SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've noticed that there's uh something a little bit different here this morning uh up here on the platform.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we have faith in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice that?
SPEAKER_00: The first few months when we were here, faith had apparently fallen down or had been taken down.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and then one one Sunday I noticed that faith had returned to Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: And it was over on one of the sides.
SPEAKER_00: And uh now faith is back in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's probably just coincidental, but wouldn't that be wonderful if that was what is really true?
SPEAKER_00: That faith is at the heart of who we are and how we live.
SPEAKER_00: Um today is Sunday, the 3rd of April, 2016, and God is on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: He was all week long, whatever kind of a week you had.
SPEAKER_00: He is today, and he will be in the week to come.
SPEAKER_00: We have no idea what this week will bring.
SPEAKER_00: But we not only have an idea, we know with a certainty that God reigns.
SPEAKER_00: Our God is on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: Our God is good.
SPEAKER_00: Our God is loving, our God is faithful, his heart is kind, he is holy and righteous, he cares about us.
SPEAKER_00: He entered into this, his rebellious creation.
SPEAKER_00: He draws near to us even when we were far away.
SPEAKER_00: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_00: Our God is here, he is with us, he is good, and he is trustworthy.
SPEAKER_00: And so we turn to God's word because our trustworthy God, who has not left us alone, has spoken, and when he speaks, he does not stutter, and when he speaks without stuttering, he does not mislead.
SPEAKER_00: You ever thought about that?
SPEAKER_00: He speaks to us clearly and he never misleads us.
SPEAKER_00: So we may always, last week, today, and in the week to come, submit ourselves to God.
SPEAKER_00: We do that in a variety of ways, but part of the way we do that is to open his word and say, Lord, teach, teach me, help me, help me get it, help me live out that which I am learning to believe.
SPEAKER_00: If that's going to happen this morning, it's not going to be because of my clever words.
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be because you are so perceptive.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be because God graciously chooses to communicate to us.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to pray, and I would like to just ask that we might open our hearts to what God wants to say to us.
SPEAKER_00: Pray with me, would you please?
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, you are good and you are involved.
SPEAKER_00: You've not left us in our sin and misery.
SPEAKER_00: You have come to us in the gospel, Christ, crucified, resurrected, life, life abundant.
SPEAKER_00: You have spoken.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, you do not mislead us.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone else can mislead us, but you never do.
SPEAKER_00: And so we trust you.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that as we turn to your word today, that we would hear your voice speaking in the quietness of our own hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Not just my words, not just the words of James, but Lord, speak to us.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray you would give us hearts, every one of us here, every one of us here.
SPEAKER_00: Hearts that are receptive, hearts that are soft and responsive to you and to what you say to us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, have your way with us this morning, I pray.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to have you open your Bibles, please, and we're going to continue after a pause of a couple of weeks with our study in the book of James.
SPEAKER_00: Uh three weeks ago, we uh we looked at the first part of the chapter of a section of which we're going to actually be looking at the second part uh this week.
SPEAKER_00: But we began at verse 14, and that section goes through verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: Um we took some time out to stop and reflect on the meaning of baptism, a very important, uh, clear biblical subject.
SPEAKER_00: And in a few weeks, we're actually going to have a baptism service here in a couple of weeks, seeing some people giving testimony to the reality of God working in their lives, a reality of a faith that works, a faith that is real.
SPEAKER_00: Last week, how could we not speak on the resurrection and the glorious victory of the cross?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that glorious, victorious Lord speaks and communicates to us, and he led his disciple James to write these words to us, words that are not just from James, but are words from God.
SPEAKER_00: Not just for the believers in the first century, but also for us today.
SPEAKER_00: So let's read those.
SPEAKER_00: Follow along, if you would, please.
SPEAKER_00: Uh James chapter 2, verses 14 through 26.
SPEAKER_00: In the Pew Bible, it's page 100, I'm sorry, 1,012.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 14.
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: There's different kinds of faith, you realize.
SPEAKER_00: And he's talking about the real thing: a faith that is accompanied by works.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15, if a brother or sister is a good example.
SPEAKER_00: If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to him, Go in peace, be warm, be filled, good luck.
SPEAKER_00: Wish you well, I'll pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: Without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
SPEAKER_00: And it's clear that it's no good, it doesn't accomplish anything.
