Intro to James

Introduction

Welcome everybody, glad to see you guys here today. Last time I was up here I talked about some questions that we need to be tackling and ways to address issues of people have with the church. The leadership team has been meeting weekly trying to work through some of that and how it is going to look. We think it is really important and want to do it correctly, so in the mean time Cody asked me to do a series on the Book of James. Now when I say a series, we are going to be taking a deep dive into James and really breaking apart the scripture . I plan on doing a chapter a week so if you guys want to read the next weeks chapter ahead of me that would be awesome. I would encourage you guys to do that so that when we are going through this, you guys have an idea of the content. I also am going to be doing things a little differently with the series. If at any point you guys have a question or feel like you want to add something please feel free to raise your hand or stand up and add your two cents in. I want this to be less of me just sitting up here and talking and more of you guys asking questions. And as I say that, please know that I don’t know everything, and I might not be able to give you a good answer and will have to do some thinking or research on it. And if anyone else wants to attempt to answer that question they can as well. My hope is that we can walk away from this series saying that we all learned something new about the book of James. Personally, this is one of my favorite books in the new testament and I feel like i learn something new every time a read it. I find that happens a lot with scripture in general. But again, feel free to ask questions if something doesn’t make sense or if you are reading this throughout the week and come across something you would like further expanded in the chapter to post the question in group me and I will be sure to talk about it in my sermon the following week.

History

With that being said lets dig into James. Now James is one of the controversial book in the New Testament. Martin Luther, who was a very prominent figure in the protestant reformation called the book fo James an epistle of straw and considered it to have a secondary status in the N.T. And modern theologians often dismiss the book as a holdover from Judaism that does not truly express the essence of the Christian Faith. So it other words, the book is “too Jewish”. Yet despite all of that, James tends to be the most popular book in the N.T. It is one of the best known, and most quoted books. And why is that? It is because James is a very practical book for people looking for specific guidance on how to live a Christian life. It is almost like the proverbs of the N.T. It offers great advice that on the surface doesn’t really require a lot of thought right. James doesn’t use metaphors that are hard for us to understand or comprehend, it is pretty straight forward. Another thing that makes James likable is that he is very straight to the point. In the book we see James make a point in a simple way, and move on to the next topic.

That being said, James didn’t become accepted as canon in the New Testament u until about 400 A.D. It was certainly used for teaching and quoted before that, but it wasn’t universally accepted as having biblical authority until around 400 A.D. The book, or should I really call it a letter because that is what it is, was written much earlier. Some scholars think that the letter was written as early as 44 A.D. while others think it was written after 70 A.D.

Now two indications point to the letter MOST LIKELY having been written in the mid 40’s. One of the most important indicators is the probable relationship between James’ teaching on Justification in chapther 2 and Paul’s teaching on the same topic. Paul was teaching that faith, not works, is how we were justified before God. We see that in Ephesians 2:8-9

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”

But James says that faith without works is dead in chapter 2. So it seems that James has not really come to grips with what Paul actually meant. But a misunderstanding like this would not have happened after 48 AD because that is the year that Paul and James met to hash out a consensus on the requirements to be imposed on Gentiles for entry into the people of God. Acts 15.

The historical scenario that is suggested is that Paul’s preaching in Tarsus from c. 36 (Acts 9:30; Gal. 1:21) and in Antioch from c. 45 (Acts 11:25–26) had been misunderstood by some who heard him. They were apparently using the slogan “justification by faith alone” as an excuse for neglecting a commitment to discipleship and practical Christian living. It is this “perverted Paulinism” that James attacks in chap. 2. James probably did not even know that Paul’s teaching was the jumping-off point for the view he is opposing. He would have attacked such a teaching, of course, at any date. But had he known what Paul truly preached (as he would have after A.D. 48), he would have put matters differently than he did.

The second indication that the letter was written in the mid 40’s is how casually James mentions the Torah. Now we will get more into this later, but James was writing the letters to a Jewish audience, so it makes sense that he would mention the torah, but in 47-48 AD the conflict over the torah and how it related to gentiles arose. Again, we see this issue addressed in Acts 15 which happened around 48 AD. Now James was the leader of the council that met in 48 AD to address these issues. So from that time on James would have been well aware of the question of how the torah related to Christians . Again, his audience as Jews, but his casual references to torah in the letter make more sense if this meeting had not happened yet.

