Faith That Works | Central Christian Church | Pastor Cal Jernigan

Hey, welcome, Central.

It is so good.

Obviously, it is good to be with you.

I love this church.

I am a part of this church, and my wife and I, we worship here, and we are just like you.

We come, we serve, we give, we participate.

But you know, the church at large is something I just absolutely love.

I can't imagine my life without it.

Where else do you ever go where you do what you do here?

You get together, you make friends with people, you actually sing together, and then we uh we pray and we uh you know commune together with God, and then we hopefully slow down long enough to hear from Him and we walk out of here a little bit challenged, a little bit different.

So, however you got here, whatever your story is, man, seriously, it is good to have you.

Um I want to uh I want to just get moving here because I got some ground I want to cover.

So if you'll allow me, I want to put a premise uh up on the screen that I want to just have you look at.

So wherever you are, and again, as already was said, welcome online wherever, you know, whichever campus is gonna show up.

This uh do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Is the point I want you to wrestle with.

In the heart of every person is a desire to do something.

Now stop and think about it.

Could you exist in your life without doing something, with just being here, with just existing?

I would argue that that's a true statement.

I would further argue that in our hearts is a desire to create, a desire to design, to build, that there is an expression waiting to come out of something inside of us.

I think it's in every one of us.

That's my opinion.

I'll take that even a step further and say this.

That thing was tapped in you when you were just a little kid.

That thing started to come out when they gave you that first box of crayons and that white piece of paper.

And you open up that box and you just started drawing, and your artwork ended up on the TV or on the refrigerator.

Uh, it was the same thing that happened when you first put a paintbrush in water and then put it on that little pad of watercolors, and then you put it on that white piece of paper.

It was beginning to, this is what it, this is what I'm gonna do with this piece of paper.

When they gave you that little block of clay, that first little block of clay, and you started, you know, kind of squeezing it, and and you're like, I'm gonna create something, and you did.

And and probably like my grandkids, I've got stuff on my shelves that they, these little creations of clay that they, it's part of what we are.

It's who you were made to be.

You were made to create, you were made to do something.

In fact, let me take this uh further, talking about how this gets developed in us.

If uh if you're aware of this, and my guess is you've heard of it, whether you understand it or not, there is a video game that's extremely popular.

212 million users of this game.

Uh they say at any given moment in time, 25 million people are on this game right here.

It's called Minecraft.

And if you know Minecraft, uh, this is I don't know how to explain it.

It just basically starts with nothing, and then you just get to go.

You just get to build, you just get to create, you just get to make stuff up.

And whatever you end up with, that's what you created.

You know, before that, though, there was a another kind of a game, toy, uh thing that it was called Legos.

You ever heard of Legos?

Of course you heard of Legos.

Legos are more popular today than they were when they first came out.

But you know, Legos are the analog version of Minecraft.

They're just that you don't, it's digital versus and you just get to physically and you make all kinds of things.

And you might think, you know, Legos was the first expression.

It was not.

If you've been around for any amount of time, you know that before Legos were popular, there was another thing that was popular.

It was called Lincoln logs.

I'm literally taking you back in time.

You can you can study the when these first came out, Lincoln logs was before Legos, which was before Minecraft.

Lincoln logs was you'd build houses and forts and all kinds of stuff and you'd create a neighborhood, Lincoln logs.

But you know, that wasn't the first thing that came out.

The first thing that came out, well, it was actually before that one.

It was, I know this is gonna take you back, and some of you have never heard of these, it were called Tinker Toys.

Anybody remember Tinker Toys?

That's a much bigger version than a Tinker Toy, but it had these hubs and it had these spikes and spokes, and you would create all kinds of things.

And you go, there's nothing that goes back farther than that, but there is.

Now, I'm gonna show you something that actually came on the market in 1913.

Before I show you what this thing is, I need to make a comment.

I don't know why they called it what they called it.

I would never have named a children's toy what they named this thing, and you're gonna snicker when you hear it, but if I don't use the name they used, it's it's not, you're gonna go, I've never heard of it.

They've changed the name since this, but they were called erector sets.

Bad name.

Can I get an amen?

Bad name.

But a great toy.

This is hard to believe that this first of all of those I just mentioned, uh uh the erector set.

What it was was it was strips of metal that you would take nuts and bolts and you would screw things together and you would build things and add all kinds of ancillary parts that you could do, all that.

It peaked in about 1960, late 60s, and then it's gone down since.

But bigger in its day than Legos is in this day.

That's hard to believe.

That's hard to get your brain around.

Well, I tell you all that story to tell you this about expression.

There was a group of boys that uh lived in Mesa, and uh they wanted to give expression to what was inside of them.

