Introduction | James: Tried, Tested & True

Like I said in the beginning of service we are starting a brand new sermon series in the book of James and that little teaser that I gave who remembers what it was that Martin Luther what?

He didn't want this in the canonized Bible. Does anyone know why? For a cup of coffee and a conversation with Pastor Jim. Why did James want it in there? No, he just wrote it. But why did Martin Luther not want it in there?

What? It's because it's works based. When Martin Luther, we'll set that coffee up, when Martin Luther read through it and he talks about it in some of his writings he sees this as a works based righteousness.

Again, there's not too many times where I can look at Martin and say, hey man, you got it wrong, but this is one I would. There's an understanding of this book pre-salvation and post-salvation that really makes a difference.

How many of you have ever read the book of James? How many of you have never read the book of James? Probably all of those that didn't read. A bunch of you just lied, but that's okay. The book of James is an interesting book and it has a lot to do with building upon something.

How many of us, again, umbrella of grace, but we've already done a time of confession, but this is a new one. When you get something that has a set of plans or a set of blueprints, whether it be a Lego, a deck, a house for Dick Hortonhoven and anyone else that builds houses, how many of you tend to not really want to look at the blueprint?

I appreciate that all of you rose your hands, right? Because that is, why not? So Jim, you mentioned it. It's a waste of time, absolutely. I don't know why the person decided to write it. I don't know why they said here's very intricate pictures and measurements as to make whatever the finished product is a success, right?

Giant waste of time in the Venice house. Giant waste of time. Anyone else that rose their hand? Why don't you? Yeah, go ahead, Al. You have very good mechanical ability. Well, that's called pride. And so die to that. But understand that, well, but you also being, you've done it a lot, right?

A brake job is a brake job is a brake job is a brake job until I try to do it, right? And the car and the wheel, all the wheels are off, even though I'm only doing one brake job. And I'm realizing, oh no, this isn't going well. And I try to put it all back together. I lit my car over to Al's workplace where he did it and he did it.

So part of that is just wisdom on my end. Notice, and I'm I am going to say something with this. Most of the people that rose their hands are guys. All right. And so that probably says something of the women in the room. How many of you wish your husbands or your your, you know, significant others or whatever the guys in your life are wish they would actually look at the blue.

Your hand went up that before I even asked the question. All right, so I'm not going to let you guys know that that was the rink of us. But understand that there's a reason why blueprints are given. How many Lego fans do we have? How many closeted Lego fans do we have? That's fair.

Legos are a big part of our house. If you ever go down to our basement, you have two very different understandings of how Legos are built. You have Joey's way of building Legos, which if we're being honest might as well spray them in concrete after you're done because there are just to look only.

It's like a museum. You just no touching. Right. Just look at him once. Set it and forget it. Then you're good. Then you have Teddy's understanding of Legos and Teddy. I love his beautiful mind halfway through the Lego. He gets his inner Venice and goes, I don't need the directions anymore.

I want to build something different. And so there you may have half a house and half of something else. And it's all so beautiful yet was not the desired outcome of what that set Lego was. And James is very interesting that way because James is building a blueprint upon faith.

So James, right, he doesn't necessarily tell us which James it is, but nine out of 10 of us that are in kind of that theological idea is that this is the half brother of Jesus. Remember James, he was not a follower of Jesus during Christ's time on Earth, but he eventually became an apostle kind of out of the vein of Paul, kind of a Paulian apostle, if you will, of Christ as one who has seen and believed the Lord post resurrection.

After witnessing the Lord's resurrected body, James became one of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem, big city. It's interesting. Jerusalem in the epistles, so that is the Pauline letters, you also have James, you have all of these different writings in the New Testament after the Gospels.

They're letters. How many of you still write letters today? And I better see some hands. Peg, I know you do in the back as I am a frequent recipient of those. A lot of us don't, but there's something very personal when it comes to a letter.

Okay, now I remember growing up when you liked somebody, right, in school, you wrote them a letter, right, you wrote them a note, you passed notes during whatever period you were. Today, where are some more younger group, where is my group of seventh graders?

