Bogus Faith

It is Sunday, the uh 13th of March 2016, and God is still on the throne.

He was all week long.

I don't know what kind of week you had.

It may have been a week in the pits, or it may have been a week on the mountaintop or someplace in between.

But this I know, and this you must know as well.

God is good, he is involved, he cares, and he rules and he reigns, he is on the throne.

He is today, he will be in the week ahead.

We have no idea what this week will bring.

But we know with a certainty, based upon the truth of God's word, who God is, and he is on the throne, he is good, he is trustworthy, he is faithful, he is patient, he is kind, he is righteous, he is loving, and the list goes on and on and on.

And those realities need to be the lens through which we see our lives last week, today, or the week ahead.

God is still on the throne.

We're going to uh to turn.

When I have my clicker on, we can turn.

Uh to the next portion of the book of James, James chapter 2.

James 2 · chapter mention

We're going to be looking specifically at verses 14 through 19.

Uh, it's part of a larger passage that goes to verse 26.

And in a moment, I'm going to have us turn to there to that and I will read it.

It is on page 1012 in your Pew Bible.

But I want to I want to give some introductory thoughts and kind of remind us what it is that we do, what we're, why we do what we're doing.

Last week we talked at the beginning of the message a little bit about the the inspiration of Scripture.

Not that the gospel writers saw a beautiful sunset and were inspired to write.

No, but that God so worked in their lives and led them in their writings, so perhaps without even realizing it, the end result of what Moses and James and Paul and all of the others wrote.

What their words were their words, but it was at the same time the very words of God, true in all that they say.

The corollary to that is that if we are wise, we will intentionally put ourselves under the word of God.

So as we gather, we gather to worship, to direct our attention to the audience of one, and that is God Himself.

He is, He is, ought to be our full attention when we are worshiping Him.

And we gather to intentionally sit under His teaching and say, Lord, what is it you want of me?

So as we turn to the scriptures, our goal is spiritual edification, spiritual growth, spiritual health.

We are on a journey that has a trajectory.

Our faith is not just a beginning.

It has a beginning, but it leads somewhere.

And that is designed in this life to lead to spiritual maturity, a trajectory, a journey Godward, Godward.

And there's many ways he does that.

He does that through our interaction with other believers, that we're to stimulate one another to love and to good deeds.

He does it through creation, where the heavens declare the glory of God and it shows his handiwork.

He does it preeminently through Christ.

He does it through the Holy Spirit.

And he has left us his inspired word, accurate and true in all that it says, to help us in our journey, our trajectory Godward.

If we don't see our lives as heading somewhere, we are not in tune with what the scriptures are all about.

Alright?

So the goal is that progress in that journey, our life changes, our attitudes change, our motivations change, what we want to do begins to change, and that is part and parcel of our faith.

That's a faith journey.

The scriptures are one, though not the only means to that end.

And so what we do here is we simply want to expose the word of God, and we want to expose our lives to that exposed word.

Sometimes we can get distracted.

That's what we're trying to do, folks.

Okay?

The scripture is given by inspiration of God and is divinely intended for teaching, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.

So when we turn to the scriptures, our heart ought to be looking for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.

If we're wise, we want to hear what God says.

Not just what we want to hear, but we want to hear what he says.

Sometimes he gives us words of encouragement, sometimes he gives us words of rebuke, sometimes he simply helps us understand the reality of a God-centered universe in a better way.

But our purpose is to open ourselves to whatever God wants to say to us.

Now, I say that this morning because the topic that we have before us is a very difficult one.

It's a word of challenge to you and to me.

It is not a passage of Scripture that I'm drawn to, that I like.

Oh well.

What's that got to do with anything?

So we want to receive from this passage what God has to say to us.

And for that, we desperately need God's help.

And I'd like us to pray before we read this portion.

Heavenly Father, we want to be wise and not foolish.

We're born foolish.

We become wise through your grace and through your spirit.

Father, may we listen to what you have to say to us.

I pray you would not allow us to reject it because we may not agree with it.