SPEAKER_00: So also faith by itself, if it doesn't have works, is dead.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18, but someone will say, You have faith, I have works.
SPEAKER_00: Well, 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 demons believe and shudder.
SPEAKER_00: There is a kind of belief that is intellectual only.
SPEAKER_00: Satanic forces have knowledge about God, they believe in God, they believe there's one God, there's no polytheistic demon, but it doesn't do them any good.
SPEAKER_00: Just that kind of faith.
SPEAKER_00: What is that?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be shown, you 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, and the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: He was called a friend of God.
SPEAKER_00: For you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
SPEAKER_00: 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: Now, this is a fairly dramatic high point in this book of James.
SPEAKER_00: And in effect, what he is saying in this passage from 14 to 26, the first part of which we looked at a couple weeks ago and today's, this section is like the high point or the centerpiece, uh, the centerpiece of the book of James.
SPEAKER_00: Everything has been building up to this, and everything flows out of that.
SPEAKER_00: It is the centerpiece.
SPEAKER_00: And he's talking the section we looked at last time at bogus faith, false faith.
SPEAKER_00: We compared it to monopoly money.
SPEAKER_00: If you're playing a game, monopoly money is great.
SPEAKER_00: The only problem is we're not playing a game.
SPEAKER_00: And monopoly money you can't take to the bank.
SPEAKER_00: No, there's a bogus faith that we can play around with, but that is not real faith.
SPEAKER_00: Real faith is something quite different.
SPEAKER_00: So in that first section, we we talked about the bogus faith.
SPEAKER_00: In this section, we'll talk about real faith.
SPEAKER_00: And what we're dealing with is the relationship between faith and works.
SPEAKER_00: The relationship between faith and how it works itself out in our lives in practice.
SPEAKER_00: Um there is a kind of faith that is bogus, and there is a kind of faith that is real.
SPEAKER_00: And we need to get this right, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: This is a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: This is a central issue for us.
SPEAKER_00: What is the nature of your faith and mine?
SPEAKER_00: How do we distinguish the real thing from the counterfeit?
SPEAKER_00: And James is spending this entire book dealing with it, and he kind of pulls these thoughts together.
SPEAKER_00: Everything is building up to this, everything flows out of that.
SPEAKER_00: What does real faith look like?
SPEAKER_00: James has been telling us, he started out by telling us that real faith makes a difference when our life falls apart.
SPEAKER_00: Count a joy when you meet various kinds of trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect.
SPEAKER_00: You see, real faith, when we go through horrible experiences, and don't kid yourself, life is filled with some wonderful experiences, but there are very, very difficult times in your life and in mine.
SPEAKER_00: In this world you will have tribulations.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus promised that in effect.
SPEAKER_00: He just observed that's the way a fallen and a broken world is, and you have a fallen and a broken heart.
SPEAKER_00: And we go through difficulties, sometimes soul-wrenching, gut-wrenching difficulties.
SPEAKER_00: And the person of faith goes through those, and his faith makes a difference in the midst of them.
SPEAKER_00: Not perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: We're not, we haven't arrived.
SPEAKER_00: Our lives, if it's real faith, are changed, but they're also changing.
SPEAKER_00: It's a process.
SPEAKER_00: But it affects the way we respond when life falls apart.
SPEAKER_00: And this was one of the ways that James talked about the difference between real faith and bogus faith.
SPEAKER_00: He continued on in verse 19 of chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: He started talking about the difference between hearing and doing the word, and no, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: And in the context, it has to do with how we interact with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And his exhortation to us is that real faith helps us be quick, slow, slow, not slow, quick, quick.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're left to ourselves and we get into conflicts with one another, and it happens.
SPEAKER_00: It happens with you, it happens with me, it happens all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Where does how does our faith impact that?
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, our faith, as we begin to live out our faith, it makes a difference when we get into struggles with people.
SPEAKER_00: And we begin to be quick to listen.
SPEAKER_00: Slow, slow to speak, and incredibly slow to get angry.
SPEAKER_00: But we go quick, slow, slow, slow, quick, quick, which is it?
SPEAKER_00: Now that's an outworking of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: How does our faith relate to those kinds of things?
SPEAKER_00: And James is saying it relates totally to it.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of the expression of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: And he he went on and he talked, and we looked at it a few weeks ago about worship.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, you can have a phenomenal worship experience, and it means absolutely nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You may think, well, that was great.
