're meant to.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now this brings us to another important thing that the Bible teaches us or doctrine, the Bible teaches us very clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is that salvation is not just one thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is actually, or what we call spiritual salvation, is divided into three basic categories, or we could say, usage of the word salvation or saved in the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Phase one is your justification.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we just talked about the gospel, the minute you place faith,
[SPEAKER_00]: In Jesus Christ, you are saved from sin's penalty eternally and absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that brings us to phase two.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I do now?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I've been forgiven.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I just, you know, the flounder around, kill time until the next thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, this is an active life of growth and sanctification, both words being basically interchangeable.
[SPEAKER_00]: sanctification mean, meaning the more and more of your life and your behavior being set apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: under the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are being saved from being saved from sins, power, or authority, or influence in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, as we saw in James 111, that's the picture that he's talking about, but it's also utilized this way in 1st Timothy, 416, and Philippians 2, 12 through 13.
[SPEAKER_00]: The final phase of salvation is glorification.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is spoken of very frequently, proleptically, as a completed fact, because that's how sure it is that God's work will reach its completion, arrive at its destination.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at that point, you will be freed from your sin nature forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will be given a new body, sinless, and untouched, you will never know the difficulty of temptation again, because you will be full complete.
[SPEAKER_00]: and finally made in the likeness of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is future tense.
[SPEAKER_00]: That happens when you die and go to be with the Lord or when the Lord comes for us in His church.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these three phases of salvation, it's very important that we recognize, James knew His readers personally.
[SPEAKER_00]: He lived with them, he probably knew them before they were saved and certainly knew them after they were saved, he knew they understood phase one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their problem was that they were blowing it in phase two.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he's going to use the very strong and dramatic language to point out that as we oftentimes forget in the church today that phase one salvation is not the only important doctrine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not even the most important doctrine, and it is a tragedy when believers say, well, I've got my ticket punched for heaven, and therefore I can do as I please or will do as I please.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is not an okay result.
[SPEAKER_00]: the Lord desires more for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we should desire more for ourselves in this regard.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when we understand that James takes this seriously, so ought we to take this seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reality of our salvation by grace through faith and the eternal security that provides should not give us a license to
[SPEAKER_00]: back off and relax and please ourselves, but rather should give us the confidence and security to seek to serve and know and love and bring glory to God in every situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Knowing that no matter how bad you fall up or fail along your way of path of growth, that the Lord is still in your corner still on your side, unwilling to release you, no matter how well or how poorly it goes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should give us the ultimate confidence and courage to serve him, to sacrifice, to make him known in this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that brings us to another doctor that we will encounter in this specific passage is the seven deaths of scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can quibble about how many of these are who which ones you'd want to bash together.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing magical about the number seven in this case other than the person who put this together originally undoubtedly was going, I got to get
[SPEAKER_00]: But nevertheless, it's the same point that we'd hit before, and that is that there are not simple definitions towards anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Words have usages, words have multiple applications, and death is another word that has multiple applications throughout the usage, its usage, and scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in, so we see physical death is obviously the most common use of the word, but especially as we move into the new testament, we see spiritual death taking its place of importance.
[SPEAKER_00]: See physical death is separation from the body and the material and immaterial elements of humanity, as we will see in today's passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: But spiritual death by contrast, but also similarity is a separation of the man from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: because God is the source of all life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And being separated from Him, even though death never means removal from existence, is the worst experience that can ever occur.
[SPEAKER_00]: So spiritual death is this natural state of man we're born into this spiritual death owing to our relationship to our spiritual forefather and foremother.
