Faith with Fruit | James 2:14-26 | Micah Hales

Guest speaker Micah Hales continues in the book of James, teaching about how a living life of faith produces fruit. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's East Side. We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, like Jared said, my name's Mike. I get to serve here on staff with the Salt Company, our college ministry. Uh, most of our students are gone this week. It is spring break or overlapping spring break. So, like, there'd be like 20, 25 more students that are sitting here in the front rows. So I'm gonna need you to bring up the crowd engagement from what Jared's announcements. That was weak sauce. We can do better, okay? Um this morning I want to start uh with a little bit of a word picture. How many of you like apple orchards? Raise your hands. I know you're in here. I know you got the flannels in the closet. You're like, it's starting to get a little warmer out. I kind of wish apples were growing now and not the fall. Okay, you know who you are. Um I want you to picture that you're walking through an apple orchard. Okay, and it's not now, it's later on. It's like the fall, uh, not quite harvest time yet, but pretty close. And you're walking in an apple orchard and you're walking through a grove of trees. I'm pretty sure that's the word if you're an arborist. Check me. Okay. Uh, and you're walking and you see off in the distance there's two trees that are not with the rest of the trees. Okay, and they're they're far enough away where you're like, okay, uh, I'm not sure why those two trees are by themselves, but uh they look pretty similar. Okay, so you're looking at them off in a distance, and and what your curiosity tells you is to hey, I want to go get a closer look at those trees. So you start walking, and as you get closer to the trees, uh you start to notice that when you thought those trees were the same, you start to notice some differences. So the tree on the the the left, we'll say the left side, okay, the first tree, uh, that tree you notice, oh okay, it's actually looks pretty healthy. It's got uh a good root system, okay. Uh the trunk is nice and strong looking, uh, the leaves are green, yeah, and it seems to have some fruit on it. And then you notice also now the the the other tree, the tree next to it, it doesn't look the same. So while this tree looked really healthy in an ideal tree that you want to see in an apple orchard when you're paying $50 just to get in, right? Uh to walk around and play some games and pick some apples, that's the tree you want to see. You notice the tree next to it is actually not like the other tree at all. See what you start to notice is the tree to the right, it doesn't have a strong root system. Looks like that thing is barely in the ground. It doesn't have a strong trunk. Okay, it looks like it could go back and forth in the wind. Maybe it falls over today, you don't know. And it's got some leaves and it's a little bit withered, right? And you look on the branches and you're like, oh, well, there's actually no apples on that tree. Like there's nothing there at all. And you notice that these two trees, even though you thought that they were indistinguishable from each other from a distance, as you get closer, you start to notice that they're not the same at all. So these two both look like a tree from a distance. They look like a healthy tree from a distance, but only one of them is bearing fruit and alive. And the other tree isn't alive at all. And ultimately, whoever the farmer is that maintains that orchard, he isn't going to get any fruit produced out of that dead tree and likely eventually will either prune it or cut it down or do away with it from the orchard. See, in this illustration of these two trees, first the living tree, it represents the person who claims to be a Christian and has faith that is living and active. Okay. The living Christian, the living tree Christian is not just sitting there, like withering away, not producing fruit, but is actively producing fruit through their good works. This is the tree that you know just by looking at it, that it's like undoubtedly alive. Because of the fruit on the tree, it's unmistakable. And the second tree, well, the dead tree, it represents the person who claims to be a Christian and says they have faith, but they are dead in their actions and works. Like they aren't bearing any fruit through their good works. Like they look like a healthy tree off in the distance, but when you examine them up close, they aren't bearing fruit. And you can tell just by looking at them that they're undoubtedly dead because of the lack of fruit on the tree. It's unmistakable. And here's the point in sharing that story with you. It's not just because I like apples. But we have a lot of people all over the world, not just here in the States, who claim to be healthy trees. Like we have a lot of people who claim to be Christians all over this world. There are so many people who claim Jesus with things like the Bible verse in their Instagram bio. Okay? Maybe that's you. But they haven't read their Bible in months. There are people who claim Jesus with their cross necklaces and their cross tattoos, even the clothes that they wear, but they've never actually laid down their life at the foot of the cross at all. And like the second tree, when you start to get a closer look at these people, you start to notice that there isn't any fruit being produced at all. Like maybe you're even sitting here today and you're starting to realize that someone you know, or maybe even you yourself, might be more like that dead tree than you thought you were. Y'all, we have a problem in Christianity where we have an awful lot of people that claim faith in Jesus, but their faith does not bear fruit. And here's the deal: if your faith isn't bearing fruit, your faith might be dead. And in our passage this morning in the book of James, what we're gonna see is James telling us in pretty blunt terms, like James does, right? If you've been through this James series with