I pray that we would not push it aside because we don't want to hear it.

I pray that we would be open to that which you have to say.

And so I pray in Jesus' name.

Now you probably wonder with all of that introduction, what in the world we're going to be looking at.

Well, let me read this passage and then try to open it up for us.

James chapter 2, beginning with verse 14, reading through 26.

James 2 · chapter mention

I've decided to separate this or to handle this section in two different messages, the first today, and then the next part of this section in a couple of weeks when we come back to James.

James chapter 2, verse 14.

James 2:14

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can that faith save him?

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warm, be filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

So also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Someone will say, You have faith, I have works.

Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

You believe, says James, that God is one, you do well.

However, even the demons believe that and shudder.

Do you want to be shown, you foolish people, that faith apart from works is useless?

Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works.

And the scriptures were fulfilled that say Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God.

You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

And in the same way was not also Rahab, the prostitute, justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way.

For the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

We have arrived at the core message of the book of James.

God, the Holy Spirit, so led James, inflamed his heart and his passions to speak very strongly and very directly under the guidance of the Spirit of God about something which was designed to cause us to say, now, wait a minute, what does this really mean?

Let me just give you in a nutshell some of the things that uh that are said here.

Faith that doesn't show itself in action is bogus.

Bogus, not real, like monopoly money.

I love to get monopoly money when I'm playing Monopoly.

It seems like the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and I'm usually the ones getting poorer, but when I happen to have a bunch of that, it somehow or another fulfills something within me.

But the problem is it's bogus money.

It has no value, no value whatsoever.

And in the same way, faith that doesn't show itself in action is bogus faith.

Or another way of getting at this: there is a kind of spirituality, of Christianity, of so-called godly living, that doesn't result in life that is being transformed.

If our lives are not being transformed, whatever our spirituality is, is as dead as a corpse.

It's like a body that has no breath in it.

That's a pretty dramatic statement.

It gets more dramatic.

Bible knowledge that only fills our heads and doesn't change our life is nothing less than demonic.

Now you're gonna say, Walt, you're really going too far with that one.

That's actually what James says.

I hope to show that to you.

Now you notice we put some of these words in uh parentheses, or no, in uh quotation marks.

Thank you, Jane.

Uh quotation marks.

So so-called faith that doesn't show itself in action is bogus faith.

So-called spirituality that doesn't result in a life being transformed is dead like a corpse without breath.

So-called Bible knowledge that fills our heads but doesn't change our lives is demonic.

So, what James is getting at is something that claims to be real and yet proves not to be what it claims that it is.

And this creates some problems for us.

Uh in fact, uh this passage and these thoughts have been a stumbling block for many people throughout the centuries.

It's something that people, the church in general, in some circles, the church or people have held off at a distance because it says something that doesn't necessarily fit the way we see the world and the way we see the truth.

I mean, talking about bogus faith, corpse-like spirituality, or demonic type faith doesn't is not what we're normally thinking about.

And we don't have categories for it.

And that's part of the problem.

We just don't have categories.

Because our thinking is limited, and we see the world through our own life history, we see the world through our own experience, we see the world through our own culture, our own time, and so we often get it wrong.

And believers throughout the centuries have struggled with this passage and gotten it wrong.

Um, I want to just mention two of them.

Uh, one of them is Martin Luther.

Now, Martin Luther was a phenomenal man of God.

God used Martin Luther, and I don't care whether you're a good Lutheran or not, that's not the point.

If you read history and you understand how God has worked in the church throughout the centuries, God used Martin Luther to accomplish far more than you or I or all of us put together will ever accomplish.

And yet, and yet, Martin Luther in his writings and in his words was no more inspired than you and I are.

Unlike James and Paul and the other writers.

And so what happens when we read James, well, when Martin Luther read James, he pitted James against Paul.

He agreed with Paul, disagreed with James, and so ignored the book of James.

It's a pretty normal way of it's that's what you and I do as well.

Um maybe I can just uh uh kind of read something that will summarize for you how Martin Luther approached this.

