Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 8, 2017 | Route 66 - James

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January 8, 2017 | Route 66 - James · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: We'll only see that bumper about seven, eight times more because we're in the stretch run of our road trip to the Bible.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting this morning, we're doing a road trip to the Bible called Route 66, 66 books in the Bible, 66 Sundays.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: We've been doing it for a little over a year.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: And this is uh with James.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: And we have first, second Peter for Center John Jude Revelation.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: That's eight.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: So we'll be done if we just motor on through by the end of February and have to do something else.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: It's great to see you this morning.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: We have a wonderful book.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: A book that I'm sure is the favorite of some of you.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: It's called the Book of James.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: And this book I think should be titled See Suffering as an Opportunity.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: This is a unique book.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Book of James, only five chapters long, absolutely unique book in the Bible.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Because, well, it was the first book easily written in the New Testament.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Only ten years after Jesus died, this is his younger brother, James, of the five Jameses of the New Testament.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus' younger brother.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: And so it's special for that reason.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: It's special because it was written, Jesus died 33 A.D., this would have been written 44, 45 A.D., at the latest, 49 A.D., which is well before Paul wrote his epistles and the other gospels and so forth.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: So you're looking at the very first book, and it's written to Jews, Jewish believers, because you know, Paul hadn't really done his thing yet.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: The church wasn't full of people like you and me, Gentiles, you know, and uh uh and so these are Jews, and they've been, and and and they were spread now around Palestine and up north, what we call Lebanon and Antioch.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: And so this book is for them.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: And it's also for you.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of the Proverbs of the New Testament, it's the Blue Jeans book of the Bible, which is why so many people like me love it.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to start with uh uh with a revealing, it's revealing about my character, but I'm gonna tell it anyway, of a cartoon that made me laugh.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Some years ago is uh it showed it the title of this uh uh cartoon strip was called Scenes We'd Like to See.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: Scenes We'd Like to See.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: And uh the one I the one I'm referring to was uh the scene.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh the first uh tableau was a girl in a canoe, and she was going down a river and it was turning into rapids, and she could tell there was a waterfall at the end, and she's panicked, and she has no paddles.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: And so she knows she's lost.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: And then you see in the next clip, you see the hero.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: He's on he's on the bank and he sees her and he's running and he says, I'll save you, I'll save you.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: And and so he finds a tree, he climbs up over the tree, leans over the branch, and Lee leans down, and she's so excited, she's relieved she's gonna be saved.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: You know, and she reaches up, he reaches down, he misses.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: So I know that shows what an uncompassionate, merciless person I am, but that just made me laugh.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Somebody came up after church, after one of their services.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I thought you were gonna say he leaned down, then he fell into the canoe, and they both went over.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: I said, that's even better.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: No.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, the reason I think that's a good introduction to this book is because I think that's happened to you.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Someone has said that if tears were indelible ink, all of us would be stained for life.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: All of us have had the experience, being a Christian for very long, of being in a canoe without paddles, seeing that you are in deep trouble, you're in the rapids, you are you're in real trouble.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a waterfall ahead.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: And so you've called out to God, whose eye is on the sparrow.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: And he will certainly, if you call out to him, rescue you.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: And you've reached up, like in that famous old Michelangelo, you've reached up, his hand reaching down, but for some reason you've missed.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: And it turns out that you lose the job anyway.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Or your loved one dies, or your best friend betrays you, or your health, your health goes to pot.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: Something happens, and it's not at all what you expected.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: And you're like the girl in the canoe.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: And the people to whom James was writing were fully acquainted with that kind of a feeling because they were being choked by suffering.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: We find as we read this book that they had money issues, big ones, some of them really poverty stricken.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: They had health issues.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 5 is all about health issues.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: They, some of them close to death, had real health issues, then they had persecution issues, partly because of anti-Semitism, because they were Jews, and even worse, because they were Christians.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: So they knew what suffering was like.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: And this book, more than any book in the Bible, except for the book of Job, addresses the question: why do bad things happen to good people?
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Why are you suffering, dear Christian?