[SPEAKER_00]: Revelation 20, 11 through 15, talks about the second death.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is when people come into their ultimate end and those who have rejected Christ and His grace are left to the eternal reality of that circumstance.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second death is when an unbeliever and their opportunity to turn or change their perspective is finally and fully interacted and they spend eternity apart from him and now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Positional death is the death that we have positionally from those things that used to plague us to which we used to be alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are positionally dead to the law of Moses.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not a part of your new position in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are positionally dead to your sin nature and the movements of sin in general.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't mean that you won't experience them, that you couldn't interact with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that you are separated from them on a judicial, spiritual, and eternal level.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is true of every believer, whether we're trying to live according to the law or live according to our flesh or sin, we are separated from those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are also separated from the authority of the enemy and the authority of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are dead to those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean they don't exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that they can no longer exercise authority over you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But rather, they must elicit your willing response.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we get to temporal death, which means exactly what it says.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a type of death in time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's when a believer who's eternally saved experiences that death-like existence, much like Dr. Manet, going back to his old ways in a stressful time, he's being in a way unrecalled to the life that he's been given and been redeemed to.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we, if we choose to walk in sin or walk according to legalism, will live in a sort of broken fellowship with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The relationship permanent and secure, we will have that deathlayer experience of doing life apart from his love, grace, and guidance.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's temporal because it happens in time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It, that temporal death ends when you get back in fellowship with the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you return your eyes to Christ, when you confess your sin more on that later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, operational death is what happens when a person remains in temporal death, and that's that all your work's become useless.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your faith becomes dare we say it, a dead thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that it didn't exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that it is not functioning as meant to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, sexual death is used only a handful of times as scripture refers to in a person goes past the point of being able to reproduce.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, many different uses of the word death, and we should never assume that it means any one of these without looking carefully at the context.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now you've got some big ideas, hopefully, clarified or at least draw into the front of your mind and we're ready to look at James II, 14 through 17.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you would please read along with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it profit my brethren if someone says he has faith, but not does not have works?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can faith save him?
[SPEAKER_00]: If a person or brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food and one of you says to them depart and peace be warmed and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it profit?
[SPEAKER_00]: Thus also faith by itself if it is not have works is dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, so it starts off with this really important concept of profit.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it profit?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it benefit?
[SPEAKER_00]: What comes out of this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it brings us to this first important point is that Jesus Christ did not save you from death and hell just for the fun of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But to turn you to your original created purpose of bringing profit, benefit, and glory to him and to others.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just a get out of help, free card.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a redemption to the life we were meant to live to bring glory to him through functioning based upon his resources to his glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Specifically, this prophet, he's speaking of here, means what benefit is it towards others?
[SPEAKER_00]: You've placed your faith in Christ, you've been born again, you've been made alive, but what does that do for any one else?
[SPEAKER_00]: What prophet does that have in the grand scheme of God's eternal plan?
[SPEAKER_00]: No one else can see your faith, it's something that's a transaction that happened entirely internally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it's not having its impact, it's meant to in your life, in your family, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, then what could is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it doing for others?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's being cut short of its value, of its potential.
[SPEAKER_00]: A clearer translation of this next one of this statement that can be shocking, says does faith save or can't face save him?
[SPEAKER_00]: Gromatically it would be more clear and many of your translations will reflect this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can this kind of faith save him?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that gets us into the big question that we always should ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: Saved from what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Saved from hell?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it can't be that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we are saved from hell, not by our works, but absolutely by the perfect work of Jesus Christ received only by faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what about saving salvation as is often the case from physical punishment and death?
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly, we know that the consequences of our sin are not removed while the penalty of our sin is forgiven.
[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore, if you choose to engage in sinful, especially repeated sinful actions, that that will have consequences in your relationship, your health that might bring you to a premature end.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see this dramatically exemplified in the story of Annais and Sephara, chose to lie to the church about how much they were giving and the Lord took their lives on the spot.
[SPEAKER_00]: we know that the Lord does allow a physical discipline, I guess I'd prefer to punish but discipline, even causing the death of the believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that mean they lose their salvation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means you're not growing down here, you've got to come up.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not being useful, it's time to get promoted.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're wasting time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, we're going to have a radical change of your perspective on things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, we could be being saved, as we saw, and we'll see in a moment, from the power of sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And well, one is absolutely unsure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two is absolutely possible, but three, I think, is the strongest option.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see the great terror Osoro of a Christian's life is to continue to live voluntarily under the influence sway or power of the sin nature or sinful desires.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the worst kind of existence.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see an unbeliever lives as a slave to sin, but knows no better.