And I am not on Martin Luther's case because I'm a lot like him, and you are as well.

Just you look a little different.

Luther attacked the book of James and would have removed it from the New Testament altogether if he could have gotten away with it.

Historical fact.

In his printing of the German New Testament, Luther had a contents page with the books set out and numbered.

At the end of the list, there was a little group separated from the others with no numbers assigned to them.

That group consisted of James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation.

These were books which Luther held to be secondary.

He didn't agree with them.

Huh.

Isn't that interesting?

What we don't agree with, we tend to.

Luther was especially severe on James, and the adverse judgment of a great scholar can be a millstone around the neck of those that he criticizes.

In the concluding paragraph of his preface to the New Testament, Luther's famous verdict on James could be found.

In some, says Luther, the Gospel and the first epistle of St.

John, St.

Paul's epistles, especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, St.

Peter's first epistle, these are the books that show you Christ.

They teach you everything you need to know for your salvation, even if you were never to hear or say anything, see or say anything about any other teaching.

In comparison to those, the Epistle of James is an epistle full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical.

And he uses the word evangelical there in the sense of gospel, gospel-centered.

So what he said is, in his not so humble opinion, this had nothing of spiritual benefit or minimal spiritual benefit, nothing in comparison to Paul.

Now, Luther, just like us, was a man of his age, an man of his day, a man of his own life history.

Luther's life story was a battle against heresy, which had captured the church at that time and resulted in an understanding of salvation as something that you work for, a works righteousness.

So that if you do these things, then that's like putting money in a spiritual bank account.

If you do these things, it's like withdrawing money from a spiritual bank account.

And you just hope by the end of your life that you have more deposited than you've withheld from by virtue of your sins.

And the works of righteousness would ultimately be what assured your place in heaven.

That was something that Luther said, no, even heckno.

In fact, he said it a lot stronger than heckno.

One of the things I like about Luther is he got himself in trouble with his words all the time.

I can really identify with that.

He said things that shocked people, things that were actually inappropriate.

He lived in a day that was shocking, and statements, dramatic statements, were made.

But when he got to rejecting portions of the New Testament as not of God, he was wrong.

He was just plain wrong, but he couldn't see it.

He had blind spots.

Well, I don't find that particularly unusual.

I may have told you before, I had a Luther-like experience, the only time anybody would ever compare me to Martin Luther.

I was a brand new believer in college.

It came to Christ through crew.

I was probably a month old in Christ, you know, real mature.

And I started reading the Bible, and you know what?

I actively avoided Hebrews and James.

I just I just didn't read it.

I just didn't want to know anything about it.

Because it didn't fit with my thinking.

As a brand new believer, I was uh was involved with a movement that was so strong on grace that I misunderstood the doctrine of grace to mean nobody can tell me what to do.

I really was a rebel at heart.

I've only modified that a little bit, I guess, but you can't put me under the law.

You can't tell me what to do.

How dare you tell me what to do?

That's kind of my very mature, wise, godly mindset.

So, with all of my maturity, with all of my wisdom, and with all my godliness, I avoided like the plague, portions of Scripture that didn't fit into my categories.

What about you?

Isn't there something of that in all of our hearts?

We want, we, we enjoy the portions of God's word that we enjoy, that make us feel good, that we agree with, and we tend, and with great maturity and wisdom, of course, to just kind of downplay the others.

Well, that's exactly what Martin Luther did here.

He was just like us.

Now, we're going to be talking about this whole passage this time and next time.

And because this is so much at the core, I would like to just take a few moments before we get into some of the details of the passage to put this in its context, because if we can see it the way it was intended, it's a very clear, very simple passage.

You see, there is a presumed conflict between James and Paul.

There really is.

It appears, if you read it superficially, that Paul and James just saw things totally, totally differently.

And I want to suggest to you that this is a non-conflict.

But just to help you understand, if we read Paul, Romans chapter 3, verse 28, a man is justified by faith apart from works.

Romans 3:28

Justified by faith apart from works of the law.