Rachel, you're in high school, but how do you, if you like someone, how do you let them know now? Probably the wrong question to ask you, I apologize. Please check her pulse, Andrea.

It may be, Demanta's girls in the back, right? Do you write notes to people anymore? Do you know what a note is? Oh, okay, good, well that's good. So I don't even know how you do that and keep it anonymous, but you know, so getting some kind of handwritten thing, that means something.

And what James is doing, James is writing a very intimate letter to the church. And when you read the New Testament, you have to understand the context and the audience for which someone is writing, because they're writing to different groups of people.

But James, becoming a leader in the Jerusalem church, you know, he's writing, and what he's doing is, because he was singled out kind of by Peter, he is writing to the church. And so, the book of James uses a lot of Old Testament proverb into kind of a New Testament post-resurrected Jesus understanding of how do we put the Old Testament into practice now?

Jesus. That's an easy way, and a very good and the right lens, to see some of the Old Testament come to life.

And one of the interesting things is that in this opening, in the opening of the letter, and today's going to be more of an overview of James looking at three specific sections, and then next week we're going to dive in.

James calls himself an interesting word. He calls himself a bond servant of God, an appropriate name given the practical servant-oriented emphasis of the book that he writes.

Throughout the book, James contended that faith produces authentic deeds. And right there, there's a tension.

It's one of the reasons why Luther didn't want it in there, because Luther was trying so hard to do anything anti-Catholic at the time, because the Catholic church believes in a works righteousness.

They believe that to earn faith, you do these things. One of the major differences between Catholicism and Protestantism is this idea of deeds.

But that what James is bringing up, and what he's contending, and I believe for us at Munster Church, we need to hear this, that faith produces.

Understand that that means something. Faith itself, faith in God, a recognition of Jesus as Lord, the idea of loving God, or love God by loving people, those kind of things, that it's the so what, now what.

You believe what you believe, you talk what you talk, now it's time to walk what we walk.

Because faith without works, as James is going to say, is what? Dead. Ooh, talk about controversy. Have you gotten into any of that in seminary?

Yeah, talking about some of that? Next year, next year. That brings up a lot of controversy. That faith, you're saying faith without works is a dead faith. Well that really blows by the one saved always saved.

So a bunch of our reformed understanding kind of goes out the window. Some people take this as if I don't do things for my faith, I lose my faith.

If it's kind of the old, if you don't use it, you lose it. Some of us, it's how we learned or not learned to ride a bike. Some people understand that as the same understanding.

See how there's tension here. I could feel, some of you don't like that. Wait a minute, if I don't do stuff for my faith, I lose my faith.

I think James would contend, and I'll back this one, if there's no production of your faith, do you have faith?

Now you understand some of the controversy. And that's going to be week after week, we're going to talk about this. Because James puts it right here.

It's what I love about the book of James. It's not some far off thought like the book of Revelation, which we'll get to this fall.

You know, it is very practical. It is building on something that the hope is all of us come to at some point in our life. A lot of you are already there. You have faith.

What are you doing about it? And it goes beyond, well, I serve in Lighthouse, or I serve in the youth ministry, or I serve coffee, or I serve at the food pantry.

All of that is good. And James would say, way to go, keep going. But there is so much more to this idea of living out our faith.

In other words, if those who call themselves God's people truly belong to him, their lives will produce deeds or fruit.

The Bible talks about that the work produces fruit, good fruit. And how do we know about this fruit?

It's because Jesus talks a lot about the opposite of that, bad fruit and things that get thrown into the fire.

So understanding this kind of, if so, now so, idea of faith, James uses language and themes that sound familiar to Jesus' sermon on the mount.

One of the things that's going to make a lot of us uncomfortable is that James rails against the hypocritical believer who says one thing but does the other.

Let's stop there for a second. That almost every chapter James is going to bring that up.

And what that tells me is that James is writing about what he's seen, maybe what he's experienced.

And I want to pause because some of you here today have been wounded by that.

That you are here today maybe against your own will, maybe you're just testing this church thing out because you have been wounded by Christians.

You have been wounded by the church. A couple weeks ago I had an opportunity to go on a local podcast.