[SPEAKER_00]: The believer on the other hand has had at least some taste of the sweet fellowship of God, of freedom from sin, and going back to being that voluntarily enslaved is truly the most miserable human experience available.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, well, two and three are perfectly reasonable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would argue strongly for over the power of sin, because James is talking first and foremost about phase two of salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying a faith that does not transform and move you, is that saving you from sin's power?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that kind of faith bringing about the life experience that God intended and designed for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the answer is very plain of course not.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all live and struggle with sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a part of God's design.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sinless perfectionism at any point in the faith seems absolutely impossible based upon the witness of Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, not seems is absolutely impossible.
[SPEAKER_00]: and Paul makes it a abundantly plain in Galatians 5, 16, and 17 that it is the normative Christian experience that the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit lusts against the flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, if you had experienced temptation, if you experienced difficulty, if you were under attack, it's because you're in the battle.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only people who don't feel such tension in their lives are unbelievers.
[SPEAKER_00]: because the Holy Spirit only works externally to draw them and call them to Christ, not internally calling them to the fellowship and life that we're meant to attain to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And enjoy by as grace and as power.
[SPEAKER_00]: then James breaks into an important example that hopefully tugs at our heartstrings.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so interesting as you watch film, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to make someone look like the bad guy or let them know that this is the bad guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you do?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have him mistreat someone early on who is somehow weaker than him or impoverished or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can immediately cast that person like, oh, he's got to be the bad guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was rude to the poor, to the helpless, or those who were under his control, his bad to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here, James paints a powerful picture of a brother or sister in great need.
[SPEAKER_00]: James puts that expressly in the text.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is clear that both people in this hypothetical example are believers, why, brother, sister?
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone is a believer in this picture that he's painting.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're saved, they're a part of the body of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the believer of the of means is entirely disinterested in the impoverished condition of his needy, brother, or sister.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what's the profit?
[SPEAKER_00]: What changes?
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens?
[SPEAKER_00]: The empty words are just that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hypocrisy of it, smacks in our mouth and stings in our ears.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we hear this, we undoubtedly are convicted by the Holy Spirit of times when we have turned our back on other brothers and sisters in need.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole point of writing this is to give us a new picture and a renewed picture of the mercy and compassion and love of Christ as it is to be expressed by in physical means amongst the body and amidst the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: This brother is saved, but his faith is not working its way out into the extremities of his real day-to-day life.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is still dealing with the previous verses that we looked at last week of favoritism within the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's still talking about how the rich believers and poor believers are meant to interact within the context of the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we see in the church in James's day and continuing on to this day, it's probably the most difficult thing that we have to undergo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talking to a friend who is a missionary in India, and they said one of the difficult things is because the caste system is so ingrained into their thinking, making a church that could embrace people from all caste.
[SPEAKER_00]: he said they just find it more comfortable to stay and worship within their cast group because it's too weird to break through those socially and artificial but social socially constructed lines.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it is for us as we've noted it with great vigor last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: we want to find a church where people look like us, sound like us that have the basic same socioeconomic group because we know how to deal with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the church of the Lord is meant to be something far different.
[SPEAKER_00]: To call us, to reach beyond the simple way in which we would be most comfortable towards truly recognizing the value of each person for whom Christ died.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the desire to see their best good even at our own great expense.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is what an active living faith looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: And hopefully this wonderful account of James stings in our ears at least a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's what it's meant to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's meant to draw us to live consistent with the love of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ, which he exercise towards us and say, if that's the way he loved me, then that's the way he loved you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's the way he loved you and his life is within me, I want to see that same kind of sacrifice, that same kind of patience, that same kind of love pouring forth from my life, from my private choices, from my attitudes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says in this final verse, thus also faith by itself if it does not have works is dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: We said it before, say it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Death means separation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not that it was never there.
[SPEAKER_00]: A dead person does not get erased from history when they die.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rather, it is not, either that it's gone, but that is not functioning as it should.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a metaphorical use of the picture of image of death help us understand in very extreme terms how important this is.