us, you know that James does not mess around in how he delivers things. He's gonna say that if you aren't bearing fruit through good works, if you aren't living out your faith, then you just might be a dead tree. But for those of you who are in the room today who want to have a faith that's truly alive and follow Jesus from that living faith, James has some things for us to know. And this morning we'll talk about this in the form of two kind of main points that come from this text, but more on that in a bit. Uh, if you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and open them to James chapter two. If you don't have a Bible, we have Bibles in the pews and the backs of the pews in front of you. We also would love to give you a Bible for free at the Connect area if you don't have a physical copy of God's Word. James is in the latter half of the New Testament. Use your table of contents if you need to. Um, we've all been there before, but we're gonna be in James chapter two, verses fourteen through twenty six this morning. So if you got it, say got it. Goodness, I don't even have it. What am I doing here? I had a bookmarked and everything. Uh okay, I'll read this for us. Starting in verse 14. James says this, What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works, can such faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed, but you don't give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself. But someone will say, You have faith and I have works, show me your faith without works, and I will show you faith by my works. You believe that God is one, good, even the demons believe and they shudder. Senseless person, are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless? Wasn't Abraham our father justified by works and offering his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works faith was made complete, and the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone in the same way. Wasn't Rahab the prostitute also justified by works and receiving the messengers and sending them out by a different route? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. So we've been journeying through this book of James in our current sermon series, uh, and we've covered a lot of ground already in the first two chapters in this book. We're coming off a week where Jared uh preached about not showing favoritism, okay, and and we talked about the gospel not being anti-work, but it's anti-earning. Okay, and the week before that, Marcus Jones, one of our guest speakers, encouraged us to do the word and not just to talk about it, but but to be about it. You guys remember that one? That was good, that was convicting. And this morning we'll be looking at building on some of those ideas, in a sense, in our text as we come to the topic of faith and works. How many of you are liking this sermon series so far? How many of you like getting hit in the mouth by James every week? It's great, right? How many of you like getting dunked on by that guy to use a March reference since we're in March Madness? Okay. Uh well, today James is gonna dunk on us again by talking about faith and works. And as I mentioned before, he's gonna show us some things about how we can have a faith that's alive and not dead. And this morning they'll come in the form of two truths. So the first of which is this. It's gonna be up on the screen for us. Faith that's alive grows fruit for Christ. Okay, think back to our two trees with me for a minute. Okay, from a distance, they looked almost indistinguishable from one another, but when we got close, we started to notice some stark differences between the two trees. Okay, the first thing you might notice is the roots. Okay. The roots of the tree. The healthy tree has a wide, healthy root system. Okay, when you look at the healthy tree, you see that the tree is rooted deep into the soil. Okay, it has a great foundation in its root system. It has a thick, strong roots that look as if they go super far into the ground. Like that healthy tree, it's not going anywhere when the wind comes along and tries to knock it over because that thing is solid. But the dead tree, the dead tree has narrow, sort of like sickly looking roots. And when you look closely at the dead tree, you see a tree that isn't firmly entrenched in the soil, and it has thin, weak roots that look as if they're barely even in the ground at all. Excuse me. That dead tree could fall over at any moment, even when a light wind comes through. Like it's withered, it's crumbling, it's weak. The roots of both of these trees, they represent our internal faith in Christ. See, when we have a faith in Christ, we're rooted in Him. We get our nutrients from Him. We get everything we need from Him. But the difference between these two trees is that one of them has a weak relationship with Christ. One of them never grew and never developed their root system through pursuing Jesus. And the other grew in their foundation in Jesus by running hard after him, spreading his word and reading his word and praying to him as often as they could. See, we want to be like the healthy tree. We want to develop some deep, strong, anchored roots in our faith in Jesus. And the only way that we can do that is through the Holy Spirit. Which brings us to the next thing we might notice about the trees, and that's the sap. Okay. SAP gets me excited for maple syrup season, whenever that is, when I talk about it. This one's a little harder to notice, okay? This is like an internal thing to the tree, especially the apple tree. I looked it up, I'm not an arborist, but that's true. Okay. But if you were to chop down both of our two trees, okay, chill out, environmentalists. It's an illustration. Jared told me I could I could uh illustratively chop these trees down for you this morning. But if you did cut them down, here's what you would notice. You notice something about their internal elements. Okay, the healthy tree, you could see that it actually has this stuff called sap within it. Okay, and and and what feeling and seeing that sap tells us is