And and so uh let me tell you the story.

I've told you the story before, but uh, my friend Brian, who's on our Tempe campus, uh shout out to Brian, been a part of this church for over 40 years.

He told this story once in church, and I've never forgotten it.

And uh I just wanted you to tell the story he told.

He is what he said.

I was in fourth grade, his uh he went to an elementary school in uh North Mesa, and he um his mom was a teacher at that school.

And she uh, you know, like you know, she no special favor for him, but uh the fact that he he had a mom there is important to the story he told because what happened was there was a a project that they were assigned, it was a science fair.

And the science fair, you're supposed to come up with something, a creative expression, you know, make something.

And he had a whole bunch of his friends that had all bought into this erector set thing, and they had all kinds of stuff.

And so they put the brains together, what if we just collected all of our stuff?

We put it in a big pile, and we made a masterpiece creation out of all of our parts.

And they got all excited.

So they went to his mom and they said, Can we build this in the back of your classroom?

We'll cover it up every day, and it'll it would then it'll be here when we're done.

And she said, Absolutely.

So they went to work and they brought everything they had, and he just described, he said, Oh man, he said it was awesome.

There were gears and there were pulleys, uh, there there were there were uh like conveyor belts and we had buckets, we had motors and and things that would turn.

It was it was everything we'd ever dreamt of.

It was the greatest creation.

And so they got all excited when they got it done.

They thought, you know, the only appropriate thing to do is to give his mom a peak you know preview of this because she was so great.

So they got her and brought her back, and I don't remember if they blindfolded her, sort of closed her eyes, whatever they did, but they basically said, Hey, hey, okay, wait, let's we gotta get it going.

So they ripped a sheet off of it and they plugged it in.

And Brian, Brian goes, Oh man, how so proud, how so incredible, it was the greatest thing, it was everything we ever dreamt of.

And uh, everything was, you know, and uh when I got all up to speed, they said, Okay, mom, you could you can open your eyes.

Take a look, take a look.

And she she looked at it and she said three words devastated them.

She said, What is it?

What is it?

And she could see that she devastated them, so she covered her tracks really fast, and she said, No, no, no, no, I know what it is.

I know what it is.

Um, what does it do?

Brian said, Mom, it's doing it.

Mom, the gears are grinding, the chains are pulling, the wheels are turning, the motors are motoring, the conveyor belt's conveying.

This is what it does.

He told us a story, and I could not help but think of the church.

What are we here to do?

What are we here to express?

What are we here to create?

I mean, I mean, they're gonna put this up on the screen.

Wrestle with this question What's the purpose of creating something if it doesn't fulfill some purpose?

What is the point of creating something that does nothing when you got it created?

Why would Jesus create a church?

Uh a long time ago, when I was in high school, I uh I came home from school one day, and this is a vivid memory.

And this might not be exactly what I saw, but this is exactly what I remember seeing.

Uh, there was a talk show host that most of you probably never heard of back way back in the day.

Uh his name was Merv Griffin.

Can I hear it from Merv?

Anyone, anyone, anyone?

There we are.

Okay.

Merv Griffin had a guest on this particular day that I came home from school and watched this guest.

This guy was a bodybuilder.

And when I say a bodybuilder, I mean one of these guys that was ripped and shredded and cut.

I mean, he so basically he introduced him, he said, I want to introduce you, I don't know, Mr.

Universe, wherever he was.

And this guy came out.

Now, this is where you're gonna have to use your imagination.

Yeah, you got it.

Use your imagination because what he did was he came out, he was all oiled up.

You know how they get all oiled up, and he's just glistening in the light, and he comes out, and people are going crazy, and he does his thing.

You know what his thing was?

He posed.

And and people, oh God, that's what people are clapping and cheering and just going, no, I'm not going, ooh, looks a lot like me.

Anyway, um, I'm going, that's like that guy's that's impressive.

And we got done doing his thing, poses.

He comes and he sits down.

I think they had to put a towel down.

Anyway, he sits down and uh and Merv asks him, oh, incredible.

He asks him a couple questions, is what I remember.

He said, How long?

How long?

What do you mean?

How long?

Oh, he said, my whole life.

I started lifting out three years old.

I started lifting while I was three years old.

How many hours a day?

Five usually, you know, that's kind of what I do.

And then he asks a question, and this is the one that just tattooed itself on my brain.

He asked him, he said, What do you do with those muscles?

And the guy was confused.

He goes, What do you what do you mean?

Your soul is wrong.

What do you do with those muscles?

The guy's looking at him going, what are they for?

And I thought about the church.

That's all we are.