The Letter of James (B. Date)

For these reasons, we think that James was probably written in the middle 40s, perhaps just before the meeting in Acts 15. This time period also had some severe economic crises (there was a famine in Judea in A.D. 46 [Acts 11:28]) and the beginning of the serious social-political-religious upheavals that would result in the Jewish war of rebellion in 66–70. Both circumstances fit the situation implied in the letter.

Authorship

Now that we have narrowed down the possible date, lets look at who wrote the letter. There are a few possibilities but the most widely accepted answer is that James the brother of Jesus was the one that wrote the letter. There were arguments in the early church that James, the brother of John, the disciple, could have written the letter, but if we go with the timeline discussed with it being written in the mid 40’s that is unlikely. James, the brother of John was killed in 44 AD (Acts 12) while James the brother of Jesus and who was the leader of the church in Jerusalem was killed in 62 AD.

We know that James the brother of John was killed in Acts 12. But for James, the brother of Jesus death, we have to go outside the Bible to a book called The Antiqueites of the Jews, written by Flavius Josephus, who was a Jewish Historian and military leader, around 93 AD. Here is the excerpt from that.

“Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned:”

So this is the reason that James, the brother of Jesus, is given credit for writing the letter. From a timeline perspective, it makes more sense if he was the one to have written it.

Nature and Genre

Now that we have the author and the date it was written lets talk about the letter itself. The opening line of James is James 1:1 “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Greetings.” This confirms for us that James is writting a letter. It has a greeting, and an addressee. Now what is really important for us to remember here is that we are reading a letter written to someone else. When James was writing this, he was writing it with the mindset that it was going to be read by other people other than the people he was writing to. He knew that this wasn’t a biography of Jesus, or that it would be used thousands of years later by us. He wrote it with the purpose of addressing a specific group of people and the problems they were facing at that time. That doesn’t mean that we can’t find way to apply what James says to our lives to day. But the burden of find the best way to relate what James is talking about lies on us. We have to interpret what James means when he says certain things and understand the context of the situation the readers were in. If we can look at his letter through the lens of his readers, we can better find ways to apply it to our own lives. Now the purpose of the letter is to encourage, give advice, and instruct and the theme of the letter is on spiritual wholeness. So as we go into chapter 1, lets try and get into the shoes of our readers and put ourselves in the mid 40’s AD.

Chapter 1

James 1:1 “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Greetings.”

So here we see the introduction. James identifies himself as a servant of God and of Jesus and the tells us who he is writing to. The 12 tribes scattered among the nations. Now the the 12 tribes is a clear pointer to the Tribes of Israel so we know that James is addressing a Jewish audience, and we see that he says they are “scattered” among the nations. Now something important we have to pay attention to is this word scattered. Keeping in mind the social, political, and religious issues that were going on during the time we know Christian were being persecuted and there is a good chance that James was writing to Jews who were displaced. They have been uprooted from their homes and scattered across many different countries. It is important for us to consider this when we go into the next set of verses. You see in James, he never says in his letters what issues the people are facing. And that makes complete sense. If i am writing a letter to you that is full of advice I am not going to take time to tell you what you are struggling with or the situation you are currently in. You already know your situation so there is no benefit of me telling you more about. Instead I am simply going to address the issues. So again, we have to understand what the readers were potentially going through. The fact that the readers had been scattered or dispersed and forced to live away from their home country helps explain a second major characteristic of the readers, they are most likely living in poverty and oppressed conditions.

This next section has a ton to unpack. Let’s start with James 1:2-4. Can someone read that for me. So you have to love James here, he gets straight to the point. We have a short greeting and then bam, he is into the heart of the problems. Other authors like Paul will typically offer a blessing and talk about a few other things before getting into the instruction, but James just dives right into it. So we know that the readers had some trials they were definitely going through. They have been uprooted form their homes and scattered, living in a new area and facing persecution. So James acknowledges that they are having some hard times and he gives advice to it. He says to consider it pure joy.... So this could be a hiccup to us at first glance. Why would James tell us to be joyful about suffering? So let’s dig into this phrase ‘pure joy’. The phrase in greek is Pasan Charan which literally translates to ‘all joy’. The prefix ‘pas’ suggests intensity rather that exclusivity. We see this phrase pas used another time in 1 Pet. 2:18 where Peter tells slaves to be submissive to their masters “in all fear of God” or wholehearted and sincere fear. Peter isn’t saying that they should only have one emotion towards God and that is fear, but rather to have a healthy fear of God. Likewise, James does not, then, suggest that Christians facing trials will have no emotion other than joy, as if we were commanded never to be saddened by difficulties. His point, rather, is that trials should be an occasion for genuine rejoicing. And he tells us why in the next two verses.