It's just crystal clear what he is saying.

Or Galatians 2.16, a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Christ.

Oh, amen.

There's the gospel.

Sanctification that is freely given, righteousness that is imputed to me.

What I deserved landed on Christ, and Christ's righteousness lands on me.

The great exchange.

It's gospel truth.

And I love it and I relish in it.

A righteousness that is not my own, because by my righteousness I can't earn anything.

And so there's an imputed righteousness, a foreign righteousness that is given to me.

Through the work of Christ on the cross.

A man is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

A person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Christ.

So then James comes along, and James says, verse chapter 2, verse 17, so faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Or, 224, a person is justified by works and not by faith, not by faith alone.

So a person is justified by faith, not by works, a person is justified by works, not by faith, all both there.

They don't make any sense.

I agree with the one, I don't agree with the other, so I'm going to focus on the one.

Well, let me suggest to you that this conflict, as it were, is absolutely illusionary.

It's all in the fact that I don't see things straight.

Now, maybe you see everything straight, or maybe not.

Now, you may understand what James is saying here, and we're gonna unpack it, but you may not like it.

You may not like some of the implications of it.

I don't either.

So let's just ignore it.

We'll go on.

Sing happy songs.

Kumbaya, hold hands, hum, isn't it great to be together.

James and Paul are using the same words, faith and works, in very different contexts and with very different meanings.

Paul uses the word works in light of the mistaken theory that by our works we can gain favor in God's sight.

So it's we can get a righteousness through what we do.

Works, righteousness was the issue that he was talking about in Galatians, in Ephesians, in Romans.

Works, righteousness.

There is no righteousness that comes from our works.

That's all there is to it.

And Paul would have nothing.

Through our good works, we don't gain anything in God's sight.

God is not, follow me if you would, please.

There is a sense in which God is not more pleased with you when you do well than when you do sin.

Now, you're gonna throw some rocks at me for that.

But the fact of the matter is, God, because of what Christ has done, is pleased with sinners and wretches.

And if we hold on to something that we think is going to earn God's smile, we are mistaken.

There is no smile of God on a sinner.

The smile that we receive from God is because of the works of another.

And we are to obey and we are to live differently, but not in order to gain God's smile.

That's the old way.

That's a misunderstanding.

That's what Paul argues against.

And so when James is talking, he's talking about something totally different.

He's not talking about the theory of works righteousness.

He's talking about the theory of what we would call in our terminology easy believism.

Just, you know, hey, I trusted Christ, everything's groovy.

God loves me, I can live like hell.

We rarely say it that way.

But the idea that it, you know, I I raised my hand, I went forward, I prayed a prayer, I'm good.

Check.

That is uh what Jesus or what uh James calls bogus faith.

The idea that faith exists in isolation from good works.

That it's alone, it just stands alone.

That a raised hand, a prayer prayed, is an assurance of salvation.

I would like you to believe that.

I'm gonna try to help you understand.

Please don't put up your defenses too much.

What Paul said cannot be said too often.

No one can get saved by good works.

That is the gospel truth, and it cannot be overemphasized.

And what James says to us cannot be overemphasized either.

That real faith results in a believer giving himself to new actions, new behavior, new things that grow out of a new nature.

But unless there are those things that accompany faith, those works, those acts of righteousness that changed heart, those differently motivated behaviors, unless those are there, then there is no real faith.

Another way of saying it is this.

Paul asserts that we are saved by faith alone, not by works that faith produces.

James says the same thing differently.

He says that saving faith is never alone.

Saving faith that always is accompanied over time by life transformation.

So the two are using terms somewhat differently, but we need to hear both.

So it's pretty simple, really, if if we have the right understanding, the right context to make sense out of what he is saying.

So verse 14, he talks about empty or pointless faith.

What is good, is it, my brothers?

If someone says, and the implication, the technical grammatical thing here, is if someone keeps on saying, um, I have faith, but I don't do anything with it.

Well, what he says, if someone keeps on saying he has faith but does not have works, notice what he says, can that faith save him?

