SPEAKER_00: I'd like to ask you to turn to the book of James this morning.
SPEAKER_00: The book of James.
SPEAKER_00: We're beginning uh an in-depth verse-by-verse study of this fascinating, practical, hard-hitting, in-your-face word of God for us.
SPEAKER_00: I love the book of James.
SPEAKER_00: No, I hate the book of James.
SPEAKER_00: I just love what God does through his word to us and for us, for his glory and for our good.
SPEAKER_00: The book of James is probably the very first book of the New Testament to have been written.
SPEAKER_00: The book of James reminds us often of the book of Proverbs, in many ways, actually.
SPEAKER_00: The book of James is as timeless as the book of Proverbs and as contemporary as an internet blog.
SPEAKER_00: And just as this book in some way reminds us of the book of Proverbs, if you're into the blogosphere, Christian blogosphere, there's some phenomenal stuff out there, and this reminds me of a lot of that as well.
SPEAKER_00: It is God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: It was written long ago, and it was written to believers in a different situation, but God uses it in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: It is living, it is active, it is powerful, it is sharper than a two-edged sword, and it penetrates in here, in my life and heart, and I trust in your life and heart as well.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like us to read the first chapter of the book of James.
SPEAKER_00: We're only going to work on the first little nugget in this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And if the second service is like the first service was, this will be part one of the first nugget.
SPEAKER_00: James is not a book that you can hurry through.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a book we ought to hurry through.
SPEAKER_00: What James says, what God says to us, we need to cogitate on, ruminate on, allow it to impact the way we think, the way we function.
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't happen quickly.
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to take our time going through the book of James.
SPEAKER_00: Each week we're going to read the chapter of the section that we're in.
SPEAKER_00: Patrick and I have talked a little bit a little bit about the fact we'd actually like to involve some of you folks in the public reading of God's Word here.
SPEAKER_00: In my own heart and mind, God's given me a desire to have the Word of God, the chapter that we're in, be read for us as part of our morning worship.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd love to hear some female voices reading God's word in our presence.
SPEAKER_00: So we're looking for a pool of men and women who will help us.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're interested in a very simple way with your own fumbling, stumbling voice, to just bless us by reading the scriptures with us every once in a while.
SPEAKER_00: Get a hold of Patrick or get a hold of me, and we'd like to have that element be a part of what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: So, but for this morning, you're stuck with me.
SPEAKER_00: But this is God's word.
SPEAKER_00: It's not Walt's words.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to read the first chapter.
SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, I would ask you to turn to that, James chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible with you, you're welcome to use the Bible in the pew in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible, then please take that Bible.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it's there for.
SPEAKER_00: So you're welcome.
SPEAKER_00: If it's not one, if you don't have a Bible, take the one that's in the pew in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: If you forgot or were too lazy or no way, to bring your own Bible, then take the Bible and read it, but leave it in the pew.
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Page 1011 in the pew Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion.
SPEAKER_00: Greetings.
SPEAKER_00: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.
SPEAKER_00: How interesting that we're thinking about the persecuted church.
SPEAKER_00: Count it all joy, brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete in lacking nothing.
SPEAKER_00: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given.
SPEAKER_00: But let him ask in faith, with no doubting.
SPEAKER_00: For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind, for that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's a double-minded man, unstable in all of his ways.
SPEAKER_00: Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation.
SPEAKER_00: And the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away.
SPEAKER_00: For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, the flower fails, and its beauty perishes, so also the rich man will fade away in the midst of his pursuits.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial.
SPEAKER_00: For when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God promised to those who love him.
SPEAKER_00: Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.
SPEAKER_00: But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
SPEAKER_00: Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth life.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.
SPEAKER_00: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
SPEAKER_00: Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
SPEAKER_00: Know this, my beloved brethren.
SPEAKER_00: Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.
SPEAKER_00: Be doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
SPEAKER_00: For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in the mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he looks like, what he was like.
SPEAKER_00: But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone thinks he is religious and doesn't bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.
SPEAKER_00: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
SPEAKER_00: Well, have you had enough?
SPEAKER_00: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
SPEAKER_00: Or if you haven't felt that, you haven't read it well.
SPEAKER_00: You haven't read it well.
SPEAKER_00: These are not words that we just hear and allow them to bounce off.
