Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 28, 2021 | Bad Religion - Action

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November 28, 2021 | Bad Religion - Action · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Topeka Bible Church.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, welcome.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, if you haven't had a chance to be with us, we are wrapping up our series called Bad Religion.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: There we go.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: There it's back.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're back.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, wrapping up our series called Bad Religion.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh as we've been going through this series, we've been looking at what happens when our actions don't meet our convictions.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And when our actions don't meet our convictions or we don't live the life that God has called us to, there are two really important and destructive things that happen.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that our relationship with God, our trust in Him, can suffer.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And second is that the world's trust in Christianity as the solution for all of its problems can also suffer.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to be lights unto the world, but sometimes, frequently, we struggle to live the life that God has called us to.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're trying to look at different ways in which we can better live out the calling of Jesus Christ.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning we're going to be going to the book of James to look at maybe one of the most popular verses about putting our faith into action that was ever written.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And as we turn to the book of James, just a little bit about him.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: We've got his classic profile picture here with the big forehead.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about James.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he has the title attached to him, James the Just.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is the brother of Jesus, or half-brother of Jesus, however you want to refer to that.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: James's dad is not God.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So either way, he is related to Jesus.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: He grew up with Jesus, but did not trust in Christ, did not believe in him until after the crucifixion and resurrection.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But after that, James was, we might say in our language today, on fire for the Lord.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: He stayed in Jerusalem, where Jesus was crucified, the epicenter of conflict between Christianity and the prevailing religion of the day, Judaism.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, James paid the price for it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is an image of his martyrdom.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have it pretty one of the more solid accounts in church history of how he met his end is that he was thrown off of the temple, and having not died, hitting the ground, somebody came along with a club and finished the job.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: James ultimately was killed because he put his faith into action in a way that was it could not be ignored.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everything about him was focused on this mission for God.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: When we go through the book of Acts, we hear about James.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's a pretty popular figure, and he was also acting as almost sort of the de facto leader in the city in Jerusalem.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where he writes the book of James, too.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Those who had been in the Jerusalem church and had scattered because of the martyrdom of Stephen, or some scholars think his audience is a little bit wider than that.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless, James wrote the book of James, though it wasn't, he didn't call it after himself.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: We just do that.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: But he wrote this letter to early Christians.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And these early Christians, they were struggling.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they had seen and witnessed the sort of amazing growth and explosion of Christianity across the world, especially starting in Jerusalem.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: But then they had gone out and to wherever they were at now.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: He refers to them in the Diaspora.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And James recognizes that they are struggling to take their faith and put it into action.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And being one of the first letters that we have in the New Testament, one of the first books that was written, James's book does not sound like a lot of the rest of the New Testament, most of it written by Paul, but James is very direct.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: He pulls no punches.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's very clear in his admonitions and his encouragements and his warnings that he gives to people.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, he is writing for one purpose, and that is to display action.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now we get to our text this morning in James 1, verses 22 through 27.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to have it up on the screen for you if you want to follow along there.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a bit of a doozy in the sense that there's a whole lot of depth to what James is writing here, and so we're going to break it up into a few different pieces.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the first one is James 1, verses 22 through 25.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: He says, But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: But one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer who works, this person will be blessed in what he does.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the first section here is one of the most popular, probably verses that you've heard from the Bible, that we are supposed to be a doer of the word and not hearers only.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what made James say that?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Preceding this section, James was talking about how we are supposed to handle trials, that when we go through difficulties in life, that it's an opportunity for us to draw closer to God.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the way in which we do that, the way that we draw closer to God through difficult circumstances, is by indwelling his word deeply within us.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Taking the Bible and reading it, or listening to it, and applying it to our lives.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: James says, this is how we endure these opportunities, these, actually, he views them as opportunities to grow deeper in our faith.