We're reading from James chapter 2 verses 14 to 26.
Faith without works is dead.
What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food,
and one of you says to them,
go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body,
what good is that?
So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
But someone will say, you have faith and I have works.
Show me your faith apart from your works,
and I will show you my faith by my works.
You believe that God is one.
You do well.
Even the demons believe and shudder.
Do you want to be shown, you foolish person,
that faith apart from works is useless?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works
when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?
You see that faith was active along with his works,
and faith was completed by his works.
And the scripture was fulfilled, and that says,
Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.
And he was called a friend of God.
You see that a person is justified by works,
and not by faith alone.
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?
For as the body apart from the spirit is dead,
so also faith apart from works is dead.
This is the word of God.
Great.
Thank you, Margo.
Let me pray for us.
Heavenly Father, as we come to your word,
we want to hear you speaking to us.
Won't you open up the eyes of our heart
to see you in your word,
and to see what it means to live by faith,
and to trust you, and to know you.
God, you know where each one of us are at this morning.
You know our fears and our worries.
You know what's on our heart, God.
You know where we feel anxious and afraid.
You know what we're hoping for and longing for.
You know our dreams.
God, this morning we pray that we will meet with you,
the living God.
We have already, God, in the sung worship.
Thank you for those wonderful songs
that you've given to us as a church to sing.
God, your word also, let it speak to us.
God, we know that your word and your spirit work in unison.
We pray, Holy Spirit,
now won't you make your word come alive to our hearts,
and speak to us, we pray, in your gracious name.
Amen.
One last thing before we dive in is,
if you've got a bulletin, open it up.
You'll see there's the scripture reading in front of you,
or if you've got a Bible on your phone,
have it in front of you.
I don't have a lot of scripture on the screen,
but I want you to look at the scripture as we go through it.
Well, I wonder if you've ever been ripped off
by buying something that you thought was true,
only to find out later it was a fake or a forgery.
When I was about 17 years old,
my older brother wanted to buy a car,
and there was a particular car that he wanted.
We lived in South Africa.
He had done all this market research.
He knew what that model,
that year,
should cost secondhand.
He was looking out for a good deal.
Anyway, one day,
he finds an advert for this particular car
at a really, really good price.
And so he thinks,
I know this car is worth more than that.
So being the entrepreneur that he is,
he says,
I'm going to buy the car,
and I'm going to flip it straight away.
I'm going to add 10%
and sell it straight away,
make a few bucks.
So,
he's good at entrepreneurship,
not so good at checking things out.
Buys this car,
a week later,
advertises again for 10% more,
and when people come to look at the car,
suddenly they notice all sorts of things
that he hadn't noticed.
This is wrong.
This is broken.
Turns out the car had been in a serious accident,
and someone had done a good job
of hiding the cracks and the faults,
and he ended up selling it for a big loss
at the end of the day, right?
Or I heard of a teenager recently,
also a family member,
who wanted a pair of Apple AirPods,
didn't want to pay the full retail price,
found a good deal on Carousel,
met the person on Carousel
for a good price of AirPods,
went home only to find out that they were fakes.
They didn't work at all.
And so what he thought was a good price
for genuine AirPods
turned out to be an expensive price for fakes.
Discovering something is not what you thought it was
can be very frustrating, very disappointing.
How many of us have built a friendship
or got to know somebody,
maybe a colleague in the workplace, a neighbor,
only to find out later
they're not who we thought they really were?
And of course, it can be very costly.
Some of you are involved in buying businesses,
and so you do all your research,
all your due diligence,
you turn over every stone you can,
look at all the financials,
but there's always a risk that you buy a business,
and at the end of the day,
it's not what you thought it was.
And there's a whole lot of stuff hidden behind.
I think of people invested
in Bernie Madoff's securities, right,
a few years ago,
and it proved not to be very secure at all.
Thinking something is legitimate or genuine
when it proves to be otherwise
can be frustrating, disappointing,
can be very costly.
But it can also be dangerous.
It can be very deadly.
Imagine you take your car for a service,
and the mechanic decides to install
cheap imitation brake pads on your wheels
instead of the real thing.
And one day they give way
when you're careering downhill.
Or think about somebody,
you go to hospital,
and somebody buys or installs imitation parts
in the ventilator, right?
You need some fresh air,
and the ventilator stops working
because of fraudulent parts.
