Living Faith

Now, I invite you to grab your message notes because this weekend we are kicking off a brand new series called "Every Day Sacred" based in the New Testament letter of James. But before we dive into the letter of James, let me take you back a different document. To July the 2nd, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was introduced to Congress. Two days later, they approved it. Its main author, as you know, a guy named Thomas Jefferson. He wrote this, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." In a separate document, he described slavery as a moral depravity. And yet, he owned over 600 slaves and only freed two in his lifetime. George Washington would eventually free all his slaves. Jefferson's cousin freed his slaves. His neighbor freed his slaves, but not Jefferson.

Now, what's that tell you? It tells you that no one is immune to hypocrisy. You can be incredibly bright and accomplished. You can have noble ideals. You can even have moral outrage over something that you perceive to be evil, something you call evil, and yet you can still deceive yourself. It happens whenever any of us find a way to live with a glaring disconnect between what we say we believe and how we actually live our lives. And James has much to say about this.

But let me ask you, ever encounter a person where you just had the strong suspicion that they were not all that they were pretending to be? Okay, have it a little closer to home. Ever feel like you were faking it? Like perhaps there's the church version of you, and then there's the work version, the home version, and the alone-by-yourself version of you. We all struggle with this. And yet at the same time, we yearn for authenticity. We want to be people where our worship and our love for Jesus is not just limited to an hour or a day during the week, but that it spills into everything we say and everything we do because we have, in fact, a living faith where everyday moments become sacred, captured for the purposes of God.

And so today, I want to give you an overview of James, and I got to warn you, James is one of the most misunderstood books in the entire New Testament, in part because people approach it without a sense of context and history. And so I want to give you a little bit of that today so that we can be informed as we go forward with this study. And so let's start. I'm going to encourage you, you know, put on your detective's caps. I'm just going to go to school here for just a moment, and we're going to ask a series of questions.

The first is, who wrote it? Who wrote this? It begins, verse 1, "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ." So you're thinking, well, duh, Mark, James wrote it. Okay, that's pretty obvious. But which James? Because there's four candidates in the New Testament. First there's James, son of Alphaeus, he's called. He's one of the disciples, one of the lesser known of the twelve. We don't know a whole lot about him other than his dad's name was Alphaeus, which means that he may have been Matthew's brother because in Mark 2, it talks about Matthew or he calls him Levi, but he says his father is named Alphaeus. So if it's the same guy, then those two are brothers. But that's pretty much where his story ends.

Father James is mentioned in Luke 6:16, mentions a disciple who is James, actually the disciples' name is Judas, but his father's name is James, and this is another Judas that's among the twelve. You might call him the other Judas. And you have to feel sorry for this guy because his whole life he has to point out, "No, I'm not that guy, okay? I'm the other Judas." And his father's name is James, but it's very unlikely that this is the James we're looking for. Third option is James the brother of John. And we read about him a lot in the gospels because he's part of the Lord's inner circle, Peter, James, and John. He's this guy, but in Acts 12, it says that Herod has him killed when persecution breaks out against the church in Jerusalem. And so it's very unlikely that this is the James of our letter because he simply wasn't around long enough.

Our fourth option, and by far the best one, is James the half-brother of Jesus. You might want to write that down if you're taking notes today. He's the half-brother of Jesus. And if you think about it, if you're the half-brother of Jesus, you're the James that doesn't need to be introduced as son or brother of anyone because you're like, "You're that James." You know, the James who's related to the Lord. And for the record, Jesus had four brothers that are named in the gospels and has at least two sisters. And can you imagine what that would have been like to have Jesus Christ as your older brother? I mean, think about that for just a moment. How many of you have an older brother or sister? Just raise your hand. A lot of us do. Okay, so you ever feel like maybe you were unfairly compared to your older brother or sister? You know, like maybe there was a little tension there, little competition. Ever feel like your parents thought that your older sibling could walk on water? Okay, in James' case, he actually could.