We do all we do just for show?

Just so that we can look.

I mean, we have all the strength and all the power to actually do something.

But instead of doing something, we just flex.

So we're beginning a series today.

It's gonna take us for the next five weeks and six weeks counting today, but it's a series that's called Faith That Works.

Faith that does something, faith that accomplishes something, faith that just doesn't exist for the sake of existing, but it actually is there for a purpose.

It's gonna be a study, as you already heard.

It's gonna be through the book of James, and we're gonna have a great time.

We're gonna get to know this book, and and uh there's so much about this book.

I I just in fact, take a take a moment.

If you brought a Bible, and uh old message, but hey, same message, bring a Bible.

Uh, find the book of James in your Bible.

Uh, if you have an analog version, it's gonna be all the way towards the back.

Get to Revelation, got a little too far, you get to Hebrews, not quite far enough.

Okay, it's between Hebrews and 1 Peter.

Just find this little book.

It's a little five chapter, it's a little short thing, okay?

And um when you find this book, I want you to understand something about it.

This book is like the book of Proverbs.

It is a book of wisdom.

It's a it's a book on how do you live your very best life?

It's just a short, concise, very, very targeted.

Uh, it's gonna ask all kinds of questions, questions I've already raised.

Like, what what does faith do in a person?

What should Christians be known for doing, and what should Christians not be known for doing?

What sort of difference should it make in your life if you say you follow Christ versus somebody who doesn't say that?

If you say you follow Christ, does anyone who knows you know you follow Christ because it's obvious by what you do that you're different?

See, those are the kind of questions, and then they get even like more like where's God when it's when it's painful?

Where's God when I'm hurting?

What about it's all these questions?

What do I do when I'm sick?

What do I do?

What do I do?

What do I do?

It's a fantastic book, and I can't wait for us to get through that.

Um, but here's the deal.

Here's the thing I want to point out.

Many times we go on a journey uh in the Bible and we have no idea where we're going.

We have no idea.

We don't know where to take it.

Uh we don't know where we're headed, we don't know what we're supposed to see, we don't know what's supposed to get out of it, we don't know why we're going.

And uh I want to say something.

If you go on any journey and you don't know where you're going, where you're headed, why you're doing it, all that, uh there's there's two things that are likely gonna happen.

Number one, you might be surprised when you get there, pleasantly, or disappointed, I suppose.

Um, but whatever, uh you're gonna be unprepared for arriving at the point you arrived at.

If you don't know where you're going.

A number of years ago, a long time ago, I was in seminary, and my class, my the graduating class, whatever, we all took a trip together.

We went over to Israel.

We went to Israel, and you can't do this today, but we were able to hit four countries.

We had Israel, Lebanon, uh, Syria, and Jordan.

And I didn't, uh, you know, it was my first time.

Had no real idea what I was gonna see.

Something happened in Jordan that um, again, tattooed itself on my brain.

We all got on the bus and we were going to someplace I'd never heard of.

And as we're going to this place, um, we get off this bus in the middle of nowhere, uh, kind of up against a mountain.

And I'm looking around and I'm like, what are we doing here?

Well, everyone gets off the bus and then we start walking.

We start walking down what's called a wadi.

That's what they call it.

It's like a wash where the water has kind of, it's kind of like you think, see it like pal.

This is a wadi.

Okay, this is the wadi.

And so we're walking down this thing.

I have no clue why are we doing this?

Where are we going?

What are we looking for?

And then um I get this glimpse as I'm getting towards the end of the Wadi.

I see this thing.

I have no idea what this thing is.

I'm going, that's interesting.

Catches my eye.

We step a little further and we uh see this.

This is called Petra.

I have since learned.

Petra is this ancient city.

This is just a fragment of what's there.

This is where Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or whatever it's called, this is where it was filmed.

I'm walking out of there and I'm looking at this thing and I'm going, oh my goodness, does anyone else know this is here?

This is amazing.

And then we hiked all around the city of Petra.

It was remarkable, and I was unbelievably unprepared.

I got about that much out of it because I had no idea that I should have been thinking about this before I actually got there.

So that's what we're gonna do today.

We're gonna think about it before we actually arrive.

Uh, I was behind from the beginning.

I'm gonna get you ahead from the beginning.

Okay, so what I was asked to do today was I was asked to introduce you to a man named James.

James in your Bible, a man named James.

I was asked to make an introduction, so I want to introduce you to.

Now, these days, whenever I get asked to make an introduction, my mind automatically always goes to something I heard my wife Lisa once say.

We were in Bethlehem with a group of people from Central, and we have friends in Bethlehem, and um Lisa was introducing a guy named Samuel Wad to the group that we had brought from Central.