That is not saving faith.

That's faith alone.

Not in the sense of the the way Paul would mean it, but in the sense of, I just I just I just believe.

It doesn't matter how I live, it doesn't matter if my life changes.

I made a decision 30 years ago, I'm good.

If that were only the case.

So he says, What good is it?

If someone says this, it's faith that doesn't have any works.

And the very way that question is stated shouts out, it is no good.

It is an empty claim, it is pointless.

That expression, uh, what good is it, is repeated in verse 16 towards the end, where if one of you says to someone who has needs, go in peace, be warm, be filled without giving them the things they need for the body, what good is it?

And the same implication, it is no good.

It's vain, it's empty, it's pointless.

So what he's really doing here is saying, you know, you can have something that looks like the real thing, um, but if it's missing the essential elements that go along with the real thing, then you have to wonder whether it's really the real thing.

Uh talks about the this phrase, what good is it?

Is used one other time in the New Testament, and that's in when Paul talks about the resurrection, and he's he's saying, we are to live totally differently from the world around us.

Uh we're to have different thoughts, different attitudes.

The Christian life is a life unlike the people in the world.

Our goal is not, as you sometimes get the impression from people, to live as much like the world as we can get away with and still be believers.

No, the whole point is we're totally different, and so we need to live totally differently, and that's the way Christians live.

And he says, no, if Christ were not resurrected, what good is living differently?

And the point is, absolutely no good.

And that's where he says, then let's just eat, drink, and be merry.

Let's live like everybody else.

Live life, live hard, die young, we'll surely die.

Let's just go for it.

You've got to grab for all the gusto you can.

You only go around once in life, let's go for it.

Carpetium.

Well, that would be true if Christ were not raised.

So it's the same idea of emptiness, pointlessness.

And the question, can that kind of faith save?

And the answer is clearly no.

Verses 15 and 16 talks about useless faith.

Just another way of saying the same thing.

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed, lacking in daily food, and it's pointing back to what we saw a couple of weeks ago, no doubt, in the beginning of the chapter, when people are shown partiality when they come in to the assembly, so that those who are well dressed and impressive get the best seats.

The others are just kind of left on their own.

And he picks up that same thought.

It was something that was going on in the churches to which James was writing.

And he says, if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warm, be filled, without giving them the things they need for the body, what good is that?

And the fact of the matter is it's no good.

How can a believer who has nothing to bring to God, is in desperate need of God, has received all things, not then somehow or another turn around and seek to help others who are desperate, whether it's physical, emotional, spiritual, or whatever.

What kind of believers are those?

And the clear implication is they're not believers.

If you just listen to someone's sob story and you say, God bless, I'll pray for you, brother.

Good luck.

That's really the kind of thing that is expressed in verse 16.

What good is it?

Well, it's useless.

Verse 17, he starts talking about dead faith, bogus faith.

So faith by itself, in other words, if it doesn't have works accomplished going with it, is dead.

Dead.

Verse 26, he'll say the same thing.

He'll say, For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, and that may be a reference to the human spirit or to breath, body, a corpse without breath is dead, so also is faith that really just says, good luck, wish you well, have a good day, and is unmoved by the needs and desperation of people around us.

Um verses 18 and 19 start talking about uh demonic faith.

That's pretty strong terminology.

Let's look and see what he says.

Verse 19 or 18.

Uh someone will say, You have faith and I have works.

Show me your faith apart from your works, and I'll show you my faith by my works.

This has a very modern ring to it.

It's as though he's talking to somebody and says, Now don't be so intolerant.

You know, we're both right.

I see it this way and I'm right.

You see it that way and you're right.

You know, we're all right, we're all good.

You're okay, I'm okay.

It's all good, folks.

Let's just get along.

Uh as a very modern, postmodern, really, ring to it.

There is no real truth.

Uh, this is my little truth, and it's good for me.

That's your little truth, and that's good for you.

So let's just be tolerant.

Um that's kind of the mindset that is here.