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is how we do it, is by hearing the word.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't stop there.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: See, this was sort of the crowd, the context that he was speaking into is he says, I know there are many of you who have heard the word, but we need to balance that.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: We need to sort of level the playing field here because so many people are just hearing the word.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: They are not doing anything with it.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And though he didn't use these words, I would, when that happens, when we are hearers and not doers, we can be practicing a bad religion.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so he talks about this.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: He says that if we are not doers of the word and hearers only, then we are deceiving ourselves.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: How in the world could we deceive ourselves?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we deceive ourselves in lots of ways.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you guys think you're great drivers, and you're not.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Some people, as we encountered at Thanksgiving, think that they are great cooks and they are not.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Some guys like to say that they don't actually cry it during movies, but they do.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just because we have an opinion of ourselves doesn't mean that it's true.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Can we establish that?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: We have a cognitive dissonance and we want to believe the best about ourselves.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: But James says that if we say that we are following Christ in all that that entails, and we are not carrying out that faith by doing actions, by doing works for the Lord, then he says we have deceived ourselves in thinking that we are actually doers of the word.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, that if we say that we love Jesus but aren't doing anything about it, then that doesn't reflect well back on us and our idea that we are living out our faith to the best of our ability.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a deception, a self-deception.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's a problem though, like I mentioned, and it's that we like to think that we're doing a great job.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: We like to think that we are pretty fantastic at living out our faith in our daily lives.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but just because we think it doesn't mean that it's true.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm reading a book right now called Team of Rivals, which is about Lincoln and his cabinet during the beginning of the Civil War.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a general named George McClellan during the first few years of the Civil War.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: George McClellan was famous because he was uh fantastic at sort of training his troops and getting them in order and building up morale, something that was desperately needed in the first few years of the Civil War, fighting against the Confederates when uh there weren't that many battles, victor uh victorious battles, that were being strung together.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so McClellan was beloved by his troops.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was the leader of the Union Army for a while, but he was frustrating President Lincoln because anytime there were difficulties or setbacks, anytime he made a mistake, his telegrams and his correspondence would blame everybody but himself.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Lincoln was most frustrated by General McClellan's inaction.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: He would receive intel or information about, in this case, he was uh sort of dueling with Robert E.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Lee around Virginia and in the peninsula, and he would do nothing about it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then comes the Battle of Antietam, still the bloodiest day in American history.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Over 22,000 people died.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: This battle between the Union and the Confederacy was a battle between McClellan and Robert E.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Lee, and McClellan got a huge advantage.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not only did he have more troops, but somehow one of the couriers for Robert E.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Lee had left his entire battle plan for the day wrapped around some cigars and left in an abandoned camp.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: So General McClellan understands all of Robert E.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Lee's plans for the battle.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: He knows exactly where his troops are going to be, what time and how many, and he does nothing with this information.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't act on it.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: He continues in the process that he had become famous for of building up his troops, but doesn't do anything with the information.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Then during the Battle of Antietam, it is technically a Union victory because the Confederacy retreats, but during their retreat, which was an opportunity that they had been given multiple times, Lincoln urged him by direct message to chase after Robert E.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Lee to finish off the army and end the Civil War.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was within their grasp, and he waited a month to do it.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Robert E.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Lee's army was able to go beyond the boundary and back into Virginia and recoup.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I say all this?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because General McClellan and all of his correspondents believed he was a bang up general.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: He thought he was fantastic.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And though he had some victories, he lacked action.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is what frustrated Lincoln the most.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: When it was needed, he didn't do anything with the information that he had.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is a picture of Lincoln relieving General McClellan of his duties as general over the Union Army.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell that they're both excited.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is what God desires from us.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: He desires action and not inaction.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: He desires for us to do something, to do the things he has called us to do when we receive the information in his word, when we hear his commands.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: But James keeps going.