James 4 and 5

Transcript

so you're going to get uh james four and five and there's a two reasons for this one first reason was i doubted that you could put up with me for five weeks so we we're not going to do all five chapters but secondly most of the [Music]

meat of james's

book

kind of comes in in that conclusion of those two chapters and so they make an interesting study that can be

comprehensive in what this book

offers us then i can summarize the first three chapters very easily the key thing there is faith without works is dead so if you remember that part you have already got the key message of the first three chapters of this book

now

a few things about this book that are real interesting some background material on it um there we go

first

there's been an argument for a long time of just exactly who

wrote it uh some have claimed that it was james the son of zebedee and salome

uh that's that seems pretty unlikely because it's well known historically that that james who was one of the 12

apostles was beheaded by

herod agrippa and 44 a.d and this book is dated to a much later date

the second is that it could have been the other apostle named james the son of alphaeus but there is no record of him ever having written anything and he also was stoned to death

before presumably this book has been noted so we ended up with the [Music]

the usual attribute was to james the just the half-brother of jesus christ and he wrote it sometime between 62 a.d and 69 a.d since he was martyred on that latter date

um it is clear that james

the half brother of jesus played a major major role in the development of the first century church in fact there is several books out by um

biblical scholars that claim that james was the inheritor of the jesus dynasty that jesus put his imprimatur on james and um

he became the leader because of his close association both by blood and by

talent to the lord jesus christ

however this has been very disputed by the catholic church

the catholic church of course has this great um theory that mary was a perpetual virgin she never had any other children and

therefore this is impossible that james the just could have been christ's half-brother and you can read right off the screen what i have there uh the claim is that uh james was a cousin um however i think we're all pretty familiar with um the gospel of matthew chapter 13 55

especially since it's been in the readings only recently uh where

he just said his is not this the carpenter's son is not his mother call mary are not his brothers james and joseph and simon and judas then that judas is the jude who wrote the other little epistle um so it's pretty two things i can get out of that verse in matthew 13 that

james and his brothers tried to follow christ around and so in some sense though he was not originally called an apostle i do believe that james and jude were disciples i i do believe that they were taught by jesus they heard a lot of his teachings and they it didn't just happen that they um [Music]

you know came along and he headed the ecclesia in jerusalem uh by default

uh another thing to be pretty aware of is that um [Music]

james is actually mentioned in a number of little places um in

in the in the new testament

here and there you will pick up little bits of piece of information about james the just the half brother jesus christ and i'm not going to look up all of these verses now uh but if you do want notes or anything um i will be more than glad to share these um um powerpoint presentations when anybody wants it um i'll give you my email address uh when we're finished tonight well you can you can if you want i will send i can forward it to um uh jim and

steve and they can send it to anybody might want it so

as they have brought jesus he um his ministry is a very clearly

mentioned so after the resurrection he's mentioned the apostle paul names him along with uh peter as being one of the pillars in the jerusalem ecclesia

and you mustn't think of the jerusalem athleisure as an ecclesia like the one in boston or ann arbor the jerusalem cliche actually had thousands of members that met in many many houses throughout the city and when we read about the jews of jerusalem the clear in in

the famous passages of the jerusalem conference where they try to decide

about what the gentiles should be responsible for that was a coming together of many many individual congregations and and james was clearly the leader of that particular conference

so

i call him the chairman so he is the chairman the first chairman of a reunion committee in a sense to try to unify

jewish christians and [Music]

gentile christians

however his as far as i know this is probably the only successful

reunion that has occurred on such a broad broad scale and

the decisions of that jerusalem council pretty much carried it all the way down to our day today

and finally paul makes a point of visiting him uh on his and asking for his advice so clearly james uh was incredibly respected that the apostle paul would seek his advice

so

one final note interesting about this book when martin luther

translated the new testament into german

at first he was of a mind to leave this book out all together he felt it was it was spurious uh it went against his contention that men are saved by faith alone and since the since the james says incredibly not only in his passages where he said faithful works is dead the whole book

goes over things

that more or less say you can't do these things there's a whole bunch of things you shouldn't be doing so he never mentions that you can get away with a lot of things just by faith but eventually luther was talked out of it because um

it was made apparent to him that um if he did that that

he would be doing something against uh centuries of tradition

so let's uh focus now on james chapter four one two three now when we look at this

this passages in this chapter

we

i personally find the language extremely harsh

and um it's been troubling to many many people and uh i don't know how you feel about it but james uses language here this frankly not quite like this used anywhere else in the new testament uh in talking about the first century ecclesia in some ways its language is even harsher than what jesus uh talked about when he was um berating the scribes and the pharisees so james describes the strife among believers in the first century ecclesia with such terms as wars covenants fights quarrels and even murders

and that that's pretty shocking when you think about it that he would be describing the behavior of the first century ecclesias and its members in those terms

and so

when you think a bit about what was happening here

many people who accepted jesus christ as their savior and got baptized

didn't necessarily

change

the character of their behavior that that's what seems apparent uh from

what the apostle is saying here and and to me that's a i don't know about you but i think that's pretty shocking and does it accurately describe how christadelphians behave today well maybe maybe you need to think about that a bit because sometimes i think we

we forget that

our religion is not simply some intellectual exercise that it needs to be an exercise in the perfection of character it needs to be an exercise of how we live and how

we present ourselves in in effect to the world and um i remember many years ago i i think many of you uh remember the late editor of the christian delphi magazine brother alfred nichols just one wonderful man he said that we need to be careful that we don't have that we're not um dr jekyll and mr hyde that at work and in the world we have one personality and in the ecclesia with our brethren we have a different one and i that always struck me as a um