He goes on to say that we know the testing of your faith produces perseverance and to let perseverance finish its work so that we may be mature and complete not lacking anything. This word testing here is actually a very rare word in the new testament. It only appears twice in the whole new testament and twice in the Septuagint which is the old testament that was translated into Greek. Each occasion in the Old Testament have to do with refining sliver or gold. So the testing of our faith is not intended to determine whether or not a person has faith or not, but it is intended to purify faith that already exist. This testing produces perseverance and the translation of the Greek word into English of perseverance is pretty spot on. You can also think of it like you would a muscle. Whenever we work hard or work out and lift weights or do exercise, our body is facing a trial. it is facing resistance and our muscles are being torn down only to be built back stronger than they were before. It our goal was to lift a certain amount of weight or run a certain distance and we quit as soon as it became hard we would never meet our goal. But if persevere and push through the pain and the difficulties, we become stronger and healthier. James is telling us that our faith is the exact same way. Whenever we face trials of any kinds we are certainly broken down, torn apart, feel defeated. But when we persevere and we push through, we come out stronger than we were before and we are more mature in our faith. Often times as we grow older we can look back on certain trials we faced and we can see how God helped us through or see the benefit of going through such a trial. But man it it is hard too be positive whenever we are currently facing trials. And this brings us to the next verse.

Can someone read verses 5:8

So James instructs his readers that whenever they lack wisdom in what they should do while facing trials, to pray and ask God for it. You see when we face trials we have multiple choices that we can make. We can choose to approach the Trial with a Christ like attitude and see how we can use what we are going through to further the kingdom, or we can shutdown and go down a different path that ultimately leads to sin. But sometimes we aren’t sure what the best choice even is. We feel lost and aren’t sure how to even begin to work through it. And in those moments is where James says that we need to ask God for wisdom and that he will give it do us. But I want to focus on verse 6 here. When we ask we must not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. That person is double-minded and unstable in all they do. Now here is our second hiccup of the day. Often times we read that doubt part and we think that James is telling the readers that they aren’t allowed to have any doubts and that if we even have a shred of doubt that God wont answer our prayer. But that isn’t what James is saying. The words basic meaning suggest that James is thinking of a very strong kind of doubting, a division with the believer that brings about wavering and an inconsistent attitude toward God. We see Paul use the same word when he describes Abraham’s faith. Abraham, Paul says, “did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God” (Rom. 4:20). Paul, of course, is well aware that Abraham did, in fact, doubt God’s promise on at least one occasion, greeting God’s promise about his son with laughter (Gen. 17:15–18). Paul’s point is not that Abraham never entertained any doubt about God’s promise but that Abraham, over many years, displayed a consistency in his faith in God. James is not, then, here claiming that prayers will never be answered where any degree of doubt exists—for some degree of doubt on at least some occasions is probably inevitable in our present state of weakness. Rather, he wants us to understand that God responds to us only when our lives reflect a basic consistency of purpose and intent: a spiritual integrity.

We see this expanded on in verse six where James compares the one who doubts to a wave tossed in the sea. So picture a body of water that is perfectly still. It is consistent, there is no waves or ripples there is nothing. It is just flat. Now think of the ocean where there are waves being tossed around. The surface of that water is in constant change, there is no consistency to it. James compares the faith of the one who doubts to that surface of water, unstable, constantly changing. He says that person is double minded. They aren’t consistent with their faith and relationship towards God and they are likely to act like a christian one day and then the next act like someone who has never even heard of Christ. Those are the people James is talking about. But if we try our best to be consistent in our relationship with God and are genuinely asking for wisdom he will give it to us generously. In order for us to receive wisdom from God we must not be spiritually divided. But be spiritually whole and consistent.

Let’s move on to verses 9-11. We won’t spend a whole lot of time here because we are running out of time. Can someone read those verses for me?