5:10
SPEAKER_00: This book written to believers.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: And this book, and in fact, this book answers the question right away.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: It puts the answer at the front door.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: It says, in a verse that had to have shocked his first readers, consider it pure joy, my brothers.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Consider it a great joy if you're reading the Holman.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Consider it all joy if you're reading the Greek.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the first time you saw that verse, you read that verse, you came across that verse, and you, or you under, you know, can you understood it?
5:43
SPEAKER_00: You didn't just read it like you read much of the Bible.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's sweet.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: But you actually read that verse and you understood it.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when you said, Are you kidding me?
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Really?
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Really?
5:55
SPEAKER_00: God?
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Consider it joy?
5:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you could have said, keep a stiff upper lip.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: You could have said, hang in there or something.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Consider it joy, all joy, pure joy, when you face trials.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, for circling words in here, make sure you circle around a line the word whenever.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Because that is exactly what the Greek word is, Hatan.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: It's not very common.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Whenever.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: It's not an if, it's a when.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: It's not an elective course in God's program, God's school of hard knocks.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: This is a required course.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: It's going to happen.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: As Job said, man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, um, I always forget this.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: In the world, you shall have tribulation.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: Paul said it's given to us not only to believe in him, but to suffer for his sake.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: It is given to us, it is a gift to us.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: I know you've prayed, thank you for the gift to God.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, for the gift of salvation.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: You've prayed, thank you for the gift of eternal life.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: You ever thank God for the gift of suffering?
6:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, me neither.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: No, have you?
7:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, because it comes from the same hand.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: And the logic, the logic, Paul says, what the way to do this is you need to understand the whole cause effect.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: You need to reason a certain way.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: You need to be, you know, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Your translation may say patience.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: But basically, you know, if you just put the words uh, you know, in here that it means on one side, you have the cause, that's suffering, that's hardship, that's trials, that's tough times.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: And then he's saying the effect is, and you need to understand this and reason this way, the effect is endurance.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: It's my favorite word here, or patience, or staying power, tenacity, fortitude.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: One of you just texted me last week.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: That's your word you've chosen for this year.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Good luck.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: You just asked for trouble.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: But fortitude, perseverance, stamina, grit.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: You can't have the second without the first.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: And God knows, though, we forget that these two things are closely related, that even his son Jesus learned obedience through the things that he suffered.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: And that endurance grows best, faith grows best in the fire.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: And patience grows in the hothouse of suffering.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: And so you can't have the first without having the second.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Because God's not interested in just giving you fire insurance policy to keep you out of hell.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: He's interested in making you just like his son, who learned obedience through the things that he suffered.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: And therefore, he's going to try to make you cry.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: It's said at this time of the year, tomorrow is the national championship college football.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: It said, often said, that national championships or college championships are not won in the games of December or January, but are won back on the training field in the heat of summer in August.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: You've probably heard that before.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: And that's when the coach has you run lap after lap after lap.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: That's when he has you doing exercises.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: Some kids drop out.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: They drop off the team because they don't believe that the coach really understands the plan of how to make a championship team.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: They don't buy into the cause-effect thing.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Other players, they go, How many laps?
9:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: How many exercises?