I totally forgot what it's called but it doesn't matter. With a local businessman in Munster.

And in there, and you can hear it, we talked for about two hours, I know a lot of you are surprised.

He says even on there that he hates the church. That he's spiritual but he hates the church because of the fact that the only people in his life that he actually got to the level of hate are people in the church.

So when we start the conversation out, I'm like, okay, I'm a pastor, we're sitting literally right here in the sanctuary. And he's taught like I so badly wanted to apologize.

And actually I think I did for, I apologize on behalf of the church. Because I know that there are some of you here today, that's your story.

Some of you, you've been in the church, you've been through the different wars, you've been the ups and downs, you've made it through.

You know, you got your battle scars but you're here and you've always been and you probably always will be.

But there are some of you here today that this might be your first time back. Or you know what, in this season you heard about this church and you came to try to be a part of it.

But the one thing that the church in the United States today struggles with is being a wrecking ball to people.

That the church can be seen as a steamroller of the unrighteous.

And that is, that's really damaging for a church. There are churches known for that.

I'm not naming any names and again, I'm focused on this church. I'm not focused on any other churches.

But one of the things I do enjoy hearing and it's props to all of you is how welcoming this church is.

That when people come in for the first time or when they come to the connection class and they join, they talk about,

we tried this church, we went and tried other churches, which is great, but we always seem to come back here because it felt like a family.

But you know as well as I do, not all times family gets along.

Right? If you think about someone you don't get along with in your family, my guess is over 90% of us have that person.

But families stick with it. Families work together for a common purpose. James is going to help us understand that.

James is going to challenge us about how we should in every day and in every way not only be impacting our lives with the Scriptures,

with the real Jesus, but also impacting the lives of others. Going and finding the lost. Seeking them out.

And by lost I mean those who do not claim Jesus as Lord. They may be good people. They may be very moral.

They may be very, you know, just very respectable, be good in their jobs and all of that, but they do not have a relationship with Jesus.

Again, we don't want this to be an us versus them, but it's part of the call of the believer is to go and find non-believers.

Why? Because Jesus found you. Right? Leaves the 99 and goes finds the one. That's all of us. We were all the one at one point.

Well, Pastor, I grew up in the church. I made professional faith when I was in eighth grade. I've always been a part of the church.

I was never lost. Hey, friend, you don't get it. Yes, you were.

Because if you were never lost, then Jesus never found you and his death on the cross means nothing to you.

But we all were. That's the common thread we all have. I say it almost every Sunday. James is going to talk to us about this.

More than any other book in the New Testament, I contend that James places the spotlight on the necessity for believers to act in accordance with our faith.

Paul does it. Peter does it. James, I contend, does it. Almost every other word.

How well do our actions mirror the faith that we proclaim? Something we're going to talk about every week.

Is it going to get uncomfortable? Yeah, it is. But I'm going to lead into it and I pray and hope you guys will as well.

This is a question that we struggle to answer all the time.

And we would like to point to all the ways our faith and works overlap. And the beautiful thing is James does it.

And not that many chapters. We're only going to be in this book for two months.

But I think he's going to hit, I'll be probably every one of our stories.

James is going to start by focusing our actions on when life isn't going well.

Insert half of our stories here today. That when life is not going well and for whatever reason,

how do we as believers respond? How do we think? How do we speak? And how do we act out our faith even in those times?

James 1.22. But be doers of the word, not hearers of the word only, deceiving yourselves.

That even in the trials of life, as we're going to start, I believe next week, when the trials of life come,

and whatever those trials are, right, 250 of us here today, I'm sure there's 250 different trials that your faith has a part in.

That you just don't abandon it when things go wrong. What kind of relationship is that?

How would that look? Carrie and I married now, come May is going to be 16 years. When things go wrong, I left.

Or when things went wrong, she left. And we're like, okay, when you figure it out and then I'll come back.

How much of a relationship? Those locks would be changed a nanosecond. But that's that level of relationship.

We do the same thing. God, I know you said you're going to deal with this, but it's not going well. It's not going my way.

I'm going to check out and I'll come back once you've fixed it. What is that about?