[Music]

let me put this this way it struck me as very very

touching

wise observation because it is so tempting to be a hard driving businessman and maybe be extremely

ungenerous in the world and at the same time uh pose a different type of character within the euclesia

so do we take these accusations literally well there is a reason i think that he puts it this way so paul in them led it to titus chapter 3 9-10 he says but avoid foolish controversies genealogies dissensions and quarrels about the law for they are unprofitable and worthless for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice have nothing more to do with him well i think

i think that's a piece of advice that we certainly

could bear in mind in our own community sometimes i think christodophians

i don't know

just don't seem to know how to get along with each other and we raise uh small things

into very large things and make them uh to be

essential for salvation when perhaps they're not and we need to think carefully about this because i i personally believe you know i'm in my 80s so i'm don't know i don't know if mary and i will live to see the lord jesus christ come but i don't think it could be that too far in the future given the state of the world today and uh the abundance of prophecies that have been fulfilled and very few remaining

will we be a community [Music] that is described

as

christ-like or will we be a community there's got dissensions and controversies and quarrels about the law and other unprofitable and worthless things

so

the thinking about why james uses this expression of murderers i i believe he is really pointed out in the first epistle of the letter of john 3 15. everyone who hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murder has eternal life abiding him so pretty much what the apostle john is saying is the fact you don't murder somebody physically doesn't mean you're free of the guilt of being that if that murderous intent is in your heart

and i think that too often um this kind of kind of hatred

is buried in the human psyche and um we need to realize that we can get ourselves sometimes very very uh upset about things to the point that uh we no longer love our brother

so what what was hindering them to do things what was hindering their prayers well he gives a whole catalog of things that are quite interesting he says you answer wrongly

now this is something to think about every single time we pray

sometimes i think prayers end up being a laundry list of things we want rather than really following the model of the prayer that jesus christ gave us as an example

let's think a little bit about why prayer would not be

accepted

the first thing is a sin now point this out in a minute uh if we're sinning creatures and we do not overcome those sins

then our prayers are worthless if we're selfish people if we lack forgiveness and if we have doubt in our heart all of those things can make a prayer to god seem

like so much foolishness so before we even attempt to pray each day we need to do a bit of self-examination

this is um this is not an easy thing [Music]

to do because no one likes

to be pointed out their own sins so i want to just take this is one case where i really think to pay attention to some of these quotes isaiah 59 102. he says behold the lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save nourishia dull that it cannot hear but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear

in proverbs he talks about selfishness whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered and when i pointed this out to some people in the past they've said well this is a this only counts into euclesia and i don't really think that's true

uh one of the things we've done here in ann arbor is we've been really helpful uh with the local soup kitchen and and at the same time been able to hand out gospel materials and so on and i can i can think of at least one or two people who eventually joined our athleisure as a result of seeing what we were doing rather than what we were saying the saying part actually came later

now in mark

he says whenever you stand praying forgive if you have anything against anyone so that your father also is in heaven may forgive your trespasses

now we know in the lord prayer lord spurrie says you know to forgive our debts as we forgive

trespasses or debts of others

you know this is not in our statement of faith but it's clearly your first principle if we are not forgiving people if we don't forgive those who sinned against us and

try to recover them then god isn't going to forgive us that's very clear and if god doesn't forgive us our sins we're clearly not going to be in the kingdom so i think forgiveness is a absolute first principle and we need to bear that in mind um [Music]

i was thinking about this you know this is not a good sicilian attitude because i know my grandmother her favorite saying um was when some of her relatives had their um real sicilian

vin you know the word of vendetta that's a tied in word for good reason

but she said when you set out to um get the revenge dig two graves

and that's uh i'm sure that was not an original by her but it is something that you always bear in mind that um

forgiveness is something that you need to give before you

expect anyone else to give it to you and finally this whole thing about be patient therefore until the coming of the lord see how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth be patient about it until he receives the early and the late rains you also be patient and i think that's that's a really critical issue because uh it is so easy

you know so easy to for people to say well i've been hearing this since i was a little kid and i said in the name then my grandfather um you know when is christ coming and to lose faith in that in that coming and i think this is this is one of our greatest tests i mean it's been almost 2 000 years but you know 2 000 years is only two days with the lord

his time scale is not our time scale

so he goes on he says you adulteress people do you know that friendship with the world is enemy with god and here he uses the term adulteress not in the sense of sex but in the sense of being unfaithful

to their calling

and the way he talks about this unfaithfulness is where you want to have your cake and eat it you want to do everything that is going on in the world um and i think we if we've you know if we've been looking at our daily readings the last few days about sodom and gomorrah that's about that's exactly what wanted to do lot wanted the pleasures of sodom and gomorrah but he didn't want the consequences that came with it and uh

his wife eventually looked back in longing for it so this idea of adulterousness is is i think very important it means we need to be faithful uh to our calling and

not put it aside for so many things in the world we'll talk later in the same talk today about what that means in terms of practical things practical decisions that we have to make which make a difference between whether we're adulterous people or whether we really are totally faithful to our calling so we'll just hold that off for a few more uh slides

again the the language is harsh and he means spiritually adulterous and

any i think he mean means this to be harsh uh to shock people in the first century and perhaps shock people throughout the ages uh that this was written for into being aware that these things are not taken lightly by god so john again [Music] john