9:32
SPEAKER_00: I'll do it.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: Because they believe, trust in the coach and in his program, in the cause-effect that will lead to championships in January if you work hard enough in August.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: But the caution, this is the next verse, verse four, the caution is that you can't quit, you can't bail out.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: Let perseverance, verse four, patience endures, finish its work.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: In other words, don't bail out.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Hang in there so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: Your translation may say perfect and complete.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Same thing, complete, mature.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: These are two words, by the way, often used for fruit, and and and they're perfect in that regard because fruit go through a two-step process.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: And the development, first of all, developing an apple develops until the moment when it has everything that an apple will ever have.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: And it is as much of an apple as it'll ever be.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: However, it's still unripe.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't want to eat it.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: You want to leave it on the tree.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: It needs to develop.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Because the second stage is the ripening process, the completion process.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: And therefore, you like that apple need to hang in there, not bail out, not quit, allowing the trouble, the pain, the suffering.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: By the way, in a small way, my lingering laryngis this last month, I will confess to you, has given me a golden opportunity to practice in a rather easy way.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: I know 40% of you, according to this, whatever those are, are going through something that's far worse than laryngitis.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: Job, at home, church, school, money, health.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: You're going through something far worse than that.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: But whatever it is you're going through, it provides you a golden opportunity to gain endurance, perseverance, grit, stamina.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: But you have to hang in there.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: You can't bail out.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: You can't quit early.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Because you need to, this is point one in the back of your sheet, see suffering as an opportunity to grow, to become better, not bitter.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, as you look at the outline at the bottom of the first side of the sheet, you need to understand that this book falls, in my view, into three parts.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: And it actually falls into five parts, but part one is like part five.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: The end of the book and the first part of the book both say endurance.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: Both talk about growing through suffering if you endure.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: And then part two and part four talk about the fact that suffering also gives you an opportunity to learn mercy and compassion, doesn't it?
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Because when people are suffering, golden opportunity for you to learn mercy and learn compassion.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: As Aristotle said, you learn a virtue by practicing the virtue.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And then the middle part of the book is chapter three.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: It's about speech.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: Because, do I need to remind you, it's when the pressure is high, when the stress is on, when there's suffering and when there are trials that we tend to make real mistakes with our tongue, whether it's our suffering or other suffering.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to get through those, but the first of those three major points is see it as an opportunity to go become better, not better.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: You say, What do you mean?
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, I say, I mean exactly what James means, because James is making that point when he then moves into the word temptation.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: It's the same Greek word, parasmos, testing and temptation.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Temptation is just this narrow field that's negative.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: Testing coming from God, he says.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Need to submit to it, you need to accept it with joy.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: But there are some people who, when they are tested, say, you know what?
13:08
SPEAKER_00: I don't buy this.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't buy that God cares for me.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't buy that this is a gift from God.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: And they begin accusing God.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: They see it as a temptation, and they actually turn the testing, God's school of suffering, into Satan's prison cell of temptation.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: When tempted, no one should say God is tempting me, for God can't be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: Each one is tempted when by his own evil desire, by her own evil desire, to have everything the way I want, to have things go plush, to have me live a good life, to have me have as much money as I want, good health, and so forth, he's dragged away and enticed.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: And you know people like this.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: For a lot of Christians are like porcupines, have a lot of good points, but you can't get near them.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Their doctrine's just fine.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: But something's happened they didn't count on.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: They reached up, hands missed, went over the falls, and now they are convinced that God doesn't like them, forgot them, is mean, and they're turning this tempting is turning into a temptation from the devil.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: Temptation leads to death.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: Testing leads to life, leads to endurance.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, be very, very careful.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: You cannot go to that person and say, sweetly, you know, every dark cloud has a single lining.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Not if you want to keep all your teeth.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: You know.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: And you can't go to them and quote to them James chapter 1, verse 2, count it all joy.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: They're victims.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: And you're not about to, they're not about to change from victim to victor just because you quote a verse at them.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: They have turned that testing into a temptation.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: And you pray for them, you're sweet to them, you just hope against hope that someone they will listen to, like a child.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Maybe like their child will say something that will change them.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: But you find that happening.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: Some people become bitter rather than better, and it makes it very, very difficult, doesn't it, to speak to them because they have decided, decided firmly, they're accusing God, decided God doesn't know what he's doing, or he's handling them wrong.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: He's absolutely not fair.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not, uh this is not just in the Bible.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: This is not just the book of James.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: I used to read loads of success books when I was a salesman, and you know what?
15:26
SPEAKER_00: There's a number of them say something like that.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: For instance, Josh Ship says this: you either get bitter or you get better.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: It's that simple.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: It's your joy.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: So I ask you, because I know a lot of you are going through a lot deeper valley than having a lingering cold and a hoarse voice, you are some of you are in a valley of suffering, nearly half of you, uh whether it's small or large.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: And so I ask you, are you in that valley right now?