Being fooled into thinking
that something is genuine when it's not
can be frustrating,
it can be costly,
it can be dangerous,
it can be deadly.
So what about our faith?
What about your Christian faith?
How do you know
whether your Christian faith
is the real deal?
Or whether you've just been fooled
into thinking that what you think is faith
is not really the real thing?
How would you know if it's fraudulent?
What diagnostic tool would you use
to employ,
to test the genuineness of your faith?
In the book of 1 Peter,
the apostle Peter writes,
and he says that
like a furnace to silver or gold,
trials are to our faith.
A furnace tests silver and gold,
and it heats it up,
and it reveals the impurities,
and the alloys,
and the fake materials.
So trials do the same thing to our faith.
They reveal what's genuine and real
when the heat comes.
Well, we've been reading the book of James,
and the brother of Jesus, James,
has been watching these Christians
who were once part of his congregation
going through these trials,
and he seems to be worried
by what he sees.
And so he's concerned
as to the genuineness of their faith.
And so in this passage,
he invites them to take a closer look
and to examine the authenticity
of their Christian faith.
Well, to change analogies,
James is like a doctor
who holds up the x-ray of their faith
to the light of day,
and he invites them,
and he invites us,
to look at the x-ray
and to see what's really there.
And so James is helping his readers,
this scattered congregation
that he calls his beloved brothers and sisters,
to examine the legitimacy of their faith.
And he's concerned
that what they think is genuine
may be nothing more
than just religious tradition
or superstition.
And this is James' big idea
for the passage today.
He says,
real Christian faith
is not simply believing certain truths.
Genuine Christian faith
causes you to live differently,
and not just because of what you believe,
but because of who you've come to believe in.
Okay, so it's not just believing
propositional truths,
creeds, and statements,
as important as that is,
it actually,
those beliefs cause you
to live differently,
but not simply because
of the theological truth,
but because of the person
or the being,
the God behind those truths,
because of who you've come to believe in.
Or said another way,
James is saying that
simply holding
to certain theological
or Christian truths
and doctrines,
true as they may be,
and as sincerely
as you may hold them,
if those truths
don't cause you
to live differently
because of a real dynamic
relationship with God,
then those,
your faith
may be no more worthwhile
than a teenager's fake airpods
at the bottom of his cupboard.
And if you know
what a teenager's cupboard
looks like,
that's not worth very much,
right?
So James is telling us this,
that where our professed belief
in Christ has no material impact
in our faith,
doesn't change the way we live,
the way we speak,
the way we handle conflict,
the way we handle challenges,
how we steward our finances,
our sexuality,
our positions in society,
maybe our faith
is not as sincere,
genuine as we thought it was.
And the way that James
is going to do this
is this,
he's going to hold up
four pictures for us.
The first two are examples
of fake or fraudulent faith.
The second two are pictures
of genuine faith,
okay?
I think you see
a picture behind me.
So James is going to hold
up four pictures.
The first two are fraudulent faith.
The second two are genuine faith.
So let's dive in
and look at what he says.
Look at the first one with me.
Look at verse 14 to 17.
He says,
what good is it,
my brothers and sisters,
if someone says
he has faith
but does not have any works,
nothing to back it up?
Can that kind of faith save him?
If a brother or sister
is poorly clothed
and lacking in daily food,
one of you says,
go in peace,
be warmed,
be filled.
Without giving them
the things that they needed
for the body,
what good is that?
So also faith by itself,
if it does not have any works,
it's dead.
James gets straight
to the point here.
Pretty clear.
What's his point?
His point is,
talk is cheap.
Easy to say the right things.
We say what people
want us to say.
We want to save face.
We say the right things.
But backing that up
with reality,
that's another story.
Maybe you've experienced
this in business.
You want to do business
with someone.
You have a couple of meals
and meetings
and someone says,
yeah, no,
it looks good.
I think we can really
do something.
I think there's a potential
deal here.
We'll be in contact.
And then you never hear
from them ever again.
And you phone them.
You send emails.
Silence.
They're saying the right thing.
And we tend to think
that as long as nobody's hurt,
as long as nobody's offended,
as long as I can kind of
keep the peace,
no harm done.
And so we tend to say
the right things.
James says,
unless that's backed it up,
it's meaningless.
And the point is that
we can do the same thing
with our Christian faith.