[SPEAKER_00]: if you see a car up on cinder blocks you don't say well that's not a car you say no uh... you don't say that was never a car you say oh the car's dead put some wheels on it let's get it going let's get the some oil in the engine let's get some gas in the tank and let's put that thing in gear and drive it right
[SPEAKER_00]: It needs to be fixed so that the car can be alive and active or fulfill its function.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's exactly what change is telling them about their faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your faith, it's a car, you're saved, but it's up on sender blocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: How, what do you got to do to get this thing up and moving?
[SPEAKER_00]: And James makes that clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here again, we see which kind of death is James, which usage of death is James appealing to, will operational death.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying that you've been in temporal death for so long, you've been out of fellowship with God for so long, or to such a degree, that you are not capable any longer of serving him.
[SPEAKER_00]: because the Christian does not serve by his own strength or power, but upon by relying upon the power poured forth through your position in Christ through the power of His Spirit, through the working of His Word.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is all of God and it is all towards the glory of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the problem isn't that they're not doing enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is that they have been broken from the fellowship that they're meant to grow in and rely upon and thus the cars up on blocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going.
[SPEAKER_00]: Moving forward into our second chunk of Scripture today, if you're unable to read this, you can read it from your own translation, wouldn't that be fun, or you can listen.
[SPEAKER_00]: But someone will say, you have faith and I have works.
[SPEAKER_00]: Show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works.
[SPEAKER_00]: You believe that there is one God, you do well, even the demons believe and tremble.
[SPEAKER_00]: But do you want to know, oh foolish man, that faith without works is dead?
[SPEAKER_00]: was not Abraham, our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see that faith was working together with his works and by works faith was made perfect?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the scripture was fulfilled, which says Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness and he was called the friend of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith only.
[SPEAKER_00]: Likewise, was not rehabbed the harlot, also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way.
[SPEAKER_00]: For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we got three possibilities in dealing with this passage or understanding and applying this passage responsibly.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see James engages in a rhetorical conversation with someone that he later is going to identify as the fool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we know that this person's,
[SPEAKER_00]: Statements are meant to be understood as exemplifying a perceived argument, much like Paul does in Roman 6, that he sees coming against his statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is very important one way or the other because it shows that James had encountered this other perspective and was dealing with it, had to be at some level taught or mentioned within the church in order to need correction.
[SPEAKER_00]: in this way or to be dealt with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So option one, the fool is speaking only that very first sentence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us will have that pointed out in your translation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The quotes will be around just that first sentence.
[SPEAKER_00]: There you have faith and I have works.
[SPEAKER_00]: If this is the case, then it is implying that works are not important in the Christian life.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, the fool is saying, look, you've got works that's good for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got my faith that's good for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Either way, it doesn't really matter one way or the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: It only matters that we got saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: right, and we oftentimes will hear that argument, particularly from those who are passionate about evangelism.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if they grow or not, I just want to keep them out of hell, and while there's some nobility to that, it falls dreadfully short of what God desires for the believer and is oftentimes exemplified in the churches and groups that teach that, think that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: by a wild levels of immaturity within those groups.
[SPEAKER_00]: Option two, the quote goes through the end of verse 18.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you wonder why that if you wonder why this is a discussion, there were no quotation marks or no punctuation in the New Testament text, as we have it.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's all capital letters all run together owing to kind of space requirements and traditions of the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is up to the reader to understand when this quote ends, and we don't have a lot of supernatural guidance, although we'll see we get some.