2 15 first epistle do not love the world or the things in the world if anyone loves the world the love of the father is not in him

and that famous verse that is no one can serve two masters really will hate the one and love the other or he'll be devoted to one and despise the other you can serve god and money and you know

it's not quite the same thing but i i learned a bad lesson about this myself when i came to michigan um i was offered um a professorship in two departments uh in physics and in engineering and

i was a little reluctant to take it and but they talked me into it um and what i found out is there's no way you can work in both departments there's no such thing as 50 50 appointments both chairmen wanted me to be 100

for them and so finally after several years or six seven years of this strain of trying to please two different bosses i finally went in and decided which one i really liked better and went in and told him um you know i'm gonna resign from the other department and he said to me what reason can you give for them and i quoted this verse i said nobody can serve two masters if he will hate the one and love the other he will despise and so on and i said on the advice of jesus christ i am resigning from the other department and uh ron the jaw dropped he didn't say a word he said and then finally he recovered after what seemed like a long time it was probably like 20 30 seconds and said well i can't i can't put down that advisor you got me there and so they converted the appointment now this wasn't trivial because that meant that this chairman had to pay the full salary now it wasn't 50 50 anymore he had actually accept this against his own uh financial detriment so there's a point where i think jesus christ's words really helped me have a much more peaceful life for many years after that and so the next thing is is talking about resisting the devil and that's a challenge for us um because the devil is

in us it is something we absolutely cannot get away from uh james 4 verses 7 to 10 very interesting he says submit yourself therefore to god resist the devil and he will flee from you draw near to god and he will draw near to you cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded be wretched and mourn and weep and let your laughter be turned into mourning and joy to gloom humble yourselves before the lord knee will exalt you so everything i got there in yellow pay attention to resist the devil journey to god cleanse purify and don't be double-minded and have humility

you can skip all the white part that's the focus of these few verses

so compare this with romans 6 12. now just about everybody who's been baptized this this is usually the reading

let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions so this verse usually read at baptism and that's clear from it that the devil is a figure of speech um

the

whole idea of conquering sin is something that comes out earlier in this book of james and is reflected back here in verse chapter four and we'll see also in chapter 5. this is a verse that i think that most christodolphians use as a proof verse james 1 13-15 very important insight let no man say when he is tempted i am being tempted by god for god cannot be tempted with evil he himself tempts no one but each person is tempted when he is lord and enticed by his own desire then desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin and sin with is fully grown brings forth death so this is one of the probably one of the key verses in scripture for us understanding the nature of sin and if you haven't remembered this before kind of stick it in your mind it's especially useful in preaching work so what does the devil look like well the world has it to me it's amazing so often dealing with preaching work that christians have absorbed the devil with capital d

and i think the reason for it is it's really comforting to have somebody else to blame

for our inability to be faithful to the word of god and to the commandments of our lord jesus christ so i didn't do it somebody else made me do it so what does the devil look like well there's been lots of different pictures of the devil this is one of my favorite uh goya fantastic spanish painter um he pictured the devil as a uh i i think he took this this image partly because of the scripture from the old testament about the jews having the the golden calf and um he envisioned that golden calf as being a devil and so the devil has got to be some kind of wild animal like this it's really pretty pretty weird more modern interpretations and you'll see this quite often i have i tried to research this so i will be really glad uh later for somebody give me some insight

there are so many different versions of why the devil has ended up looking like this with a long big tail and a horns and uh bat wings and so on i have um there are so many different interpretations of it that i am convinced that probably none of them are correct but this is just one of the modern images now i'm going to actually show you the devil that as he has appeared in our household and that is the devil right there i am definitely afraid of looking in the mirror sometime at myself and thinking what did i do wrong today uh and trying to straighten it out this is one of my better pictures um i am i'm actually um probably i don't know when was that taking i have no idea yeah well it was probably 10 15 years ago i didn't have any here then either so it doesn't matter really matter so what did when did the devil come from i looked this up and this is probably the best um best interpretation i've seen of it

the devil also referred to as satan is best known as a personification of evil i think we would agree with that and the nemesis of good people everywhere his image and story have evolved over the years and the devil has been called many different names in various cultures the elzebab lucifer satan mephistopheles to name a few with various physical descriptions including horns and whose feet but this benevolent being and this legion of demons continues to strike fear in people through from all walks of life as the antithesis of all good things although the devil is present in some form in many religions and can be compared to some mythological gods

many christians believe the devil was once a beautiful angel named lucifer who defied god and fell from grace well we all know that that's total nonsense because the passage in isaiah 14 12 is actually referring to nebuchadnezzar

this this

site goes on to say in judaism satan is a verb and generally refers to a difficulty or temptation to overcome instead of a literal being well i know i see i think dave levin's on this so he can tell me how correct that is but that pretty much agrees with how i grew up i grew up in a really nice jewish neighborhood in brooklyn i had several jewish girlfriends that was it was not an orthodox neighbor it was more like it was conservative and when the issue when i used to talk to them about uh the the the devil and satan uh it clearly agreed with this description that it was a it was a description not of a physical being of a fallen angel uh but uh it should be more likely to be used as a verb um

so

we can't look at the charts we can't see this oh but if the chats let me see let me see

we're gonna have to hold off on that because once i can't see the chats and and my screen at the same time so there's nothing in the chat john yeah well uh

just for the sake of argument since i'm old and tempted

crotchety yeah and and i i'm used to lecturing this way anyway i'll leave plenty of time for questions at the end because if you interrupt me two things are gonna happen i'm gonna lose my train of thought or you will anticipate something that i'm going to say later anyway because this is a smart class so the the basic thing to keep me happy which i think is [Music]

the prime directive tonight

the share screen and we can talk for plenty time there will be plenty of time trust me

okay so how to defeat the devil

uh

draw near to god and he will draw near you purify you hearts you double-minded i i like that double-minded because uh uh this idea of uh having you know two opinions all the time

is

classical of people who waver they can never make up my mind i can never make up my mind and i tell you that there's nothing that can drives me crazier than people who say one thing one day and then somebody else talk to them and they change their mind and say another thing and it can just absolutely drive you nuts the classic verse i love is first kings 18 21

and elijah came near to all the people and said how long would you go limping between two different opinions if the lord does god follow him but if baal then follow him that is classic matthew 6 and 24 which we read early about you cannot serve two masters it's classical if we're going to serve god better make up a mind to do it 100 percent 90