And he then goes on, and uh he says, Well, you can have it that way, but be careful of the company you keep if you approach it that way.

Verse 19.

You believe that God is one, you do well.

Even the demons believe.

The demons, it's very interesting, and I won't take the time to turn to these two passages, but it's very clear here that the demonic forces, fallen angels, eternally condemned, no hope of salvation, active and involved in the world.

The demonic beings have orthodox theology.

They believe that there is one God.

There is not a polytheistic demon in the world.

They have orthodox theology, and they believe.

They believe.

They have knowledge of God, they know more about God than you do, actually.

Study the spiritual warfare and the forces that are set against us, they very well may have more knowledge about God in a certain sense than you and I do.

They are attuned to spiritual things.

They just simply reject the personal implications of their knowledge.

They have knowledge, orthodoxy, and faith that does not express itself in repentance and transformation.

It's demonic.

Now, I'm not saying that your faith is demonic.

I'm saying if you think a certain way about faith, you're keeping company with demonic forces.

I'd rather not say that.

Now, Martin Luther wouldn't have had a problem saying that.

You see what's what's going on here?

He says they believe and they shudder.

And well they should because they know their doom is certain.

The idea of shuddering here is like a cat that is scared and all of the fur is standing up an end.

When they are confronted with God, they know they're in trouble.

And we're so casual.

We think our own way, go our own way, do whatever we want.

Only accept what we agree with.

A couple of other things.

I won't take the time to go through these.

Matthew, John the Baptist turns to the religious leaders, the Sadducees, and he says, You rotten brood of vipers, you conniving snakes, bring forth fruit in accordance with repentance.

See, it's not just knowledge, but do we repent as our heart, is there a change?

And he's saying, theologically precise people, be careful if it's just theological precision and it's not resulting in changed hearts and changed lives.

Matthew 7, Jesus said, Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves, and you will recognize them by their fruits.

Every healthy tree bears good fruit, every diseased tree bears bad fruit.

What's your fruit?

John, in his gospel, the gospel of love, has a loving word to say, and it is a loving word.

By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.

Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God.

That is a loving word.

We need to hear that.

It just doesn't fit into our understanding very well.

Well, the difficulty with all of this, the difficulty, the painful reality of all of this.

What do we do with people who claim to have faith or have made a decision or have become a believer, and yet there's little or nothing that changes in their lives?

And that is a painful reality.

Painful, painful reality.

It's sensitive, it's delicate.

What about people who have made a decision for Christ and really nothing has changed?

What about your children who may have responded at some point to an invitation years ago but are walking far from the Lord?

What about who someone who can remember praying a prayer and maybe even wrote the date down in their Bible, and yet that was as far as it went?

What do we think?

How are we supposed to what do we do with all of that?

Well, some thoughts of my own wrestling with this when I read James and allow him to say what he wants to say.

Clearly, we don't know all that's going on in anyone else's life and in their heart.

In fact, we're only attuned to a little bit in our own heart and our own lives.

We know less and understand less of our motivations and why we do what we do than we think we do.

There's deep dark recesses in your ugly soul and in mine.

There's all kinds of things that are going on.

And we don't know what's going on in the heart of another person.

And so we need to be extremely careful.

We need to be very careful about this.

When we don't see any visible fruit in the life of another person, we ought to be concerned, but we ought to also be careful.

And not just say, well, I know they made a decision for Christ, so everything's fine.

But you don't know what's going on in someone else's heart.

All you know is the way they live.

And that's exactly what John the Baptist and Jesus and James, you'll know them by their fruits.

So we don't know the inner workings of someone's heart, but we see something being manifest in their lives.

And if we're not seeing the fruits of righteousness being manifest, then we must be very careful.

We must not automatically conclude either way.

It's not up to us to judge that.

We see the fruit and we can judge those fruits, but you know, there's a whole lot of things in your life that you don't want to have examined.

Because there's good fruit and bad fruit in your life and in mine.

I like to gloss over the bad fruit.

Okay.