SPEAKER_00: These are words that are designed by God, who inspired through his Holy Spirit an inerrant and infallible and living word, words that are designed to penetrate and beat us up a little bit because sometimes we need beating up.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we also need the embracing, gracious arms of God that envelop us.
SPEAKER_00: It's both and.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he does.
SPEAKER_00: And it's my deep prayer that in the weeks and months ahead, we, I and you, will allow the words of God, not the words of Walt, the words of God, to penetrate into our souls, change the glasses with which we view the world, cause us to ask the right kinds of questions, and by God's grace, cause us to have a faith that works, a faith that really works.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I am calling this series of messages faith that works.
SPEAKER_00: I thought of all kinds of other titles.
SPEAKER_00: But when I thought about what the main message of this book is, it is simply that a faith that doesn't work is no faith at all.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll explore what that means.
SPEAKER_00: That could be easily misunderstood.
SPEAKER_00: But at a minimum, it means that our faith is to work.
SPEAKER_00: Not just here.
SPEAKER_00: That's really not the point.
SPEAKER_00: But out there, in our homes, in our marriages, in our work, at school, at Starbucks, at the hockey game.
SPEAKER_00: I've never once been to, well, once I've been to a hockey game.
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_00: But if it doesn't work at the hockey game, what are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00: That's what James would say.
SPEAKER_00: Does it or does it not really work out there?
SPEAKER_00: That's the question.
SPEAKER_00: The point of the book of James is that if our Christianity doesn't work in the details and the contours of our daily life, then it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: It's just as simple and as penetrating as that.
SPEAKER_00: If our Christianity doesn't work in the details of our daily life, then what are we doing?
SPEAKER_00: We are not doing what God wants to be doing in our hearts and through us in our world.
SPEAKER_00: How does it affect, how does your Christianity, these are the kinds of questions that James forces us to ask.
SPEAKER_00: He just kind of smacks us with these questions.
SPEAKER_00: How are your lips doing?
SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean do you have lipstick on today, ladies, but how about our words?
SPEAKER_00: How about our words?
SPEAKER_00: The way we talk in the privacy of our own home?
SPEAKER_00: The way we we talk at the office, the way we talk interactions with other people.
SPEAKER_00: Are we still setting forest fires aflame with gossip?
SPEAKER_00: Are you?
SPEAKER_00: Am I?
SPEAKER_00: Are we as a church?
SPEAKER_00: Are we still playing around with fire and creating creating forest fires through gossip?
SPEAKER_00: That's not faith that's working.
SPEAKER_00: So what's your faith doing with your lips?
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of question that uh the Job asks.
SPEAKER_00: How do you view people?
SPEAKER_00: How does your faith impact how you view people?
SPEAKER_00: Do you just view people, especially those who are like you and who look good and smell good?
SPEAKER_00: Those are the ones that you want to be around?
SPEAKER_00: Or does our faith cause us to see people that are very different from us, or people that smell differently from us?
SPEAKER_00: Causing us to see them as people and the love of Christ impacting how we are and what our attitude is about people?
SPEAKER_00: Are we just impressed with the rich and the famous?
SPEAKER_00: Or do we have compassion on the broken and the discouraged and the destroyed?
SPEAKER_00: Those are the kinds of things that Jabe, Job, Job, well, Job asks us some of those things, that James asks us to consider.
SPEAKER_00: Because if our faith doesn't impact us in areas like that, it's not real faith.
SPEAKER_00: We could go on.
SPEAKER_00: Does our faith affect the way we we view what we're going to do this week?
SPEAKER_00: Or are we, and we'll see the example, are we the kind of people that say, well, on Thursday I'm going to this or that city and I'm going to do this or that thing?
SPEAKER_00: And James says, You fool, you don't even know what's going to happen this afternoon, much less next week.
SPEAKER_00: No, he's not saying we don't ever have any plans.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying we don't act as though we're in control of our lives, do we?
SPEAKER_00: Or do we?
SPEAKER_00: That's really the kind of question that James forces us to deal with.
SPEAKER_00: And more pertinent to our section that we're going to be looking at is what about when things fall apart in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Now, to look at you, you've done a pretty good job of getting dressed this morning and doing your face or whatever it is, putting on decent clothes, and you've got a wonderful church smile.
SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but I know better.
SPEAKER_00: Because I look at the guy in the mirror.