60

40 i think sometimes we're so used to percentage scores here that we don't realize that that um what god wants from us is our very best and and that's not that's the very best of us as individuals there may be somebody else better than us and the euclid may be somebody worse but god is looking for us to develop ourselves and i think one of the best

metaphors i've seen in that as a with my son andy said when he was running track he said when you run track and you're practicing and you're running he says you don't look behind you you don't see what anyone else is doing all you're trying to do is beat the clock you're trying to make your own performance better and i think that's a good metaphor for how we need to treat ourselves don't look at anybody else only jesus christ and try to make ourselves better that's that's the goal that's the mark

so make judgments the right way again he's telling you

who are you to judge your neighbor we shouldn't take that as an absolute because i think sometimes people say well you know what i can't judge anything i can't i can't make any judgment about someone and

the verse in matthew 7 1 and 2

is often cited i've heard this fact too many times judge not that you be not judged for what the judgment you pronounce you will be judged with the measure user will be measured to you

here's one of those cases where james cites something which i feel very comfortably that he must have heard jesus say this and he was putting it in that context

um

were they saying never to judge

another person that athleisure should never make any judgments about anyone um i think the key here is what

is underlined for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged so we need to be careful not that we absolutely never judge anything but how we do it

in the gospel of john

the lord jesus says do not judge by appearances but judge with right judgment what's the right judgment the right judgment is the word of god

that according to those standards

and we've all been given this kind of guide about how to solve problems in ecclesia when jesus said you know first go to the person then go to some elders and then go to the euclesia

jesus was foreshadowing a way to handle judgments in a christian community and i think when ecclesias operate this way they usually have a very happy congregation

so making plans with the lord in mind is important uh i think a lot a lot of times people go off and they run off and they're gonna do something and they don't think is this the right thing to do is this what god would want me to do

come now who say today or tomorrow he will go in such and so to town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring what is your life for you are missed that appears for little time and then vanishes and so his advice has really good advice he's saying before you set out to do anything especially major things consider first

is this

in keeping

with my calling

to be a disciple of our lord jesus christ

i i think

too many times

yeah i love this in the good news bible we make our plans but god has the last word i think that's a pretty good pretty good um

analysis um i've seen

i i have seen you know i'm retired now very retired from the university 2004

but i saw a number of my colleagues in my department at least half a dozen who all they talked about was their retirement they were going to say they were saving all kinds of money they put off all kinds of things because when they retired they were going to buy this nice house in florida or and napa valley whatever and you know

many of those people didn't even live to see their retirement and several cases died only one or two years after they retired

you can make all the plans in the world but again it's god who gets the last word

so what major decisions in our lives would include the lord now i i'm going to give you some that i've thought of but when when we get to the chat box and we've had questions i'd like to hear what other people have to say because sooner or later i'll probably write this up so i don't mind stealing some other people's ideas if there are good ones so here's some of the decisions i think that you need to absolutely make sure that you've included the lord and if you can give me more i really would appreciate it so one

whether or not accepting baptism that probably other than being born this is when you're born again is probably the most important decision you'll ever make in your life for eternal purposes

where to go to school you're in a clear compatib even in thinking about a compatible athleisure i can tell you right now i've seen too many young people go away to school

and go in isolation spend

four or five years

out of the occlusion loop only to become very very weak or even lost christadelphians

uh it's really important

in every way possible

for the intellectual life

to go side by side with the spiritual life

uh who we choose to marry or if we marry at all that i don't have to tell you this is a far fact

part of our statement in the fate and doctrines to be rejected and this is one of the downfalls

of the nation of israel that they did not follow this and often uh became entwined in the pagan world and

so i don't have to mention the name jezebel without you know you all know what that's going to end up

what type type of job or career we pursue that can be extremely important is that job going to be something that is going to help us help me to be able to have a good

time energy effort to still

work with my family with euclesia

you know we can get so entwined in success

that we lose

eternal life

and we hurt those near us who do not have the advantage of us being there to help and guide them uh where we choose to live is an important thing um

too many people have um

i i hate to say this if we tie it into isolation that's to me that's beyond belief i like it right here i like being here in ann arbor i like being near all my friends relatives at leisures i think it's great um and you know boston's a great place too the only thing i don't like about boston is the last time i was there for important convention and there was three feet of snow

now i is that the normal well you can tell me i don't know it's a we don't generally get

heavy heavy snows here in southeast michigan we just get miserable coal and who do we choose to as our friends pure influence critical at times

if you're fortunate to have an ecclesia large enough to have an active cyc that's just great because that's

the way you you give your children that kind of peer reinforcement i think one of the saving things of christodolphians in north america has been bible schools it has enabled um uh uh you know young people to

associate together in ways that

are helpful to a community as small as we are

okay so life is full of uncertainties and we should always act as if the lord wills

this is reinforced many times by paul i mean even

an apostle like him and sitting out on a journey he says if the lord permits he um [Music]

when we do things this is something that comes through at time and time again there was a time when i was much younger that any correspondence i got from a brother or sister would end with lord willing or would start with lord william i think since the internet's come along in emails we've gotten a little bit lazy about saying things and forgetting to say if god wills or if the lord permits uh because this whole

internet email everything everything flies with the speed many many times faster

than than you know when i was growing up

i

i actually think mary and i have a terrific advantage because we were separated for a good period of time when i was in college and she was 350 miles away and i couldn't wait to get to the mailbox to see what letter she sent me and you know i still got all of those letters in a draw i got all of her letters and my letters are all all together i don't know what's going to evaporate on the internet but i think there's something to saying that

if the speed of our communication forgets to include god in it then we we're doing something that's not right

and i like this phrase because it's right in the lord's player thy will be done it's something to remember over and over again and every time we pray

we should include that in our prayers

um if you've got some experience in your life that relates to this i would really like to hear about it in the chat when we get to the end of this are there things that you thought that

um [Music]

god's will helped you and was done in a way that helped your life

and now wrapping up this chapter

is this thought

it's a really powerful thought that not doing something can be as sinful as doing something now that's that's something that i think

needs to be ingrained in our thinking the fact that we don't act on something when we should is really sin and i think too often we do this because we're