But I want other people to extend a bit of grace to me.

And so I would not be quick to condemn and judge, dismiss and reject someone who made a decision but bears no fruits.

But beware.

There is also no great reason for optimism and hope.

Don't say, oh, I know, even though there's no evidence whatsoever, it's all going to be good.

He made a commitment to Christ in Vacation Bible School or youth group or wherever it was.

Don't go there.

That is not a sufficient basis for encouragement.

That's wishful thinking.

That may be true.

You wish it were true.

You don't know that it's true.

I don't know that it's true.

I don't know that it's not true.

So there's much about people's inner workings that we don't understand and we don't have access to.

But we must not pretend that a fruitless tree is a good tree.

That's just not the way it works.

So when there's not fruit, what do you do?

I pray and I care and I'm grieved.

But I don't say it's all good, it's all good.

Nor do I say The opposite.

I just don't know enough about someone else to make those kinds of judgments.

But when it's people we love, the tendency is to say, oh, it's okay.

I know they made a decision.

And James would say, it's very dangerous, my friends.

Very dangerous.

The other, not only do we not know what's going on in someone else's heart, this is all a lifelong process, isn't it?

You know?

We don't pop out of the womb full grown.

It takes many, many, many long years to grow up.

I'm still trying to grow up, aren't you?

Well, spiritually, we don't just automatically have everything transformed.

There is a deep, true inner transformation.

There's a new heart.

It's like being born again.

There's a new nature, a new set of dispositions, a new set of desires, a new set of wants.

And they're all mixed up with the old disposition and the old nature and the old desires and the old set of wants.

And sometimes we get it right and sometimes we get it wrong.

We're in process.

We are a work in progress.

We have not arrived, and we will not arrive until we get to glory.

So we need to recognize just as we are imperfect, lots of other people are imperfect.

And just because we don't see right now those fruits that we so desire to see doesn't mean that they're not there or they won't be there.

It's just let's not let's not just assume when there's no fruit that it's a good tree.

That is dangerous and foolish.

The new birth changes us deeply and fundamentally.

Sanctification is a process and it's progressive.

It's an ongoing growth process, Godward, Godward.

We're on a trajectory, Godward, but we haven't arrived.

If you think you've arrived, you have bigger problems than you think.

So we just have to think realistically and biblically about these matters.

I guess this is the last thought I would leave you with.

We are saved by faith alone.

But saving faith is never alone.

We are saved by faith alone, but saving faith is never alone.

There's results that progressively over time, with starts and stops and fits and all kinds of things, we just kind of grow Godward, but far from perfect.

So I think we have to take James and Paul and say yes and yes.

And so we pray for those we know for whom we have great concerns.

You don't see any fruit.

We pray, and that's absolutely essential and appropriate.

Don't assume, just don't assume.

Don't assume either.

Just pray.

Let God do his thing.

And no one, when they stand before God, will raise their fist at God and say, You've not treated me right.

No one will be able to stand before God and say, God, you've not treated me right.

So let's leave it up to God to deal with those matters.

But let's not kid ourselves with false hope.

The real question is not, is that person's faith alive?

The real question is yours and is mine.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, these are such critical issues.

This is at the heart of our understanding of the gospel.

Oh Lord, I pray that we would have the full gospel, the balance of Scripture.

Father, we pray for ourselves that the trajectory of our lives might increase and there might be ongoing progress, that we will no longer be who we once were.

We look forward to becoming the person we shall be.

And in the process we need you so desperately, Lord.

And I pray that you would protect us from false thinking about people, especially those we care dearly with.

You know what's going on in their lives.

We simply pray, Lord, have your way in their lives.

And we pray that for ourselves, Lord.

Have your way in our lives.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let me ask you to stand for the benediction.

On the basis of truth, we can go into the world in peace.

We can have courage, hold on to what is good, and honor all men.

Strengthen the faint-hearted, support the weak, help the suffering, restore the wandering, comfort the grieving, and share the gospel.

And may the grace and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all.

God bless and amen.

You're dismissed.