SPEAKER_00: I loved the music today, or I hated the music today.
SPEAKER_00: It really doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: But let's say you happen to love it, and then you were moved by it.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's all that it is, then your worship service was worthless.
SPEAKER_00: If it doesn't lead us to be different.
SPEAKER_00: And so he talked about real worship ought to lead us to bridle our tongue to a faith that is pure, a life that is pure and undefiled, and visiting orphans and these practical outworkings.
SPEAKER_00: Real faith, not bogus faith, is characterized by those things.
SPEAKER_00: And so he went on and on and on, and we've gone on and on and on, and it's only been the first chapter and a half.
SPEAKER_00: And there's three more chapters that will flow out of this.
SPEAKER_00: And James will continue to press into us.
SPEAKER_00: And he will talk about things like really taming the tongue.
SPEAKER_00: He already talked a little bit about it, but really taming the tongue is a work of an outgrowth of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's a work that comes from and goes together with real faith.
SPEAKER_00: Similarly, embracing godly wisdom instead of stiff arming what God has to say to us.
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever have times in your life in which you hold God off at a distance?
SPEAKER_00: I do, you do.
SPEAKER_00: Well, faith causes us to soften our hearts towards God, be responsive towards God.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's an expression, and without that, our faith is just talk.
SPEAKER_00: And he'll talk about avoiding quarrels and conflicts.
SPEAKER_00: He'll talk about how we plan for the future, knowing who's God and who's not.
SPEAKER_00: He is and we're not.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what the future holds.
SPEAKER_00: And that's an outworking.
SPEAKER_00: How we handle the future and make decisions about tomorrow is an expression of faith, according to James.
SPEAKER_00: So on and on it goes.
SPEAKER_00: It's the relationship between works and faith, and how do we know the bogus from the real.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the fact of the matter is that throughout church history, the church has struggled with this.
SPEAKER_00: You have struggled with it, I have struggled with it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're in company, whether it's good company or not, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_00: But as you just review how believers, throughout the centuries, there's always been this tendency to not be sure how to relate faith and works.
SPEAKER_00: And what's the proof, the litmus test of real faith?
SPEAKER_00: And how do we know whether the faith of that person or my faith is real or bogus?
SPEAKER_00: And it began even in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: You had the Judaizers who came along, and the book of Galatians deals with that and elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00: But basically, a strange thing happened.
SPEAKER_00: Non-Jews came to faith, and that was unexpected, and that was hard for the Jewish believers who had found their Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: The first believers were all messianic Jews, and then came these Gentiles, and so the question arose in the church: how do we know that's real?
SPEAKER_00: And do they have to become Jews first?
SPEAKER_00: Or can and this was a big debate.
SPEAKER_00: And James and Paul and Peter and the leaders got together in Acts 15 and sorted this out, and they made it clear there's some expressions of faith that need to be there.
SPEAKER_00: That was a question in the first century, second and third century.
SPEAKER_00: Um time of great persecution.
SPEAKER_00: It was very difficult to be a believer.
SPEAKER_00: And many believers came under persecution of various kinds, sometimes physical, sometimes social, and there was a huge tendency for people to recant their faith in Christ, to give up their faith, at least publicly.
SPEAKER_00: And then at a point in time, Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal, and now the church had a real problem.
SPEAKER_00: What about these people who had given up their faith and now want back in the front door?
SPEAKER_00: How do we know that's real?
SPEAKER_00: And this whole issue of how do you how does real faith express itself?
SPEAKER_00: This kind of thing can continued on.
SPEAKER_00: The time of the Reformation.
SPEAKER_00: At the core of the Reformation was the relationship between faith and works.
SPEAKER_00: The medieval Catholic Church had an understanding of salvation, which was kind of what we might call a works righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: By our works we will earn enough credit, or God will gain God's favor and we can be justified.
SPEAKER_00: And the reformers had a problem with this correlation of faith and works.
SPEAKER_00: And so they declared, no, uh one is saved by faith, by grace, not by works.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what it was really at its core all about.
SPEAKER_00: The interesting thing was, a half a generation, the reformers who had been persecuted became the persecutors because the Mennonites and the Anabaptists viewed things differently, and there was a struggle going on of how do we know what's real and how do we know whose faith is real.
SPEAKER_00: Same kind of thing happened in more recent times in Nazi Germany.