We can say the right thing,
say, God,
I believe this.
This is true.
But unless there's some
substance behind it,
maybe it's all a sham.
We say things like,
God, I really trust you.
But if we don't take
any risks,
if we don't trust God
when it's hard,
do we really trust Him?
Confession,
I had this a few years ago.
I remember writing
a position paper
for Watermark.
This is what we believe
on this certain area.
And it was very theological,
very wonderful,
really brilliant paper,
if I can say so myself, right?
This is what we believe.
Well, about six months later,
I actually had to defend that paper.
And there was a situation
where I actually had to
then explain,
this is what we believe,
and I cowered away.
It's one thing to say,
this is what we believe,
but when push comes to shove,
it was easier just to stay silent,
remain quiet,
avoid the conversation at all.
That's James' point,
that validity of our faith
and our relationship with God,
and whether we really,
it's based on whether
we really know Him,
whether we really love Him,
whether we really trust Him.
It's not authenticated
by what we claim,
it's by how we live.
And so he asked the question,
verse 14,
look here,
can that kind of faith
save a person?
His answer is no.
So look at his summary statement,
verse 17.
So also faith by itself,
that means faith in concept
or idea only,
if it does not have works,
if it doesn't correspond
to real life,
well, that kind of faith is dead.
It's not real faith at all.
Okay, first picture,
cheap talk.
Second picture,
look at verse 18 to 20.
Here, James anticipates an objection.
So he says,
okay, someone might say,
well, you have faith,
I have works.
Okay?
You're a faith kind of person,
I'm a kind of practical
kind of person.
In other words,
you say potato,
I say potato.
You like rice,
I like noodles.
Okay?
In other words,
why do you have to
put me in a box
and say that
I've got it,
my faith needs to look like this?
There's so many different
types of Christians,
right?
And some people are
kind of believing,
trusting God,
faith kind of people.
Some are just very practical,
social justice,
get their hands dirty
kind of people.
And so yeah,
you might be one of those people,
I'm one of these people.
And James says,
no, no, no,
what you're doing
is you're taking one thing
and you're creating
a dichotomy,
splitting into two,
and saying choose one
or the other.
But these two things
inherently go together.
Very silly analogy.
It's like a hen
saying to another hen,
you lay egg yolks,
I'll lay egg whites.
Okay?
Not going to be
a very good,
productive hen.
Those eggs
are not going to sell
very well.
It's like imagine
you go to buy a car,
you want to buy
a secondhand car,
you go to a car dealer
because you don't want
to get ripped off
like my brother,
and he says,
I've got two cars for you.
This one's got an accelerator,
this one's got brakes.
Which one do you want?
Well,
that's not going to be
a very good car,
right?
You need them both.
James says,
one person says,
look,
you've got faith,
belief,
trust,
I've got works.
What's the big deal?
No,
the big deal
is these two
go together.
Show me your faith
apart from your works,
I'll show you my faith
by my works.
Now,
drive that car,
best of luck to you.
Let's see how far you get.
I'll drive my car that has both
and I'll show you
how this works.
Look at verse 19.
Here you see something fascinating.
It says,
okay,
you believe that God is one,
you do well,
even the demons believe that,
and shudder.
Now,
remember,
all devout Jews
every day
would recite a prayer
called the Shemal.
The Shemal is a prayer
that's based on
a couple of scriptures
in Deuteronomy.
The first one is
Deuteronomy 6.
It says,
hear, O Israel,
the Lord our God,
the Lord is one.
So every single day,
devout Jews
will wake up in the morning
and recite this prayer.
Hear, O Israel,
the Lord our God,
the Lord is one.
You shall love
the Lord your God
with all your heart
and all your soul
and all your might.
The Jewish Christians
that James is writing to
would have known
this prayer.
It's probably
one of the most
important sentences
in the whole Old Testament
for Jewish men and women.
James says,
you know that thing
that you recite
every morning?
You believe God is one.
That's great,
but even the demons
believe that.
Even Satan knows
that that's true
and he's not a Christian.
Sam Albury says like this,
are you pleased
with your right understanding
of who God is,
your good theology?
Congratulations,
you're at precisely
the same level
that the demons are at.
You see,
just because you have
good theology
or you know your Bible
really well,
you know your doctrine
straight as an arrow,
doesn't mean you have
saving faith.