either oblivious to what needs to be done and haven't really thought it out or because we're too cowardly

to do what has to be done so this idea i think is really the key

issue

in how we sin even when we don't do something

as it is the apostle says you boast in your arrogance such boasting is evil so whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it for him it is sin

now that's a very startling

thought because

that means that we need to think about our actions

not only what we should do but also what we shouldn't do

sins of omission are as bad as one's resulting from overt action and i think often this is my biggest problem you know should i or shouldn't i and

there are some really good bible examples of this that

a cynical mission led to disaster again i want you to think about this if you can give me some examples in your own lives this would be really a cool thing for me to have in my in my catalog of things i want to think about for the future so he saw he despised his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew and he lost his birthright so something just didn't do

he didn't outright kill or shoot anybody samson getting involved with delilah why would he do that why didn't he marry a nice jewish girl

he led to him being blinded and eventual death

um i think i got one more example yeah israel failing to eliminate the amalekites god told me to get rid of all of them and it led later to haman the amalekite who uh

if he had had his way he would have tried to destroy all of israel

so that's that's the end there's

Transcript

james 5 is an extraordinary chapter in fact the whole book is extraordinary and as i pointed out last week

there were doubts by martin luther and even others more modern more recently about whether this book even belonged in the bible so let's take a little bit of a look at this this whole issue a little bit more before we focus in [Music]

on

the details here in chapter five which are pretty much summarize all the

message that james is trying to get across this whole issue of faith versus works

this is a very interesting passage that i got out of the oxford research encyclopedia on religion written by a professor at the university of helsinki and it's worth reading [Music]

in in full he says

luther's central claim is that faith alone justifies that is makes a purchase person righteous in the eyes of god

the one who believes in christ as a result of hearing the gospel his faith affects the imputation of christ's righteousness and covers the sins of the believer in contrast to medieval doctrines of justification luther argues that christ himself not love is the form or the essence of faith love and good works are the necessary consequences of justification even if they are not necessary for justification now that is that is in fact

exactly what the epistle of james was written to counter because these kind of thinkings came to the fore even in the first century church

the idea that if you had faith and believe that jesus christ was the son of god or today even that he is uh part of the trinity if you just believe and accept that that he's your personal savior that's all that's necessary

try to do good works but if it doesn't work out you know god's going to forgive you because you've been called

the problem with this

today is pretty much the same as the problem was then so a little bit in fairness to martin luther he did eventually decide to include the epistle of james in his german translation of the bible

and in the second edition he removed the preface that he had the first edition where he called the letter of james a letter of straw

some have claimed that he

said that meaning that it was like straw fada that it should be just ignited and thrown away uh but um there are lots of scholarly papers on just what he meant by that but let's let's just focus in on what i got there and read luther's central claim is that faith alone justifies that is makes a person righteous in the eyes of god

and that's a that's a pretty bold claim

in recent times um others have picked up on this idea that salvation is contingent only on faith they claim if one has enough faith in jesus all else will be forgiven in fact their faith doesn't even

necessarily have any quantitative value with it's just a question of i believe jesus is the savior of the world and therefore i'm saved um

now i'm gonna muse you a little bit because we've been having some real fun around here um i thank all of all those people who sent us congratulations about michigan winning um the big ten and beating ohio state and i thank you for commiserating with me because um as you may know i am originally am an illini that's where i got my phd and they have never won anything anywhere i'm also a jet fan and that's another losing proposition and um and of course the detroit pistons are beyond hope so you guys in boston that had the patriots there you know you're extremely lucky and of course it's because of a michigan man that you can be lucky so there is something said to that so this is what you often see at michigan stadium at football games um and when i say often i mean every game i've ever been at there's been some kind of sign in the stands john 3 16 for god so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believed in him which should not perish we have eternal life and

evangelical movement has picked up on this in big time since the 1970s

and if you're doing bible seminars

you're going to find this question coming up that you know a fake alone saves why are you giving us all this why do we have to study the bible why do we have to do anything well i don't know about new england but we're still in the bible belt here in the midwest and this this comes up quite frequently and the issue is a tough one to overcome because like most simplistic views on salvation if it's simple why complicate it why why are we complicating it so another verse that sometimes you see a little more sophisticated verse uh so sometimes also displayed in around the stadium for the wages of sin is death but the free gift of god is eternal life in christ jesus our lord so that supposedly also verifies now of course this is uh this is probably read at almost every custodial in the world baptism

and i know it was read at our baptism we read it here in ann arbor when someone is baptized it's clearly taken out of context because the very same chapter uh the apostle paul uh raises this point because i think there was already in the first century this feeling that james wrote about to overcome that if if you have faith and you don't need anything else it was a complete

what about how i put this it was a complete putting aside

of

the failure of the jewish law where i had to do every little last thing and if i do all these things i can feel good and of course in religion that's very comforting like i i apologize i'm i was not brought up catholic my wife was i know some of you were but i never was able to figure out why eating fish on friday made you holy and since my mother was married to my dad who was catholic until he eventually saw the light

mom would never save fish on friday we'd get it monday tuesday sometimes thursday it's fascinating we ate a lot of fish but never on friday that that was her way of saying to dad

there's nothing holy about having fish on friday

so this quote here from rome in the same chapter what shall we say then are we to continue in sin that grace may abound by no means

how can we who died in sin still live in it and so taking romans 6 23 out of context just as bad as taking john 3 16 out of context and so james i believe this whole book was written

to correct this over obsession that had swung all the way the other way from being ritual followers of a lore and a set of codes to saying well i don't need any of that

and james then expands on it now what we have seen in chapters four and five is there was a i believe an awful lot of sin going around because people were living this lies feeling i'm already saved

what good is it my brothers if someone says he has faith but does not have works can that faith save him