SPEAKER_00: The church, the German church, came under the control of Hitler and Nazism.
SPEAKER_00: And so believers and clergymen had to stand up and be counted.
SPEAKER_00: And there were some who shied away and just kind of bent their head and went along.
SPEAKER_00: And there were others who stood up and said, No, we can't go there.
SPEAKER_00: And those who said, no, I can't go there, paid a price.
SPEAKER_00: One of the more familiar examples to us is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor of the believing Evangelical Church, Protestant Church in Germany.
SPEAKER_00: Paid a price with his life.
SPEAKER_00: Shortly before the war was brought to an end, uh, he was put to death.
SPEAKER_00: But then what happens?
SPEAKER_00: Uh then the Nazis were gone.
SPEAKER_00: What about those Germans who had gone along with it?
SPEAKER_00: And where was their faith?
SPEAKER_00: And now they what are we supposed to think about them?
SPEAKER_00: Same kind of same kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: Happened the same way in Eastern Europe when the wall came down.
SPEAKER_00: Uh suddenly it was okay for the churches to come out of hiding.
SPEAKER_00: And some churches, some people had gone underground, had gone silent, and now they could come out, and there was a huge issue in Eastern Europe of, well, where was their faith then and what's their faith now?
SPEAKER_00: How does faith and works relate?
SPEAKER_00: 60s, 70s, 80s in our country, there was a whole discussion that we often use the term lordship, salvation.
SPEAKER_00: There was a big debate about that, still is in some circles.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, can you just receive Christ as Savior, or can you receive Christ as Savior without Him being Lord of your life, having control of your life, giving every area of your life to him?
SPEAKER_00: And it's the same question in effect.
SPEAKER_00: And the way it was posed then is if Christ isn't Lord of all, is he Lord at all in your life?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, full surrender, is that not implicit in salvation?
SPEAKER_00: So, 2,000 years, and we're not going to solve this problem today, but what I want to say is this really is a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, James is crystal clear.
SPEAKER_00: God through James is crystal clear.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 14 of chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: What good is it if someone says he has faith but doesn't have works?
SPEAKER_00: And we looked at this and we saw the very grammatical construction almost demands and answer, no good.
SPEAKER_00: What good is it it is no good?
SPEAKER_00: Faith without works doesn't save.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: So faith by itself, if it doesn't have works, is dead.
SPEAKER_00: Faith by itself.
SPEAKER_00: And what we'll find is that true faith is never by itself.
SPEAKER_00: There are works that flow out of true faith.
SPEAKER_00: But faith by itself is dead.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20, we'll see in a minute that that kind of faith is useless.
SPEAKER_00: It's unemployed, it's vacant, it's empty, it's not the real thing.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 26, faith without works that grow out of faith is like a dead corpse, where the breath is gone, the spirit is gone, is just a corpse.
SPEAKER_00: So James is very clear about this.
SPEAKER_00: The difficulty is not the clarity of James.
SPEAKER_00: The difficulty, as we try to bring this to light, he says in verse.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20, maybe the problem is not that this is difficult to understand.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we don't really want to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Bear with me.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
SPEAKER_00: Now there's there's uh a significant thing that he's doing here.
SPEAKER_00: When he asks, do you want to be shown?
SPEAKER_00: It is almost literally, do you really want to be shown?
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, are you willing to be shown?
SPEAKER_00: And and he's suggesting that maybe our struggle with this is not that it's so difficult, but there's a problem with our will.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're not really willing to respond and hear and respond to what God is saying.
SPEAKER_00: So he starts out, this is difficult stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's causing us, I hope it causes us to say, is my faith real or is it just monopoly money?
SPEAKER_00: And part of the question is, that's a question I'd really rather not have posed, and I'd really not answer.
SPEAKER_00: And so he helps us say, are you even really willing?
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's quite possible for us to just, we can be here, we can have gone through the motions, and yet our hearts, there's something wrong.
SPEAKER_00: They're not responsive to God.
SPEAKER_00: We're not growing, we're not developing Godward.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the kinds of questions that he poses here.
SPEAKER_00: A faith that has little evidence to back up the claim to faith.
SPEAKER_00: It would be kind of like somebody who said, okay, if we put it in our terms, I raise my hand, I have faith, I prayed a prayer, I go to church, I believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Check, check, check, check.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: Leave me alone.
SPEAKER_00: James will not leave you alone.
