Good News for the Family-Less | Good News for Every Family | Pastor Joe Coffey

James 1:27.

James 1:27

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father

is this to visit orphans and widows in their affliction,

and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Right.

This is the final message of our four week series that we're calling Good News

for Every Family.

We started out with Good News for Children.

That was the outdoor service then Good News for Every Marriage.

And then last week, Good News for Broken Families, which I thought was great.

And now orphans and widows is Good News for the Family-less.

And the message seems to be clear

that God doesn't leave anyone out,

which is pretty profound.

It means I can say to you, no matter who you are,

no matter how far away you feel from God or how close you feel,

no matter if you have a wonderful family or a broken family, or no family

at all, God pursues you

and that is amazing.

Here are the three points that I want to pull out

of this verse, and I want to use this as the outline.

I want to talk about the religion of God,

the heart of God, and the family of God.

The religion of God. The heart of God.

In the family of God.

First, the religion of God.

Let me start with this.

I don't like that word I don't like I don't know if I've ever liked

the word religion, and I only I have to use it

because James used it, which seems weird for me to say.

The reason I don't like it is precisely

the way it sounds in this verse,

because religion always seems like a bunch of rules, like boxes to check.

And I'm good at checking boxes.

And you know, in this verse

it seems like, hey, if you want to please God, just visit the orphans and widows.

And I could just go check, check.

But it doesn't really do anything inside of me.

That's why I don't like religion.

But I told you a couple weeks ago that it's important

to read the Bible in context, because if you just read a single verse

out of context, you can misunderstand the whole thing.

This is what James says.

But right before this verse he says, but

be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

For if anyone is a hear of the word and not a doer,

he's like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror,

for he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he was like.

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres,

being no hearer of

being, no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts.

He will be blessed in his doing.

James likens the

Bible to a mirror, and when you look in a mirror, what do you see?

You don't see a list of rules.

You see. You

okay? Yeah, this is the point.

Don't miss this. This is big.

Before the Bible ever tells you what to do.

It tells you who you are.

Before the Bible ever tells you what to do.

It tells you who you are

and what James is saying here.

And he does it all through his letter.

If you're struggling to obey God, whether you're struggling

to forgive someone or give generously or love those

that God loves,

you forgotten who you are.

You've just forgotten who you are.

And I say that because that's the central

message of Christianity is is called the gospel.

And the gospel literally means good news.

That's what that word means.

And news is different than advice.

Every other religion is based on advice.

Do these things, then God will accept you.

But not Christianity.

Christianity is based on news.

I remember hearing it, hearing this story and it helped me a lot.

In the ancient world, if you lived in a city in a

an army was going to attack your city.

You would send your army out to meet them in the field

before they got to the city, and then you'd wait

to see what happened.

And from the battle lines, they would send a runner

to tell everyone in the city what had happened.

If the runner came and said, the enemy has broken through, bar the gates.

Arm yourselves. Prepare to fight.

That's advice.

That's advice.

But if the runner comes

and the runner says the battle has been won.

The enemy has been decimated.

Rejoice and be glad.

That's news.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is news

is that the battle has been fought by Jesus.

Rejoice and be glad.

That's Romans five eight.

The God demonstrates his love toward

us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died.

For a second Corinthians 521 God made him who had no sin

to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

It's like

James is saying, if if I lived in under incredible debt

and someone paid off my debt, and you came to visit me

a couple of months later and found me with the same anxiety

that I had before the debt was paid, you say, have you forgotten

what has happened to you?

See that?

That's what James is saying.

James is giving something to do.

But he said, before I tell you what to do, you need to remember who you are,

that the battle has been fought.

The debt has been paid by Jesus.

Rejoice and be glad,

and in that joy, then live out of that joy.

And that brings me to my second point, which is the heart of God.

There are a lot of images that the Bible gives

to try to describe our relationship with God.

It'll talk about

God being like a king and we are his servants.

God is a shepherd and we are his sheep.

God is a Savior and we are the ones who have been set free.

But one of the most powerful images I think, in the whole Bible is the one in

right in the middle of Romans, and it's the image of adoption.

And I love this image.

This is what Paul says, for you did not receive

the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,

but you've received the spirit of adoption as sons

by whom we cry, ABBA, father!

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirits

that we are children of God.

I love adoption, I love that the whole thing,

because when someone is adopted, they hear unmistakably from someone.

I see you,

I want you,

and I love you, right?

That's what this says, that God does that with us.

You know the Gospel of Luke, that the disciples are hanging around Jesus and

and then they they one of them shows up to Jesus

and said, Jesus, would you teach us to pray?

And of course, you would ask that if you're a disciple, right?

If you're if you're watching Jesus and you watch him pray,

I mean, I always feel like I'm not a very good prayer,

but if I was around Jesus, I would ask him that.

Teach me to pray like you. Pray right?

And Jesus said, okay.

And then he taught them what we refer to as the Lord's Prayer.

But we become so familiar with the Lord's Prayer,

I think sometimes that we we miss what must have taken their breath away.

Because the way Jesus starts

the Lord's Prayer, he says, okay, I'll teach you how to pray.

This is the way you start.

Call him father.

And right then, that must have blown their minds

because no one called God Father.

What Jesus was saying is because of me, when you go to God,

you can call him dad.

When James mentions orphans

and widows in the first century, they were terribly vulnerable.

Orphans and widows fell through the cracks.

There was no social welfare net to catch them

if they didn't, if you didn't have family in the first century,

you had nothing.

