SPEAKER_02: Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Song Churches Podcast.
SPEAKER_02: We're a gospel center church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.
SPEAKER_02: May God bless you today through his life-giving word.
SPEAKER_00: A reading from the book of James, chapter 2, verses 14 to 26.
SPEAKER_00: What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
SPEAKER_00: Can that faith save him?
SPEAKER_00: If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
SPEAKER_00: So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
SPEAKER_00: But someone will say, You have faith and I have works.
SPEAKER_00: Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
SPEAKER_00: You believe that God is one, you do well.
SPEAKER_00: Even the demons believe and shudder.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be shown, you four foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
SPEAKER_00: Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?
SPEAKER_00: You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works.
SPEAKER_00: And the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God.
SPEAKER_00: You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
SPEAKER_00: And in the same way, was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?
SPEAKER_00: For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_01: Father, we come before you now to hear you speak directly to our hearts and our minds.
SPEAKER_01: Please take away any distractions from this week, Lord, whether they're good or bad.
SPEAKER_01: Draw us to yourself, draw us to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Father, we pray for us to decrease and for him to increase.
SPEAKER_01: And praise in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_01: So preachers, through their life of becoming a preacher and always developing as preachers, regardless of how long they've been preaching for, will come to a will have moments in their weeks, it'll come and goes every couple of months, where they get um they get almost married in a sense to their title, to their intro, to their conclusion.
SPEAKER_01: And for this week, that was that was happening that happened to me.
SPEAKER_01: And I had these two titles I really wanted to I didn't know which one I wanted to use, but I wanted to use one of them.
SPEAKER_01: And I became married to that title for the entire week.
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't until yesterday morning that finally, I, as Amy has told me that musicians will say, you gotta kill your darlings.
SPEAKER_01: And I killed my darling finally.
SPEAKER_01: So you can see here in the bulletin it says counterfeit faith.
SPEAKER_01: But the title we're gonna go with is Faith That Works.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the title we're gonna go with today.
SPEAKER_01: Um, so you scratch that out.
SPEAKER_01: You may also notice if you look at the front of the bulletin, there's chisels on it.
SPEAKER_01: This is the graphic that we've been using for this sermon series because with Proverbs and James, it's very practical.
SPEAKER_01: It's very work, it's about doing um, as we have our faith, we also do work in our faith.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what we're gonna come to.
SPEAKER_01: And if you notice the tools on it, they're chisels.
SPEAKER_01: Now, chisels with woodworking is a very they're very important tools to have.
SPEAKER_01: They're almost invaluable to have, unless you have the modern day um tech, modern day tool, power tools.
SPEAKER_01: But chisels for many years were extremely um so important that you needed them to do any kind of woodworking.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't make joints, to make boxes, to make dressers.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus probably used chisels.
SPEAKER_01: That's how long they've been around for.
SPEAKER_01: And the thing is, they help you make form wood quickly to make joints, but they're they have to be very sharp.
SPEAKER_01: You have to have sharp chisels.
SPEAKER_01: If they're dull, you're gonna fracture your wood, you're not gonna get the clean cut taken from the wood.
SPEAKER_01: Now, James is writing to a scattered church of mainly Jewish Christians, and they're facing persecution, they're facing cultural pressure to conform.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone in their situation would be tempted to become more like the people around them, to be accepted and have an easier life.
SPEAKER_01: And James knows this.
SPEAKER_01: He knows what they're going through, he knows they're suffering, he knows that times are hard for them.
SPEAKER_01: So he when he writes his letter, he writes it very it's short, it's practical, and it's sharp.
SPEAKER_01: It's a sharp letter.
SPEAKER_01: And it's written to those who call themselves Christians.
SPEAKER_01: And why he's writing this is because he wants to give them something that's small that they can carry with them and bring around.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone who's gotten instruction manuals when they buy a car or get a fridge or anything like that, it's like very thick.
SPEAKER_01: And if you can raise your hand, who's read it?
SPEAKER_01: Anyone?
SPEAKER_01: No one's read them.