You genuinely know God.
As many have observed,
hell is full of demons
with great theology.
They don't know Jesus.
They don't trust him.
They fear him,
they shudder,
but they've never come to him
in surrender
and love and trust.
Friends,
saving faith,
genuine Christian faith,
is not just intellectual assent
to core doctrines
and beliefs.
It is that,
but it's more than that.
It's heartfelt trust
in who God is
and handing our lives
over to him.
So James tells us
that genuine saving faith,
yes,
it's grounded
in theological truth.
This is who God is,
but it's more than simply
knowing a lot about God.
It's loving him.
It's knowing him.
It's trusting him.
If you're a high schooler here,
if you're a part of the youth
this morning,
so glad that you're with us,
chances are,
you're here
because you grew up
in a Christian family
and have parents
that want you
to know God.
And that is an amazing privilege.
You are very privileged
to grow up in a family
that has parents,
not perfect parents,
not a perfect family,
but parents who love God
and want you to love God.
But one of the dangers,
high schoolers,
is that you can grow up
in a family
because you know
the Christian stuff
thinking that you're a Christian.
Because you know the stories,
you know the catechisms,
and you know the Bible teaching,
and you've memorized
the Bible verses.
Youth and high schoolers,
here's a challenge for you.
I want you to go home
and at lunchtime today
or dinner tonight,
I want you to ask your parents
this question.
Mom and dad,
how do you know
that your faith is genuine
and not fake?
Okay,
can you do that?
And then I want you
to ask yourself a question.
Am I really a Christian
or am I just believing
what my parents
have told me to believe?
Okay,
can you do that,
high schoolers?
Ask them that question
tonight at dinner time.
See,
you too can be fooled
into thinking,
yeah,
I'm a Christian,
I'm safe,
I know all this stuff.
But do you know him?
Do you trust him?
Do you love him?
James has given us
two examples
of counterfeit faith,
right?
But now he gives us
two examples
of genuine faith.
Look at what he does here.
Look at verse 20.
He says,
do you want to be shown,
you foolish person,
that faith apart from works
is useless?
We said earlier,
James is like a doctor,
right?
He holds up this x-ray.
James is a great doctor,
he just needs to work
on his bedside manner.
Not a good thing
to call your congregation,
you foolish people.
Okay,
but anyway,
well,
that aside.
Verse 21,
was not Abraham,
our father,
justified by works
when he offered up
his son Isaac
on the altar?
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 was counted to him
as righteousness.
He was called
a friend of God.
Now,
if you're new to church,
James assumes
that we understand
some of the Old Testament
and so there's a story here
that you need to understand.
Let me explain to you.
In the Old Testament,
Abraham is kind of
the founder
of the Judeo-Christian faith
in many ways.
And one day,
God comes to Abraham
and he says to Abraham,
through your descendants,
I am going to create
a nation of people
and through that nation,
I'm going to send
the Messiah,
the Savior,
who will save humanity
from sin and death
and the curse of the fall.
And so Abraham,
you're going to have
a son and descendants
and through them,
the Savior of the world
is going to come.
The only problem is
Abraham is one,
very old,
and two,
doesn't have any children.
And so things
are not looking good.
Well,
fast forward about 30 years,
Abraham is now even older.
He's about 100 years old
and God is good
on his word
and gives him a son.
A son called Isaac.
And so,
it seems like
the promise
is going to be fulfilled.
And so Abraham
has the son Isaac,
through Isaac
and his descendants,
the world is going
to be blessed
and saved.
But then one day,
God asks Abraham
to do something crazy.
He says,
Abraham,
take your son,
your only son,
whom you love,
go up on the mountain
with a pile of wood
on his back
and sacrifice him to me.
Make a burnt offering
and sacrifice your son
to me.
Now,
immediately you can see
there's a couple
of problems with this.
One,
what do you do with that?
I mean,
what parent says,
yeah,
sure,
no problem.
Let me just go
kill my son,
right?
I mean,
that itself is,
okay,
you need to wrestle
with that.
But in addition to that,
everything that Abraham
was and had
and believed in,
his entire legacy,
the hope for humanity
rested on this one child
not dying
but staying alive
as long as possible
and having many,
many children.
And so here,
God says,
the whole hope
of the world,
I want you to
sacrifice it for me.