SPEAKER_00: You may leave him alone.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I did as a new believer.
SPEAKER_00: I've told you about that.
SPEAKER_00: My great wisdom as a believer for three or four months.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't read the book of James because it didn't agree with me.
SPEAKER_00: Whether you're that immature, um, or whether you just kind of don't let it in, just passively aggressive about it, just holding God at a distance.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of question we ought to have going through our minds this morning.
SPEAKER_00: What's the nature of my faith?
SPEAKER_00: So uh that question, uh, do you even really want to hear?
SPEAKER_00: presses in on us.
SPEAKER_00: Are you open to what God is saying to you?
SPEAKER_00: Are you open?
SPEAKER_00: Are we open?
SPEAKER_00: Are we responsive?
SPEAKER_00: Are we soft and flexible?
SPEAKER_00: Or do we keep God at a distance and our hearts stony and cold?
SPEAKER_00: Those are real questions.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting, he says, uh, how foolish are you in that case?
SPEAKER_00: Now it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: There's a whole bunch of different words for fool in the Old Testament and the New.
SPEAKER_00: Um words and the breadth of vocabulary says something about where we're coming from.
SPEAKER_00: We lived in the Low Countries in Europe for many years where there's canals and water all around.
SPEAKER_00: And there were twenty different words for canals.
SPEAKER_00: Twenty different words because they were all around.
SPEAKER_00: It was an important part of their culture.
SPEAKER_00: There were at least ten different words for rain, different kinds of rain.
SPEAKER_00: Each different kind of rain had its own word because it rained all the time.
SPEAKER_00: When there are many words for fool in the scripture, maybe that is not by chance.
SPEAKER_00: The particular word for fool that is used here means hollow or vacant or empty.
SPEAKER_00: We used to use the term space cadet or airhead.
SPEAKER_00: I won't pick on any of the blondes around here, but there's something along those lines that goes with nothing personal.
SPEAKER_00: The word is really means hello?
SPEAKER_00: Is there anybody inside?
SPEAKER_00: Kind of like back to the future.
SPEAKER_00: Ouch.
SPEAKER_00: Hello, McFly, anybody home?
SPEAKER_00: And James is kind of going, anybody home in there?
SPEAKER_00: How foolish is it?
SPEAKER_00: How empty is it to think that you can have faith and that it not be life-transforming?
SPEAKER_00: And if your life isn't being transformed, then there's a big problem here.
SPEAKER_00: And is that the real thing or is that monopoly money?
SPEAKER_00: And I get wanting to hold that off at a distance.
SPEAKER_00: Um God doesn't really give us that option.
SPEAKER_00: He calls it empty, useless faith.
SPEAKER_00: Unemployed, unproductive, and that word for useless that appears here in verse 20, uh, faith apart from works is useless, is a word that was commonly used for someone who is unemployed.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, in the parable of the laborers uh in Matthew 2020, workers in the vineyard, there were some people who hadn't, they were day laborers and they were just standing around because nobody had come and hired them for the day.
SPEAKER_00: They were unemployed for the day.
SPEAKER_00: They were useless, they were unproductive.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the picture of faith without works, faith that doesn't express itself in a changed and changing life, is not the real thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's just unemployed, it's just empty.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone home?
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
SPEAKER_00: Something's wrong here.
SPEAKER_00: Um something, it's like a field that has been planted with good seed and yet nothing comes up.
SPEAKER_00: Or it's like a tree, a fruit tree, that doesn't bear any fruit, doesn't bear any apples.
SPEAKER_00: There's something seriously wrong with it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the same kind of thing that James is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: And he's pressing in and he says, What about you and what about me?
SPEAKER_00: Bogus or real?
SPEAKER_00: And how do we know?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is we know because our lives change and we're not perfect, but we're being transformed.
SPEAKER_00: We're a new creature.
SPEAKER_00: Old has passed away, the new has come.
SPEAKER_00: We're not yet fully new, we've still got a lot of the old around.
SPEAKER_00: We've been raised kind of like Lazarus, we're we're out of the grave, but we've still got the bindings all around us, and so Lazarus hobbled around, and Jesus said, go release him.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a picture, that's where we are.
SPEAKER_00: We're not yet all we will be, but if we're not at least bobbling around trying to figure out how to move and how to live and how to express it, if there's little or no outgrowth, then there's a deeper problem.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a question for all of us to wrestle with.