that a tree is getting what's in its root system and it's pumping it up all throughout its trunk and its branches. Like it's taking the source of its nutrients and making sure that it literally saturates the entire tree with it. That's what the sap does. But the dead tree, you'd cut that thing open and you'd see that there's no signs of sap in it. It's likely brittle because it's been so long since that tree had delivered sap from the roots to the branches that you wouldn't ever know that it had it flowing in it before. It's abandoned the source of nutrients and its life, because of it, it has dried out completely. The sap on both of these trees represents the Holy Spirit working within us. The Holy Spirit is what causes us to live out our faith despite our sinful nature still being present. And the difference between our two trees is that one of them ignored the Holy Spirit living within them, and because of it, has dried out all the sap from its trunk and its branches, and it isn't letting the fullness of God's Holy Spirit thrive. But the other, the healthy tree, let the Holy Spirit flow and go wherever he chose in their life and from their trunk to their branches. Because of that, the healthy tree was full of sap and fullness of life. Like you want to be the healthy tree, full of life in the Holy Spirit, full of sap, letting the Spirit go and move us wherever He pleases, which is what leads us to the last thing we'll notice about the tree, and that's the fruit. This is the last thing we notice about the trees, but it's it's arguably the most obvious. Okay? The healthy tree. Well, the healthy tree is actually growing fruit on its branches. The healthy tree is growing fruit in season, year over year, producing fruit to benefit the farmer who planted it. Okay, its branches are overflowing with fruit because this tree is alive, y'all. From the deep roots to the living sap to the fruit-filled branches, this tree is healthy because it's doing what it was made to do. But the dead tree. The dead tree is not bearing any fruit at all. The dead tree hasn't grown fruit in recent memory. Like the dead tree might even have the desire to grow fruit. Maybe it even wants to grow fruit, but the dead tree can't do it because it doesn't have the root system. It doesn't have the sap. It doesn't, it isn't doing what it was made to do in the first place. And because of that, it cannot grow fruit that it needs in order to not be cut off by the farmer. And here's the point of all this tree comparison talk this morning. It's that if you have faith that's truly alive, you will grow fruit for Christ. You can't claim to have faith and never show it. And hear me when I say this, there will be seasons where you grow more fruit than others. There may be seasons where you feel like you've been, you haven't been as fruitful. And in those seasons where it feels difficult to see fruit being produced, you might even be trying to grow fruit and do good works for Christ, but there's just something that like blocks that from happening. Like if you're in one of those seasons, maybe there's some sin that you need to confess. Maybe there's something that you haven't told anybody else about that you need to be healed of through confessing it to other believers, as James says in another chapter in James. Maybe there's even something that is distracting you from being able to truly grow fruit, that you need to cut out that thing from your life. Okay, for a lot of you, maybe it's social media. Okay, maybe it's the news. Goodness. Turn that thing off. Or something else you're obsessing over, like a nutrition or fashion trend. Okay, like seed oils like me. Don't eat seed oils, guys. They're bad. Man dies. That's that's just I just had to throw that in there. And because of that distraction, okay, you haven't been able to see as much fruit. Or even any fruit. And here's the thing: the time is now to cut that out. You do not want to end up like the dead tree. But regardless of which season you're in, whether you're producing fruit now or it doesn't feel like you are, if your life doesn't ever bear fruit and you claim Jesus, something needs to change. James puts it super, super bluntly, as he always does in verse 14. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him? Okay, James says, What good is it if you have faith but not works? Or in other words, what good is it if you're a tree, if you're someone claiming Christ, but you don't grow fruit? Can that faith even save you? James has a point here. There's so many people who claim Jesus, but you could not tell if you looked at their life. Like they walk around like this person in verses 15 through 17. It says, if a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food, and one of them says to you, Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed, but you don't give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself. James is like, if you see a person who clearly needs something, and you don't give them what they need, or at least point them to someone or some group that can fill that need, what good is your faith? That's how serious he's taking this. Good works are growing fruit should flow out of us because we have faith. Okay? We don't grow fruit to become a living tree. But rather we grow fruit because we are a living tree. Or in other words, good works don't save us, but are the evidence that we are saved. And that sums up James's statement in verse 18 perfectly. He says this. But someone will say, You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without works, and I will show you faith by my works. Y'all, if we have faith, if we have Jesus, if we are a living tree, fruit will be grown. This is so important because there are people out there who claim to believe in God who don't show any evidence of faith in their life through works. And here's the question for those people if they aren't growing fruit, if they aren't doing the good works that flow from their faith, what is separating them in their life from the enemies of God? Verse 19. James says, You believe that