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: He says, But if it because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now James loved using imagery to help describe the points in his book.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: The five chapters of James are filled with sort of natural images.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: He uses boat rudders, he uses a forest fire, he uses mirrors, he uses a spring, a whole lot of things to help us understand what he was saying.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And here he's talking about a mirror.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: For him, that would have been like a burnished sort of piece of metal that was shined so that you could see your reflection.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he says that we're supposed to look at ourselves in the mirror.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Look at ourselves honestly, not as we'd like to think of ourselves.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not the image that we want to present to the world, not under the influences of social media, not because of, you know, we are trying to impress somebody, but looking at ourselves honestly and judging ourselves honestly.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: See, what we like to do when we look in a mirror is we like to distort it and twist it like a carnival funhouse, because we can make ourselves appear like anything in our own minds.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing that James was focused on, again, writing to a group of people who, let's be clear, like early Christianity, well Christianity throughout its history, but especially who James is writing to at the time he's writing to, it was scary.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like their friends, people that they knew, there weren't a whole lot of Christians, I mean, just thousands, and their friends were being stoned to death.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's speaking into this environment and he says, but make sure you look at yourself with a sobering glance, that you don't distort it to fit what you think you should look like.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: But judge yourself based on your actions, your works for God, so that you can look at yourself clearly.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is also probably a really helpful time for us to establish a boundary for this morning.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: That as you hear me talk about works or good deeds, as you hear James talk about them and read as he discusses them, know that James is writing to Christians.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Salvation is not on the table here.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to, we don't even need to really have this debate.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Salvation is not based on your works.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is for by grace you have been saved through faith, not through works so that nobody could boast.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: You've been saved by Christ, and we didn't deserve it.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, James wants to help us have a direct picture of ourselves and for it to not be distorted.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: We must not forget what we look like in the mirror.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: But how do we move from inaction to action?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Once we've looked at ourselves in the mirror, once we've seen that there is a difference between needing to change and making the change, how are we supposed to do that?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: He says, But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer who works, this person will be blessed in what he does.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: The word here for looks intently is like if you were walking along the sidewalk and you uh you spotted like a$20 bill, and immediately your attention is drawn down and you bend over.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: The this looks intently literally means somebody who is bent over to look at something closely.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so James is saying, we're supposed to be looking intently, but into what?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: The perfect law of freedom.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: What is that?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, James is writing to a Jewish audience, a Jewish audience who would have a lot of uh who had who would have many memories of the law growing up.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Jewish Christians who had grown up in the Jewish faith and system, and then who had believed in the Messiah.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so hearing the word law then attached to the word liberty or freedom would be sort of an interesting juxtaposition.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because the entire law, the old covenant law, was really anything but freedom.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: God had given it to the Israelites, and it was good, but Jesus fulfilled that law with his life.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Living the life that we should have been able to live, but never have, and then dying an innocent death.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what is the law of freedom?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: The law of freedom is what we have in Christ now.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: It is the new covenant.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's the fact that by trusting in Jesus you have been set free from the bondage of sin and death, that you are no longer held to the law, but rather you are held to the Spirit of God in this law of freedom, and we can have that freedom in Jesus.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: The freedom to do what is the next question.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: We are free to live our lives as God has called us to.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're no longer held under the law, but we are supposed to persevere in it.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: If I asked you to find the mouth of the Mississippi River and you weren't allowed to use Google Maps, your best bet would be to head east until you hit the Mississippi and then follow the riverbank until you get to New Orleans.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to abide and persevere in the law of Christ, in the law of freedom in the gospel, then what it means is that we not only see it, but we walk with it, and we follow its moves and its contours, so that it can lead us to this place where we are moving from inaction to action.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: If we do that, then we are not forgetful, we are not a forgetful hearer, but a doer who works, somebody who will be blessed in what they do.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the last thing I want to say about this here is when we talk about the law of freedom and looking intently, it's important that we follow the advice of one of my favorite fictional characters, Sherlock Holmes.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon the details.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: The linchpin of James's argument in chapter one is that we understand the word correctly so that then we follow it and carry out God's will.