How is that taking ownership of our faith? That we are called to be doers of the word.

Well, Pastor, what does it mean to be doers of the word? Friend, read it. It will tell you.

It will show you what it is to walk as a life of the believer.

In the very beginning, James is going to tell us that we be doers, not just hearers.

And throughout the book, he will emphasize something very, very important.

And I think a lot of us, including myself, struggle with this. He's going to describe for us how to walk in a genuine faith.

Now, for some of us, we're better than others at spotting this in life. But for a lot of us, we can tell when something's really fake.

You've probably had those conversations with people you don't really like, right? And you see them at a function like, hey, it's really good to see you.

Is that genuine? No. Yet we do this. Oh, do we do this. We do it in the church.

People that you've not talked to and have thought real bad thoughts about on Sunday morning, hey, good to see you. Glad you're here.

What? But we do it. We do it. We offer that as far as what I would call pious, empty prayers.

People we don't really care for, right? One common example, Purdue fans, I'm praying for you for tomorrow. No, I'm not.

Not at all. I'm angry now because there's no way I win our staff bracket. I'm not praying for any of them.

At least I'm honest about it, right? But understand, we do this.

We like to put the Christianese hat on or the words in our mouth when it suits us.

We do it all the time. And what happens when a church is known by that?

And I'm not saying we are, but what happens when a church is known by that?

Ah, they're really fake. They're really fake over there. Or you know what? I went to that church and zero people talked to me.

Yet the pastor prayed about how we should love others and everyone maybe even said amen, right?

We get taught it. We agree with it. Sure, the Bible says go out and love other people.

I'm not going to talk to one single person at church today. Why?

Don't put it out there if you're not going to do it. That's this understanding of genuine faith.

But what James is going to do, he's going to hit the surface, but then he's going to hit the heart.

That for a lot of us we say we're doers of the word. Oh yeah, yeah, I run a business.

We're a faith-based business. But your books might not look like it. Your HR department might not show it.

So what does that look like? Or this idea of maybe a Christian household or all of these things that we label as Christian

when then all of a sudden they're not. And I think for a lot of us that's maybe how we treat people.

That we put this label on as believer. We put this label on as Christian, which we understand what Christian means?

Little Christ? Do you really want that mantle? Do you really want to be wearing that?

That's a question all of you, myself included, need to choose every day.

Paul talks about in the book of Colossians this Greek word, induio, that he says you put on the new self.

Some of you have heard me preach this before. Induio literally means you're putting on, right, like Jim put on that shirt,

he induio'd that Purdue shirt. That he put it on. What Paul encourages all of us is every day we put Christ on like a coat.

Is that a genuine thing? Or be honest, you don't want to put it on.

Because you know what you're going to do today. You know how you're going to live your life.

You know what you're going to say about this person or post about that thing or whatever.

Or do we spend our days taking it off, putting it on, taking it off, putting it on.

Friend, that's exhausting. James is going to say do it or don't do it.

Because by doing that all we're going to do is hurt the world.

Now I don't want to sound like a defeatist. My hope is that people aren't going to leave this and go, well then I'm out.

I can't measure up. Because guess what? You're right. You can't measure up. I can't measure up.

In of ourselves we cannot measure up. This is where Marty gets it wrong.

This is the understanding of once we believe it, once we've declared it, once we've professed it, now what?

Do you really want to go back? I really want to have this kind of mean talk about this person.

So I don't want to believe in Jesus for the next seven minutes.

But I know he's going to be here and so I'm going to pick him back up after I have this gossip conversation.

A lot of you are like, oh pastor, that doesn't happen.

Are you sure? Are you sure? Because then those emails I get about that person hurt, they just are faking it.

No. This is what James is going to talk about.

And the thing I'm going to go back to is what I said about 15 minutes ago.

James must have seen it and experienced it maybe even in himself, but in the church.

This letter is to the church, friends. This letter is written to Munster Church for the next two weeks.

Sorry, next two months. I wish it was two weeks, but it's not. It's two months.

If they were doing this at Faith Munster, it would be written for them.

If it's the first PCA, if they're doing it, it would be written for them.