16:05
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, by the way, when you think about it, you're only in a valley of suffering for one of two and a half reasons.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, three reasons.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Number one, you messed up, you took a wrong turn, right?
16:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, we were watching Dave Dave uh Ramsey here.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, you had a credit card, you maxed it out, you spent more than you had, then you got another credit card, maxed it out, and so you you got deeply in debt, and you're in a valley of financial suffering, and you messed up.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's one option.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, I'm not very compassionate, but that's just the way it is.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: You messed.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: And the second reason you're in a valley of suffering is that God took you there.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: God led you there.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: Somehow you got dropped in there.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: And and and God didn't God really does want to grow you.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: It's not your fault, you know.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and by the way, the third option is just the catch-all.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: You have no idea why you're there, you know, which is most of us, most of the time.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: But uh if it's number two or number three, if it's not that you you messed up and you need to repent and you need to hike back out of there as quickly as you can, then what you need to do is you need to walk through that whole valley.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: You need to accept it as a gift from God, you need to rejoice in it.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite writers is an ethics professor, an old one, at Yale University.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: His name is Nicholas Wolsterstorff.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: He's a wonderful Christian man.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: And his his 20 was some years ago, his 21-year-old son, the light of his life, fell off a mountain, died in a mountain climbing accident.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: And and Wolterstorff wrote an amazing book about suffering, uh, about his son.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: It was just just just phenomenal.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: And what he says is this in the valley of suffering, despair and bitterness are brewed.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: You're tempted toward despair and bitterness when you're in that valley.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: But there is also, there also, character is made.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: The valley of suffering is the veil of soul making.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
17:53
SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: The valley of suffering is the veil of soulmaking.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: I never heard anybody else say that.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful way to put it.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: And and so the New Testament is clear about that.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: Wise people are clear about that.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh James 1 says it more thoroughly and clearly than anywhere else, but but it said in brief elsewhere, such as in Romans 5.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Twenty years later, Paul wrote this We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: There it is.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: And this chapter, James 1, ends with a promise.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: If you will stay in the valley, if you will not bail out, if you'll hang on to Lin and accept it as a blessing from the hand of God, blessed is the man of beatitude.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is the man who or a woman who perseveres under trial, because when he or she has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: Now I don't know.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: I I have preached before that the crown of life is in the future.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: It's one of those five crowns in the New Testament, that you get it as a reward.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's true, but you know, half of the scholars believe that it's a it's something that you get right now.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a special, vibrant spiritual life that you get even now on the other side of that valley.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's now or later or both, I don't know, but it's good, okay.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: I I heard somewhere, I don't know who said it, hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many of you have watched the YouTubes or seen this Australian, a guy who was born without arms and legs named Nick, and who who's who who maybe would have been ordinary otherwise, but because of the way he's responded to having no arms and no legs, he has wonderfully influenced a hundred thousand high schoolers and college kids by speaking all over the world.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Hardship prepares ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: I believe that.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: See suffering, therefore, as an opportunity to grow, become better, not better.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: Now, as we move toward the center of the book, see suffering as an opportunity to help, right?
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Don't just stand there, do something.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: And so now we move to the idea that suffering afflicts us all, but it gives us opportunities to learn mercy and to learn compassion.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: But we have to get up out of the pew.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: We have to exercise our faith.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 22, chapter 1, be doers of the word and not hearers only.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: When the Bible says, love be you know, show your love, be compassionate.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Don't just listen to that.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Get up and do it.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you're fooling yourself, as a modern translation puts it.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Do what God's worth says, don't merely listen to it, or you'll fool yourself.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: And um, this is not part of my sermon, this is extra, but um, this this book is full of humor.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: The very next verse, by the way, says, otherwise you're like a guy who looks in the mirror, a man who looks in the mirror and goes away and forgets.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: If you look at the Bible when it says be compassionate, and you go away and you don't do anything, you're like a guy who in the morning gets up, looks in the mirror, and goes away and forgets.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing to me, the wonderful thing is in Greek, the word male is used because James knows good and well women are not like this.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Women will look in the mirror and they will remember what they look like.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: But we, am I right, Terry?