Well,
Abraham somehow
so trusts God
and his promise
that he takes his son,
his only son,
he puts wood on his back,
climbs the hill
and is about to sacrifice him
and at the last minute
God says,
okay,
that's enough.
Now you know
that I know
that you love me
and trust me.
It's an unbelievable account
of taking God
at his word.
But what's James'
point here?
His point is,
Abraham's faith
was active
along with his works
and was completed
by his work.
James' point is that
genuine Christian faith
is not just theoretical,
God,
I trust you.
It actually has
real relevance
in real life
on the decisions
that we make,
on the way we conduct
ourselves.
Real Christian faith
is not just believing
propositional truths
but really trusting
in a real God.
Real Christian faith
knows not just
that God is God
but that he's good.
Not just that he's true
but that he's trustworthy.
Not just that he's a father
but that he's faithful
and therefore brings our lives
and says,
God,
this is so hard
but you are good.
I trust you.
This is the point
that the writer
of the book of Hebrews
makes as he looks back
on the Old Testament
and he recounts
the stories
of men and women
of their genuine faith
and how their faith
was made visible
because of the way
it manifests itself
in the real contours
of life.
And so he says,
think about Abraham.
God comes to him one day
and says,
Abraham,
leave your family,
your father's home,
your country.
Follow me.
Trust me.
I'm going to take you
to a new place.
I'm not telling you
where it is
but trust me
and Abraham did.
Or God says that
Moses,
because of his trust in God,
turned his back
on the privileges of Egypt
growing up in the palace
and associated himself
with the slaves
because he knew
that God's promise
was faithful.
Or he says,
think of the nation of Israel,
how they left Egypt,
wandered in the wilderness
even though they didn't know
what lay in store for them.
It was genuine faith
in the faithfulness of God
that caused David
to go up against Goliath
even though Goliath
was much bigger,
much scarier,
much more experienced
soldier than him.
But his genuine faith
in the faithfulness of God
caused him to actually act.
Or think of Daniel
and his friends
in Babylon,
how they refused
to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar
knowing that that meant
the lion's den
or the furnace
or some other certain death
and yet their trust
in the trustworthiness of God
led them to actually say no.
Friends, think of Hosea,
this man whose wife
probably left him
to go sell herself
into prostitution.
God says,
go and bring her back
and marry her again
a second time.
And Hosea says,
you are God
and you are good.
I trust you.
Okay, I'll do it.
Or think of Esther
who takes her life
into the hands
and goes into the king's palace
and challenges him
to revoke an edict,
bring shame on himself
against God's people.
But she goes
because God asks him to.
Or think of Gideon
who goes against
the Midianites
even though he's outnumbered
500 to 1.
It's his genuine trust
in the trustworthiness of God.
And the writer of Hebrews
says that this is
what faith looks like.
Friends, this is James' point.
As you look at the panorama
of scripture,
genuine faith
is not just saying,
God, I believe you to be true,
but I believe you to be trustworthy.
And I'll put my life
in your hands.
Faith is tangible.
It's real.
It leads to real action.
And so James asks us
the question again,
is our faith,
is my faith genuine
or is it fantasy?
Is it intellectual belief
about something?
Or is it heartfelt faith
and trust in someone?
Someone that's proved
himself to be good.
Look at the final picture
that James paints for us.
Verse 24.
He says,
you see that a person
is justified,
that means a person's faith
is proven to be true,
shown to be true,
by works
and not simply
by faith alone.
In the same way,
was it not also Rahab,
the prostitute,
justified by works
when she received
the messengers
or spies
and sent them out
another way?
For as the body
apart from the spirit
is dead,
so also faith
apart from works
is dead.
Again, James here assumes
that we know
our Old Testaments.
And so the story here
is the nation of Israel,
they come out of Egypt,
they wander in the wilderness
for 40 years.
They actually wander there
because they don't
have great faith in God.
God asked them previously
to trust Him
and they're like,
no, we're not going
to trust you.
They stay 40 years wandering.
Eventually,
after 40 years,
God says,
okay, it's time to go
into the promised land.
They cross over
the river Jordan
and they're going to
occupy the promised land.
But in order to do that,
they need to conquer
one or two towns
and cities
that are in their way.
The first city
that they come to
is a city called Jericho.
And so Joshua,
the leader,
sends two spies
into the city
to go and suss it out,
do some reconnaissance work.