[SPEAKER_00]: So option two, the quote goes all the way through the end of verse 18, which would mean that he says, your faith, you have faith, and I have worked, show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works, in which case this fool is questioning the faith of the one without works, a possibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, I would argue that the flow fits better with option one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Option three, the fool's statement goes all the way down through verse 19,
[SPEAKER_00]: And this continues on to say, you believe that there's one God you do well, even the demons believe, and tremble in which case everything up in this statement is of the fool and therefore on trustworthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't seem to follow with his continuing argument, but the reason why it has to stop here is verse 20, is where Paul says,
[SPEAKER_00]: but don't you want to know or but do you want to know oh foolish man so that's when his response begins for sure or sorry everyone his responses either beginning there or in full flow but it couldn't go beyond that so that's where the three options as I see them make themselves available
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would argue very seriously for the first option.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems the most natural.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's pointing out that this believer, who is content to see believers live in perpetual immaturity without activity, is somehow an acceptable solution within the context of God's plan and design for believers.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, James' point, James' point, he got that no believer would be should be satisfied with a faith that doesn't affect our lives and actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is not in any way insinuating that the person who has faith alone and Christ alone doesn't have salvation, but pointing out that this attitude, that no maturity, growth or service matters, is in any way acceptable to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then it comes to that big question that James is returning to.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reality is that you can't see what a person believes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, you can hear them tell you what they believe, but even that winds up being subject.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, faith is entirely an internal affair.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why we generally discourage altar calls are coming to the Ford forefront or joining a church because all of those things could be done without trusting in Christ for salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And many a person can attest to a time when they walked down to the front, they walked an aisle, but truly didn't understand what they were doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that walking of the aisle or that gaining of baptism or taking of communion, none of those things had any saving power at all, zero zip, zilch.
[SPEAKER_00]: faith is unseeable from one person to another, and the believers that James was writing to had a faith that was often invisible to the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we want to point out that faith that works never prove salvation in the same way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just having walked the aisle or becoming baptism or works of the flesh and they don't prove that you'd believed that you trusted in Christ for salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good works can be done by any person saved or unsafe from the human perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not rewardable or good before God, but the reality is there have been many people totally unsaved.
[SPEAKER_00]: that have done things that, in according to the world's perspective, look like great works they've fed, the hungry, they've helped the sick, we have atheist doctors all the time going to great sacrifice to save a human life.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are all sorts of good things that a word a person can do that will not be an evidence of salvation because no salvation is there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Works cannot prove salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: but they can be or provide evidence of what is going on with the Lord is doing in the heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are the thing that will make an impact to others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when they see a believer's faith being lived out with grace and consistency to the glory of God, that is the powerful testimony that might cause them to consider the gospel, consider salvation and Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Apart from that, their faith is unseeable.
[SPEAKER_00]: is the case in James's church, and it could be the case in any church.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I'll go further and say it is the case in every church where in believers are growing from immaturity to maturity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And tragically, it can be the case for an entire church who seeks to either serve God through their own power and legalism or seeks to satisfy themselves and just come to for a little
[SPEAKER_00]: And they simply can't see what's going on in your brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you believe inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: They only see how it affects how you live.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the only data point that you can offer them in that state and from that place.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, James's readers, I realize there's two small readers not there for that purpose, but James's readers clearly had a largely invisible faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Reading through these briefly without the verse references,
[SPEAKER_00]: They were guilty of double-mindedness, hedging their bets against God.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were accusing God of tempting them or yielding to sinful desires.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were quick to anger.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had were surrounded by sin or mortal and cleanness.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were guilty of practicing wickedness.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were hearing the word without doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were spiritually in self-deception.
[SPEAKER_00]: The failure, they failed to bridle their tongue, care for the poor, they engaged in destructive speak, slander, they were blessing God and cursing others with the same in the same statement at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were guilty of favoritism, dishonoring the poor, failing to love their neighbor, violating God's standards, they were guilty of...
[SPEAKER_00]: bitter jealousy personally, and selfish ambition that caused problems within their church, claiming wisdom while living in envy and strife, disputes among believers, lustful desires, coveting others possessions, murder, yes, murder.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was we get to that point that it's some will try to soften that, but I believe that there was absolutely the practice of murder within this body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spiritual adultery arrogance, slander, presumption, omit shit, sins of omit shit, not doing what you know you should do, oppression and injustice, self-indulgence, grumbling in oaths, in other words, James is readers, we're just like us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you find anything you should find?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can any one of you, is anyone so bold as to hold up their hand and say, it never struggle with that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly not, not me, I never did, never will do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you do,
[SPEAKER_00]: I will believe you a liar, and therefore, back onto the list.
