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James 02
Intro Hook:
You are out camping with a couple of friends. You have been excited for a while for this. Maybe you are glamping maybe not. One of your friends you know was a boyscout and said he would handle buiding the fire. Everyone else just bring food. It is gonna be a good weekend of fishing, reading and resting outside and roasting food at the campfire.
When you get to the campsite, Rob is already there. Rob is over at the fire pit. “I am getting stuff started, should be ready soon!” You cant wait. You start unloading your car. There is a nice wooden table on the campsite, so you setup some drinks and condiments. When you are finished you walk over to Rob and the fire. “Excellent, best one I have ever made.”
When you walk up, your jaw drops. Sitting inside the fire circle, there are no leaves, not wood, and no fire. Just a pile of legos. Red on the bottom… yellow on the top… wait, this was a model of a fire! Rob smiles. “Best fire I ever built.”
Seam: Now has Rob actually built a fire? It has the shape of a fire. He has said it is a fire. But why is it not a fire?
Fire actually has a definition. It has a nature.
FIRE: a state, process, or instance of combustion in which fuel or other material is ignited and combined with oxygen, giving off light, heat, and flame.
Did the fire give off heat? Light?
In order for a fire to actually be a fire it needs to give off light and heat. If it does not, it is not fire. It is dead.
Recap and Setup
Lets Jump in
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
Notice, faith is not bad without works. Faith is dead. It is not Faith. Faith requires action.
Another way of looking at it is that if we believe, if we have faith, then we act upon it.
We know this in most parts of our lives. Actions speak louder than words. But there is something that happens when we begin to talk about Faith that we feel like it does not apply to it.
Break for Argument
Before we talk more about Faith being dead without works, we need to chip away at the false dichotomy between Faith and Works.
Most of the argument comes from two verses.
First
This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
See Patrick it is through Faith.
Here is the problem. Back up just a couple of verses.
Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are subject to the law, so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may become subject to God’s judgment. For no one will be justified in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.
We need to understand that James and Paul are talking about two kinds of works.
The First works that Paul is talking about is Works IN ORDER TO
The Second Works that James is talkign about are Works BECAUSE OF
Its like this.
You are going to the movies. And there is a cost IN ORDER to see the movie.
Jesus, he payed that cost IN ORDER for you to see the film.
NOW the movie is awesome. You love the movie. It is the best film you have ever seen. What are you going to do? BECAUSE of the goodness of the movie you are going to share it. You want other people to experience that movie.
You dont tell people about the movie IN ORDER to see the film. You tell people about the movie BECAUSE the movie is so good.
Seam: Now, Faith and works are intertwined just a little bit more even.
Remember, James has said that Faith is dead without works. Meaning that Jesus payed for you to go to the movie, but you hadnt really seen it if you were not telling people.
Dallas Willard explains this passage like this.
“Works are siply a natural part of faith. James’s statement is about the nature of faith, about what makes it up. It concerns what believing something really amounts to. It is not an exhortation to prove that one has faith or to work to keeps one faith alive.”
Works are not something outside of faith. Works are what Faith is made of. Just as a fire must burn, it must produce light and heat… faith must have works. It must be lived.
James
See, Our Faith is actually a reaction to something that is or at least appears to be faithful.
When you go to a restaurant, and the server is sick, you can hear the chef in back and the Burger you order comes with a side of sneeze, you are not going to have faith in that food!
And so James is building upon what he has already said within the letter earlier.
But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror. For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was.
James is letting Christians know to not just hear the word but to go and do it. He uses the example of a mirror. You go up to the mirror, look in it. Check your hair, make sure your beard is straight…but is it any good if you forget what you look like after? You are going to walk away and have to go back to check again! Same with Scripture, the way to make it sticky, like cement, is to do what it says.
Seam: James continues with what is a response to a person reading the letter.
“But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” (James 2:18–19, NIV)
James is inviting the person to compare their faiths. A Faith lived and a faith unlived.
Notice two things.
First, James says that “there is one God.” Now, this is not the best translation of this verse.
The NASB and other translations say
You believe that God is one.”
Here is why this is important. James is not saying “Oh! That is good that you believe in one God….” This is actually a refrence to the most important prayer for the Jewish Faith. The Shema. It may actually look really familiar to you… when Jesus is asked what the most important commandment is he quotes it.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:4–5, NIV)
“The Lord is one” becomes an incredibly important phrase throughout scripture. Not a statement about a number, but submission to God.
Tim Mackie is a biblical PHD, and in his discussion about the SHEMA prayer he says this specifically about this phrase” The Shema prayer isn’t trying to make a philosophical statement about God’s essence or being (that God is one). Rather, the Shema is a pledge of allegiance to the Lord God of Israel that excludes allegiance to any other gods.”
So, James is not saying… Good thing you believe in there is just one God… what James is saying is “ Oh I see that you say you say that God is your king, Demons also believe that God is king…” Right information does not save us. Living the right information saves us.
Seam: James then gives an illustration of what this looks like.
We talked about him last week, Abraham. Not Abraham is THE guy that we look at as an exmple of faith. And so James points to him showing that the nature of faith is action.
Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works in offering Isaac his son on the altar?
The nature of Abraham’s faith is his obedience to offering Isaac.
The Pastor writer of Hebrews tells us more about this Abraham’s faith. Like we said, Faith is in the faithful.
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He received the promises and yet he was offering his one and only son, the one to whom it had been said, Your offspring will be traced through Isaac. He considered God to be able even to raise someone from the dead; therefore, he received him back, figuratively speaking.
Abraham has faith that God will be faithful to the promise of having more children. This faith leads to action. If Abraham chose not to do it, it would reveal that Abraham does not have faith. Faith without action is dead.
So what is it that you trust God for today? Do you trust God that you are going to go to heaven? Is it possible that God is actually inviting you to more than that? That God is inviting you to be able to live in his kingdom today?
Think about, what is it that Abraham was trusting God for? Not something after he died, but something now.
Our faith is not only in the future, but we have faith that God is present and active now, and so we can live as if that were so!
This means that our faith is not something seperate from the rest of our lives, but that it is active in the way that you and I live today!
This is what Paul is talking about in his letter to the Ephesians…
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.
You are saved…and then we do good works that we were created for.
Why are you created for works?
Because God is relational. It goes to the very purpose of why God created us. He created us for relationship to enjoy working WITH us.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”
Now, the word image is not only like a picture of God. It is deeper than that. It is the world tselem… and has to do with something really specific. A tselem is an idol of a God. So if you had an idol of a god in your house in ancient times, it was refered to as a Tselem.
Now only one kind of person was a tselem… And that was a King or ruler of a land. The Pharoh, the king of Egypt, was known as the Image of Ra. His role was to rule in the place of the god on earth. A heavenly representitive.
And so what God is saying in Genesis 1 is that humanity is created all in gods image. Not only the king. All people are gods representitve on earth, and what do they do? They rule with God. Or have dominion.
You and I were created for works, for good works from the beginning.