21:21
SPEAKER_00: We'll go in the mirror and we'll look like we'll look horrible in the morning.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: But but we won't even comb anything, we'll go away and we'll go, I look fine, and you will have totally forgot.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: So, but if you look at the Bible, if you hear that the Bible says you need to be kind and compassionate, and you go, well, you don't do anything, you're like Terry and me in the morning.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: So don't be that way.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: So, uh but then it gives all kinds of illustrations of when people are suffering, what to do.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Visit orphans and widows in their distress, James 127, because that's pure and undefiled religion.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you're thinking of Haiti Lifeline, I am too.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many ways that you and I can get involved, but that's one Haiti Lifeline helping out at the orphan.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Or with Trash Mountain or being a lunch buddy across the street, right?
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Or helping as some as a number of you did yesterday at the cab closed closet giveaway in the freezing cold weather across the street where we give away 3,000 pairs of clothes the first Saturday of each month.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: Or you go down, you can come down and help us give away food the second Tuesday of each month.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: That's harvesters, get involved in young lives, a rescue mission.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: There's so many ways that you can do it.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: But you have to, you have to take your faith and you have to move it, okay?
22:29
SPEAKER_00: And there's a he then moves on and says, by the way, you need to treat poor people as well as you treat rich people.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: There's a tendency, he says in chapter two, you know, for us to treat rich people or important people differently than we treat better than we treat poor people.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Now, the illustration he gives doesn't apply very well here in America, because he says when when rich people come into the auditorium and church, you know, you take them down to the front seats and you let the poor people sit on the floor in the back.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, in America, that you know, that's not true.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: All the rich people want to sit in back anyway.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, no, all of us want to sit in back.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: Or or or are uh you know, we're more democratic.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: But I will tell you, no matter who you are, especially I've I experienced this, you know, hundreds of times overseas, that if you're from America, and of course if if if they regard you as somehow important, they treat you like the Pope.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they treat you like amazing, and it's embarrassing.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: And and you say, Oh, you want them to read James chapter two, because you need to treat, you need to treat poor people.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: But so we I expand this, you know, wherever it is in life.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, our tendency is to cozy up and want to be known, want to drop names and get known by important people.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, he says, you need to treat poor people as well as you treat rich people.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: And then he twists the knife.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: He says, Listen, what good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Can such faith save him?
23:54
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden you're feeling this constriction around your throat.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Hold it.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: If I'm not doing charity, I'm going to hell.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15, suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: If one of you says to him, Go, I wish you well, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?
24:14
SPEAKER_00: I love the humor here.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, faith by itself, if it's not accompanied by action, is dead.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: Ooh.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: You go, wow.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: That means my faith's no good if I don't exercise cheer.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And it gets worse.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: You see then how by works a man is justified, not by faith only.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: And you're going, hold it.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: I I I thought, I thought, I thought in Romans, Ephesians, Galatians, Titus, it was justification by faith, not works.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead too.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther, no less a guy than Martin Luther, who wrote commentaries on every other book in the Bible, came along, saw this, wrote his preface to the book of James.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: This this contradicts Paul's teaching justification by works.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: This is an epistle of straw, knock it out of the Bible.
24:56
unknown: Okay?
24:57
SPEAKER_00: But because it is directly contradictory.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Now I don't have time, but I'm going to give you five minutes of sort of seminary, heavy Bible school stuff right now about this, because so many people get confused and they go, oh, okay.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: And they cross out the hundred times we're here about saving, we're saved by faith alone and eternal security, assurance of salvation on the basis of this one, James chapter two, which seems to say that you're saved by charity, you're justified by works, and you have no real faith, you know, unless you're unless you're kind and compassionate.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: So let's take those.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: I just want to touch on those three really quickly.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: The easiest for you is going to be salvation, because we've talked about the three tenses of salvation before.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: We did several times back in Romans and Titus.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: And as you know, there's a past tense of salvation when you believe Jesus is your Savior.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: He forgives you from the penalty of sin, all your sins, past, present, and future, and uh Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 and so forth.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: There's a future tense of salvation where you're going to be saved.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he speaks that way.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: In the future, you'll be finally and forever saved when Jesus appears, if you've trusted his son.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: But there is a present tense in the middle of that you are being saved presently from the power of sin, from those temptations that hold you down, from those lusts and desires and negative and so forth.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: And here he's talking, he's saying, when your brother is hungry and cries help, is it your faith or is it your work that will save both of you, actually?