But they obviously
can't go and say,
hey, we're spies.
So they go in
and the chances are
they go in as kind of
merchant traders, right?
And they do
what most merchant traders do
as they pass through the city.
They go to the house
of a local prostitute
called Rahab
and they stay with her
to not be seen
for who they are.
But Rahab is heard.
So Jericho are not Israelites.
They're not Jews.
They don't know God.
But Rahab is heard
about the God of Israel.
She's not an Israelite,
but she's heard
that God is powerful
and strong
and she's heard
that this God
is faithful
to his promises
that he makes.
And so she picks up
when that the Israelites
are coming to attack us
and these spies
are coming to suss things out.
And now she's got a decision.
Who will I trust?
Will I trust my fellow citizens,
the Jerichoites
or people of Jericho
and fight against God
or will I trust
the God of Israel
and side with him?
Whose side am I going to take?
Well, while she's
deliberating about this,
word gets out
that there are two
suspicious people
walking the streets
of Jericho
and they stay at Rahab's house.
And so the city officials
come to her,
knock on her door
and say,
hey, who are the two guys
that you are sheltering
in your house
and bring them out?
And suddenly she's got to decide,
who am I going to trust?
Am I going to trust
the God of the Israelites
that he's going to save
his people
or will I trust my people?
And she comes to the conclusion
that God is trustworthy,
he's with his people
and that no one
who trusts him
is in danger
and no one
who stands against him
is safe.
And so she makes a decision
and this is what she says.
She says,
I know that the Lord
has given you our land.
For we have heard
how the Lord your God
dried up the water
of the Red Sea
before you came out of Egypt
and what you did
to the kings of the Amorites
who were beyond the Jordan.
For the Lord your God,
he is God
in the heavens above
and on earth below.
She's saying,
I've come to believe
he's the real God.
So more than just believing it,
she acts in it.
And so she says
to these two spies,
okay listen,
you go hide on the roof
and she tells the soldiers,
oh,
I think they went that way.
Created our version
and she saves
these two spies
and lets them live.
He may have
this Gentile prostitute,
this person
who in every respect
was outside
of the covenant people of God.
She's not an Israelite,
she's not a believer,
she's not rich,
she's not famous,
she's not esteemed,
she's the very opposite
of Abraham.
Abraham is wealthy,
she's poor,
Abraham's a man,
she's a woman
in that culture,
not a good thing.
Abraham is respected,
she's a sex worker,
Abraham's a Jew,
she's a Gentile,
in every way the opposite.
And yet both of them
have one thing in common,
they trust
in the God
of Israel.
And so here she is,
her faith in the living God
was not simply believing
propositional truths,
her faith caused her
to make bold
and risky decisions,
not just because
of what she believed
but who she had come
to believe in.
And so James' question,
verse 14,
does that kind of faith
save you?
Absolutely it does.
Friends,
James is telling us
that genuine faith
is not so much about
what you know
but who you trust.
And trust by its very nature
means you put your hands
in the life of somebody else
at their mercy.
So as we come to a close,
where do we find ourselves?
Well, the question is
where do we find this faith?
Every passage of Scripture
in the Bible
has got a purpose behind it.
The authors,
in this case James,
didn't just write
to tell us,
you know,
some poetry or something.
They've got a purpose.
They want us to do something
with the passage.
They want us to respond.
How does James
want us to respond?
What is James' purpose
for writing this passage?
One of the things
that's interesting
is in nowhere in this passage
does James tell us
to do a single thing.
There's no action,
no imperative.
So what does he want us to do?
How does he want us to respond?
Well, let me tell you firstly
how not to respond.
The wrong way to respond
is to say,
okay,
well,
James tells you
that faith
without doing a lot of things
is useless,
so I guess I better get busy,
right?
Okay,
I'll join the multimedia team
and I'll join the kids ministry team
and I'll go in that social justice outreach.
James is not writing,
saying,
you lazy Christians,
get busier.
Okay?
That's not what he's wanting to do.
What he's wanting to do
is he's wanting to say,
stop
and examine your faith.
Does what you say you believe
correspond to reality?
Is what's true in your mind
played out in the reality of your life?
Do you really,
he says,
to what extent do you really believe?
James has been pushing us to see
that Christianity
is not about intellectually
believing something,
but coming to believe
and trust in someone.