SPEAKER_01: But if you got a little instruction manual, you're more likely to read it.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what James is doing here.
SPEAKER_01: He's giving them a sharp chisel to use.
SPEAKER_01: And what he's doing is he's writing a letter that's for the individual Christian, but it's also for the church, the churches that he's writing to.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the thing with when you have a sharp letter, and when you read things in the Bible that are hard to come to terms with, or hard that talk about things that we need to change, it can be uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01: It can be um, it can be painful at times.
SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, what it says in 2 Timothy, what Paul's writing, chapter 3, verses 16 to 17, he says, all scripture is breathed out by God, and it's profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the servant of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
SPEAKER_01: So with our chisel, the Bible, in our hands, let's see what James has to say.
SPEAKER_01: James chapter 2, verses 14 to 26.
SPEAKER_01: It's in your bulletin, or if you have your Bible, you can follow along in your Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And he gives us three headings in this section to go from.
SPEAKER_01: And the headings are living faith and dead faith, visual faith, and faith that works.
SPEAKER_01: So let's look at the first point.
SPEAKER_01: The first is living faith and dead faith, verses 14 to 17.
SPEAKER_01: What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works, can that faith save him?
SPEAKER_01: If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, be filled, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things they need for the body, what good is that?
SPEAKER_01: Or good here could be also what benefit is that?
SPEAKER_01: So also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
SPEAKER_01: Now the thing that's so nice about the Bible, that it is oftentimes it's critiqued or said that it's out of date.
SPEAKER_01: It's a dated book.
SPEAKER_01: And it's just something that we should use for uh for in a literature class or something like that to study, to see what how it's how it helps shape modern English in our society.
SPEAKER_01: But the Bible is relevant for today, it speaks today, and this is a very practical thing that you can picture happening within churches, but also outside of churches.
SPEAKER_01: We think of, but we can think about in the news lately with the LA fires.
SPEAKER_01: It's been it was a devastating thing, and the fires are still happening in some places.
SPEAKER_01: It has been the worst fire, I believe, in US history.
SPEAKER_01: And the thing is, you see, we see these celebrities who go, but they don't live in the area.
SPEAKER_01: They're just going for the photo op to look like they're helping.
SPEAKER_01: Some are, but some are just going for photo ops and nothing else.
SPEAKER_01: And we can see the insincerity of it right away, and our red flags go up.
SPEAKER_01: But the also thing that can be said towards Christians is that we say all the right things, we say what the Bible says to do, but that's that's all we do.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing else that we do.
SPEAKER_01: We begin our liturgy, our mornings here, by reciting the most the commandment, the love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_01: And then we leave here at the end of the liturgy by saying, Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if we just stopped there and if we didn't act it out, people around us would see the insincerity.
SPEAKER_01: They would see that we are just saying things, but we're not actually living out what we say.
SPEAKER_01: And their red flags would go up, rightfully so.
SPEAKER_01: So, how do we come to terms with this?
SPEAKER_01: How do we approach this text?
SPEAKER_01: Because this text can sound very moralistic.
SPEAKER_01: If you think about the Pharisees in Jesus' time, that we read them in the Gospels, we see that they said all the right things.
SPEAKER_01: They looked very religious, very pious, but they were also only doing things for their personal benefit.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what James is trying to get at here in the text.
SPEAKER_01: When he's talking about people who just say the nice things, but they actually don't work it out.
SPEAKER_01: They don't do what they say they're gonna do.
SPEAKER_01: One, see, one just does for personal benefit, and one just does it for for, and another one does it for genuine love based on what God has done for them.
SPEAKER_01: And it's the thing I prayed at the beginning that we need the prey for us to decrease and for Christ to increase.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what James' getting at here.
SPEAKER_01: See, Christians during the Roman time, one of the Roman emperors, I don't remember his name, I didn't have time to look it up.
SPEAKER_01: Um, if you uh really want to know the name, email me and I'll find the name.
SPEAKER_01: But he writes about how he, he's not Christian.
SPEAKER_01: This is before Constantine.
SPEAKER_01: Um, he writes about that he sees the Christians helping the poor, giving all their money to the poor.