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: If we sort of miss, we're talking certainly about works right now, but if we miss the beginning part of it, where he says that we're supposed to look intently upon the word, the parts that we haven't read this morning earlier on in chapter one, where he talks about being a hearer of the word, we have to see that he is wanting us to examine it clearly.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're not supposed to have these, you know, just Jesus calling devotionals as the exclusive maker of our interaction with God's Word.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't be having these just emotionally topical Bible studies that are seven verses to help you get rid of anxiety.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: God's word is there for you and for you to study and for me to study.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if we don't examine it, if we don't endeavor to become biblically literate people, then we're going to miss the opportunities that he is giving us to carry out his word.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not surprising that if we have a shallow understanding of the Bible, we have a shallow understanding of our own faith in God.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Diving deeper into one means diving deeper into the other.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: But James isn't done.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's not done talking about this because he's helped us to understand how we can avoid a bad religion, what it takes to move from this clear image of ourselves where we recognize a need for change and want to make a change, and now he's going to give us an example of what that looks like.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: He's rounding third and heading for home.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: He says, if anyone thinks he is religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now the first part here, if anyone thinks he is religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds similar to what we read a second ago, with one added part.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Previously he said that we deceive ourselves.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now he says that it is a useless faith.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, man, that's pretty intense.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: A useless faith?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: You might be waiting for me to say, well, in the original language, this doesn't mean useless.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: He means useless.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: He means useless.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this Greek word for useless is the same one that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15, 17, when he says, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless, you are still in your sins.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way that a belief in Jesus, where he has not been raised from the dead, is a worthless faith, because it is the foundation of our faith.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: In that same way, a faith in God that does not result in action is also worthless.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the message version says that it's hot air, but I feel like that is even less helpful somehow, even though there are endeavors to try and make it more helpful.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Worthless.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's a hard word to hear.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Makes us uncomfortable.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: We don't like thinking that our faith in God is not valuable for much in this world.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we are not, we've set our boundary for this morning.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about salvation.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: We are within the bounds of Christianity.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: For those who haven't trusted in Christ, some are doing more with their faith than others.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And for some it is worth more than others.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe to explain it in a different way, for any of my non-homeschoolers here who remember going to grade school lunch and immediately opening up your lunchbox and trading whatever you had with your friends around you.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's picture there are two lunchboxes, okay?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: First one, all the good stuff.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Cheetos, Oreos, Go-Gurt, for the younger generation, probably lunchables, okay?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then you've got a second lunch box leftover tuna salad, hard boiled egg, celery with no peanut butter, and sour milk.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've got two lunchboxes.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: In the economy of grade school lunches, one of them is worth far more than the other.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's pivot here for a second and talk about.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Christians.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's one, there are two Christians.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: The first one looks a lot like Jesus.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's loving, is kind, hates injustice, protector of the innocent, merciful, good natured, impatient.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody you want to be around, for sure.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then you got a second individual who knows Jesus, believes that he is their savior, and is has a quick temper, is mean and gossips, is rude to people and plays favorites, doesn't care for the needs of those who most need help, and altogether is just difficult to be around.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: They don't in any way exude the Spirit of Christ.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Though they know him personally, they don't act like it.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so between these two, we hopefully get a better picture of what James is talking about here.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are Christians who are saved, but that faith not playing itself out into transforming life on the interior and transforming others' lives in the exterior, that one is worth more than the other.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what should that faith look like?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: James says, pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just to be really clear, when James uses religion here, or when he says somebody who thinks they're religious, he's using that in a different way than we do.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: In our world today, religion, we're culture is kind of trying to separate that from our faith in God.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like we we think religion is bad, and so we'd say, like, I believe in Jesus, but I'm not religious, or something.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the context that he's discussing here.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Religion simply just means how you are carrying out your faith.