And I actually think they're going to do it in the fall.

This is going to be written to us. Munster Church, hear these things.

Because in times of trial, in the good times and the bad, we need to persevere.

James 1, 2 through 4.

Count it all joy, Munster Church, when you meet trials of various kinds.

For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

Let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Leave that up.

Count it joy when you meet trials.

What? No, no, no, no. I'm going to pout for a bit.

No, I'm going to be mad. I'm going to say some words.

I'm going to have some thoughts. I'm going to think some things.

And then maybe I'll get to joy.

For some of you, that trial has been going on for years.

And you're going, hey, when's the joy coming?

The joy comes in the morning.

I'm not saying wait until tomorrow morning.

But I'm saying if you're not finding that, instead of blaming everybody else or God,

look at yourself. What is stopping you from finding joy in the difficulties?

And friends, I know that's hard.

Pastor, you're saying I need to find joy in the death of a loved one?

Not right away.

Or maybe ever on this earth.

But I think what James is saying is count it all joy that your faith is being tested.

Why? Because the testing produces.

You're growing.

If this church just wanted a pastor to tell you all the good things,

all the good things about life, all the good things you're going to get,

all the good things, maybe even tie some money sprinkled in there,

this isn't that church.

I can point you to churches that do that, but I really don't want to.

Because I don't think it's a true gospel.

But understand that we are to count it joy when we step to difficult situations.

Now let's talk about our escapists for a minute.

Or our fleers, or should I say the other disciples.

We had the betrayer in Judas.

We had the denier in Peter.

We had the rest that fled.

What about when hard things come? We flee.

We're still going to want to count on the blessings of God, but we're going to flee.

We're not going to deal with it.

We're not going to call it to account.

We're not going to have the tough conversation.

It's a lot easier to have it on Facebook anyway, junk.

But understand, can you still count it joy if you escape?

Can you still count it joy if something hard is going on, but you're going to go?

No.

Part of James is telling us, his friends, sit in it.

It may only last a night.

It may be many nights.

But one day it won't be there.

One day that trial will be over, this life or the next.

And that's the steadfastness of our faith.

But for a lot of us, and I'm going to submit it, and I look at myself first,

we have a little escape hatch that we just like to pull and drop into when things get really hard.

Well, really hard trials will produce really hard and really good and really tested faith and maturity.

James urges us to count it as joy.

Why?

Because it develops us.

By enduring trials with faith and patience, we develop character and become more steadfast in our walk with God.

Ooh, but I know I just said a word.

It's a word that a lot of us don't like, including myself.

And it wasn't the word and.

It was the word patience.

That James is going to encourage us to be patient in affliction.

But for a lot of us, when the trials come, when life gets real hard, when people are being mean, we just want it to be done.

Okay, God, I'm done being hurt.

When is this over?

It's the wrong question.

Lord, what are you teaching me?

What are you opening my eyes to?

What do I need to learn in this moment?

What am I not getting?

Whoa, dangerous prayer.

That's like when we pray, Lord, have it your way.

Guess what?

He will.

And his way is higher than our ways.

And that can be scary.

But part of this is laying down, knowing and trusting Jesus's words.

I will never leave you or forsake you in this world.

You will have trouble.

And he stopped right there, right?

No, he said, take heart.

I've overcome the world.

This is the testing of faith that produces not only a deeper understanding of grace in our lives, but should produce in us a deeper understanding of the grace that we ought to give other people and to give yourself.

Let me just say that for a moment.

There are a lot of you, myself included, that are way too hard on yourselves.

That sometimes for some of you and me, the first person that we ought to give grace to is yourself.

Now, some of us don't like to do that.

No, I just want to whip myself because it's going to produce really fun, good things about faith.

And you're going to be a big joy to be around in the church, said nobody.

No, give yourself some grace.

Jesus loves them, but he also loves you.

He also died for you.

And one of the main things we're going to learn at the end, and I cannot wait to get to this, is what happens in that connection with God.

What's the greatest way to build that connection with God?

With a, for lunch.

I'll throw a lunch on it, right?

Cheryl, you can't answer.