[SPEAKER_00]: He constantly addresses them as brothers and sisters in the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows they're safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows they're in an act of relationship with God, but they're struggling with all of these sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have faith, but it's just not in gear, and you're going to be one or two types of people reading this, of two types of people reading this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're either going to be self-righteous and diluted and saying, well, I might not be perfect at it, but I'm better than that person or better than these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: In which case, woe unto you, you are far from the heart of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: or were humble and teachable and say, in my immaturity and growth, I can do nothing but rely upon the perfect provision of Christ in His power to live this Christian life and see the kind of character and growth come forth from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Through the pain's challenges, trials, temptations, and difficulties through successes and failures, but constantly relying upon Him to bring us to a more mature or complete state.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can be one of two people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we the self-deluded, will we choose to be the self-deluded, or will we humble and teachable and say there are times when my faith has been invisible to others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the grace of God, I hope, I seek, I desire that that not be the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: This brings into another important issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Justification is another important Bible word that you very frequently, probably don't very frequently use.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you talk about what's your justification for that action?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, why are you asking, why did you do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: What makes that the right thing to do before your eyes?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Paul uses the word justification in one sense this judicial sense, but we're going to see that James uses that same word of justification before someone else because you have to always ask justification before whom or in other words, who am I justifying myself to in this case?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, generally, it means that the core of its idea to be declared a righteous, and as we can see, Paul's going to use that in a broader sense of decolored righteous before God, but James is going to use it differently in terms of justifying our actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, again, Paul's, use this term more frequently in the context of justification before God, judicially based upon God's grace, made available through the work of Christ, and I'll just refer you to the entire book of Romans.
[SPEAKER_00]: because he uses it again and again and again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Justification declared righteous before God by grace alone through faith alone, in Christ alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no other means by which a man can be declared a human can be declared righteous.
[SPEAKER_00]: James is interested very clearly in how your faith affects other believers and unbelievers in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: James is not concerned with our justification for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Justice Paul does, but James is interest is how is the church's faith justified before man?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we kind of got to get around the modern delusion or at least the modern situation that we're in.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see most everybody in this world says, oh yeah, or in our American context says, I'm a Christian, sure, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a Buddhist.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a Muslim.
[SPEAKER_00]: I must be a Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: not an atheist, therefore I must be a Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in James's time, being a Christian, meant that you were already suspect of various problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd rejected, in James's audience case, the religion of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, you were rejecting and walking away from the temple
[SPEAKER_00]: worship and sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are walking away from the traditions of your family, of your blood relatives, of all the history that stood behind you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are a turncoat.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are a traitor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then to have these believers who are already so ill viewed by the ungodly world that opposed them, then living in ungodliness lack of compassion and not seeing that lived out just confirmed everything that the world saw or alleged about their faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so James is interested in saying, how can we justify ourselves before all of the Jewish community around us?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we could apply that to the world around us when what we believe is unpopular, rejected.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if our lives don't reflect the power of this saving gospel, this work of Jesus Christ, then how are we going to justify that before the other people around?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he gives us three important examples.
[SPEAKER_00]: First is the faith of demons.
[SPEAKER_00]: Second is the faith of Abraham.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the third is the fate of Rahab.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this first one gets most frequently misunderstood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say that because up until like two days ago, I didn't understand it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thankfully, my dear friend Dennis Rocks gave me this insight.