You know the gospel, Luke, Jesus goes into a town

and there's a funeral procession going on,

and Jesus ends up asking, what's going on?

And they say, oh, that's the only son of a widow.

And it

says that Jesus was filled with compassion.

And he goes over and he raises the young man from the dead

and gives him back to his mom.

The reason that James mentions

orphans and widows is because they matter to God.

It's showing God's heart

what what God is saying is that if you are alone

or you are lonely,

he's saying,

I see you,

right, I want you.

I want those who are lonely

and alone, taken care of.

And that brings us to my final point, which is the family of God.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says a couple of really interesting things.

How I the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says a lot of interesting things, but

there are two that kind of stuck out to me as I prepared for this message.

The first is in Matthew 12.

Jesus is teaching in a house

and there are tons of people.

They packed the house, which you can just imagine so much so no one can get in.

And, Jesus, mother and his brothers come,

his family comes and they're outside and they send word they can't get in.

So they send word in, tell Jesus we're out here

and we want to talk with him.

And so somebody told somebody who told somebody told somebody,

the message gets to Jesus.

And this is the way, Jesus responds,

says while he was still speaking to the people, behold,

his mother and his brothers stood outside asking to speak to him.

But he replied to the man who told him, who is my mother?

Who are my brothers?

And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, here

my mother and my brothers, for whoever does the will of my father

in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

I don't think Jesus was dissing his family

as much as he was saying, you don't understand.

I'm creating a whole new family.

He says something similar in Matthew chapter 19.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

In Matthew chapter 19,

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

a man comes to Jesus and he's referred to as the rich young ruler.

And he comes to Jesus and he says, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus says, go and sell all that you have

and come and follow me.

And it was too steep a price for that guy.

So the guy just went away.

And this is not my point.

But what a mess, right?

What a mess on his part. Forget that he was rich.

Forget that Jesus said go and sell all.

But Jesus said, come,

be one of my disciples.

Follow me. What?

He was inviting him to walk with him.

24 seven.

Can you imagine what that would have been?

If he had done that, we would know his name.

We would name our children after that guy we would name like Peter

or John or Matthew, but instead

he's just an anonymous guy that was referred to

as the rich young ruler because he chose his money and property

over Jesus.

But there's some high point.

What happens right after that is Peter.

You can always count on Peter to say something.

And Peter says, Jesus,

we've left everything to follow you and you can hear what he's doing.

He's just going, hey, we're good, right?

I mean, we've sacrificed to follow you.

And Jesus says this to Peter.

He says, no, Peter,

no one who has left father or mother

or sister or brothers or houses to follow

me will not receive back 100 times in this life

and the life to come.

What Jesus is saying is that Jesus didn't

come just to call individual believers to himself.

Jesus came to create a family.

When Jesus says to me,

you can because of me, you can call God Father.

You can call him dad.

And he says to you, because of me, you can call him father.

You can call him dad.

What he's saying is you have siblings,

I have siblings, they're sitting all around

scads of siblings.

There's a sociologist and historian named Rodney Stark.

He wrote a book called The Rise of Christianity.

I've mentioned it before. I really like that book.

But in that book, he tries to explain why

Christianity spread across the Roman

Empire at lightning speed, and one of the reasons he gives

it is the way the church responded

to those who had been marginalized,

to people who are poor or orphaned,

or widows or slaves,

because when someone

who is marginalized, who was alone would come into the church,

what they would hear is the heart of God,

but they also were able to feel the heart of God,

because when they walked into the ancient church,

what they felt was a bunch of people would say, we see you,

we want you,

we love you,

you're home,

right?

Because the church is filled with people who know what it is to be adopted,

who know

what it is for God the Father to look at us and say,

I see you, I want you, I love you

because before the Bible tells you what to do,

it tells you who you are.

There's an emperor named Julian the Apostate.

Some years ago, archeologists found a letter

that he wrote, and I love this

because Julian the Apostate hated Christians.

And when he wrote the letter, and I'll paraphrase it,

he was writing it to some pagan priests,

and he was saying, you know, I hate those blasted followers of the Galilean.

That's what he called Christians.

Because Jesus was from Galilee.

He wouldn't even mention Jesus name.

But he said, listen, they take care of not just their own.

They care of take care of ours.

And then he

told the priests, if you don't start imitating them and doing what

they're doing, the whole world is going to follow Jesus.

And I love that, because, you know, they did.

But the other thing is, I like it

that he realized we don't play fair

because for us, people aren't just people.

People are family.

So if you are here

and you are alone or lonely,

I have good news for you.

And the good news is that God sees you.

God wants you.

God loves you.

But he's not just calling you to himself,

he's calling you to a family, to this family.

And for us,

we want to be a church where anybody

who walks in that door not doesn't

just hear about the heart of God for them, but they feel it

because we say, we see you,

we want you, we love you.

The gospel is good news

and it's good news for everyone.

It's good news for you.

Would you pray with me?

Our father in heaven,

we come to you and I am so, so grateful.

Adoption is something

that just, resonates with me.

The fact that you look at us and you say

you see our us in our loneliness and brokenness, and you say, I see you.

I want you, I love you,

and I will prove that by sending my son Jesus

to live in your place, die in your place, and resurrection.

Thank you that you didn't give us some kind of dry religion of rules,

but you gave us something that actually changes us

from the inside out, because there's nothing more powerful than that.

I pray that you would create us, create a church here

where we will have your heart.

So everybody who walks in here, we're not just here about you,

but we'll feel

what it feels like to be loved by you because of us.

That's our prayer.

Thank you. We pray this in Jesus name.

Amen.