So here we see James address the rich and the poor. Now at first it looks like James is condemning the rich and praising the poor. But this is not exactly what he is saying. Rather that both the poor and the rich should view themselves as God does. The poor taking pride in the fact that though they are considered of low status of the world, God views them in high status. And on the other side of the coin, the rich should take pride in the fact that though the world views them as rich and high status, that are of no higher status than that of the poor people. He goes on on to talk about how the riches of the rich will fade away with time. What we can take away from this section is that no matter how the world views you, you shouldn’t measure your self worth by the world’s standards, but take pride in how God measures your self worth.

So now we will move on to the last section here. Will someone read 12-18.

Alright so here we see this transition back to trials. Every trial or difficulty that we face carries with it temptation. But while God allows trials to happen, God is not the one that entices us to sin. I always like to tell this story about my time in North Carolina. When I lived there Brooke and i went to a church where the pastor was southern baptist. He love to say “can i get an amen” and stuff like that during his sermons. I always got a good kick out of it. But i remember him doing a sermon on temptation one weekend and he said this. If you struggle with over eating and you see that doughnut sitting there and you feel tempted to eat it, that is the devil tempting you, the devil is telling you to eat that doughnut and you need to say no to the devil! “ He went on to give a few other examples but I just remember thinking, that isn’t the devil, that is your own body wanting a doughnut. A dough nut is not inherently evil, and the devil certainly didn’t put that dough nut in front of you. But rather the temptation is coming from our body’s desire to get something that we think will bring us pleasure. James confirms this for us. He says God doesn’t tempt us, but we are tempted when we are dragged away by our own evil desire and enticed. You see, God doesn’t tempt us, rarely does the devil himself actually tempt us, but rather our temptation comes from our own inner self. And when we give into that temptation, and we act on temptation, we give into sin and when is full grown it gives birth to death. You see we often think that because we are being tempted that somehow we are sinning. or that if we are tempted more often that we must not have a good relationship with God. And while when we walk with God we are certainly tempted less, it doesn’t mean that temptation is ever going to go away. Even Jesus was tempted. It is what we do with that temptation that defines us. Think of it like a fishing. We are fish and in front of us there is a tasty looking piece of bait but inside that bait is a hook and once we take the bait in our mouth we will be dragged away. Now sure, might get lucky and get off the hook, but most of the time once the hook is in our mouth we are goners. So when we are tempted, we shouldn’t blame God. God is not the one who is making us tempted, but it is our own lack of self control. James tells us that instead, God is perfect, cannot be tempted or tempt anyone, and that he does not change.

When we face trials we are going to face temptation and that temptation in of itself is it’s own trial. Christian maturity is not measured by how often we face temptation but by how often we act on temptation. Persevering under trial demands that we overcome these temptations and when perseverance finishes its work we will be made more spiritually whole.

Like i said, every trial brings temptation. Whenever we struggle financially we can be tempted to question whether or not God takes care of us. When someone close to us dies we are tempted to question God love for us. When we see so much suffering in this world we are tempted to question God’s Justice or even his existence.

You know we have a good family friend who just had a miscarriage. I can’t even believe to understand the pain that a mother goes through having something like that happen. And this was very unusual for them. They already had 3 healthy kids and no problems before, but for whatever reason something went wrong and she had a miscarriage. She was of course devastated and emotional but I will never forget what she told Brooke. She said now that she has experienced this pain she will be able to better relate to other mothers who have had this happen to them and use it to further his kingdom.

Wow, how powerful is that. She told Brooke that not a week after she learned the news. In the midst of pain and suffering she was able to find joy in the fact that she would now be able to relate to people better and help point their pain to God. That right there, that is exactly what James is talking about. She knows that right now she is going through something hard, but when it is over she will be made more spiritually whole and mature. She is not double minded, she is not inconsistent with her faith, she knows that God is with her through this hard time and even though it sucks now, she can use it to further his kingdom.

All of us are going through trials right now. Some of our trials might be small and some of them are life changing. If you aren’t sure how to move forward pray and ask God for wisdom. You might have doubts and that is okay. We all have doubts. And know that you aren’t the only one going through this and that there are people in this room who may have gone through a very similar situation already. Let us share our trials with each other so that we can support each other and share in our wisdom. And we we don’t know what we are doing, pray and ask our loving father for wisdom. We might not see it now, but I promise that God is with you and that if you follow him you will look back and see how God was with you the whole time. Like our friend, we need to see how we can best redirect our own pain and suffering into further the kingdom of God. And when we do that, we truly can rejoice in our trials.