James 2:1-17
Sermon
Viewing entries tagged
James
I want to talk to you today about doing gospel good. Doing gospel good. What is it?
Gospel good is this. Actions that both people who know you personally and God receive as good.
Actions
Actually good for real people
Genuine, authentic, not hypocritical
And we’ll get what makes this really gospel good later. I want to unpack this today.
I know how hard it is do good right now. Let me give us an example from my past to consider. Family that I worked with for a time. Helped them get food. Helped them to get basic items for life. Worked on projects around the house. Provided Christian guidance. Good relationship. I appreciated the intimacy, the honesty. It was good.
Eventually the whole relationship exploded. There were a number of reasons, but one thing said was something like; “you said one time you were good at working people“. The takeaway, that person thought I was good at manipulating people. That was there takeaway from my words and actions.
I'm not telling you this because I want you to think I’m a hypocrite. I’m not telling you this because I want pity. I’m not telling you this because
I’m telling you this because, if you are a religious person, I can almost guarantee you people don’t think you are as good as you think you are.
What do I mean?
I mean the most basic religion is to say, if I’m a good person, then God will love me and forgive me and accept me and bless me. Religious people almost always say, I feel loved, I feel accepted, I feel blessed. I must be a pretty good person.
I don’t think it’s that hard to prove. Do you know how many people ask me to forgive them or assure them they’re forgiven? You can probably guess. You know how often you’ve told me, pastor, I feel really bad about what I’ve done. I feel guilty. It doesn’t happen that often.
What is that? That’s nothing other than religious people thinking they’re pretty good. That’s not what other people see.
Study by David Kinnaman in the early 2000s. About the way non-religious people perceive religious people. One non-religious person said, “Christianity has become marketed and streamlined into a juggernaut of fearmongering that has lost its own heart.” (David Kinnaman, unChristian, pg 15)
I know you’ve seen that first hand and so have I. I was just hearing from an acquaintance who said a relative was changing religions. That person told Christians, don’t judge me, the bible says don’t judge me. Don’t be a bunch of hypocrites.
And you know what, God agrees. Twice in this lesson, James says, “don’t deceive yourselves”. What’s he saying? He is saying, it’s really easy to think you are doing good when you aren’t.
The Christian idea of doing good is different. Christianity says, God loves me and forgives me and accepts me because of Jesus. He died and rose for me. And because of that, I will do good. I will listen to God and people and do good for both. That is the Christian idea of doing good. That is gospel good.
That happens no matter how bad or crappy or cruddy the times are. A lot of stuff stinks now. Really does. Stuff stunk for James too. Life was a mess. We talked about it a little bit last time
people were scattered
Poverty
Trials
Still James said, “do what it says” (verse 22) He said, don’t just be hearers of the word and deceive, not everyone else, but yourselves, and do what it says. This is the basic premise: The message of the gospel leads us to do good for real people.
There are at least three things to pay attention to or to think about as you try to do gospel good.
First, moral (verse 24)
Moral or morality means determining what is right and wrong and then living out those beliefs
People are generally not immoral. They’re not amoral. They’re hyper moral.
Like this family. You'd think after everything we’d have a lot of cred but we didn’t. People are really picky.
They don’t often have a good foundation. “accept the word planted in you” - he is trying to help people see that most of us haven’t accepted the Word as our foundation for our morality.
We tend to act like an anorexic person.
Verbal (verse 26)
Personal (verse 27)
Words and actions that go together for people.
It’s one thing to say, I want to do something good and then make a post on Instagram. Make the good things you do for specific people so that your words and actions line up.
I know this is asking a lot.
Everything is so confusing right now. Everything is so hard right now. Even the businesses are in the business of telling us what good we are supposed to be doing.
So I want to give you this encouragement. James says, doing good should be kind of like looking into a mirror. It should be that natural. It is just who you are. This is verse 23 and 24.
Then to complete his illustration, listen to God’s Word. And listen to the people next to you. And when you’ve got a chance to do something that both the people next to you and the Bible call good.
He is saying, this is how natural it is. This is how normal it is. You just ask people, how can I help? How can I serve?
And then, its like he catches himself. He says, “look at the perfect law that gives freedom”. (verse 25) What is that talking about?
Let’s take an example like Snow White. When the Queen looks into the mirror all the time, she says, mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all. And her view of herself becomes distorted.
You need to see the good you are supposed to be doing. You also need to see the freedom you have.