SPEAKER_00: When that stuff that you are facing, those problems, those trials, how, what do you do with those?
SPEAKER_00: That's the question of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith that doesn't work when a relationship falls apart is not faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith that only works when everything's going well, when our kids are following the Lord and everything's great.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the nature of faith.
SPEAKER_00: What happens when your world falls apart?
SPEAKER_00: People disappoint you.
SPEAKER_00: When you get attacked, when you get misunderstood.
SPEAKER_00: That's when the reality of faith lives itself out in the most practical and truest way.
SPEAKER_00: Because who we are under pressure and in trials is who we are.
SPEAKER_00: Who we are in pressure and trials and disappointments is who we are.
SPEAKER_00: What happens when we go to the doctor and we get a positive lab result?
SPEAKER_00: Funny thing about the medical world: a positive lab result is always negative.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want a positive lab result.
SPEAKER_00: So when you get a positive lab result, yes, you do have fill in the blank.
SPEAKER_00: And no, there may not be a cure for it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the question that James would ask.
SPEAKER_00: So how's your faith then, my friends?
SPEAKER_00: That is the reality of the transformation, that fundamental change that comes as we come to know Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Are we perfect in it?
SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00: Are we always stirring examples of faith?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: But the point is, if it doesn't work then, then it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: And if it doesn't work then, don't tell me that when you were six years old at camp, you raised your hand and your life has been transformed.
SPEAKER_00: That may very well be true.
SPEAKER_00: I'm very appreciative of that.
SPEAKER_00: But the question is not what happened back then.
SPEAKER_00: The question is what's going on in your life now?
SPEAKER_00: And the reality of faith is how we deal with life at the present time.
SPEAKER_00: For example, James chapter 2, verse 14 and following.
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 in daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warm, be filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, is that good?
SPEAKER_00: What is that?
SPEAKER_00: So also faith by itself, if it doesn't have works, is dead.
SPEAKER_00: That's not some liberal do-gooder, that's the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: So get ready.
SPEAKER_00: Get ready for this book as we unpack it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the strong emphasis on faith living itself out is very problematic for us, and it comes nowhere more strongly than in this book.
SPEAKER_00: And this book has had a sordid history in the church because this book says things that we don't feel really comfortable with.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, no less than Martin Luther had a problem with this book.
SPEAKER_00: He said at one point, it's an epistle of straw.
SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: No, he was wrong, but he saw works of faith being played out and against works of God and justification of what God does for us.
SPEAKER_00: As though Paul is the real gospel and James is this epistle of straw.
SPEAKER_00: If he could have, and he didn't, he would have excised it from the canon of the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Now we'll deal with that when we come to it, because faith and uh and works go absolutely together.
SPEAKER_00: The works are the fruit of our faith that we receive as we trust Christ.
SPEAKER_00: One is the root, the other is the fruit, but one without the other is not real.
SPEAKER_00: Have you got both?
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of question that James asks us.
SPEAKER_00: I remember as a new believer with all of the wisdom and experience of a believer who was a few months old in Christ, an arrogant, young, obnoxious college kid who, by God's grace and the work of crew, came to faith my sophomore year in college, but by the end of my sophomore year, I was refusing to read the book of James.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that wonderful?
SPEAKER_00: What an arrogant jerk.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't agree with me.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: So I only listen to God's word when it agrees with me.
SPEAKER_00: Foolish, immature, ridiculous, sinful.
SPEAKER_00: But we're going to struggle with some of those things as we walk through here.
SPEAKER_00: It works in Starbucks, it works at the doctor's office, it works as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
SPEAKER_00: And if it doesn't, it's not real faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's that simple and that painful.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at the first part of James 1, 1 through 4.
SPEAKER_00: This morning.
SPEAKER_00: We'll do part two next week, unless God gives a miracle and I get done this time with everything that I want to say.
SPEAKER_00: The focus in these verses are what we will call spiritual resilience.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read that again.
SPEAKER_00: James, a servant of God.
SPEAKER_00: We're just going to walk through this and try to bring it to light and try to apply it in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings.
SPEAKER_00: Count it all joy, my brothers.
SPEAKER_00: If he had been politically correct, he would have said, brothers and sisters, if he was talking today.
SPEAKER_00: Count it all joy, people.
SPEAKER_00: When you meet trials of various kinds.
SPEAKER_00: For you know something.
