Living Faith
Notes
Transcript
1 I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.
2 And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.
3 For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.
4 “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.
A. Rapport for the time
How do you learn to do anything? I started playing golf when I was 9 years old. Really, but really didn’t play a ton until I was 16 and then I started playing everyday in the summer. To learn how to really play I needed guidance because I thought I knew what I was doing but in reality not so much. To really grow in the game of golf I needed not only more information but I also need to try and execute that instruction in my life.
Later when I started teaching full time with zero experience my friend and mentor told me to go teach what I know. Which after many years of playing I thought it was not much.
You know it’s gonna be a great Sunday when you get to start the service with the OT book of Habakkuk. We left the text of James last week asking “Does our faith define us?” meaning do the actions of my life align with the God that I say I serve? The message from James this week just continues that conversation by giving us examples.
B. Reading of the text
19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?
22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;
23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.
24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
25 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?
26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
C. Review of the text
• Trials
• Wisdom from God
• Humility
• Unchanging God
• Don’t deceive yourself
• Goodness of God
• Embracing God’s word because of his Goodness to us
• Living our Faith out —Being a doer of the word-True faith
· Show no partiality
• Real faith is only lived out dead faith produces no change in our life
(this is the transformative power of Christ’s grace, urging us to forgive and show mercy. It’s a call to live grace-filled lives that reflect the mercy we’ve received through Jesus.
D. Relevance of the text
This morning as we dive back into the word of God in James we will be given examples of what a living faith looks like in the life of the redeemed.
T.S.
Living Faith: The Action That Speaks
Living Faith: The Action That Speaks
I. Acknowledgment Isn't Enough
I. Acknowledgment Isn't Enough
19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
Honestly most of us in this room have never thought about the theology of demons have you?
vs. 19
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Demons—fallen angels have the knowledge of who Jesus is and that is not saving faith for them. In fact, they have more knowledge of this than we do since we have never seen Jesus face to face.
MacArthur Study Bible NASB Commentary
Demons are essentially orthodox in their doctrine
29 And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”
30 Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them.
7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.”
41 And demons also came out of many, crying, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.
15 But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?”
Demons know the fullness of the trinity but they hate it and despise the things of God. They have been in heaven and have no doubt to the authority of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Demons do not have a knowledge problem they have authority problem. In their actions they declare that they will do what they want till the bitter end despite God.
20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
James is not contrasting faith salvation vs. word salvation. That is the huge misunderstanding about the book of James. He is really looking at a dead faith vs. a living faith. Living faith will have works and show the change that God has made in your life by your Faith in Christ Alone.
7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.
8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.
10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
T.S. Abraham: Faith perfected.
II. Abraham: Faith Perfected
II. Abraham: Faith Perfected
21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?
22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;
23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.
Abraham was called by God to be the father of a nation with no children. That sounds like something our God would do don’t you think? What seems impossible by our standards and our eyes.
1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan,
6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
Salvation was not the found in the what Abraham did because that is not what the bible says. Vs. 23 is found in...
6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
He believed the Lord!!
1 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?
2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.
3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.
5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,
Our salvation is by faith alone.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Now, Abraham expressed this faith in God in his actions.
9 When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.
10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
“This sermon point suggests that true faith leads to transformative steps that align with God’s promises, urging the congregation to trust God through difficult choices. Challenge them to reflect on Abraham's legacy, inspiring a living faith that manifests in acts of obedience.”
T.S. Not just Abraham alone but also we hear about Rahab
III. Rahab: Bold Faith in Action
III. Rahab: Bold Faith in Action
24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
25 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?
26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
24—can be controversial taken out of context. Understand that James is not saying anything different from Paul. Paul says it this way in Ephesians
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
How beautiful is that! You are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. How so?
God created you to be found in Christ for good works. Good works would be an expression of the relationship you have with the King.
Rahab..
4 But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, “True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from.
11 And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.
15 Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall, so that she lived in the wall.
17 And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent.
31 By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.
Rahab is David’s Great-great-great grandmother.
5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse,
6 and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah,
Rahab was a Canaanite woman living in Jericho that God destroyed because they worshiped not the one true God. Oops sorry, she is a prostitute in Jericho that finds herself in scripture for all eternity speaking about her great faith in the God of the universe and how she ended up in the line of Christ Jesus our Lord. This can’t be real can it?
Application:
4 “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
Romans 4:1-25
38 but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”
6 just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?
11 Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”
22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,
23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.
13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.
—Macarthur—Faith is not a one time act, but a way of life. The true believer, declared righteous by God, will persevere in faith as the pattern of his life.