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the in our in James's sense here, we want to be religious people because that means we are living out what we have heard.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, pure and undefiled religion before God is this, and then he gives two things, looking after orphans and widows in their distress, and keeping oneself unstained from the world.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get bogged down in the specifics.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're important, but James is bringing out a general claim here.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: What he is saying in the first part is he is highlighting the two groups of people who were most vulnerable in a first century male-dominated culture of Israel.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Those who had lost their family and those who had lost their husbands were without a doubt the most vulnerable in that time.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so James says, what does true religion in God look like?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: It means caring for those who need the most help.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in today's world, that grouping of orphans and widows is still an important area for God's people.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Topeka Bible Church, we have an adoption ministry.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: We also have chore corps to go and help ladies who might have lost their husbands or who need some more help.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we have ministries dedicated to these endeavors, but James's point is not that just looking after orphans and widows means that you sort of get to check your box.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, he is saying that you are supposed to be living the life that Jesus lived.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so if Jesus cared for the most vulnerable, the poor and the needy, then we should be caring for the most vulnerable and the poor and the needy.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: This was his point.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Let me think of the best example I can give for what faith in action looks like.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And here it is.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Looking after orphans and widows in their distress.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: But then he moves on and he says, to keep oneself unstained from the world.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Unstained from the world.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another general principle applied specifically here.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we the world, the word world is used differently in the Bible.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's used to talk about, I mean, just like the globe and the people on it, but sometimes it's also meant to reference a specific aspect of creation that is fallen, that is dedicated to the prince of this world, which is Satan.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so what he is saying here is not that we are supposed to be people who don't go out and be a light into the nations, who that we should not go and share the gospel, or that we should not uh what I'm gonna say, he's not trying to say that we should become a recluse.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, he's saying that when we venture out into the world, we need to come back unstained, which is really hard.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I used to play football, and uh anybody who's played football or a whole lot of sports, basically where you're on a turf, you remember mud practices.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and for parents who have kids who do that, you definitely remember mud practices too.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: I remember specifically, though, a couple times drawing out the um my sweet mom had uh had washed my my you know pads and jersey and stuff and putting them on to immediately head out to this field where it'd been raining all day and it was absolutely disgusting.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And basically no practice happened that day because it was essentially just who could slide the farthest in the mud.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then you come back inside and you you know doff these disgusting pads and stuff, and then lovingly hand them back to, in my case, it was my mom, who gently washes them again so that I can probably repeat the process the next day.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is how we like to think of what engaging with the world looks like.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: That we can go out into the world and we can sort of get muddy and we can get gross and we can engage with everything that it has to offer, and then we can come back.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe for us that looks like we go to church, we read our Bible, we pray, whatever it is, we have sort of this cleansing activity, and then we feel like we're ready to head back out again the next time.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: That engaging with the world, being people who have their sins forgiven, that engaging with the world isn't dangerous, like James says it is, but rather it's sort of like this foray into fun time, and when we come back to God, that's when we get serious.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: James earlier in chapter one, though, sort of set up this progression.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: He said, When you have desires that point you into the world, he said, first of all, do not say that God tempts anybody, for we are the ones who tempt ourselves.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: He says, When you have desire to sin, know that that desire leads to temptation.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that temptation leads to sin.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that sin, he says, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: That there's this direct sort of chain link between desire and death.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so James is warning us.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: He is saying, not only is your Christian life supposed to be marked by care for others that should be cared for, to be living like Jesus, but part of the way that Jesus lived was that he refused to be stained by the world.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't allow it to influence him.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And even though he was a part of the world in one sense, he was also separate from it.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is the other way that our faith is supposed to be pure and undefiled, is that we carry out this command, that we walk forward into this world, desiring to change it without being changed ourselves.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: All of James's um his message here is simple.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Our relationship with God is built on faith and backed by action.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: We like to divide the two.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to divide the two.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: But from the very beginning, we have to understand that our faith in God was not supposed to be divided into faith and works, like we so often like to pit them against each other.