God is one, good. Even the demons believe and they shudder. He says, Even the demons believe and they fear God. If you claim to have faith in Jesus, if you fear God, if you acknowledge that God is real and even who he says he is, but your life isn't showing it through good works, what is there to separate your life from any of God's enemies? Like it might sound brutal coming from James, and it kind of is in a sense. But he's trying to get us to understand that if we aren't growing fruit for Christ, our faith is almost no different from his enemies. And they aren't claiming to be in Christ at all. If God's enemies are trees, those suckers are dead as can be. Those people who claim Christ but don't have works, some of them might even say, Well, well, I've I've volunteered once before. Like I I went down to Hope Street and I volunteered, right? Like I I did my time, I've I've done time helping people in the past. Like I gave up a Saturday to serve soup a couple of times. I'm good. Like I've done my works. Saying you're a healthy tree, but you have that and that you have done works in the past, but not currently, or not. Recently, it's like trying to stick some fake plastic apples on a dead tree and say that it's alive. Or to use an analogy, my grandpa used to say, maybe this will resonate more with you. It's like putting lipstick on a pig. You can try and doll it up, but at the end of the day, you can't make it something that it's not. So the question for us now if you claim to have faith in Christ, if you claim to be alive in him, are you growing fruit? Are you doing good works that flow out of your faith in him? Are you differentiating yourself from even God's enemies? Because faith that's really alive, it isn't stagnant, but it is actively growing fruit for clock for Christ. And ultimately, faith that's alive gives glory to Christ. Okay, faith that's truly alive, good works that flow from like a foundation in Christ, they will ultimately give him glory above all else. You can do a bunch of good things. You can do a lifetime of good works, but if they don't give glory to Jesus, it's all flowing from the wrong place. See, just doing good works, that doesn't actually mean you have faith that's alive. Like anybody on planet earth can do good works if they really wanted to, despite our sinful nature. By God's grace, it does happen without those people doing them from having a faith that's alive. But those good works, ultimately without giving any glory to Christ, they're coming from the wrong place. They're likely coming from a place of guilt or obligation or pridefulness, attention seeking, or even a place that seeks to earn the favor of God Himself. These kinds of works are not evidence of faith, but they can be evidence of the absence of it. Faith that's truly alive, it will produce good works that don't flow from a place of trying to earn favor or to check a box or to seek attention, but it will produce works that say, the only reason that I am doing this is because I want to give God the glory for what he has already done in me. Faith that's truly alive produces good works like that of Abraham. If you haven't read the story, it's found in Genesis 22. We're not going to go through the whole thing right now, but you can read that on your own time later. It's incredible. Okay, maybe you've heard this before. Abraham, he's given an opportunity by God to show his faith in him. By doing what? By actually sacrificing his only son, Isaac, who was born to him in old age. And I phrase this as an opportunity because if you read the text before Genesis 22, God has been blessing Abraham immensely. Like Abraham had all the livestock, right? He had all the resources. God had been blessing this man. And then it said, God tested Abraham. Okay, or in other words, God gave Abraham an opportunity to show his faith by doing what God asked him to do. And Abraham is quoted as saying, God himself will provide. Okay, he has faith that God will do what is best. And ultimately, what happens is that Abraham says yes to this opportunity to show his face by sacrificing his only son, displaying that God should get all the glory, and God eventually says, Abraham, stop. Don't touch your son. Now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld even your son from me. But what does God do? Abraham asked for it. Abraham assumed it was happening. Abraham was confident that God would provide. God provides. He provides a ram to sacrifice in place of his son, and then declares that because of Abraham's willingness to do what God desires, even if it meant sacrificing his only child, never to have another one after, even if it meant that, that he will bless Abraham and Abraham's offspring for generations. But here's the point it's that Abraham had faith in God that was truly alive. And because of that living faith, he was willing to do whatever work God asked him to do, even if it meant losing his only son in the process and glorifying God, anyways. See, God has already blessed Abraham greatly in his life, but not just with possessions, family, and resources, although that was true. But God had truly blessed Abraham by giving him hope, by giving him faith and salvation through him, the true God of the universe alone. See, faith that's alive like Abraham's, it doesn't just do good works just to do them. But it does good works out of a posture of faith that's flowing with gratitude towards God and what he has done, and ultimately it glorifies God above all else. Maybe the most incredible of that part of that account of Abraham and Isaac, and Abraham's choice to do what God asked him to do, to do the work, is that it's a direct foreshadowing of what was to come later on in history in Abraham's family. See, though Abraham didn't ultimately need to sacrifice his only son that day when God asked him to, God ultimately chooses to sacrifice his only son Jesus, even when he didn't have to. This is the sacrifice that God makes in order so that we can have faith in him. This is God's way for us to have faith when we would never choose him