[SPEAKER_00]: you didn't even charge before it, so I won't charge you either, this is super exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he talks about the faith of demons.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is often taught to point for those who are arguing for lost salvation or arguing for this being some kind of bizarre, sadistic test of salvation to say that you're being compared to a demon in the sense that
[SPEAKER_00]: the demons believe, but it doesn't bring about the results that they want there for its demon faith or something to that effect.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've always understood it historically as being teaching that the demons believe that God exists, but they don't have faith in His salvation because no salvation is offered to the demons and that holds together better than the totally
[SPEAKER_00]: Wrong view because they don't but because they don't believe in it is a savior, but again That's problematic because they wouldn't believe him is a savior anyway, so I think that the Application here is pretty easy to understand He's pointing out that that demons though they are unsaved and unsavible.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're a state of permanent rebellion against God They believe in God and have this immediate reaction to shutter to shake in fear, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, as much as it is possible or as it is a word picture or some kind of analogy, when a demon thinks upon God, he believes so as to cause and to physically shake in response to the reality of that faith and the knowledge of God's goodness and reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point of this example is that the faith of demons makes them shutter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It affects them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It affects what they do, and if the faith of demons affects their actions, why doesn't our faith affect us?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's pointing out, he's not using the demons as some sort of thing to look up to or in a sense to avoid.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just pointing out that their faith translates into them shattering with fear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why does our faith, or if it doesn't, why doesn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, the faith of Abraham is drawn upon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Abraham, of course, is a hero of the faith, and James even points out how we know that Abraham had faith in Genesis 156 saying that Abraham believed God and God accounted it to him as righteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul uses this verse regularly in Romans to defend salvation by faith alone through grace alone in Christ alone, and James is at no odds with this interpretation, but again, James is looking towards a different kind of justification.
[SPEAKER_00]: James, that is, before men, not before God.
[SPEAKER_00]: James ignores all of Abraham's failures, and he had plenty.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had failures or lapses in his faith with Haggar, with a Bumilek and others that brought about great difficulty and challenge in his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he focuses here on this supreme act of faithfulness in offering his son, his only son Isaac before the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, the Lord called him back and the Bible never justifies or allows human sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it focuses on this supreme act as the expression of his faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we could say, oh, I wouldn't have done that Hagar, had that Hagar situation happen to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I wouldn't have lied and said that my wife is my sister, because she kind of is.
[SPEAKER_00]: But how many of us in our heart of hearts could imagine putting your first born child on an altar?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you so believe that God would resurrect them or could bring them back.
[SPEAKER_00]: as a monumental act of faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did that faith save Abraham?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that had happened chapters before in Genesis 15 when he placed his faith and it was counted in his righteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: but nobody would question his fidelity after this moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was exemplified.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was proven that wherever bumps and bruises and failures along the way that there can be no question that Abraham's faith was firm, secure, and absolutely affected his actions even towards his most beloved possession, person, his son.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we move on to the faith of Raya, Raya lived in Jericho and protected the spies that were sent by Joshua to spy out the land to find out what's going on and how they would make their military approach.
[SPEAKER_00]: She did so because she believed in the God of Israel that the Hebrew people had been truly given the land and that they would destroy all those who stood in resistance of the will of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her faith was justified.
[SPEAKER_00]: Proven, it wasn't just an abstract idea because by helping these men, she did so at great risk to herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even had to work quickly and intelligently to get out of experiencing persecution and probably death at the hands of her own countrymen.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she had such a faith that what God had said was going to happen would happen that she took that risk, delivered those men.
[SPEAKER_00]: If her faith had not motivated her action, we would never have heard that story.
[SPEAKER_00]: She would have died with the rest of the city, but rather she was brought into the nation of Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: The faith of Rehab was visible, demonstrable, and obviously impacted the very outcome of the entire story of the fall of Jericho.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we get this reminder of what death means.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means separation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He makes a comparison for his body without the spirit is dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: James absolutely new along with every other good Jewish theologian thinker and school child that the separation of body and spirit or soul did not mean an isolation of the immaterial elements.
[SPEAKER_00]: They knew that there was a shield, a place of the dead where those people who were disembodied spirits would go and remain until such times
[SPEAKER_00]: called them back, according to Daniel and other places.
[SPEAKER_00]: They absolutely knew that death was a separation of physical death, was a separation of the immaterial and material elements.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he makes another comparison.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, so faith without works is dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a separation there of what is meant to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The body, just as the body, no longer functions in physical death, so their faith was not functioning in this kind of spiritual death, which death, you guessed it, still operational death.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pointing it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's making it very plain to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's using this extreme language because it's really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not good enough that you're saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much more that the Lord has for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole life that the Lord has you to live.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's all purpose and calling for you to be here.