What is he saying? He is saying, look at the Bible. Even more than that, the use of the word “law” here. In James, its confusing, its hard. But commentators point out that it basically means the gospel here. It means Jesus great teaching that is filled with the gospel. (“it is necessary to associate ‘the perfect law of liberty’ closely with the gospel”, Douglas Moo, TNTC,
If you want to be great, serve. (Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant – Mark 10:43)
------skip this during service ---------------
Emile Cailliet – never saw a Bible. Did some graduate work. Went off to war
"A Bible, you say? Where is it? Show me. I have never seen one before!"
She complied. I literally grabbed the book and rush to my study with it. I opened and "chanced" upon the Beatitudes! I read, and read, and read - now aloud with an indescribable warmth surging within. I could not find words to express my awe and wonder. And suddenly the realization dawned upon me: this was the book that would understand me!
I continued to read deeply into the night, mostly from the Gospels. And lo and behold, as I looked through them, the One of whom they spoke, the One who spoke and acted in them became alive to me.
The providential circumstances amid which the book had found me now made it clear that while it seemed absurd to speak of a book understanding a man, this could be said of the Bible because its pages were animated by the presence of the living God and the power of his mighty acts. To this God I prayed that night, and the God who answered was the same God of whom it was spoken in the book. (histheo-calliet_emile.docx (sharepoint.com))
-----to here------
You have to have something else to look at. If you’re only looking at yourself, you’re a slave to yourself.
This is what the ancient church captured. Ancient church lived. Epistle to Diognetus, middle of the 100s.
“Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, language, nor by the customs which they observe. They do not inhabit cities of their own, use a particular way of speaking, nor lead a life marked out by any curiosity. The course of conduct they follow has not been devised by the speculation and deliberation of inquisitive men. The do not, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of merely human doctrines.
Instead, they inhabit both Greek and barbarian cities, however things have fallen to each of them. And it is while following the customs of the natives in clothing, food, and the rest of ordinary life that they display to us their wonderful and admittedly striking way of life.
They live in their own countries, but they do so as those who are just passing through. As citizens they participate in everything with others, yet they endure everything as if they were foreigners. Every foreign land is like their homeland to them, and every land of their birth is like a land of strangers.
They marry, like everyone else, and they have children, but they do not destroy their offspring.
They share a common table, but not a common bed.
They exist in the flesh, but they do not live by the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, all the while surpassing the laws by their lives.
They love all men and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned. They are put to death and restored to life.
They are poor, yet make many rich. They lack everything, yet they overflow in everything.
They are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor they are glorified; they are spoken ill of and yet are justified; they are reviled but bless; they are insulted and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if raised from the dead. They are assailed by the Jews as barbarians; they are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to give any reason for their hatred.” Letter to Diognetus
This is gospel good.
Action
Listen to someone else, listen to God and find a small act of good you can do.
Ask someone, how can I help? How can I serve? What can I do for you? How can I pray for you?
I know we’re tired. I know we’re confused. I know things seem to keep getting worse.
Bring gospel good. Do gospel good.
One of my acquaintances...I told this woman that I was a pastor. She said, wow, that must be really hard. I wasn’t looking for any sympathy or pity and so I said something like, I don’t think it is any harder than any of your jobs. She said, no, that’s not what I mean. I mean inspiring people
Jokingly I said, yeah, I’ve given up on inspiring people. I'm just aiming for survival. Just keep our heads up and keep going, that will be enough.
She is right. It is incredibly hard to inspire people. The world seems so crazy and upside down. We feel like there is trouble everywhere.
And it really is. In fact, we really connect with the people to whom James wrote.
In verse 1, we hear that this man James was writing to the “12 tribes scattered among the nations” (verse 1). By this point, the 12 tribes of Israel no longer exist. But he is writing to his people. The descendants of the 12 tribes.
They are going through some terrible things. They’ve been
Scattered – sounds like us after 18 months of pandemic; we’re not sure where to go or not to go anymore
Lacks wisdom – sounds like us making decisions in a difficult, shifting economy
Divide between the rich and the poor – growing inequality
We could go on and on because the list of troubles that these people are going through are no different than the troubles you and I experience.
But James wants us to look at a deeper level.
Whatever troubles you and I have gone through, they are really nothing compared to what is going on on a much deeper level.
A lot of our fundamental ways of looking at life as Americans have been tested. re is a clash, a collision of views that we’re experiencing.
This time of testing, that makes it feel like there is intense trouble.
You know what I’m talking about. You know what I’m saying. Even if you wouldn’t talk about it in exactly the same way....