SPEAKER_00: You know that the testing of your faith produces something steadfastness, spiritual resilience.
SPEAKER_00: And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1 is uh introductory, but it's not to be skipped over as though it's, oh yes, just uh uh an introduction.
SPEAKER_00: There are some important things for us to see here.
SPEAKER_00: The the book of James is one of what we call the general epistles.
SPEAKER_00: An epistle, we don't tend to use that term very much anymore, but an epistle is simply a letter, not just any letter.
SPEAKER_00: It's typically it's it's a letter that that really has a message of significance intended by the author for the readers.
SPEAKER_00: I got thinking about this, and uh I don't know uh how many of you who have uh fathers who have kids who have gone off to college.
SPEAKER_00: I know a number of us, somewhere in the first month or two at college, we we wrote a letter to our kids.
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't just, hey, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: Are you enjoying the season?
SPEAKER_00: It was a letter with a message of whatever would be appropriate.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've received letters like that from somebody who loves you and cares for you deeply.
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature of an epistle.
SPEAKER_00: It's called a general epistle because it's not written specifically to a given local church, the church in Ephesus or the church in Rome or the church in Corinth or the church in Philippi, like many, but not all of Paul's letters, epistles were written to.
SPEAKER_00: But this, together with 1st and 2 Peter, 1, 2nd, and 3 John and Jude, at least these books were written to a group of believers in a group of churches, but not in one particular geographical area.
SPEAKER_00: So that's really all that that is saying.
SPEAKER_00: In this case, he was writing to believers who were scattered.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't in the mother church in Jerusalem where James had been the leading figure.
SPEAKER_00: They were scattered, they were in the dispersion, they were living as strangers and aliens out there among the Gentile world.
SPEAKER_00: The twelve tribes of Israel, it's writing to the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve tribes of Israel were no longer in the land.
SPEAKER_00: They were no longer easily identified in the particular areas of the Holy Land as they had been.
SPEAKER_00: They were dispersed, they were strewn, they were, the term is diaspora or diaspora, spora for seed, uh, dia for through, as though the seeds had been thrown out in the field, and that came as a result of persecution.
SPEAKER_00: Church founded in the day of Pentecost, almost all or all Jewish believers at that point.
SPEAKER_00: Continued on, great preaching, great growth.
SPEAKER_00: And then there was the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts chapter 7, and that led to a persecution.
SPEAKER_00: A persecution which God allowed or gave.
SPEAKER_00: So God at least allowed the persecution to come, and he scattered the believers that had been in Jerusalem out into the Gentile nations.
SPEAKER_00: God uses bad things for good purposes.
SPEAKER_00: The persecution of those believers was not in and of itself a good thing, but God used it for good, both in their lives and for the blessing of the church and the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Just as we saw in that video.
SPEAKER_00: I so appreciate that video.
SPEAKER_00: A year and a half ago, I was up in that area in northern India in some very remote villages.
SPEAKER_00: I was part of a group that I was trying to figure out whether we were going to send missionaries to that part.
SPEAKER_00: And that village and that church scene of them sitting around the floor and so forth is exactly what I saw.
SPEAKER_00: And that kind of opposition.
SPEAKER_00: And God uses that for good and for his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: And the believers that I have seen over the years in various parts of the world who are in very difficult circumstances, they don't ask us to feel sorry for them.
SPEAKER_00: They actually, if you really would get a number of them talking, they would feel sorry for us.
SPEAKER_00: Because we've got it so good, and we don't value and appreciate what we have, and it doesn't produce within us steadfastness in the same way they have.
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, we should pray for the persecuted church, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: When we pray, we should also ask that we might have, as James says, is a sign of faith that works, the same kind of steadfastness in the issues that we face in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: The pressures and trials in their lives produced something good.
SPEAKER_00: The pressures and trials in our lives are to produce something good.
SPEAKER_00: They were scattered in a hostile environment.
SPEAKER_00: They were out of their comfort zone and the warmth of the believers of the church in Jerusalem, and they were out in society that was opposed to them, that didn't underscore and support their values that was hostile to them.
SPEAKER_00: And we are as well.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've noticed that.
SPEAKER_00: Our society has fundamentally changed, and it is not likely to change back.
SPEAKER_00: There was a time in which the values of believers, of the Christian worldview at least, were supported in schools and civic organizations.