26:22
SPEAKER_00: Him from hunger and you from the sin of selfishness and the temptation of mightest greed.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: So, so I think you'll have no problem with the idea that this saving could be present tense.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the faith without works is dead.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: Faith without works is dead.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: He says in James 2.17, faith by itself, if it's not accompanied by action, is dead.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: Now, what does he mean by that?
26:48
SPEAKER_00: He could mean, which question is he addressing?
26:51
SPEAKER_00: Is he addressing, is your faith real or not, evaluating whether or not you're going to heaven, or is your faith useful or not, evaluating the obedience of your life on earth and how the world sees you and so forth.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: And you know as well as I do that there are a lot of Christians who you could say have a dead orthodoxy, who never get involved, who are doctrinally perhaps just fine, but they never do anything about it.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: And you don't like to hang around them, and their faith is dead.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: And then there are Christians who you look at them and you love being around them because their faith is absolutely alive and it's living and it's vitalized.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: In James chapter 2, verse 22, he says, you see, faith their faith.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of Abraham, who actually is justified in James by works, whereas Paul says he's justified by faith alone.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: But that's 20 years later.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: This is the first book.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: This is before the whole justification by faith became all over the place.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: So this is justified books.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: It says Abraham was justified by his works.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: His faith was completed by his works.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: And so the call here is for you to work your faith, for you to vitalize your faith, for your faith to get it out of the pew and to be alive and doing something.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can have faith, but it can it can be as dead as a doornock, it can be like a car without gas.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: It can be like a sailboat without any wind.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: But your activity, your works, your acts of compassion are the wind that fills the sails of your faith.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: They're the gas that powers the car of your Christianity.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: But then he talks about justifying.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: You go, hold it.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: He says we're justified by works, not faith.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: Paul says the opposite.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: Which one are we justified by?
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about this wonderful, glorious word justification, remind you of what Paul says about it, justified by faith for a moment.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: And I do that partly because the word justification is under attack starting in England today by certain people who say it's not really important.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: Remember, to justify means to declare righteous.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: And all those of you who've received Jesus as your Savior are actually declared righteous by God.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: For you to lose your salvation, God would have to go back on his word and undeclare what he previously declared.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: I like what Jerry Bridges, one of my favorite writers, recently passed away, wonderful leader of the navigators.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: He put it this way: to be justified means more than to be declared not guilty.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: And I was just saying it means more than what you often, just as if I'd never sinned.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: It means more than being innocent.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: It actually means to be declared righteous, positively righteous before God.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: It means God has imputed or charged the guilt of our sin to his son Jesus Christ and has imputed or credited Christ's righteousness to us.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: We're speaking now about justification by faith.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Praise the Lord for that.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing idea.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: But James is speaking about justified by works.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: Suppose there's a contradiction.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther said, Jack this book out of the Bible.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Paul says Abraham was not justified by works, James, Romans 4, James says he was.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Point is Abraham was justified by faith in God's word, but then asked to demonstrate his faith with genuine before the world by his works.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: He was justified before God by faith, but was justified before men by his works.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: Let me put it this way.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: When you are justified by faith, you at that moment have the possession of eternal life before God.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: You're as sure of heaven as if you'd been there a thousand years already.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: When you're justified by works, you have an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, who also learned obedience through the things that he suffered.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: And before the watching world, you are ennobled.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: You are Christ-like by the fact that you serve and are compassionate.