that's one of probably one of the key verses in scripture

and it's one i've you know always remembered

jesus didn't actually teach that just believing that he was the savior and the son of god he said if you keep my commandments you will abide in my love just as i have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love so this is the reason why if if you look at the back of an occlusion guide you will see a whole bunch of jesus's commandments and sometimes sadly i found the christodophians make such a big point that a statement of faith and and then forget about those commandments of christ which are actually the most important part of what's our beliefs

okay so let's now take an examination of this chapter and see

what i believe was happening in the first century church in in ways that probably came right out of their paganism there were things they were doing that they never saw anything wrong in and now i believe in jesus as my savior well i'm going to keep living the way i was always living

come now he says you rich weep and howl from miseries that are coming upon you your riches have rotted and your garments have more than your gold and silver have corroded and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire you have laid up treasure in the last days

now that's a tremendous indictment of behavior and i think we need to examine this a little at a time to see what what is it here that may be something that we're we're we're affected with it's in our world today

here's a question i want you all to think about and um at the end of this talk i might like like some comments on do riches help or hinder us i mean it's a good idea

to um [Music]

just throw away everything work and go go buy a trailer home somewhere that's in um

you know bad a place you could possibly you know imagine like

california or something like that do rich's hender or help well the question is this is actual bumper sticker i saw him on a car in laguna beach some years ago he who dies with the most toys wins

i'm not sure what they win so you got computers there airplanes uh something that looks like a corvette stingray

i'd be a little more sympathetic to a ferrari and of course a boat and so on is it actual

uh sticker on a car that was probably worth more than the house i'm living in

so

is that actually something that we've aspired to well i think i think an awful lot of people do um they were terribly

you know wrapped up in being that the word i hear more than anything else about students when i was still teaching was i want to be successful i want to have i want to be i want to really want to make money and even the pressure even in engineering nowadays you you get a master's degree in mba because you can get much more successful in business in richmond well that's fine that's a good goal there's nothing wrong with being rich what's wrong is what you do with it

so yeah i'll just point that out so here's what jesus has to say about

riches

matthew 19 23 and 24 another one of those really insightful verses in scripture and then when i say that about jesus christ of course you read the gospel almost everything he says is insightful but certain things stick out more in each individual's minds depending on our life experiences and he says to the disciples truly i say to you only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven again i tell you it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of god now of course some people said that they he was talking about the needle gate going into jerusalem i'm not sure that's the case i think jesus actually had a sense of humor and if you really look at many of the parables and things he's talking about he knew how to be a great orator and great all-raiders are not all monotone they're not all slamming down on them he

was able to hold an audience because he knew the tone and how to have a break and make people then focus back up again and so classically we would say he was not a heavy speaker

he was an absolutely insightful speaker

so here's the the my vision of a camo go through the i have a needle i apologize it's a it's a it's a illustration that was in my book on parables and uh i couldn't really find find one so i actually drew it up myself uh excuse the uh this is obviously not the leonardo style the drawing but you get to get the idea so what what is he saying in this verse he says you're gold and silver corroded and their corrosion will be evidence against you when you eat your fleshlight fight that's pretty stunning because well for a guy who had undertrained godzilla training in in um metallurgy gold and silver or noble metals they're virtually indestructible

so what was he talking about

i like to interpret scripture with scripture here in proverbs he says a good name is to be chosen rather than riches and favor is better than silver and gold if you don't have a good name anymore your good name should be as noble to me as silver and gold that's what i suggest he was indicating and their good name had corroded away because of their behavior and i think we need to be very mindful of that that our behavior has to be as noble as silver and growled and in silver and gold nothing corrodes them

so we may tarnish a bit but the silver is never worn away

john 6 and 27 he says do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures to eternal life which the son of man will give you for on him god the father has said his seal

don't labor for the food that perishes

so in their riches

we find this stunning statement that they were cheating other people

indeed the wages of laborers who mowed your fields which kept back by fraud or cry out in the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the lord of the sabbath

i i believe he's talking here literally and i think that's that's a danger that sometimes we fall into without even realizing [Music] one of my thoughts that really stuck in my mind is some years back brother alfred nichols told me that some delphians think it's all right to have two personalities the personality they have at work

hard driving ambitious uh not regard for anyone else that's their monday to friday personality and then they have their saturday personality which might be

modified quite a bit after doing cyc or something like that and then they have their sunday personality which is a cloak clothing temporary clothes of whites well i don't know [Music]

about you but i've felt that very close because that's that's a tough that's a tough call

because the world

honest

hard driving

ambitious

tough people you don't often hear someone say oh my course was a nice guy with such a like and he hardly ever pushed me for anything i was it was just a pleasure well the guy did that probably or the woman who did that never became the boss

i've worked for a lot of bosses in my 50 years of being employment

and i can tell you i've worked for some people who were absolutely beyond hell

and on occasion i also work for some extremely nice

people their riches they made their riches by exploiting others now this was strictly forbidden under the law of moses leviticus 19 13 says you shall not oppress your neighbor or rob them the wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning that's a pretty good saying and i think uh that goes for this if we owe a brother or sister we should not hold back payment or take advantages of sin and i'm not talking about just money i mean if we owe them our time if we owe them uh our energy if we owe them our advice if we owe them even a good meal um you know i've seen let me give you a good good example about this um oppressing hurtful people we we had

at the time in ann arbor is a college town and in good weather he's a lot of people come through here and are begging at um

various uh highway exits onto into town for food

and somebody said to me well we once

gave somebody a five dollar bill and the next time i saw them they were drinking some kind of booze out of a brown paper bag so i'm never gonna give anybody anything again

well after really thinking about it i thought well you know there's a way to get around that so i advise the ecclesia we don't give out money anymore we give out

food cards

you can have this card and you can go to mcdonald's or you can have the car there and you can charge the meal period and we give out actually a couple of hundred of these

every year

so that people and can go now you'll love you'll love this because this shows you how

really mean people are so i had a place where i was when i was still working i had my my um