And when she got up, she said something, and I absolutely love what she said, and I thought about it so many times.

She said this one of the greatest joys in life is introducing your friends to your other friends.

See, you got this group of friends over here, but they've never met those people.

But boy, joy, when you get to introduce them to them and them to them, I get the joy of introducing you to a friend of mine.

His name is James, and he's been a friend most of my life.

And I can't wait for you to meet him if you've never met him.

Some of you, you go, I've met James a long time ago.

Well, we're gonna get reintroduced to this fantastic guy named James.

Now, strangely enough, you know what his name is?

Anyone's name is James.

His name is James, uh, which is a very common name in the Bible.

Very common.

It would be like John today, it's literally Jacob.

It's a very common name.

There's nothing remarkable.

But here's what is important that you understand about this.

There are different Jameses in the Bible.

And if you convolute them all together, you think they're all the same person.

You'll never understand what's actually happening.

It's like the name Mary.

There's so many Marys in the Bible.

You need to know the difference between the different Marys, or it's never gonna make sense.

Uh there's another James that's very, very popular in the Bible.

I need to make sure you don't think it's that guy.

So let me just talk about that other guy.

All right?

That other guy was one of the twelve apostles.

Okay, so he he was a guy, uh so when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter, James, and John, that's a different guy.

He he was he and his brother John were known as Sons of Thunder, Sons of Zebedee.

Uh different.

He was the guy that Herod beheaded and pleased everybody, and so they thought, well, start killing more Christians.

That's not the guy that wrote this book.

So I want you to get that guy out of your head for a moment, and I want to take you down, I want to take you down the story of this guy, this James, all right?

So let me just introduce him the way he introduces himself, okay?

Okay, so this is what he said, all right?

He introduced himself.

Uh this letter, the first words in the letter of James, this letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Is all you need to know is I I'm a servant.

I serve God, I serve Jesus.

That's all you need to know.

That's what he introduced himself.

Good.

All right, that's a good start.

Now, as long as you know it's not the other one, you know this one.

But what's amazing is what he didn't tell you.

What he doesn't tell you, what he doesn't tell you is he is the brother of Jesus.

Technically the half-brother, same mom, different dad.

He just doesn't, it doesn't.

Does it surprise you to know that Jesus had brothers?

He also had sisters.

You go, no, they know he didn't.

No, yet read, he did.

Look, let me read it to you, all right?

Um, see, what was happening was Jesus doing these miracles and he was teaching and he was healing.

TMZ got word of it, and they sent a crew to go get the scoop on who this Jesus guy was.

And this is what they found.

In Matthew 13, it said this.

When Jesus had finished these parables, he moved on from there.

Coming up, coming, and this is important, coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogues.

And they were amazed.

Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?

They asked, Isn't this the carpenter's son?

Isn't his mother's name Mary?

Aren't his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?

Aren't all his sisters with us?

Where then did this man get all these things?

And they took offense at him.

This is the point.

This guy can't be anything special.

He's one of us.

He grew up here.

We all know him.

He can't be.

Where did this power come from?

And they were simply amazed.

Now here's the point I want to make.

You think that in introducing himself to us, James might want to mention some things he left out.

Like, okay, if I were James and I were introducing myself to you, I might, all things being equal, I might say it a little bit differently.

So I wrote how I would have introduced the book if I were James and I were introducing myself to you.

James, the second born child of the Virgin Mary, I would lead with that.

Because that would get you attention, right?

And then I would say, the brother of Jesus, because I got you, man.

Oh yeah, and I'm a servant of God.

Like that would slip to the bottom.

I would make sure.

You need to understand exactly who is writing this book, okay?

It's kind of like if you ever read the story of David and Goliath, you know the story of David and Goliath.

You learn the little kid, big giant, slingshot.

Beheads him, holds it up.

You know the bizarre thing about David killing Goliath?

It's never mentioned again in the Bible by David.

He never brings it up.

If I can be candid, if I kill Goliath, you'd probably hear about it.

I'd work it in somewhere.

That seems like a big problem.

Kind of reminds me of the day I faced Goliath.

Did I ever mention you I killed Goliath?

You know why David never had to mention it?

The same reason James doesn't tell you this.

Ready?

Because everybody already knew.

Everybody knew.

We don't know.

But everybody then, they knew who James was.

This is the brother of Jesus.

He had credibility, he did not have to express.

Now, I need to point out a couple of things.

He had little nicknames.

He had little nicknames.

You need to know these nicknames.

One nickname, he was called James the Just.

So have you ever heard that phrase?

James the Just, it's this guy, the brother of Jesus.