SPEAKER_00: That day is gone, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've noticed it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've realized it's come to North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: I know some of you had because we've had some conversations about this with a couple of you this past week.
SPEAKER_00: Well, get used to it and embrace it.
SPEAKER_00: Don't moan and groan about things aren't the way they used to, and we used to be able to have prayer in schools, and we used to be able to do this, and we used to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_00: I grieve those things myself, but that must not be the dominant reaction.
SPEAKER_00: We have before us in our society, we scattered now among the heathen nations, the Gentiles, the unbelievers, those who don't share our worldview and don't value us, in fact, quite the contrary.
SPEAKER_00: We have an opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: We have an opportunity to be salt and light, and we have an opportunity to be vibrant and strong.
SPEAKER_00: You look at the history of the Christian church, and you will find, I dare you to study this in church history, you will find that the church has never been vibrant and strong when it's wealthy and accepted by society.
SPEAKER_00: It is vibrant and strong when there is opposition and people have to take a stand for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We are not helped by what we have had.
SPEAKER_00: And all of the Christian bookstores and all of the Christian radio stations and all of the Christian dentists and all of the things that we we think are so wonderful, and I'm not opposed to any of that, my friends, but has that made us as a church vibrant?
SPEAKER_00: Has that made us to demonstrate practically the reality of a faith that's alive, the way James talks about it?
SPEAKER_00: I think we have great opportunities ahead of us.
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
SPEAKER_00: I think the word of God is all the more powerful in dark days.
SPEAKER_00: I think the light of the gospel and the light of believers, as imperfect as we are, will shine far greater if we will allow it in a dark culture that is rushing towards the abyss.
SPEAKER_00: We have opportunities while it's still day.
SPEAKER_00: So let's not get all wrapped up feeling sorry for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't feel the least bit sorry for you in that regard.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I rather suspect that God, in his goodness and grace, is allowing the American church, and it's only just begun.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not conspiratorial.
SPEAKER_00: I just think that there have been fundamental shifts in the tectonic plates that aren't going to be moved back, and we better just embrace it and be the people of God in the time and place that God has placed us.
SPEAKER_00: That is faith that is alive.
SPEAKER_00: Gee, I can't figure out why I didn't finish my message this morning.
SPEAKER_00: The writer.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's that's true.
SPEAKER_00: But do you realize what he could have said about himself?
SPEAKER_00: How he could have introduced himself?
SPEAKER_00: I'm James.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know who my big brother is?
SPEAKER_00: Let me just read a real brief overview of James' life.
SPEAKER_00: James was none other than a blood brother, a half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Same mother, different father.
SPEAKER_00: The Gospels mentioned this fact, Matthew, Mark, text references.
SPEAKER_00: Apparently at first he was an unbeliever, John 7.5, for even his own brothers did not believe him.
SPEAKER_00: However, during the 40-day period between Jesus' resurrection and his ascension, Jesus, quote, appeared to James and to all the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 15, 7, and James believed.
SPEAKER_00: James is mentioned as being in the upper room in Jerusalem, praying with his mother and the rest of the disciples in Acts 1, was presumably present on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was given, and the church was, as we know it, was born.
SPEAKER_00: James, when Peter was imprisoned and then released from prison, became the leader of the church in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And James became the leader of the Council of Jerusalem in Acts chapter 15, which dealt with some of the earliest theological issues that we know of.
SPEAKER_00: This is James.
SPEAKER_00: The writer says, James was a late bloomer, but he flowered well.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a great expression.
SPEAKER_00: He was a late bloomer, but he flowered well.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that's true for us.
SPEAKER_00: And when he truly came to know Christ, this boyhood background of his was not wasted.
SPEAKER_00: He became known as James the Just, a man of immense piety.
SPEAKER_00: That's James.
SPEAKER_00: And I just find it so instructive that he doesn't go into any of that when he presents himself.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't pull out his resume.
SPEAKER_00: Well, actually he does.
SPEAKER_00: He pulls out the only point of note on his resume.
SPEAKER_00: I am a doulos, a slave of God and of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: What do we do with our resumes?
SPEAKER_00: How do we present ourselves?
SPEAKER_00: Resumes are strange and awkward things.
SPEAKER_00: But I find that if we're not careful, we present ourselves in all of the wrong ways.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Walt Barrett.
SPEAKER_00: Are you impressed?