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm going to say something you've never heard before, but James teaches this.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Dear Christian, you need to live your faith, to be justified by your works, saved by your acts of compassion, displaying a faith that's alive, not dead.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: Bottom line here is practical.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: This is blue jeans.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: I've given you five minutes, seven minutes actually, it looks like, of seminary doctrine.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Had to get through that because of the misunderstanding.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: But the real point is, blue jeans, see suffering as an opportunity to help.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: Don't just stand there, do something.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: And finally, interestingly, not the point I would have made third, but at the middle of his book, he says, see suffering as an opportunity to speak.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: Be a peacemaker, not a peacebreaker.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: I don't need to remind you that when crisis comes, when there are confrontations, difficulties, troubles in a church, troubles in a home, health issues, financial issues, that oftentimes things are said at that time that are absolutely devastating, that divide churches, that divide homes.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes James says, by the way, James actually says this, sometimes you need to actually keep your mouth shut.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: You need to be quick to hear and slow to speak.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: There's times when you need to sit in the hospital, hold someone's hand, and not say a word.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: Like Job's friends did.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: We forget Job's friends actually did that with him for a whole week.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: They shut up.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: And then they started talking and blew it all.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: But but you know, so there are times when you absolutely need to be quiet when someone someone is suffering.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: Watch your tongue.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: And the problem is that sometimes when we see the way people are handling their suffering, and we don't like it because they're getting whiny or getting demanding.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever done what I've done?
32:38
SPEAKER_00: Been righteous, quoted James 1, 2, told them they're going through the school of suffering, they need to accept it better.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: And after all, the way they're handling it shows they're really not a very mature Christian.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: How well did that work for you?
32:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it didn't work well for me either.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: So chapter 3 starts out how the tongue is such a small memory, and yet it's like a forest fire.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: It does great things.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: How great a force is set ablaze by such a small fire.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: You can set things ablaze by your tongue.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, it's so important, especially in times of crisis.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: By the way, last week I mentioned, you know, uh Rheamer, I read all these books, and uh I think this week our secretary is going to put online the five books that I have enjoyed most over the last two years, because people have been, some of you have been texting and saying, What books would you recommend?
33:28
SPEAKER_00: And one of those books is called Crucial Conversations, and it's this wonderful book about how to handle tough conversations, right, with your children, with your people at work and so forth, because it's so easy to say things that ruin relationships at those times.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: And this is what James talks about.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Outside of the book of Proverbs, no place in the whole Bible addresses your mouth, your tongue, that part of yourself that you would like to control better more than James chapter 3.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: And the climax of the whole thing is you need to use your tongue in an encouraging and peacemaking way.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: Because he says, the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: Consider it submissive, full of mercy, good fruit, impartial, sincere.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: Friends, see suffering as an opportunity.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: An opportunity to develop and grow three absolutely invaluable character traits endurance, mercy, self-control with your mouth or tongue.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: Melody and I have had opportunities over our time here, as you can imagine, to learn these things.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: Some years ago, we were a dozen years or so into our ministry, and a couple that we love dearly, good friends of ours and of our kids, uh, turned against us.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: They decided we were awful.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: And also against the church, and they started a letter writing campaign.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: They left church course, very angry, and started a letter writing campaign lasted for a couple of years.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: Thousands of letters, not just one or two.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Not all of them to us.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: They were to all over town to the to the newspaper, to all the churches in town, and to all the schools we'd gone to in the past and the people we hadn't somehow.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: They found people we hadn't talked to for years.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: And the hardest thing, I think, for us was getting letters or phone calls from people from other states that we had known decades before, who just said, What did you do?
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Why did you hurt those people that badly?
35:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, just just it was just and uh we had to decide what to do.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: And we decided accept it as God's training program for us so that we could become better people and not better people.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: We also decided to control our tongue, not not not answer back, and not even explain ourselves uh to everybody, you know, who I judged us.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: And um and mercy came in as well.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: At times, I found out I did not have a mercy gift, especially one night when um I was home, I was opening the mail.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: Melody was speaking in another church in town, she's speaking on the topic of depression.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: Melody was a full-time therapist counselor at that time, and a church in town had asked her to come and speak on depression, and and she she was good at that.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: And it had been advertised in the local newspaper, and so obviously uh these people who didn't like us had read the newspaper.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I'm opening the mail.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: Melody's out, she's giving her talk at another church.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: And I opened it, it's addressed to Melody, but I think, oh, I want to read this first.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: Could tell it was probably from them, there was no return address, but we knew who it was from.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: And the letter went like this: dear Melody, one wonders why you would speak on the topic of depression.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: It is no wonder you are depressed.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: Any woman would be depressed if she looked as bad as you look.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: Hair falling out, wrinkles aging far before your time.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: Now you need to understand, I felt that that letter was really mean, but at this point, I was laughing out loud because Melly was in her young 30s and she was hot.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, mm-hmm, right.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: Aging far.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm giggling at this point.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: You are depressing to look at and to be around.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you go back to Texas with your family and quit trying to clean up your husband's reputation and your own?
37:24
SPEAKER_00: You, my dear, are an old, old, old, used up gal.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: That was the last line, that was the end of the letter.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: So, since um obviously, husband, I want to help my wife, learn endurance, and so forth, and um and not being gifted with a gift of mercy, um, I made a sign.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: And I taped to the bathroom door, a bright sign that had the last line on it.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: You, my dear, are an old, old, old, used up gal.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: Put on the door so she'd see you shaking your head at me.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: I know it sounds awful.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: So, but by then, you know, we'd wrestled through this so that when she came home and she was going to the bathroom, she could see that sign and just be blessed by it.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: The letter was inside the bathroom, so but um so um the point there is that I'm a really awful husband.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: But and but she let me back in the bedroom after about a week, and things were just great.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: So, no, she she's she's fine.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: We, you know, we have a warped sense of humor, Melody and I do.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: And uh, but but that you know, we tried to learn those lessons at the time.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: We continually are learning that lessons.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: And I would say to you, you you as much as you can see uh suffering as an opportunity.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: I believe it prepares ordinary people for extraordinary lives.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: I think it's done that for thousands of years.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: I think it did that for Ruth and for Daniel.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: Ruth, you remember, was widowed very young, and she had a decision to make.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: She had a really bitter mother-in-law, the kind of mother-in-law you don't want to spend any time around.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: And yet Ruth made the decision.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: Her mother-in-law would be lost without her, probably starved to death.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: Ruth decided to stay with her mother-in-law.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: Though she was bitter, she only was negative.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: Ruth stayed with her.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: Ruth became an extraordinary person.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: Daniel's the same way.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: What was Daniel's problem?
39:30
SPEAKER_00: He had people who were jealous of him.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: You have people who are jealous of you.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: They were jealous of him, and so they would try to cut him down behind his back, got him in a line, then and so forth.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: Daniel endured all those things patiently, accepted them as from the hand of God, became an extraordinary person.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to add some more names to that list.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: I say, when someone sees suffering as an opportunity, what can stop them?
39:58
SPEAKER_00: Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: Plant him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: Blind her and you have a Fanny Crosby.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: Persecute him with racial hatred, and you have a Disraeli and a George Washington carver.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: Put her in a concentration camp, and you have a Corey Tinboom.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: Take his wife and daughter away, give him hepatitis, and you have a Hudson Taylor.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: Cripple her, and you have a Johnny Erickson Tata.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: Have him be born without arms or legs.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: And you have a Nick.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: That is so important that you don't bail out.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: Stay in the valley.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: God's gift.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: God's opportunity for you to develop incredible, extraordinary character.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: For these dear people, so many of whom are going through the valley right now.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: It's a dark valley.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: They either don't know why they're in the valley, or they suspect that you put them there because they they prayed for fortitude or for patience, perseverance, or something like that.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you help them show them your presence, let them sense, feel your presence as you go through the valley, for you are always with us, you never leave us nor forsake us.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Give them the strength, the endurance to continue on through the valley until they are mature, complete, ripened into that extraordinary person that you want to develop in them and out of them in Jesus' name.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: You're dismissed.