Sermon Tone Analysis

What is your favorite soda?

Classic, Diet, Cherry, etc.?

Nothing tastes quite like Zero while actually being zilch.

What?!?

Coke zero is a zero sugar, zero guilt knockoff of original Coke.

It is coke’s most successful product line launch in the past 22 years!

The company claims the taste is almost indistinguishable from the Real Thing, but there are no calories to count.

No nutritional value to speak of.

This is the Paris Hilton of sodas.

Appearance without substance.

Notoriety based on nothing.

This is the Seinfeld show of sodas: a soda about nothing.

Research shows that most men are turned off by feminine diet drinks and chemical tastes.

Coke Zero, however, has been able to attract men.

Leave those diet colas for the sissies… real men drink Zero!

I believe that this is a great illustration for us for people of faith.

This is what the world wants – not Coke Zero, but Believer Zero.

The world wants believers who are shallow, indistinguishable from anyone around them with zero religion and zero back bone.

I mean – have you heard the new #1 country song called “Believers”?

Joe Nichols sings a song about how people who believe are the backbone of this nation.

Never mind that it is on the same album as the song entitled “Tequila makes her clothes come off”.

It simply states that Believers are good, BUT… he never says what kind of believers, or what believers should believe in.

He just says Believers – Hindu believers?

Christian believers?

Buddhist believers?

I don’t know Joe Nichols or what he intended when he wrote this song, but it seems like he is celebrating Believer Zero!

It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe in something.

The world may want us believers to stand for zero, but what they need is a different type.

The world needs believers who are not Zeros!

The world needs people who have substance (those who believe in the atonement, the cross, the resurrection of Christ.

Those who are led by the Holy Spirit and have a God-driven purpose that has both the right doctrine and the right life-style.

This is why we are studying the book of James.

A book that penetrates our hearts and asks us to consider what our lives and our beliefs are really about.

In fact turn with me to James 1:12.

READ

This is a description of a believer with purpose:

• They have a backbone because they endure temptation

• They have a life-style that shows that they are in love with God

• They have a purpose – seeking after that crown of life

This crown of life is another more important symbol – because it comes from the Bible – that says that your life has achieved success in God’s eyes.

You ran the race and you have accomplished what God has put before you.

We are to run after this crown that is given to us in the end times from our King when He says, “well done, good and faithful servant!”

James says, “this is the life that is worthy filled with purpose!

This is the real thing!”

James wants us each to understand what it means to be the real thing, a real believer:

The first thing he says is to

1. ENDURE – vs. 12

“Blessed is the man who endures temptation.”

James starts this verse with the term “Blessed.”

What is a blessing?

What does it mean when someone sneezes and you say “God bless you.”

What do you wish for them?

Blessed has to do with happiness.

When you bless someone, you are wanting them to be happy.

Blessed has to do with being fortunate.

When you bless someone, you are wanting them to be privileged.

You want them to be lucky.

Ultimately though, blessing someone has more to do with happiness and luck.

James uses the word “bless” twice in his letter (once again in 5:11).

Both times he says that a man who does not give in will have God’s favor resting on them.

He is saying that God is looking for those who are steadfast, who persevere, and even suffer under a load of miseries, adversities, persecutions, or provocations.

When God finds that person, God prospers that man or woman.

It is a life that God rewards and even cheers for.

Jesus even said in Matthew 10:22 (HCSB) - You will be hated by everyone because of My name.

But the one who endures to the end will be delivered.

We must endure, but this world throws a lot at us, doesn’t it?

We have sin coming at us in all directions.

We turn on the T.V. – temptation.

We turn on the computer – temptation.

We walk down the street – temptation.

We go the beach – temptation.

We go to our jobs – temptation.

This past week, school let out and what happens when the kids don’t have planned activities – temptation!

But James’ words are not some ivory tower advice.

You see James himself had to endure when it was tempting to give up.

In the year AD 62, Jewish Scribes and Pharisees came to James because the people were converting to Christianity.

They begged James to tell the people that Jesus is not the Christ.

James boldly responded - "Christ Himself sits in heaven, at the right hand of our Great God, and shall come back one day on clouds from heaven."

The scribes and pharisees then said to themselves, "We have not done well in procuring this testimony to Jesus.

But let us go up and throw him down, that they may be afraid, and not believe him.

Accordingly, the scribes and Pharisees threw down the just man… [and] began to stone him: for he was not killed by the fall; but he turned, and kneeled down, and said: "I beseech Thee, Lord God our Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

And, while they were thus stoning him to death, one of the priests, the sons of Rechab, the son of Rechabim, to whom testimony is borne by Jeremiah the prophet, began to cry aloud, saying: "Cease, what do ye?

The just man is praying for us."

But one among them, one of the fullers, took the staff with which he was accustomed to wring out the garments he dyed, and hurled it at the head of the just man.

And so he suffered martyrdom; and they buried him on the spot, and the pillar erected to his memory still remains, close by the temple.

This man was a true witness to both Jews and Greeks that Jesus is the Christ.

~ Fragments from the Acts of the Church; Concerning the Martyrdom of James, the Brother of the Lord, from Book 5.

James himself had to learn the hard way to endure to the end!

To be the REAL THING, we must also:

2. EXALT GOD – vs. 13  Read

James understand that our natural tendency when we give in to temptation is to blame someone else.

We like to say, “the devil made me do it!”

Some however, have a defeatist mentality and feel that they are victims.

They say, “if God was so good, why did He create evil?

He knows all things, so He knew I would give in.

Why did you do this to me God?”

James attacks this thinking by stating clearly that God has nothing to do with evil – He doesn’t tempt anyone with it and in fact, can not be tempted to do evil.

So if temptation doesn’t come from God, where does this evil come from?

Jesus answered this for in Mark 7:21-23 (ESV) - For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery… All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.

Where does it come from?