SPEAKER_01: He sees them going into the areas where the plagues are, not running away from them.
SPEAKER_01: He sees them helping people for no reason.
SPEAKER_01: And he's shocked by it because at that time the culture taught that you don't help people, you just look out for yourself.
SPEAKER_01: He's completely almost like flabbergasted by it, by these Christians that are doing these things.
SPEAKER_01: They're acting out their faith.
SPEAKER_01: They're not doing it to be made right with God, but they're living out their faith that it says in the Bible to do.
SPEAKER_01: See, living transform transformational faith leads to works.
SPEAKER_01: It leads to churches doing works within the community, serving the poor, helping the needy.
SPEAKER_01: It leads to works through the personal level, doing things to help people, not just saying that we do things.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what James is talking about here.
SPEAKER_01: Is that we need to, because what Christ did for us on the cross, what God has sent his son into the world to save us, we need now to live out the faith.
SPEAKER_01: It can't just be a faith that says it believes, but doesn't look like it believes.
SPEAKER_01: That's what James is getting at here.
SPEAKER_01: And he makes it clear in verse 17 when he says, so also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
SPEAKER_01: Now James uses rhetorical methods to get his point across as we come more into this text.
SPEAKER_01: In verses 18 and 19, he says, But someone will say, You have faith, and I have works.
SPEAKER_01: Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
SPEAKER_01: And then James goes on, you believe that God is one, you do well.
SPEAKER_01: Even the demons believe and shudder.
SPEAKER_01: What James is getting at here is that even demons, because we say we believe in miracles, we believe in angels, we believe in a risen Lord, the supernatural, there's demons in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And what James is talking about here, as we see it also referenced in the Gospels, is that the demons know Jesus is the Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: They have, you can almost say they have the best orthodoxy, the best theology.
SPEAKER_01: This just they just don't believe that Jesus is the Lord and Savior, the saved for them.
SPEAKER_01: Because they're just fallen angels.
SPEAKER_01: So what James is talking about here is that you can know all the right things.
SPEAKER_01: You can have all the right things to say, know all the proper theology.
SPEAKER_01: But if your faith isn't through your, um, if your heart isn't changed, if it's just in your head, you're just like the demons.
SPEAKER_01: That's what James is talking about here.
SPEAKER_01: If your faith only stops at your head and doesn't go to your heart, that's all it is.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's easy for us to fall into the trap of head knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: But the heart needs also to be moved by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Head knowledge won't keep you during periods of trials.
SPEAKER_01: That's what James is talking about here.
SPEAKER_01: And if we think about it, if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, if we see them among us and then we say, Go in peace to love and serve the Lord, are we showing Christ to them?
SPEAKER_01: Are we doing that?
SPEAKER_01: James is coming at it very sharply here to them, because he knows they're in these situations where they're suffering, where they're going through hardship, and they need to be told that you need to live out the faith.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he's that's what's going on here.
SPEAKER_01: And it can sound very moralistic, but the text keeps going.
SPEAKER_01: So let's look at it.
SPEAKER_01: Visual faith.
SPEAKER_01: James now uses two Old Testament examples, since they are Jewish by birth, so they have the Old Testament very much in their mind.
SPEAKER_01: Let's look at it.
SPEAKER_01: Verses 20 to 24.
SPEAKER_01: Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
SPEAKER_01: Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son, Isaac, on the altar?
SPEAKER_01: You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works.
SPEAKER_01: And the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God.
SPEAKER_01: Now, two things that we can see in verse 20 here is that it says, showen.
SPEAKER_01: See, true faith is visible.
SPEAKER_01: You can see it, it's transformational, you see it visibly.
SPEAKER_01: And then when it says foolish person, if you think about when we're going through Proverbs, it said the fool in verse um in chapter 1, verse 7, it says the foolish person doesn't follow God's wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: He only follows his own wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what he's going at here, is that we have to find our true wisdom in God.
SPEAKER_01: So he refers to Abraham.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Abraham, in way at way at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis, Abraham is promised by God that through him, if he looks at the stars in chapter 15, through him God will create a mighty nation, Israel, all the people.