otherwise. This is the way that we can have faith that overflows into good works and grows fruit and gives God glory. And ultimately, when we have genuine faith that's alive in Christ and not dead, it pours out into our good works and we will give Christ the glory. Because here's the thing Jesus didn't stay dead, y'all. Oh no. Jesus didn't stay dead. But God raised him from the dead. And Jesus walked right out of that grave after three days, and Jesus is still alive to this day. So if we claim to have faith in Jesus, who's alive and he's active today, but our faith is dead, we are not truly living. Y'all, we're not living. If our faith isn't growing fruit for Christ, if our faith isn't giving the glory to Christ, then something has got to change. Here's my challenge to two different groups of people in the room. To the non-Christians, it's this. It's to go to Jesus and it's to give him your life. Like you might have made it this far. You're thinking, I don't claim Christ, but I have works. Like, is that enough? Can I earn my way? And if that's you, you need to know that no amount of good works, no amount of good deeds can earn your way into God's graces. You need to know that you can't do anything that can outweigh the sin debt that you owe a holy God. You can spend your whole life trying to earn, earn, earn, doing countless good works over decades of time, even the rest of your life, and at the end of the day, you cannot do enough to appease the wrath of God on your own. But the beautiful thing about the gospel is that it actually says exactly that. It says, you can't save yourself. You can't. But Jesus can. See, while you can never earn your way into heaven through good works and trying to grow fruit without faith in order to pay your debt, Jesus has already paid it in full. It's Jesus' finished work on the cross that allows anybody who has placed their faith in Jesus, in him, for the forgiveness of sins to be saved. So if you're a non-Christian in the room, my challenge to you wouldn't be to grow fruit, but it's to go to Jesus and to give him your life. All you have to do is confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you'll be saved today.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Right now.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

And if you've placed your faith in Jesus today for the first time, you can take a deep breath. Because you don't have to earn it anymore. You're saved by grace. You're not saved by good works. And those good works that you've been trying to stack up to earn your way into God's graces, those aren't for earning your way to salvation anymore. But now they can come from a place of someone who has already been forgiven and now wants to give Christ the glory. Which brings me to my challenge to the Christians. If you're claiming Christ and you're a Christian in the room, this is for you. The challenge for you is to grow fruit and to give him glory. If you follow Jesus and your life, it's not growing fruit. There's something that needs to change. If our lives look nothing different from that person who does not claim Christ, how are we living any different from them? Our faith should be alive. It should be active. It should be producing fruit through our works and not just one time. Not just a Saturday three years ago at the soup kitchen. But for the rest of our lives until Jesus calls us home. This could look like actually helping meet a physical need of a person you know that is struggling. Okay, this could look like helping your neighbor with a task that God has given you the skill to complete, but they can't do it themselves. It could look like going above and beyond your job description at work in order to help a customer or a coworker that needs assistance. It could look like making a meal for a family that you know is in a tough season or just had a baby or something else. It could even look like encouraging a friend or listening to someone who needs to bear their heart about something. The list goes on and on of the works that we could do for others because good works can be anything that you do in faith to glorify God and to serve others. And those works, they shouldn't ever be for our glory, but they should always be for his glory. And when we live a life that's growing fruit and giving him the glory that he is due, we're doing exactly what we're supposed to do. Now, what could God do with a room full of Christians who are doing exactly what they were created to do? What could God do with a group of Christians who are not just doing good works to just check a box or to impress someone or even God Himself, but instead we're growing fruit, we're doing good works and giving God the glory because of what he has already done for us through the finished work of his son. I imagine a city that would be absolutely smothered with genuine good works. A city that would be not so divisive. A city that would be full of love and of care for one another, and ultimately a city that would be transformed with the message of the gospel through this room. Let's pray that that would be true of us this morning. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this room. God, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the good work, the finished work of Jesus on the cross. God, I pray that this room, these Christians in this room, Lord, would have a faith that's alive, Lord, that grows fruit for you. Lord, that ultimately gives glory to you, who deserves it all. Lord, I pray that this city would be transformed because of this.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

God, I pray that you would help Milwaukee be a city that is full of people whose faith that's alive and not dead, Lord. I pray all this in your name. Amen.

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Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast. To learn more, visit ambassadormke.org or follow us on Instagram at Ambassador MKE. And if you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 10 a.m. at 2308 East Bellevue Place. Grace and peace.