SPEAKER_00: Now, he takes uh an example here.
SPEAKER_00: He takes the example of real faith of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we won't take the time to go into all of this, but Genesis chapter 12, Genesis chapter 15, Genesis chapter 22, that Abraham is the consummate example of a real believer in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: A real believer.
SPEAKER_00: He was called from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to a place that he knew not where he was going, a place that God had promised, and it says, Abraham believed and he obeyed.
SPEAKER_00: He took a step.
SPEAKER_00: He took a step, not because he could see it, but because God had said it.
SPEAKER_00: He began to organize his life around who God is and what God has said, not what he could see or could understand.
SPEAKER_00: And he became the great example of faith.
SPEAKER_00: A promise, he went to a promised land, a land of promise, but he didn't inherit the promise.
SPEAKER_00: It was going to be his descendants who would be as numerous as the stars of the sky and the grains of sand in the ocean, but it wasn't there now.
SPEAKER_00: And so from Sarah and from you will come a great nation.
SPEAKER_00: And Abraham was an old man, Sarah was barren, and they just laughed.
SPEAKER_00: How could that, she just laughed, how could that possibly be?
SPEAKER_00: But they followed and they organized their life and they lived in such a way that reflected their faith, that was an expression of their faith.
SPEAKER_00: And he becomes the great example for us.
SPEAKER_00: It's very, very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 15, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham believed the Lord and he credited to him.
SPEAKER_00: God credited to him as righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the very first time in the Bible the word belief is used.
SPEAKER_00: The example is Abraham, a real, real believer.
SPEAKER_00: And what James picks up on in the story here is the account in Genesis 22 where God told Abraham, God, at this point, uh Isaac had been born, his son, the son of promise, the son where all of God's blessings for his progeny would come out of that.
SPEAKER_00: And that was, this was the way God was going to answer his promise.
SPEAKER_00: And so God said, All right, I want you to take a knife and I want you to sacrifice him on the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: And it says in Hebrews 11, we won't turn there, but it says that you almost wonder what was going through his mind.
SPEAKER_00: Here they're going up the mountain and carrying the wood, and Isaac was, I don't know, 10, 12, 15 years old, something like that.
SPEAKER_00: And he asks him, okay, I see the wood, and uh, where's the sacrifice?
SPEAKER_00: And Abraham knew exactly what or who the sacrifice was going to be, and he said, God will provide.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and he gets up there and he prepares the knife ready to come down, and God holds, stays his hand and provides a substitute, a ram, which is a beautiful picture for us of the Lamb of God who had come to take away the sins of the world.
SPEAKER_00: But what James picks up on here is something rather different.
SPEAKER_00: He uses Abraham to talk about the relationship between faith and works.
SPEAKER_00: So in verse 22 at the beginning, let's read 22 through 20, or 21 through 24.
SPEAKER_00: Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: You see that faith was active along with his works.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I need to pause for that with that thought for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: What he is saying here, literally, is his faith was working together with his works.
SPEAKER_00: Faith worked together with works.
SPEAKER_00: There's a play on words here that this particular translation doesn't really bring out to the full.
SPEAKER_00: NASB does a little bit better job in this case.
SPEAKER_00: But he's saying, our works work together, and it's synergy, sun ergeo, a synergy from which we get that working together, the works of faith work together with the faith to produce works.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way it goes.
SPEAKER_00: And he sees in the example of Abraham the way it works, as it were.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham's faith worked together with his works.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that faith and works, true faith, not bogus faith, true faiths, faith always goes along with works flowing out of faith.
SPEAKER_00: They not only flow out of faith, they make the faith complete.
SPEAKER_00: Second half of verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: Faith was completed by his works, and the scripture was fulfilled that Abraham believed God and God counted him as righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Faith was completed, was made complete.
SPEAKER_00: It's like some of you, we we happen to like jigsaw puzzles.
SPEAKER_00: Um I think I told you at one point or another that the um a nasty uh rebellious little boy by the name of Walt, when our family, when I was young, was doing jigsaw puzzles, when nobody was looking, I'd take a piece of the puzzle and stick it in my pocket.
SPEAKER_00: And then I could put the last piece in.
SPEAKER_00: I could make it complete.
SPEAKER_00: There's a real mature way, huh?