SPEAKER_01: And he promises this to Abraham.
SPEAKER_01: And Abraham believes, and it's counted to him as righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, Abraham and his wife Sarah were childless.
SPEAKER_01: His wife was barren, as it says, and they wanted children, but and God promised that they would have children.
SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, they were very much advanced in age, but they held on to the promise.
SPEAKER_01: And there comes a point where Abraham, where God comes to Abraham and repeats the promise again to him.
SPEAKER_01: And Abraham says to him, God, you haven't provided a child yet.
SPEAKER_01: And then you can tell through the text that they want the child so badly.
SPEAKER_01: And then it happens that Sarah becomes pregnant and gives birth to Isaac.
SPEAKER_01: And then through the text and verses in chapter 22, God tests Abraham, as it says here.
SPEAKER_01: It says that God asks Abraham to go and put his son Isaac on the altar.
SPEAKER_01: Now you might be asking, is God, is are we saying that child sacrifice is wealth?
SPEAKER_01: That should we do this?
SPEAKER_01: No, it's not saying that.
SPEAKER_01: What's going on here is that God is getting at Abraham's heart.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to see Abraham's heart here.
SPEAKER_01: How far will Abraham go to trust in God?
SPEAKER_01: Because the thing that's so unique about this text, when you read it, chapter 22, Genesis chapter 22, is that as Abraham is walking with Isaac towards the mountain where they're going, Isaac says to him, Dad, we have the wood.
SPEAKER_01: We have the fire.
SPEAKER_01: Let's have to start the fire, but we don't have the lamb for the offering.
SPEAKER_01: And Abraham replies to him by saying, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering.
SPEAKER_01: What the text is getting at here, it's not promoting child sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: What it's getting at, it's going right to Abraham's heart and seeing what he idolizes most, what's the most thing that's most dear in his heart.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens that we see Abraham, he is so committed to God and what God tells him to do that he goes and puts his son on the Isaac, just put his son on the altar to offer him up.
SPEAKER_01: And then God stops him.
SPEAKER_01: Because God wanted to test him.
SPEAKER_01: Abraham waited for years for Isaac, but he is still willing to give him up.
SPEAKER_01: See, works isn't just about doing things.
SPEAKER_01: When we think about, when we say faith that works, we think about it's about serving the poor, which we must.
SPEAKER_01: We think about it's about being loving to our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we must.
SPEAKER_01: But faith also is about doing heart work.
SPEAKER_01: It's about looking at our hearts and seeing things if there's things we need to give up.
SPEAKER_01: Oswald Chambers, if you are familiar with that, devotional is an excellent devotional.
SPEAKER_01: Every day there's a short little blurb on scripture text.
SPEAKER_01: And yesterday's was actually on this text.
SPEAKER_01: And what he says, he says this the thing is, we need to look at our hearts and we need to be willing to be identified with the cross so that we may sacrifice, we may make sacrifices of our life to God.
SPEAKER_01: And what that's talking about is that there's things that we hold on so dearly that we can we think we can never give up or never live without.
SPEAKER_01: We all have them.
SPEAKER_01: We all have to do the work in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: If we say we have genuine faith, we must look to ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We must use the Bible as the chisel away at us for faith that works.
SPEAKER_01: And we need to say, we need to do this.
SPEAKER_01: And when we give it up, we do it through prayer.
SPEAKER_01: We do it through the when we look to the cross and see what Jesus did for us.
SPEAKER_01: Because we can confidently say, God will provide.
SPEAKER_01: Just what Abraham says, God will provide.
SPEAKER_01: See, visible faith happens like this.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what Abraham's, that's why James quotes Abraham here.
SPEAKER_01: He shows Abraham.
SPEAKER_01: He's showing that his faith was started with believing in God's promises and then becomes visual in his works and trusting in God.
SPEAKER_01: And then he also uses Rahab, the prostitute, which is in Joshua chapter 2.