SPEAKER_00: I want you to be deeply impressed.
SPEAKER_00: All a doctorate means is you've been willing to play the academic game and do the jump through the hoops that are necessary.
SPEAKER_00: That's really all it means.
SPEAKER_00: I have a friend, a dear friend, who uh was a dentist.
SPEAKER_00: And he would always introduce himself.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
SPEAKER_00: John.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
SPEAKER_00: John.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
SPEAKER_00: John.
SPEAKER_00: I'm teaching the Sunday school class.
SPEAKER_00: What was that all about?
SPEAKER_00: Are we trying to impress each other?
SPEAKER_00: You want to be impressive, be a slave to God and to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's the only thing on your resume that counts.
SPEAKER_00: And if it's not there, then you don't have much to boast about.
SPEAKER_00: I personal preference, I'll get my licks in.
SPEAKER_00: My personal preference is that you just call me Walt.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you insist on calling me Pastor Barrett or Pastor Walt?
SPEAKER_00: Now I understand for many of you that's an expression of love and respect, and I cherish that.
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't help me to be made into a third sex as though I'm fundamentally different from anyone else around here.
SPEAKER_00: That's baloney.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't help me, and frankly, it doesn't help you.
SPEAKER_00: So I would just say, let's be careful how we present ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting that James the Just presented himself as James the humble, the non-pretentious.
SPEAKER_00: Just a doulos.
SPEAKER_00: Just a bondservant.
SPEAKER_00: All he really wanted people to know is that he was enslaved to God and to his son Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the term doulos here.
SPEAKER_00: It's a bondservant.
SPEAKER_00: This is not like in Downton Abbey where you've got this whole, you know, the upstairs help and the downstairs help and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: This is a slave, pure and simple.
SPEAKER_00: Had no opportunity or no rights to exercise his own will.
SPEAKER_00: The only will that matters is the will of the master of the slave.
SPEAKER_00: Has no concern for his own rights.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, a slave doesn't really have any rights, and neither do we.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, America.
SPEAKER_00: Inalienable rights.
SPEAKER_00: The only right you have is what God chooses in his goodness and grace to give you.
SPEAKER_00: You do not have a right to happiness, you do not have a right to wealth, you do not have a right to good health.
SPEAKER_00: All you have a right to, you don't want.
SPEAKER_00: What we deserve, we don't want.
SPEAKER_00: What we've earned, we don't want, and that is hell.
SPEAKER_00: Our only rights have been received from the hands of a gracious God.
SPEAKER_00: So I know I don't make a very good American, that's because I lived overseas for 30 years, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: But we always talk about our rights.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't we talk about our obligations?
SPEAKER_00: Is there something fundamentally ungodly about that?
SPEAKER_00: No way.
SPEAKER_00: That is a fundamental stance.
SPEAKER_00: And being a slave?
SPEAKER_00: A slave to the God of glory and the universe, there is no higher calling.
SPEAKER_00: And how we see ourselves and present ourselves does matter.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I want to make three weeks out of this, but I am going to stop at this point.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say a couple of things.
SPEAKER_00: Today is Sunday, November 8th, 2015.
SPEAKER_00: And God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: He was on the throne in the lives of these people to whom this was written.
SPEAKER_00: He was good and gracious and kind, fulfilling his good purposes, always and only good to them.
SPEAKER_00: He is good and kind to those people in northern India, always and only good to them, using bad things for good purposes.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God specializes in.
SPEAKER_00: Others may mean it for evil.
SPEAKER_00: God uses it for good.
SPEAKER_00: God is still in your life with whatever it is that you are facing.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever hurts, whatever disappointment, whatever struggles, whatever deep despair, whatever pain.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not making light of any of that.
SPEAKER_00: You have no idea what my pain is.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know much about yours, and we don't always have to undress in front of everybody.
SPEAKER_00: I just know that there's issues in your life, but what I also know is that God reigns, God is alive, God cares, God is involved.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the devil that's in the details, it's God that's in the details, and we find him there and we trust him there, and he is gracious and good and sufficient for the readers here, for the people in India, and for you and me.
SPEAKER_00: How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Patrick.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure who the organist is now.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to close with one of the great hymns of the faith.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how familiar you are with it.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what this hymn is affirming.
SPEAKER_00: It's telling us about who God is, and that is what leads to spiritual resilience.