[SPEAKER_00]: People to love and to serve and to sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_00]: People to bring the gospel to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a part and a place in the great triumphant, triumphant, triumphant, history of the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, what do you do?
[SPEAKER_00]: James writes this for a reason, you see, it was a real church that was really experiencing this and living this way, and James as a loving pastor had had enough of it, and by the spirit of God gives us this message.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have growing to do, none of us perfect finalized complete.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have moments of chronality where we don't live our faith out correctly.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is part of the process, God designed the process that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: If James were talking about a loss of salvation, then we should all just give up and quit and end it all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is no longer worth going forward because as we've already pointed out, none of us stands perfect in this list of sins and challenges that James brings forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: James isn't talking about any kind of loss of salvation, nor is he talking about guessing whether you might be saved or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's talking about your sanctification and growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might think that you've been driving in the wrong direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: That might be the picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I need to turn around, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not exactly what it's like.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's far more like you sitting in your car without it moving, going, and really not going anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretending to drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Turning around won't get you anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just be pretending to turn around.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to turn the key, put the car in gear, and push the gas pedal in order to get it going.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what does that mean if that may be cryptic?
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's very, it's quite simple.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there sin?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a sin issue?
[SPEAKER_00]: Confess it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you confess your sins before I agree with him that this behavior, this attitude, this action, whatever it is, it's sinful, you can know for an absolute fact that he will cleanse you, forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Put your eyes on Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Put your eyes where you're meant to go, as Hebrews 12, 1 and 2 points out.
[SPEAKER_00]: a bite in Christ, rest in His completed work, and in the relationship that He's given you, walk by means of the Spirit by what the Spirit is provided through His word, through this salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: James request here is not a tri-harder request.
[SPEAKER_00]: If His describes us as we turn to Him and recognize that apart from Him, we can do no good thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thus you can put your faith into gear, and the Spirit of God will bring faith, growth, and life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You haven't noticed those fruit of the Spirit that come forth from walking by means of the Spirit aren't for your benefit?
[SPEAKER_00]: Love, joy, peace, patience, God, who benefits from that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Your wife, your kids, your husband, your friends, your family, they are the ones who eat that fruit to the glory of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's for the edification and service of the body of Christ, that we need one another to be growing.
[SPEAKER_00]: to be continuing to live out this faith that he has given to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We started talking about Dr. Minet, wanting to note that his story didn't end where I left it off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Minet now free and alive would relapse constantly into his death-like attitude and action.
[SPEAKER_00]: Returning to his work, Bench, and back to his insanity of repetitively making shoes and mumbling to himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the way we appointed the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: The change came when his friends who loved him, challenged him, that it was time to destroy the workbench, that who would she constantly returned.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was time to let go and never return to that past insanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can imagine the fear that he would have felt, and he expresses it to the point where he's not able to do it himself, but ask them to do it for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless,
[SPEAKER_00]: because the thought is the fear is that that bench might be what's keeping him on the edge of sanity when he falls.
[SPEAKER_00]: But instead he's challenged to see it destroyed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was able and returned to his senses and become the man that his daughter and the rest of the characters need him to be as the novel continues to go on.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been called to life brothers and sisters, but only you can decide when it's time to burn the bench.
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, we thank you for the life, the freedom, the hope, the joy that you've given us in your salvation and your Son.
[SPEAKER_00]: We confess with humility and honesty how many times have frequently we've false short, how frequently we rely upon our own resources, how frequently seek to go our own way, how frequently we turn a blind eye to those in need for our greater personal convenience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Father, we present ourselves before you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Present our members for your use and glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Teach us, O Lord, to abide in your Son, teach us to grow in the grace and knowledge of your Son, teach us to live a life that reflects the mercy, grace, righteousness, hope, and peace that comes only by your hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Increasingly, we pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.