And imagine, you know, Mary saying to the others, "Why can't you just be more like your older brother?" Like, "Come, stop it, Mom. That's not gonna happen." And maybe, maybe just maybe this why, when you read about Jesus' interactions with his family, it's clear they don't believe that he is who he says he is in the gospels. In fact, I put two references there for you in Mark 3, John 7 in your notes. You'll see, they kind of mock him if you read that. They think he's a little bit delusional. They certainly did not believe that he's the Messiah. But then, several days, perhaps weeks after the crucifixion, guess what? You see James and his brothers, they're in the upper room praying with the disciples, with the other followers of Jesus, and so what in the world happened? I mean, how do you account for that kind of switch, that turnaround? Well the Apostle Paul tells us. In 1 Corinthians 15, he says that after Jesus rose from the grave, he appeared to Peter and to the 12, then to over 500 people, and in verse 7 he says, "Then he appeared to James." So I mean, wow, what a moment. It's like all of a sudden he's like, "Hey, bro, did you miss me? You know, who's the crazy one now, huh?" I mean, but seriously, what would it take for you to believe that your brother was the Lord? I mean, what would it take? You'd have to rise from the dead or something like that, right?

And very quickly, James becomes a disciple. In fact, he rises to leadership. He becomes the leader of the church in Jerusalem, and he's a very capable leader. In fact, he has a calming influence on the early Christian movement. You can read about this in Acts 15, where it's about to be torn to pieces from within. So this is a little bit of his backstory, but let's move to the next question. Why did he write this letter? What prompted it? Why was it written? I think it's directly related to this persecution that's talked about in the book of Acts. In fact, in chapter 8, it says it's such a great persecution against the church that essentially everyone flees Jerusalem except for the apostles, and they settle in distant cities and lands. And meanwhile, a guy named Saul, who would later be known as the Apostle Paul, but back in the Saul days, he sets out to destroy the church, going from house to house, dragging Christians to prison, sometimes worse.

Now, imagine James, okay? He's like what we would call the senior pastor of these people. They're scattered. Many, if not most of them, will never return back to Jerusalem, which means that the context of this letter, it has to do with the church living in the world, living abroad, where they're experiencing trials, persecution, some are living in poverty, and you can see James' pastoral heart as he mentions these things. But he's also got a concern. He's got a burden because if the context is that the church is living in the world, his concern is that the world is living in the church. In other words, there's hypocrisy, there's favoritism, there's slander, quarrels, selfishness, envy, injustice, all happening in their midst. These are things that the church has had to contend with ever since the very beginning.

And you know, we often think, we often think that if I go through hard times, it's going to make my faith stronger, and there's certainly always that potential, but it's not a guarantee. It's not automatic. You can go through some kind of suffering, and it can leave you bitter, cynical, envious of others, self-indulgent, self-centered, mean-spirited, and over time, negative patterns become defining traits. Perhaps you've seen this person who talks about their faith, says they're a Christian, and yet you would never know it from their life. James addresses that throughout this letter. In an odd way, it kind of reminds me of an old commercial. How many of you were around during the 1980s? Yeah, I'm thinking most of you were around during the '80s. And if you were, you'll recall a wildly successful ad campaign for Wendy's restaurants.

Watch this. It certainly is a big bun. It's a very big bun. Big fluffy bun. It's a very big fluffy bun. Where's the beef? Some hamburger places give you a lot less beef on a lot of bun. Where's the beef? At Wendy's, we serve a hamburger we modestly call a single, and Wendy's single has more beef than the Whopper or Big Mac. At Wendy's, you get more beef and less bun. Hey, where's the beef? I don't think there's anybody back there. You want something better. You're Wendy's kind of people. Remember that? One line, but boy, she delivered it well. Where's the beef? And you know what? That's really the through line of James' letter. He's like, "Where's the beef? You say you're a Christian, but how does your faith influence your actions?"

So along these lines, let me just show you a couple of theme verses that speak to this. James 1:22, he says, "Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." Now does this mean that you're perfect? No, of course not. In fact, I think the new American standard translates this a little bit better when it says, "But prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves." In other words, we become a doer. It is proven out over the course of our lives. It's not just like flipping a switch, but it's about growing and maturing in Christ. And again, nobody but Jesus Christ has ever obeyed the Bible perfectly, but follow me, as we grow in our likeness of Christ, we will become more and more doers of His word. The two are really inseparable. As we become like Jesus, we act more like Jesus.