You already got coffee.

You're having a lunch and a conversation with Pastor Jim.

What is the best way to really grow that connection with God?

Prayer, who said it?

Oh, up there.

Doug, we got lunch.

Maybe that was way too easy because the balcony got it first.

Yeah, yeah.

Give the balcony a hand, right?

Yeah, go Huskies.

Understand that prayer is the greatest connection we have with God.

Seek me and you will find me.

When you seek me with your whole heart, I will be found by you.

Who said that?

Asland from C.S. Lewis.

No!

It was God in the book of Jeremiah.

Seek me.

He says it.

Seek me.

The worst game of hide and seek I've ever heard.

But God says seek me and you will find me.

Do we do that?

Or we much rather cry and not do anything with it and say, God, no, you seek me.

I am hurt.

Can't you see that?

Really?

The God that created all things doesn't know you're hurt?

Doesn't know your pain?

But it's just like the parent watching their kid grow up.

If every time the parent was right there the minute that kid fell, the kid will never know how to get up.

God's like that parent sometimes.

And I know it stinks to hear.

And I know there are aspects of this that go, I don't like it.

I get it.

But there are times God is there going, get up.

I am here.

Get up.

Don't get me wrong.

There are days he's slinging us over his shoulder like a fireman's carry and walking.

But there are times those of us in the faith and probably in the faith for a long time, he's saying, hey, get up.

I got you.

I said that last week at Easter.

Guess what?

A week later, still true.

That he's got you and he will continue to get you.

James 5, 16.

Therefore confess your sins to one another.

Pray for one another that you may be healed.

The power of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

That's the prayer relationship we have with God.

That's the communication.

I was getting my hair cut across the street about a month ago.

And one of the guys asked me, the same guy that asked about why I go to church and we did the whole chicken thing.

I'll get to that another time.

Or asked me after service.

He said how weird prayer was.

He talked about how weird he thought prayer was.

He goes, I'd much rather pray to something.

You know, like a picture or something.

And I was like, well, that sounds fairly Catholic.

And that's not what we believe.

We don't pray to anything.

We pray and God is right there.

And he said, but it's just so hard for me to pray because I really don't know what to pray for.

And I looked at him and I go, start with you.

I'll be praying for you.

Why don't you pray for you?

Well, I can't pray for me.

Why would I pray for myself?

I'm going to pray for other people.

I said, okay.

I said that's more than that.

That's fine.

I said without that relationship with God, though, who are you praying to and what are you thinking is going to help those people?

Well, just good vibes and good times.

I was like, Ed, that's a dumb prayer.

I said, Ed, I love you.

But if you're not praying to Christ, who is the one that says these things, then that's not the prayer of a righteous person.

That's just you're just trying to put it out there in the universe.

Praying to Oprah doesn't do anything.

And you could tell that it kind of got there.

And I hope and continue to work on that.

I hope and pray one day he shows up and we love on him and he comes to a renewed understanding of who Jesus is.

That's another way that we show our faith.

It's another way that we work through the things that James is going to encourage us to work through.

Prayer is not just a ritual, but a powerful means of communication with God, though which we can seek his guidance, provision, and healing.

Now, for a lot of us, we grew up praying before dinner and it was usually a uniform prayer.

For some of you, you prayed afterwards when you did some kind of devotion and you always maybe prayed before bed.

We've talked about that, how I grew up praying a really nice, comforting prayer.

My wife grew up praying some sadistic, evil prayer about dying in the middle of the night.

We've worked on it.

But understand, we teach and we show that model, but here's the thing.

If you're going to model it for your kids, then you yourself are not going to do it, then really you're modeling for your kid what it means to be a hypocrite and James is going to call that out.

I'm going to end on that note because I want some of you really mad at me.

No, I don't.

But understand that's where James is going to go because James is talking to the church.

So he's going to take some levity, he's going to take a lot of passion, and he's going to throw down on a lot of these things.

And for a lot of us, we're going to go, was he writing this to me?

And you won't be wrong thinking that way, but understand we're going to do this together.

That he's going to help us understand that life before the cross, life after the cross means something.

I'm very excited for you.