SPEAKER_00: But it's not complete until the last piece is in.
SPEAKER_00: And in effect, he's saying the the the act of sacrificing, at least being willing to, starting that process until God interrupted, was what was a completion and a proof of the reality of Abraham's faith.
SPEAKER_00: And God saw that and he considered, he justified him, he considered him righteous as a result.
SPEAKER_00: Faith that doesn't come to completion in actions is bogus faith, not real faith.
SPEAKER_00: Just take a second and turn over to Philippians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians chapter 2, verses 12 and 13.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, Therefore, my beloved brother, as you have always obeyed, he's talking about obedience, so now not only in my presence, but more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: Obey.
SPEAKER_00: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
SPEAKER_00: And then the other side of that, the very next verse, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: The works we do, God works in us.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just our own doing, but our faith doesn't exist, if it's the real thing, without the works that God has called us to do.
SPEAKER_00: And that's precisely what Ephesians 2 says.
SPEAKER_00: We love to quote Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it's a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
SPEAKER_00: Great.
SPEAKER_00: Read the next verse.
SPEAKER_00: For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation by grace through faith is not apart, is not separate from working the works that God works in us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the words don't help us, but do you get the picture of what the scriptures are saying?
SPEAKER_00: And there was no conflict here between Paul and James.
SPEAKER_00: Real faith is never alone, never without works.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 24 of James chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith.
SPEAKER_00: Is that what it says?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: What it says is you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when we pit Paul and James against each other, we're making a mistake because Paul was fighting against, was correcting the idea that by our works we can be justified as a result of our works.
SPEAKER_00: Works righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul was saying, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00: And James would say, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what he's talking about here.
SPEAKER_00: James is teaching against the false idea that true faith exists alone, without works of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: See, they're talking about different things, but they're saying precisely the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's been best expressed by this phrase, happens to be a phrase of John Calvin in the Reformation.
SPEAKER_00: Faith alone justifies, but faith that justifies is never alone.
SPEAKER_00: It's always accompanied by life change.
SPEAKER_00: A changed and changing life.
SPEAKER_00: A changed and changing life shows the reality of faith and brings it to completion.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to get into Abraham's example here.
SPEAKER_00: I want to just kind of try to wrap this up.
SPEAKER_00: What does this mean to us?
SPEAKER_00: This whole section, what we saw three weeks ago and today, they go together.
SPEAKER_00: That's the other side of the coin.
SPEAKER_00: Bogus faith, this is real faith.
SPEAKER_00: When we looked at this three weeks ago by way of application, we ask ourselves, what are we to think of?
SPEAKER_00: Other people, perhaps a son or a daughter, or a spouse, or a parent, or a friend, who made some kind of a decision, but there's practically nothing to show for it?
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about other people.
SPEAKER_00: James is talking here about us.
SPEAKER_00: What about us?
SPEAKER_00: What what is your life?
SPEAKER_00: Is mine?
SPEAKER_00: Not perfect, that's not what we're asking.
SPEAKER_00: But is your life in the process of being transformed?
SPEAKER_00: Changed and changing, a new creature who still has an awful lot of the old.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm no longer who I was, and I'm not yet who I will be, but I am different, and that's because of Christ living within me.
SPEAKER_00: And I change and I grow and I get better and better.
SPEAKER_00: You hardly notice it, but that's just because you didn't know me 40 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: Jane notices it.
SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
SPEAKER_00: But are our lives changing?
SPEAKER_00: Is there life transformation happening in you?
SPEAKER_00: How does it express itself?
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians chapter 13, 5.
SPEAKER_00: Paul urges his readers to examine themselves to see whether they are of the faith.
SPEAKER_00: They're to test themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a tricky matter.
SPEAKER_00: There are wonderful, wonderful, gentle what word would I use?
SPEAKER_00: Sensitive people.
SPEAKER_00: I have trouble relating to sensitive people.
SPEAKER_00: By nature I'm an insensitive jerk.
SPEAKER_00: But there are people who are so sensitive that when they hear we're to examine ourselves and they begin to get all frantic because they love Jesus so much, they just want to get it all right.
SPEAKER_00: And this can drive that kind of person into a spiritual downward spiral.
SPEAKER_00: But what I would say is if you're all hyper-concerned about this, and are you good enough and you've not changed enough and everything, then you don't have to worry because he's not talking to you.