And James describes this kind of Christ-like activity in chapter 1, verse 27, when he says, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." Now I want you to notice what it does not say because he doesn't say that religion that God accepts as pure and faultless is to merely feel sorry for widows and orphans in their distress or for other people in need. It says what? To look after them, to act on their behalf. And I don't understand that this can be complicated, especially in our society because the line between helping and enabling is very thin at times. So I'm appreciative of that. But James, he's really not talking about that in his letter. What he's talking about is about getting so sucked up in the ways of the world, whether it's selfishness or any other kind of sin, that we lose sight of God's agenda. We simply stop caring about the things that God cares about or even worse, we begin to oppose them, our lives.

I will confess. There have been times in my life where what I thought, what I was doing was at cross purposes with the Lord. And that's true any time. We're living in sinful behavior. As it says in James 4:4, "Don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?" And so throughout this letter, he just keeps kind of hitting the same thing. It's like, you know, guys, talk is cheap. Where's the beef? And not to take this whole hamburger metaphor too far, but it is one of those weekends with a lot of burgers and barbecues going on. You notice today that it's kind of popular. People will order, maybe you do this, you order a burger without the bun. Anybody do this? You can raise your hand, you're proud of Santa Cruz. That's a cool thing to do, right? No bun. In fact, In-N-Out Burger, they even have a name for this on their secret menu. They call it what? They call it protein style, right? You know what they call the opposite? Where you get everything but the meat? They call it why bother style.

Sorry. I know I've offended some of you right now. I'm sorry. I mean, to each one, that's fine. Whatever you want. But at that point, you can't call it a burger anymore, okay? It's a cheese sandwich, right? With condiments. Now follow me. We can surround ourselves with the trappings of Christianity. We can honor Jesus with our lips. We can give mental assent to the key Christian doctrines. But if our lives tell another story, that's a problem, plain and simple. And James is going to address this head on in what I call the most misunderstood section of James, which is chapter 2, verses 14 through 26. Here's just three of those verses. He says, "Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm and well-fed,' but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?" I mean, that's a fair question, right? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is what? Dead. Not just sick. It's dead.

Now like I said, this is one of the most misunderstood controversial passages in the New Testament. In fact, every cult will try to convince you this is why you have to earn your way into heaven. I'm going to point to these verses, but listen, you misunderstand these verses right here, this section. You'll not only misunderstand the letter that James writes, you will misunderstand the essence of the gospel. So write this down. This is very important. This is not about faith versus works. People who say that, they're not reading James closely enough. This is not about faith versus works. This is about living faith versus dead faith. That's a very important distinction.

Show of hands, how many of you this time of year you like to put in a little vegetable garden? See it? Okay, yeah, it's cool. It's fun to do. My vegetable garden is how ambitious I am. It consists all of two tomato plants, two. Okay, but check this out. The light, the rain, the hail, the cold, the other day I went out there, check it out. It's already producing tomatoes. I'm like, there they are. Do you just keep growing little guys so I can pop you in my mouth. And I was so excited. Aren't you impressed? I did that, okay? And well, I didn't do it actually. But I want to share with you a little bit of my secrets to growing tomatoes. And here it is, in addition to, you know, plenty of sunlight and water and air and nourishment, there is one thing that every plant, this is a non-negotiable, every plant has to have this if it is going to produce fruit. You know what it is? No, it has to be alive. Okay, I know that's deep. It's very deep. But the same thing is true of our faith.

And so often the question that arises when people read James and they know a little bit of the New Testament, they'll ask the question, "Do Paul and James agree?" Because does Paul say that salvation is by grace and James, that you have to earn it, like it is faith plus works? But not at all. Because the difference has to do with their focus. Okay, Paul's focus in places like Ephesians 2 or often in the beginnings of his letters, Paul's focus is on how we are saved. How? And so he says this in Ephesians 2:8-9, "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast." Okay, that's pretty clear. But when we get to James, James has a different focus. James does not focus so much on how we are saved. He kind of assumes that. James focuses on once we are saved and what that looks like. And the Spirit begins to produce fruit, Christ-like behavior in our lives.