You would say for example, that we’ve been told as Americans, “the customer is always right”. It’s my way. That we the people make the government and all the institutions.
Schools telling parents
We’ve got businesses telling employees who can work there and what they have to do to
I’m not taking a position on either side, but I’m saying that we feel this clash, this collision in our minds saying, I’ve been told my whole life that the customer is always right and what am I supposed to do about this.
“My body, my choice” has always been the position of a certain group of people or a certain party. But now, a different group completely has started saying the same thing.
“You can be anything you want to be.” But now with increasing polarization, especially on social media, all the sudden there are some things we can’t be. You can’t be too masculine. You can’t be too feminine. Some people even feel like they can’t be the person they were born as – their ethnicity, their gender.
You're feeling the testing, you’re feeling the clash, you’re feeling the collision. The basic belief, the basic idea of American life is to be true to myself. That’s the meaning of life. The meaning of life is to be true to myself.
When we think of getting tested, many of us think of feeling encouraged to do bad things. To be naughty. If we know the Bible stories, we might think of someone like Judas who was tempted to betray his friend for money. We might think about a guy who wants to steal someone else’s wife.
James wants to tell us that there can be many kinds of trials. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (verse 2) We’re going to come back to the joy part in a second.
What you are going through right now, all of these troubles are a huge test. It’s a huge test if you are the person you should be. Are you mature? Are you complete? Will you make it through?
And today he is going to give us the basic thing, the first thing to be mature. To be complete. To really, not in a superficial way, but in a deep way, be true to ourselves.
Development
What is that?
It’s not bad to get that our deepest convictions are getting challenged.
God would say, that’s a good thing. “may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (verse 4) Because most of your beliefs about the world are wrong. They’re just plain wrong.
It’s easy to laugh at someone who says, “the customer is always right”. We all laugh at that and say, haha yeah right. And yet, if you get into any kind of a position in a business or an organization, you better not tell You realize, its much harder to have correct and true beliefs about life than we thought.
God says, look, most of everything you believe about the world is just plain wrong. Many people believe that the most important thing in life is to be a good person. Just be a good person and everything will be okay. If I'm a good person, then the gods or the universe or whoever is out there will bless me and take care of me and I’ll be accepted and approved. But that’s not true. That’s no more true than saying, “the meaning of my life is to be true to myself.”
“be true to myself” isn’t correct. The only thing that is true is to say we’re poor, wretched, and lost people. We’re more lost and broken and hurt and confused than we could possibly know or imagine. And yet at the same time, at the same time, we are forgiven and loved and accepted and welcomed in Jesus Christ.
That’s the gospel. The gospel is the first thing we need to get through this test. The gospel means that we are are lost and broken and sinful but we are also loved and forgiven in Jesus.
That’s the kind of belief that can stand up. That's the kind of belief that can put the world back right. God is showing you that here in all kinds of little ways in James.
It’s that belief. It’s that conviction that says, I’m forgiven and accepted only because of Jesus. And God wha
He says here. “consider it pure joy when you face trials” (verse 2) How can you have joy when you face trials? Who can do that?
If you believe that I’m a good person, so everything will be okay, what happens the first time your girlfriend breaks up with you, or you lose your first job, or you get cancer? If you believe you are a good person, how can you have joy when you experience those kinds of trials? What will you end up saying to yourself?
You'll say, I thought I was a good person. I thought I was doing the right thing. I shouldn’t have to suffer like this. This doesn’t seem fair. This doesn’t seem right.
But the gospel would say to you and me, Jesus has endured the very worst trial – he was separated from his father – so that he could be joined with us and you and I would never be separated from God.
We can say, yes, my girlfriend broke up with me because I am a messed up person and I probably did something and I betrayed her trust and I hurt her and I messed up the relationship. At the same time I know that my God has endured a test so much worse than this so that he would never leave me. Even if my girlfriend does leave me, my God never will.
Or if you or I get cancer, we can say, I realize that I have this cancer because I am a broken person and I’m falling apart and I’m supposed to be heading into the grave. But my God went through a far worse test, he suffered eternal death so that whatever death I die, it’s only temporary. Even if I die for a time, I won’t die forever. I will rise again.
This is what the gospel does for us. It lets us turn this whole messy world back around.
“Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. But the rich should take pride in their humiliation” (verse 9) Again, we say, how can I take pride in my poverty? If the meaning of life is to be true to myself and my lack of money keeps me from being true to myself, you’ll never have pride when you’re poor. But if you say, God made himself poor in Jesus so that I could be rich, you’ll say, yes, I realize I’m poor. But I’m also rich. Richer than I could imagine.