business uh where every day went by and there's a major exit and there was a place where there was always somebody there uh who was needed some help and i gave out a lot of these cars and then a couple of blocks away was a

a mcdonald's and i went in to buy some more one time and the guy said to me i'm i'm not selling them anymore

and i said uh you're not selling out gift cards anymore why why are you doing that he says well some jerk is giving him out and all kinds of bums are coming in here and scaring away my other customers i said

just now there's the classic example what james is talking about when he says somebody comes in and isn't dressed very well you treat him badly what did i give that guy a talking to um [Music] he did

bring back cards but he kept them behind the count i was just selling them

on an as needed basis he was rationing them he told me he had a race in them but isn't that a horrible world where people would [Music] deny someone a meal because they're not dressed well i i don't know i i think that's pretty sad he says you will not oppress a hired worker who is poor whether he's one of your brothers or one of your sojourners here's another thing that i have found crystaldelphians doing at time that they have different behavior how they treat brothers and sisters from how they treat their workers if they're in positions of authority and that's just bad news

uh again talking back to brother nichols comment about monday to wednesday i mean monday to friday behavior being different from our sunday behavior

neither should we defraud anyone outside our household we should have a reputation for being honest and trustworthy and god-fearing people and i can tell you i know

i know several brethren personally over the years

who attracted people from the truth who did not have what i would call academic background nor would they be able to argue a case about whether the trinity is right or not but because they worked with people who so respected their character that they inquired further

about

what kind of faith they had so i won't mention any names but uh i if i did i'm you probably will know some of these people yourself

okay so there's an excitation of paint so boy i need i need that all the time patience is not one of my great strengths um and at one time it almost cost me my life uh be patient brothers until the coming of the lord well the coming of the lord is for any of us is the day we die so that we shouldn't think of the law being delayed two thousand years uh time is very different from our perspective as it is for god's perspective and we never know tomorrow next moment could be our last moment so we need what he's saying here is you got to be patient your whole life

that's what he's saying you've got to be patient your whole life

so i love this proverb

one moment of patience may ward off a great disaster one moment of inpatience may ruin a whole life and that's a very clever insight into the whole idea of of patience

so me myself i i almost killed myself in an experiment in 1959

uh when i was doing a hydrogen um annealing experiment and i was in such a hurry i forgot to check the pressure gauge and the pressure over blue

and the entire experiment exploded

god must certainly be with me that day because

i

at that moment just a moment before i bent down to look under the table something had dropped and the only thing i had above the table was this thumb

and a piece of glass from the explosion

pierced it and went right through it out the other side and i still got the scar if i had been above the table where it was about 30

about five seconds earlier it would have blown my head off so

i learned something there about patients and then experiments you never ever assume anything you check you double check you triple check uh never be in a hurry to do an experiment and i think the same is true in life and we're thinking about doing something for god we need to be patient

with what god is doing on us because that's how god works with us

so i want you to think about this too because we talk about so what lessons and patience can you remember in your own life that uh helped you

so he's asking us to be patient even in the face of suffering and failure they're going to be times things go pretty rough for you and when that happens uh you're not going to um be successful if you lose it

he says also be patient establish your hearts for the coming of the lord

do not grumble against one another brothers so that you may not be judged behold the judge is standing at the door as an example of suffering and patient brothers take the prophets who spoke in the name of the lord now in those three verses

there's incredible amount of meat and that's why i put in blue the first thing about be patient because god is at hand that's literal that means

the moment

of our departure from this planet in dying it can be at any time secondly in red grumble complaining and moaning i don't think there's anything worse

in some of our attitudes that i sometimes see about brothers and sisters that they if they get a bad exhibition oh they're they're going on and on and on and on instead of thinking you know maybe i ought to speak quietly with that brother a week or two from now when the cool down and maybe give some advice or some discussion and a kindly and brotherly way um i have i don't know if you've ever examined things are probably very nice up in new england i'm sure you never have any of these problems but i have seen at times when a young brother give an exhibition somebody didn't like it the latest chord on the piano or org it hadn't quite died down when somebody's joining up to the platform and screaming at them

and then of course he uses this example of suffering and patient well

going through the month of december and reading about joel

job is

quite a lesson in patience and thank god i personally have mary have never suffered anything like job

and that whole book is written to teach us patience and to teach us that it's god that's in control

so the idea

as i've said these ideas i've just gone through now the last one there i love this one first kings 18 22.

then elijah said to the people i even i only am left the prophet of the lord but baal's prophets of 450 men

well elijah really he had his hands full didn't he and i think at times the preaching work we can get discouraged we

for every single success we have had here in ann arbor with our bible seminar programs and we have had some success but forever success we've had maybe a hundred failures now we still have a codri of some people who come to bible seminars and are still around and and haven't been motivated to be baptized and i'm talking after many years

so

this idea of patience and preaching work uh there are times even our best efforts to preach or teach or care for someone will lead to failure and the messages don't get discouraged and i i think that's that's probably one of the most important things that james is saying about working in a collegial life and everything we do we be

willing to fail and not

stop working

and um [Music] is that easy i know i i don't think james was meant to tell us anything easy i i like this hymn that we have how few receive with cordial fate the tidings which we bring i mean there's a it's great words to describe uh him 217 that um we need to

obviously the hymn book was written a long time ago and carried over from the 19th century so there's nothing new about

discouragement in preaching work

so let's move on james 5 and 11. he says behold we consider those blessed to remain steadfast

we have heard of the steadfastness of job and then have seen the purpose of the lord how the lord is compassionate and merciful now i like i love that word steadfast that's a that's pretty uh cool expression um and you'll be pretty shocked to hear that the word steadfast appears 218

times in the esv bible and only 11 times in the king james version in fact it's it's actually spelled using the old english spelling s-t-e-d