SPEAKER_01: Israel is coming into the promised land, and they're surrounded by nations that, pagan nations.
SPEAKER_01: So Joshua sends two spies into the land to scout it, to see what the nations look like.
SPEAKER_01: And they come to a place where Rahab lives.
SPEAKER_01: And they everyone knows in these nations what God has been doing through the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And Rahab knows this, and she believes in the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: So she hides the spies when the people of the town come looking for them.
SPEAKER_01: And then she lets them out through a window when the people have gone out to look for them.
SPEAKER_01: See what happens here is that through her faith, God saves her.
SPEAKER_01: And it's seen in her works.
SPEAKER_01: That's what James is getting at here is that when we proclaim Jesus, it becomes visible through what how we act it out in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Like when we leave this building, when we go out into the community, it's faith that works.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just faith that's proclaimed, it's faith, faith that's visual, visual faith.
SPEAKER_01: And then we come to the final point: faith that works.
SPEAKER_01: If you look at verse 26, it says, For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
SPEAKER_01: Here we see the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: See, this may feel like this this sermon or this text might feel like do this, do that, do this, you'll be okay, you'll be good.
SPEAKER_01: But the thing is here, James thinks that.
SPEAKER_01: He knows that that's what they'll be thinking, that, oh, I just need to do these things and I'll be okay.
SPEAKER_01: But he says here in verse 26, for the body apart from the spirit is dead.
SPEAKER_01: See, the thing is, the spirit enters into you when you come to faith.
SPEAKER_01: God draws you into himself.
SPEAKER_01: Because it says in Romans, we can never do that ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: See, the gospel is that we are so far gone that God loves us so much, he gives his son.
SPEAKER_01: And he gives us the faith.
SPEAKER_01: And then through that faith we see we see it worked out.
SPEAKER_01: Because James says, so also faith apart from works is dead.
SPEAKER_01: See, what flows out of the transformational faith through work of the Spirit, that's what's seen.
SPEAKER_01: That's how we know genuine faith.
SPEAKER_01: In summary, living faith is visual faith that works.
SPEAKER_01: Two weeks ago when I preached about hearing and doing the word, see, God implants the word in us.
SPEAKER_01: And then when we come to the word, to the Bible, God speaks to us.
SPEAKER_01: He shows us, he chisels away at us things that we need to, that need to be chiseled off.
SPEAKER_01: Because when we become Christians, we are like just a stone, a rough stone.
SPEAKER_01: And then the Bible slowly chisels away at us to make to make us a beautiful piece of art through our lives as we continue in the faith.
SPEAKER_01: And it's the same with churches.
SPEAKER_01: When churches use the Bible to look at themselves, it's God chisels away at them, and they become beautiful places of worship.
SPEAKER_01: They become places where God's love is felt when people enter the building.
SPEAKER_01: So James is talking to them in a way that you have been saved by faith.
SPEAKER_01: So go and live in the way that you've been saved.
SPEAKER_01: Go and do faith that works.
SPEAKER_01: We find our ultimate example in the cross.
SPEAKER_01: And we also find a great summary of it in John 3.16.
SPEAKER_01: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
SPEAKER_01: See, faith, living faith, is always a visual faith.
SPEAKER_01: And faith, it is a faith that works, but not for personal benefit.
SPEAKER_01: It works because of God loves us so much, and it is transformed by that love through seeing Jesus, for reflecting on Jesus and his work on the cross and what he's done for us.
SPEAKER_01: That is faith that works.
SPEAKER_01: And let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, sometimes, Lord, uh, your word um, your word can feel like um, it can feel uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01: It can feel um that we don't measure up, or we don't um, that we can never do the things that your word asks us to do.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, help us to just come to the cross, to talk to Christ, to ask Christ to pour out his spirit more and more on our lives, so that we can come and you can chisel more at our lives as we reflect on your word, as we try to live out this Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: We hope that you've been blessed by God's Word today.
SPEAKER_02: If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.
SPEAKER_02: If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.
SPEAKER_02: Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.
SPEAKER_02: Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.
SPEAKER_02: If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.
SPEAKER_02: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.