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Our faith in God was supposed to be marked by works.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And works should not be a dirty word.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: It often is, but it's not.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or it shouldn't be, at least.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably familiar with the passage that I mentioned earlier, that for by grace we have been saved by faith.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is not our works, but the works of God.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast, but it keeps going.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: This whole verse is typically not the one that is quoted.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's usually this top half.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's the easy part.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's the part that is most compelling to people.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: That, hey, believe in Jesus, trust in him, know that by putting your faith in Christ, your sins can be forgiven, and you can have eternity with God and peace in your soul.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is very compelling.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest of it is compelling too if we weren't so scared of it.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: See, the most robust and attractive version of Christianity is telling somebody that they can change the world by the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Is telling somebody that if they trust in Jesus, not only do you sort of get to go into the clear and be forgiven of your sins, but then you are empowered to go and share that with other people and to go and do good works, and to take this fallen world that we live in and change it, and ultimately carry out the mission that was given to Adam and Eve, that we subdue, subdue probably isn't the word, they were talking about creation, but they were supposed to go forth, multiply, and they were supposed to share God's presence with the world.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is our mission.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: And when we truncate it, when we cut it short, then we lose half of the reason that we should be walking towards God as well, is that He has prepared in advance good things for us to do, and He just wants us to step into that space.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll say it one more time.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Our boundary this morning, we're not touching salvation.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: You believe in Jesus, you're saved.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a result of your works so that no one may boast.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: But know that if you've trusted in Christ, God desires for you to do good things for his kingdom.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a negative idea, it's a blessing.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if we think and reflect upon his word as Jason wants us to, as James wants us to, if we reflect on it and be stay as hearers of the word, it should flow into being a doer.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's the idea.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: That there's sort of this cyclical process happening where as we hear God's word, we carry out his will.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: And as we carry out his will, we crave him more and more, and then we will continue this process until the day he calls us home or Jesus returns.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is the goal.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's the mission.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I fail all the time at doing it.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: But grace be to God that when we do fail that mission, when we do fail to move from inaction to action, when we fail to switch from realizing we need to change to making a change, that God welcomes us back in with open arms and says, hey, let's go try again.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're not out of the game yet.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sort of like, get back out there.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Your time's not done.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: You are here.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: You have a mission.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: God has called you to it.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: He has prepared things in advance for you to just step into.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he wants you to go and take that charge.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is the opposite of bad religion.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is everything that the world needs.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what we have been called to do by God.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: We've been saved so that we can carry this out.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: So as we wrap up our series on bad religion, I want you to hear me clearly that I am not trying to present myself as an example necessarily for what good religion looks like.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: I carry myself in the group and that I often fail to do the things that God has called me to do.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: I also know that when I fail to do those things that God has called me to do, I can lose my trust in God because I'm not carrying out his plan or understanding his will for my life or seeing his goodness.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that when I act in a hypocritical nature, the world around me does not see me as a light, does not see me as someone who's advancing the gospel.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a problem.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my prayer and my hope for all of us for Topeka Bible Church is that we would be doers and not just hearers, that we would be people who desire to examine God's word closely so that we can carry out his will into the world.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that as we do it together and fall together, that we would encourage one another on towards love and good deeds, as Hebrews tells us to do.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, for your goodness and mercy.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you have saved us through no work of our own, but God, that you have set up for us a few good things for us to do while we're still on earth.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Father, you have a mission for us, a great commission.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: And God, we ask that you would help us by the power of your spirit, because we know we can't do it on our own, by the power of your spirit that dwells within us to carry out your will to the best of our abilities.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Father, this is a good thing.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we pray that you would help us to turn in our minds this attitude if we have one where that pits faith against works and sees them instead as a a cohesive whole, as your son Jesus Christ did.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: Father, please help us to practice a religion that is glorifying and honoring to you.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.