Sermon Tone Analysis

Big Idea: Recap the entire book of James and all of the different wisdom sayings.

Recap what James wants us to understand about faith and works, wisdom, and trials.

We will then tie it all together with James’ final words about final things found in chapter five.

Chapter five is ultimately about the motivation for living perfect.

Jesus is returning soon and with him comes the judgment and reward for all that is done.

James operates a lot like the book of Ecclesiastes in its final chapter: It considers all that has been talked about up to this point and directs our attention to one singular grounding reality…all of this is temporary.

Even though bad men prosper and good men are oppressed, even though trials come, even though we will struggle with our tongues until the day we dies, and even though we are tempted to live only in light of the present, there is coming a day when all will be called into account…so live perfectly.

Talk about why I am so bad at social media and why it would be great to have a social media manager…the only way to really get better at something is to practice it.

So, this week, I took some time to practice my social media skills by being James’ twitter account manager.

We’ve been in the book of James for going on six weeks now, but this morning, we are going to finish it out.

The question is, how do we conclude something neatly that runs off in so many different directions?

James gives a dozen or so different, and seemingly unrelated, concepts for us to consider which makes tying it all together really hard.

This is really funny considering that James does a really good job of concluding all of his teachings.

He does so with these super catchy and tweetable one-liners.

I tried to think that if James could be here this morning wrapping up his own letter how would he do that.

We have this platform that I think James would love…twitter.

I’ll let you into a bit of pastor envy that I harbor in my own heart.

I have a friend named Chad Graves…he’s a pastor in Arkansas and Chad is like the most tweetable dude on the whole planet.

I think people have told that to Chad long enough that he’s started taking it seriously and now Chad puts out a short 500 character or less devotional or catchy Biblical axiom food-for-thought every day.

You should totally follow Chad…I would honestly love to get a call from him wondering why in the world all these random people from Washington state just started following him.

I have spent a lot of time considering why James wrote the way that he did.

James has these deep biblical roots and every single word and concept he writes is hyperlinked back to Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Old Testament Prophets, and Jesus’ sermon on the Mount.

James will give these short expositions over these deep and super heavy theological concepts that other biblical writers use pages and multiple chapters to deal with.

And then, James will conclude those teachings with an even shorter one-liner.

For a guy who regularly speaks longer than he intended, this has been quite the puzzle for me to understand why James would choose to communicate this way.

280 Characters or less seems to be James’ sweet spot.

Here is the answer I came up with about why James writes the way he does and it comes from a concept we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

I think James truly believes what he wrote in chapter 3 verse 5.

When is a forest fire a bad thing?

When it is in the wrong area and when it is out of control.

A controlled burn in the proper places not only keep forest fires from getting out of control, but they actually encourage new life by clearing downed trees, undergrowth, and returning precious nutrients back to the soil.

And catch this…both the good and the bad forest fires are started from the same small source.

Just think about it for a second.

Have you ever heard something super simple and yet it changed your life in some big ways?

I remember back early on in ministry, I really struggled with feelings of inadequacy and qualification.

And then I heard a statement that you’ve probably all heard at some point: God doesn’t call the qualified but qualifies the called.

What a trite simple sentence.

That isn’t a Bible verse that you’ll find anywhere but the concept is definitely biblical.

Just look at Jesus’ disciples…these dudes were not the number one draft pick of any biblical teacher in Jesus’ day.

They were uneducated, poor, and lacking in any powerful social connections that could serve them or Jesus’ mission well and yet they are the ones that God chose.

Those men are the one’s who’s writings we open up and read week in and week out over 2000 years later.

None of the educated dudes have anything we look back on.

God did that…not them…not a prestigious school…not money…and not any social or political connections.

If God can do that through them…surely He can work through me as well.

Such a simple statement went on to change the way I felt about my calling into ministry in ways that I still cling to to this day.

James uses that concept over and over again in his writing to inspire major change through a small amount of words.

And so, this morning, I want to journey back through James to hit the highlights and any of the things we have yet to cover.

But, staying true to James’ own style, I want to do them all in 280 characters or less.

And at the end, we are going to let James close it all out with the motivational kick in the pants we need to get serious about growing in our maturity.

Here we go.

In chapter 1 we read this in verses 13-18.

Trials and temptations are not sent by God but He is big enough to see you through them if you love Him more than your sin and trust Him more than you trust yourself when negative circumstances arise.

Tweet: God didn’t send the trial you are in but He’s powerful enough to use it.

Perhaps the greatest thing God can offer us in our trials isn’t deliverance but maturity and the opportunity to grow in faith and love for God.

#shiftyourperspective #yourgoodandHisglory

INSERT TWEET 1

James has a few things to say about riches as well in chapter one.

This echoes Jesus’ words from Matthew chapter 19 when he says this in verse 23-24:

Its actually not any harder in the literal sense for a rich man to enter into God’s kingdom than it is for anyone else.

Repentance, trust, and asking Jesus to save you are the three components of salvation and they are the same for a homeless person as they are for Jeff Bezos.

What makes it harder is the trust piece.

It’s hard to trust God in something you can’t see (although I’m not sure why because the death rate for humanity is still sitting firmly at 100%) when you can trust yourself for the immediate and tangible things.

James is saying that trials have a way of showing what we trust in more.

Are we going to look to God or are we going to rely in our own strength, character, and riches to remove the stresses of bad circumstances?

And in the highly pragmatic James fashion, he is saying:

Don’t place your hope in earthly riches because they can evaporate in an instant.

Tweet: You want too little!

Quite striving for earthly riches when only heavenly ones will truly satisfy.

One will rust before your eyes and the other is an eternal crown of life.

Love God and be rich, love riches and lose them both.

#trulyrich

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In chapter two, James moves on to three other topics that by themselves have hundreds of pages dedicated to them elsewhere in the Bible.

Let’s look at two of those that haven’t been covered in detail yet:

First, James says this:

That is to say:

Do not claim to follow after the way of Jesus and proceed to treat people differently based off of what you stand to gain from them.

When we categorize people based on appearances and treat them with love in proportion to what we stand to gain, it is the antithesis of how Jesus loved you and if you are following after Jesus, and fail to love people the way He did are you really following?

Tweet: Jesus didn’t stand to gain anything by loving you…in fact, it cost Him everything.

His love was based on who he was not what you could do for him.

Followup question: What if Jesus loved you the way you love others?

#loveregardlessof...

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Then James goes into how we view ourselves in terms of our morality.

James is saying the root of our favoritism and judgmental attitude stems from a falsely derived attitude of superiority and when we judge people based on that, our judgments will always be merciless.

That we can somehow view ourselves as superior to others as we redefine God’s law in favor of ourselves.

We aren’t murders or adulterers so we are blameless.

Right?

Wrong! James looks back on Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount and says nope!

If you have hatred in your heart towards another person, you are a murderer.

If you look with lust on another person you are an adulterer.

Don’t deceive yourself because you definitely have broken the law and if you break one part you are guilty of breaking it all.

We then go on to judge some with favoritism and others we judge in harshness and without mercy.

And don’t miss this tweet:

Tweet: When your false sense of moral superiority causes you to judge your neighbor w/o mercy, you stand convicted by the same measure of judgment.

You've never experienced Jesus' mercy and forgiveness if you won't extend it to others.

#shownmercyshowmercy #theforgivenforgive

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That is to say, true mercy and forgiveness cannot simply be conjured up by our own strength.

True mercy and forgiveness only comes out of the overflow of that which has already been extended to you through Jesus.