This is what James is talking about when he says in James 2:18, "Show me your faith without deeds, and I'll show you my faith by my deeds." In other words, my life will tell you everything you need to know about my faith. Just the other night, Thursday night I was watching the NBC Evening News and Anchorman Lester Holt starts telling a story about a couple, Matthew and Ashley Boyd. This couple here, Matthew is a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. But the story really wasn't about baseball at all. It was about how this couple has established three homes in Uganda in order to save children from sex trafficking. It's a powerful story. And what was interesting is that Lester Holt never said anything about what they believed. Not a word. He just kind of hinted at the very end when he closes out and he said, "What a great mission." And so curious, I Googled them and I find their nonprofit called Kingdom Home, another hint about what they're about. And sure enough, as I read down through their website, I arrive at this where it says, "Our goal is to bring hope and healing through the love of Christ." So there it is. But here's my point. Long before I reached this place in their mission statement, it was obvious. I mean, it's like, yeah, these guys, they're all about Jesus. It's just clear. It just was obvious. And this is exactly what James is talking about. He talks about having a living faith.

Let me say it another way. If Paul's focus is on God's grace to us in places like Ephesians 2, James' focus is on God's grace through us, the impact. In fact, Paul, right after those verses in Ephesians 2, Paul will talk about how God has created us to do good works in Jesus. So he's on the same page all the way through here. And make no mistake, both affirm salvation is by grace. Let me just show you two parallel passages here. Paul says in Ephesians 1, "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." And then if you grew up with this idea of kind of a cranky, angry God, you could just soak in that passage and get a sense of God's heart for you. But you could do the same thing by reading in chapter 1, verse 18 of James, where he says, "He," that's God, "chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word, and we, out of all creation, became his prized possession." Now, you can't choose your own birth. You can't earn it. The only thing you can do is gratefully embrace it, right?

And by the way, when James says that he chose to give us birth by giving us his true word there, that phrase literally is word of truth. And I mention that because the Apostle Paul uses the same phrase as a shorthand for the gospel in four of his letters. Four times Paul will use the same phrase referring to the gospel, which is about how God has saved us through his Son, Jesus Christ, that we don't save ourselves. God saves us. He adopts us. He gives us new life. He calls us his prized possession. And so if we're asking, "Well, what's the big idea of James?" Well, it's right back to the gospel. It's about the power of the gospel transforming us and changing how we live. In other words, the big idea is this, it's that living faith produces loving actions, Christ-like actions, righteous action, God-honoring action.

Because listen, this is important. And I think in our culture, sometimes coming to faith can look so much like just like a contract. You know, I say some words and then God's obligated to punch my ticket to heaven. And then people feel like they just kind of go on with their life. But in reality, we were not just saved from something, from sin, from guilt, from judgment. We were not just saved from something, we were saved to something. It's about a new life that begins the moment we come to faith. It's about so much more than just going to heaven. It begins now. Look at just these last couple of verses. James 2:8 says, "If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing right." James 3:17, "But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good," what? Fruit. There it is again. "Impartial and sincere." And man, if you're familiar with what Paul says, or the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, this list sounds very similar to that. In fact, I invite you to just kind of read them in parallel. You'll see, again, they're talking about the same thing.

So there's one last question for us. And this is the most important question. How do I apply this? How do I apply this? And I'm assuming that by being here today, by tuning in, you want this to be a reality in your life. You want to have a live, vibrant, living faith. And the good news to the next church is that for so many of you right here in this room or next door, part of this community, it's just absolutely true. I mean, honestly, I am so humbled, constantly humbled by the things that I see going on in this church. You know, pastors have a unique view. We see both the underbelly of the church, but we also see the beauty from a unique vantage point because we're aware of so many stories. And week after week, I mean, you serve, you pray, you give collectively thousands and thousands of loving deeds and acts are performed through this community every week, all the time.

In fact, even right now up at Camp Hammer, we have a group of Middle Eastern refugees are just being offered hospitality and love. And I know many of you will be involved with the Homeless Connect or whatever it is. This stuff just goes on all the time. I mean, you are the salt of the earth. You really are. And I praise God for you. But maybe perhaps there's some of us here today and you feel kind of like this. You feel like a person who enjoys going to a swimming pool, but you never actually swim. You know what I'm saying? You like to weigh it around and you fill the bottom firmly under your feet, but you never experience the thrill of pushing off and gliding into the deeper water. That's because there is a big difference between getting wet and going for a swim. Wouldn't you agree? And in the same way, there is a big difference between being in church and being the church. You follow me? It's about the difference in the participation that we have in what the Lord is doing.