SPEAKER_00: Who he's talking to is those among us who just keep God at a distance.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, check, check, check, I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: Leave me alone, raise my hand, pray to prayer, take communion, been baptized, I attend church, I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: And James is saying, is that what faith is all about?
SPEAKER_00: Is that real faith?
SPEAKER_00: And in a thousand different, well, hundreds of different ways in this book.
SPEAKER_00: James presses in and he says, this is what real faith looks like.
SPEAKER_00: And what real faith looks like is a life that is changing.
SPEAKER_00: It's been fundamentally changed, but the reality of that is yet to be fully expressed, and it won't be fully expressed until we get home with a capital H.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven.
SPEAKER_00: But in the meanwhile, if there's no discernible change, and if being honest with yourself, not you don't have to be honest with me, being honest with yourself, you know, I'm a Christian, but let's leave it at that.
SPEAKER_00: We'll we'll keep it at arm's length.
SPEAKER_00: But if you examine your heart really honestly, it's not warm towards God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not responsive towards God.
SPEAKER_00: And and I don't know who you are, I don't have to know.
SPEAKER_00: But James is talking to you if that's the case.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, don't harden your heart.
SPEAKER_00: If your heart, if you're not moving Godward, a direction, a trajectory in your life, if there isn't some kind of change over time, if it's just the status quo, and it's just out here.
SPEAKER_00: And he gives dozens of examples of what the real thing is.
SPEAKER_00: He said, if the problem.
SPEAKER_00: The problem may really be the inner core.
SPEAKER_00: That's why this is so central in this book.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says, the writer of Hebrews says, today, if you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Don't harden your hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And I guess that's what I want to say as well.
SPEAKER_00: If God is saying something to you about this matter of life transformation, and if you just honestly have to admit, you know, there just ain't much of that in my life, then I would say, you know, that wonderful song that the kids sang for us.
SPEAKER_00: We were made for so much more than this, an ordinary life.
SPEAKER_00: We were made to thrive.
SPEAKER_00: And I would urge you to be responsive and open and intentionally just try to be soft to God.
SPEAKER_00: Don't make him be hard with you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't harden your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Be responsive to God.
SPEAKER_00: A tender-hearted man lives a blessed life.
SPEAKER_00: A hard-hearted man has a hard life.
SPEAKER_00: Modern translation of Proverbs 28.
SPEAKER_00: This is between you and God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not between you and me.
SPEAKER_00: But it is between you and God.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say if you have to admit that you're kind of cold inside, you do the Christian thing, you go through the motions, but there's a problem there, then deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: God loves to soften our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's what needs to happen.
SPEAKER_00: God needs to just have his way in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Just don't stiff arm him, don't make it difficult.
SPEAKER_00: Real faith is never alone.
SPEAKER_00: Real faith expresses itself.
SPEAKER_00: How it expresses it in your life and what's visible, I may never see.
SPEAKER_00: You have no idea what God is doing in the inner regions of my soul and how he's working on me.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't really know for you either, but I do know God is working on me.
SPEAKER_00: And I know it goes a whole lot better when I don't make it hard for God to accomplish what he wants to in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't learned much over the years, but I have learned that it's a whole lot easier if I soften my heart towards God.
SPEAKER_00: Will you, to the extent that you have any idea what that means this morning, just be open to God and responsive to God and let him grow you and develop you?
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, you know our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We only know a little.
SPEAKER_00: We can't judge the heart of another person you never called us to.
SPEAKER_00: But you have exhorted us to examine our own hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And Father, I pray in just a real simple way.
SPEAKER_00: If there are cold and unresponsive hearts here, oh Father, by your grace, do a mighty work of transformation and softening.
SPEAKER_00: And I would say to my friends here, don't resist the hand and the working of God.
SPEAKER_00: It will go well with you if you allow God to mess with your life.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, have your way, I pray.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to just have you stand for the benediction, and we'll be dismissed.
SPEAKER_00: One of these days I'm just going to be silent and let you guys repeat the benediction, see how much you've absorbed of it.
SPEAKER_00: Now go into the world in peace, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: Have courage.
SPEAKER_00: Hold on to what is good.
SPEAKER_00: And honor all men.
SPEAKER_00: Strengthen the faint hearted, support the weak, help the suffering, restore the wandering, comfort the grieving, share the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And may the grace and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.
SPEAKER_00: And amen.