In John chapter six,
some people come to Jesus
and they say,
Jesus,
what works must we do
to be doing the works of God?
God,
we want to get to eternal life,
we want to get to heaven,
what must we do?
Must we fast more?
Must we pray more?
Must we give money to the poor?
What must we do
to do the works of God?
And Jesus says,
this is the works of God,
to believe in him
whom God has sent.
You want to do the right thing?
Trust me.
Believe in me.
Look to me.
Friends,
where do we find this kind of faith,
this genuine faith
that so changes our lives
that we live and behave
and think and act differently?
The kind of faith
that causes us to obey
even when it's hard.
Don't look inwardly to yourself.
Look outwardly to Jesus.
Let your mind be captured
by the trustworthiness
and the faithfulness of Jesus.
Do you remember what Rahab says?
He says,
we've heard the stories
that God has been faithful
to his people
time and time and time again.
Friends,
hear the stories
of where God has been faithful
to us.
And where is God
most faithful to us?
Jesus died on the cross.
And so don't look inwardly
and say,
I've got to do more.
I've got to be more.
I've got to try harder.
Don't look at yourself.
No, friends,
forget about yourself
and look to the crucified Christ.
That's how you know
that Jesus is faithful.
And so what battle
are you facing this week?
What trial
are you facing this week?
What thing at the moment
are you wrestling with God
and say,
God,
I don't know
whether I can trust you or not.
If I step out on the water,
will you be there for me?
Friends,
the cross proves
he won't let you down.
Robert Murray McShane,
one of my favorite quotes.
For every one,
look at yourself.
Take 10 looks
at Jesus Christ.
He is altogether lovely.
Such infinite majesty
and yet such meekness
and grace
and all for sinners,
even the chief of sinners
like me.
Live much
in the smiles of God.
Bask in his beams.
Feel his all-seeing eye
settle on you in love
and rest in his almighty arms.
Friends,
the amazing thing
about Jesus Christ
is it doesn't matter
who you are
or what you've done.
It doesn't mean
your background,
your socioeconomic status.
It doesn't matter
if you're the world's
worst criminal
or the world's
greatest philanthropist.
If you will simply
come to Jesus
and take a small step
and say,
God,
I want to trust you,
he'll draw near.
He'll save you.
He'll rescue you.
He'll prove himself
faithful to you.
In his mercy
and in his grace,
he will come
and meet with you.
And so what about you?
Friends,
some of us have been religious
for many, many years.
You've done the church thing.
You've done the retreat.
You've done the CG thing.
But maybe you're not
genuinely a Christian.
Maybe you're not
genuinely saved.
Do you know him?
Do you love him?
Do you trust him?
Maybe you believe
the facts about him.
You do well,
but even demons know that.
Come and trust him.
Friends,
maybe you genuinely
are a Christian,
but your faith
has become cerebral
and intellectual.
It's become dry
and academic.
You go through the motions.
Why don't you this morning
come and get on your knees
and say,
God,
I want to know you.
I want to trust you again.
I want you to have your way
in my life.
Jesus,
come and have your way.
Let me pray for us
as we come to close.
Lord Jesus,
thank you so much
for your amazing grace.
God,
thank you for who you are
again and again
throughout scripture.
God,
every page of the Bible
echoes the fact
that you are God,
but you're also good.
You are true
and you are trustworthy.
You are a father
who loves us
and you are faithful
and we can bank
our lives in you.
God,
it's very easy
to come to church
and to sing
the wonderful songs
we sang this morning,
but God,
to actually,
for that to be
the reality of our hearts
is sometimes hard.
I pray,
God,
won't you open
the eyes of our hearts,
Lord?
God,
even now,
open the eyes of our hearts
to see you
that we can trust you.
Help us to see you,
Jesus,
how good
and trustworthy you are.
Help us to see
that Jesus,
you went to the cross
for us
God,
come and have your way,
I pray.
God,
both individually
and as a church body,
as a community,
I want you to help us
to be those
that love you,
trust you
and obey you.
Father,
I pray for the wrestle
that's in our hearts
this day,
this week,
God,
where we've got
some decisions to make,
which way will we go?
Help us to trust you,
God.
Father,
forgive us for our
eager faith.
forgive us,
God.
But then help us
to grow.
Help us to become
more like you.
Pray this in your
great and wonderful name.
Amen.
Thank you.