Or perhaps some of you, you're like me. You know that the Lord is in you. The Spirit testifies to that in your life, but you long to be used more. You want your heart to burn even brighter for the things of God. You want to be quicker to recognize those little mundane opportunities, everyday moments that are all around us that you can claim for the kingdom of God if you're like me today. In fact, I was reflecting on this. A couple years ago, we had a men's retreat up at Camp Hammer. I can remember the first meeting was starting. The guys were singing. I don't know what it is about this thing, but if you've ever been on a men's retreat, you know men sing in those situations like they never sing anywhere else. I mean, it's just like, "Raise the roof." And meanwhile, René and I are standing in the very back of the room because like we're never going to be in the back, so we are going to be in the back. We are taking the back row. And I'm telling him this amazing story that I had just learned about a guy a couple rows ahead of us, a guy who was homeless. And a couple of the men in our group who often would go down to downtown Santa Cruz and they would bring food, they end up talking to this guy in front of the boardwalk. And one thing leads to another and they end up inviting him to the men's retreat. They're like, "Hey, why don't you just come up to our men's retreat? Come on." And so he does.

And when they arrive there, he wants to take a shower. And so while he's doing that, they're rifling through all their bags, trying to find sets of clothing for him. One guy has a brand new pair of shoes that fit him and they get him all decked out. I mean, he's looking really sharp and he's singing, just singing his heart out with these guys that brought him right in front of us and I'm telling René about just how amazing these men are. Can you see what they did? I mean, they just plucked this guy off the streets and here he is singing to Jesus. It's incredible. And René looks at me and he says, "You know what this means?" I said, "What?" He says, "I think it means that you and I are going to hell." I think he was kidding. I'd like to believe that. But in truth, I knew what he was saying and I got it instantly. It was one pastor's admission to another that even if you have theological degrees and you preach sermons, you provide spiritual leadership, even if you're a professional Christian, you can still find yourself in moments where you go, "My heart isn't as warm as I'd like it to always be." Sometimes it's just jaded or distant or cold.

In fact, one of the hazards of going to seminary is you discover very quickly that your knowledge of the Bible quickly outpaces your obedience to the Bible. It's an occupational hazard. But it's not exclusive to pastors. It's really something that all of us, the more we learn, the more we have to grapple with, "Well, yeah, but what's it all leading to? What's it amounting to?" I'm encouraged by one of my heroes, Richard Sibbes, who said this, "The law cannot do anything than remind us of our duty. Only the gospel can move us to grateful obedience." Isn't that good? So if that's what you want today, you want to live a life of grateful obedience that leads to loving action in the lives of other people, then let's just go to our source of every good and perfect thing. Let's just go to Jesus and ask Him. Let's just say, "Lord, fill up what's missing in my life because I can't do it myself." In other words, as James, his little brother says, "Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up." Amen? Let's do that right now.

Heavenly Father, we come to You, speaking for myself with a mix of gratitude and ongoing longing. Lord, I'm so grateful for Your goodness in my life. Many of us are, Lord. We've had the blessing of being a part of church for an extended period of time. It's blessed us and it's shaped us and changed us because Your Spirit is here applying Your Word to our lives. And yet, Lord, we just want You to just bring it on all the more. Keep that fire burning ever more brightly, Lord. Charge our hearts for the things of God, for the things that are central to Your heart, Lord. Continue to transform us more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

And Lord, I pray that You would encourage everyone here, everyone who's listening, that they would know that in small ways, most often mundane ways, everyday ways, there can be sacred moments where in the name of God, whether we're changing a diaper or fixing a meal or taking out trash or commuting to work or whatever it is, we do everything we do in the name of the Lord and ask that You would be glorified in our midst. And Lord, for the one or more who are here and they're on the periphery of faith, they're just kind of on the outside maybe looking in, I pray, Lord, that there would be the beauty of the gospel and the life that we have in Christ will continue to pull their hearts towards You. In fact, there might even be some here today who they know the story enough to know that Jesus died for their sins and they know that they needed someone to do that for them and that He rose from the grave, He defeated death, He defeated sin and He is our living Lord and Savior and they say today, they want in their heart, "Count me in, Jesus." And if that's you just in the privacy of your heart, you can say, "Lord Jesus, count me in. I want to follow You. Give me all I need, the strength, the direction, the grace to do that." Father, we pray all these things in the name of Jesus Christ asking that You would just continue to be glorified in our midst. All God's people said, amen, amen.