We could go on and on. Jesus says, you’re going through a time of testing, a time of trial. You feel like the world is turned upside down and is just a mess. Let me tell that the gospel is a thing that will turn the world back right.
What we’re feeling is like an hourglass. You ever watch an hourglass? Sand flows down and there is something mesmerizing about it. The cool thing is, you can just turn it over and it goes around again. Turn it over and it goes down again.
And what God says is, stop trying to turn the hourglass around. Stop trying to put it all back. Do you know what you could do with this hourglass?
God says, I can remake the hourglass. I can do it in a new way.
There is just one way to turn the hourglass around. Change the sand.
Can God do that? “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.” (verse 17)
And you say, can God do that? Does God do that?
Example of this, I was told this week about a conversation a middle aged man, and a 70 year old man had.
He said he asked this man, hey how you doing? He said, I’m good. And then the younger guy said, what you don’t think this is crazy. The older guy said, you know what was crazy. The 60s were crazy.
The younger guy said, oh you mean the summer of love and VW's and the Beach Boys. Crazy like that. He said, no man, that's all stereotyped.
You don't understand the psychological trauma that the 60s were.
He said, you're dealing with racial tensions right now. You're worried about how technology is shaping people. You think politics is a mess right now.
He said, you've got to understand how sort of homogeneous and stable the world was after World War Two. There was this era where for the most part there was pretty shared cultural narratives. There were some people excluded from it, but for the most part it was pretty stable.
And then he said, we had the civil rights movement and he said, you think that you know you're traumatized because people are dying at the hands of the police?
He said I lived at a time were the leaders were assassinated. He said when Martin Luther King Junior was killed, you don't know what that did to the black community and then Malcolm X was killed and then Fred Hampton was executed. He said there was just this sense of racial trauma with the civil rights movement.
He said you think you've got political chaos, so people forget that JFK was incredibly controversial when he was elected. And then JFK was assassinated. And then they wanted his brother Bobby to run. And then Bobby was assassinated. And then Watergate happened and people would completely lost trust in the institution of government.
You think you're dealing with war. We have the Cold War, Vietnam, Vietnam War. We had the draft and draft burnings. Our aversion to violence was horrific.
You think your technology is good because you can do FaceTime calls he's like. We put a man on the moon. We put a man on the moon.
He said there was the rise of mass media, couldn't believe it and he says you you think you're struggling with LGBTQ realities? How do you make sense of sexual confusion and everything happening in our culture? He said you should have understand what the pill did which was sex without consequence.
It's like you don't understand how procreation was separated from sex and what that did in our larger culture you don't understand.
The Stonewall riots and how that came into for the most part, a stable understanding of the family and changed it is that there was so much confusion.
Then there's the hippies and the counterculture. It was just wild.
The middle aged man said, Ok.
And then he said this to me, he said. You know what came next?
I said no, this is the Jesus movement.
Out of all of the confusion, another movement of Jesus came.
And he said, here's the thing about the Jesus movement. The reason it happened is because every structure, every ideology, every vision of life was tested and broken and pushed to the max.
And here's what people found out. They all weren’t enough and a couple of burned out kids read the gospels, read about the Kingdom of Jesus, the way of Jesus, the community of Jesus.
They took it seriously, and that potent fruit that had been hiding under all these other structures came up again and it change the church in the United States. They made it to the cover of the Time magazine.
You think God can’t turn this right? Just you watch.
Action
Friends, this is what God calls you to and I too. And there is one way to get there.
“He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” (verse 18)
We are on the very edge of a birth of a new movement, but it’s threatened. It’s not threatened by the pandemic, or vaccines, or racial issues, or the government. It’s threatened by us. We need a new birth.
Friends, there is no guarantee or church structures, or great leaders, or our futures. There is the victory of God through Jesus. I don’t know what life is going to look like in a day, a week, a month, or a year, but I know what that word of truth says. And it says if you take hold of his victory, you hold on to his win, you too can be a kind of a firstfruits.
Some of you are on the verge of compromise, you are ready to give in. You want to marry the times and be accepted and fit and conform.
Don’t do it. This is the time to come alive by the word of truth.
I want to encourage you. I want to call you to believe in the gospel. To build a community of love and carry this in our very hands.
What’s the future going to look like in Otsego and Plainwell. It’s going to be what we make it to be. So let’s pray that the Holy Spirit would come and fill us with faith, fill us with hope. Fill us with belief
Belief in the gospel. The gospel will get us past this test.