instead of s-t-a-d

why this difference this is a shocking difference in fact this is probably one of the most amazing differences uh between the esv and other versions and and i think there's a very deliberate attempt here by the esv translators to lock up a whole bunch of other synonyms that were in the king james version and make it clear that it has a broader meaning [Music] okay

so uh what does steadfast mean this is staying the same for a long time not changing quickly or unexpectedly

okay

so synonyms immovable loyal faithful committed devoted dedicated dependable reliable steady true constant staunch trusty firm determined resolute unfaltering and trustworthy they're all synonymous of steadfast and the king james translators uses most of those words in many many places but the esv translators have decided that the meaning [Music]

of steadfast

conveys

the absolute dedication

that was intended in all of those verses

so they have opted for using it almost everywhere when many of these other cinemas now that's pretty nice actually in some sense because if you really want to find out uh all the ways that god remain expects us to be true devoted and loyal it's easy to go through

all the quotes in the esv under steadfast and i've done that and it's really great a great experience so oops not so fast john um [Music] so

i

i kind of like the way they've done that

uh but if you don't agree with me um

sit down side and cut the two versions bible side by side and see if it makes sense uh the word steadfast conveys to me a lot more than uh and a fuller meaning than many of these uh other now you've got to remember translators sometimes just put in synonyms because say i don't want to keep repeating the same word over and over again but sometimes

repeating a thought that's important over and over again is the way to hit home an idea and that's what james is doing remember back in the verse we just read he's repeating that thought twice

right

right behold consider those who remain steadfast have you heard of the steadfast of job he's doing that quite deliberately to see that the lesson is understood okay let's go back to where we

were okay we got it so now he moves on to this issue of keeping our commandments but above all my brothers do not swear either by heaven or earth or by any other road but let your yes be yes and your no no be no so that you may not fall under condemnation uh i believe here that james and i'm going to call an apostle here is quoting matthew 5

and i think that this is another one of the little internal proofs uh in the whole epistle of james that as the lord's half-brother he was not one of the official 12

disciples but i think he did follow christ around and he did hear a lot of his preaching firsthand

okay so moses

said if a man vows about the lord or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge he shall not break his word he should do according to all the proceeds out of his mouth so james is saying something different he says don't swear don't make a nose now is there a reason is he uh is he now undoing the fact that we should keep to our word

um when jesus says do not take an oath of all and that passage as i just read that what you say simply be yes or no anything more than this comes from evil i've actually heard some brothers and sisters at times saying well i'm not going to promise anything because i'm so weak i probably won't keep it anyway i do not think that's what james means and i do not think that's what jesus means

but that's something else for you to think about in a few minutes the james or jesus mean we should never make promises because we aren't people capable of keeping our word or did they mean something else

i'm not going to give you what i think about it just yet because we'll wait until we have some discussion on that and then we come to this issue of prayer oh [Music] that is probably

one of the nicest and most powerful ways that we can spiritually grow

when there's troubles when there's difficulties

that's a good time to pray

when there are no troubles when everything's going well that's a good time to pray

it is

for our benefit now i've heard all these kind of scientific ideas well how you know you're praying and how do you know god's even hearing you and you know millions of people may be praying at the same time

that doesn't trouble me at all because as a scientist i know all about bandwidth and i can be pretty sure that god has the major maximum bandwidth ever

um many of you probably don't realize this that while we're praising god of not not being able to hear millions of people millions of people right now

are hearing and talking to each other over cell phones all over this planet using bandwidth

and they're all maybe even all talking at the same time so it's not amazing to me at all that god can hear the prayers of millions of people all at once

so we don't have to suffer in silence it's perfectly appropriate to share our troubles with others and pray together and in a sense as we do this every sunday with our prayer list i i'm pretty sure you probably do something simple similar then he goes on saying anointing with oil in the name of the lord i want to make this clear he's not talking about extreme function here okay now when i talk about extreme function there's probably some of you out there are much more familiar with this than me but i have my catholic expert sitting right next to me here so that's who i consult on these things this is not the catholic extreme junction which is given to those on their death beds for forgiveness of sins he's talking about it as a sort of comforting way

anointing with oil is mentioned only once in the new testament in mark 6 and 13.

and he says they cast out many demons and anointed with all many who were sick and healed them so anointing with oil was a way of comforting someone but pretty much today like you might want to annoy someone with some kind of a cooling slav

[Music]

we do that

so it was apparently meant as a comforting healing application meant for recovery now of course they didn't have aloe and all those other things that we have in modern

you know skin stuff so the olive oil is kind of universal thing and uh you know growing up of course in an italian household my mother bought it by the gallons now we had olive oil in just about everything

in fact probably the only meal i was going to say the only meal in the day that we didn't know how or it was breakfast and then i think about that that's that's wrong if mom fried an egg she fried it in olive oil

so [Music] so these instructions in prayer are given them they're real important

because it says the prayer of a righteous person has great powers and it's working

i want you to think about that a righteous person yeah if we are doing sins and we're doing lots of bad things and then we expect god to do something good for us that's probably not a right way of thinking

so there are two main purposes for prayer thanksgiving and seeking help and i believe that the third purpose which i'm leaving out here

there's one third person purpose for prayer

besides thanksgiving and seeking help and that is forgiveness

these must be done with the right spirit and the right character jesus taught us how to pray and we should keep these thoughts in mind whenever we pray

um

i don't think i'll read this out because i think most of us are pretty familiar with this uh

i love this do not heap up empty praises as gentiles do but they think that will be heard from many words your father knows what you need before you ask him so our prayers should

be

tailored to the occasion i mean don't make a prayer for the bread or wine be a long diet you know a long diatribe a long time focus in on what it is and uh when we pray

let's remember that there's one key phrase that should never be left out of prayer

it is the praise that jesus puts

in his example

thy will be done

don't ask for something

and expect that you can bypass

god's will because we may be asked for something perfectly normal please heal me and god says no that's not what i intended to do