He also had another nickname, which they called him Old Camel Knees.

Isn't that funny name?

Old Camel knees.

Why would they call him camel knees?

Because he spent so much time on his knees praying to God that he developed calluses and his knees looked like a camel.

Old camel knees.

That's what we're talking about.

Now, I'm gonna ask you to go down a road with me you probably never thought about.

What would it be like growing up with Jesus as a brother?

Hmm.

Jesus would have been the firstborn, all indications this James is the nextborn.

You think you were unfavorably compared to one of your siblings?

How would you like to have Jesus as a brother?

If you're old enough to remember the Brady Bunch, remember Jen, Marsha, Marcia, Marcia.

It's always about Marcia.

And James goes, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

It's always about Jesus.

How would it be?

I mean, no matter how good James was at anything, you're compared to Jesus.

Come on.

I wonder if his mom and dad said, Why can't you just be a little more like Jesus?

If you would just be a little more like your brother.

Oh what chance did he have?

Um I also wonder if Mary and Joe, uh Mary and Joseph ever had to sit him down and say something like this.

I don't know how it would have gone.

Son, son, sit down, James.

John said, okay, look.

We think it's time you understand something.

Your older brother is um he's a little different.

Let's just say he's uh he's gifted.

Um there's a reason that he's all in these AP classes in elementary school.

Um yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

The thing with Harvard was legit.

They wanted him as, you know, a seven-year-old, but he said no.

Um he's just special.

And then I wonder if James ever said, you always have treated him like he's something special.

You always treat him like you love him more.

Did his brothers and sisters ever get jealous of him?

Was it ever awkward?

Was it ever just weird?

How would you handle it?

To say that a little bit of stress would have come into this family is not an understatement.

But then it gets to this point where what do you do when your older brother, who you already have trouble with being your older brother, he comes along and he says, Hey, just so the heads up, I want you to understand something.

Uh I am the long-awaited Messiah of Israel.

Okay, yeah?

How's that gonna go over in a Thanksgiving dinner?

Uh yeah, you know, you might want to read uh the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah prophesied about me, you know, 700 years ago.

Uh oh, and if you haven't understood, what I'm trying to tell you is I am God in the flesh.

Okay, now listen, listen.

If you're being honest, any one of us would go, you gotta be kidding.

Who does this guy think he is?

We would all have a hard time.

You could not just accept that.

And uh, what you know what I want you to understand?

He grew up on Jesus' stories, not James stories.

He grew up on Jesus' stories.

You see, Mary and Joseph, now don't miss this.

Mary and Joseph had a huge advantage over their other kids.

Mary and Joseph got visited by an angel, and the prophecy of the birth of Jesus came to them.

Remember that?

Christmas?

And then when Jesus was born, shepherds showed up because the angels told them, and then Magi from the east showed up, and and and and then Herod had all those babies killed because of your baby, and then you fled to Egypt.

Remember all that?

They experienced all that.

James and them, they went around.

He just heard about the birth of Jesus, like you heard about the birth of Jesus.

So here, why am I telling you all that?

Because I want you to understand something that most people do not understand.

You will when you walk out of here.

Listen, his brothers had a hard time with him.

Just need you to know.

His family had a hard time with him.

You think Jesus just fit in, everything was just cool because Jesus showed up in that family?

Nope.

Quite the opposite.

Let's just say this family had their doubts.

So let me show you a couple passages.

Uh, Mark 3.21.

When his family heard about this, they they went to take charge of him, uh, for they said he's he's out of his mind.

Our brother has lost his marbles.

His brothers mocked him.

They mocked him.

In John 7, it says, His brothers therefore said to him, Depart from here and go into Judea, that your disciples may also see the works that you are doing.

For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly.

If you do these things, show yourself to the world, for even his brothers did not believe in him.

Oh, that's a twist to the plot.

Even his brothers didn't believe in him, and their unbelief persisted to the very last day of Jesus' life on earth.

To the time he was crucified.

Well, how in the world did this skeptic become an author of one of the books of the Bible that we're gonna dedicate the next five weeks to?

What happened?

Well, let's just say something happened.

Let's just say something happened that whenever that happens, you can't ignore it.

Let's just say that whenever that something happens, you can't dismiss it.

Let's just say that if that something happens, even though you can't comprehend it, you know something happened.

Something incredible happened.

You can't ignore that.

Something happened that never has happened since and never had happened before.

Jesus rose from the dead.

Jesus rose from the dead, and that changed everything.

He rose from the dead.

You know, you can travel all over the planet and you can see the places where religious leaders are buried, but you know what you cannot do?

You cannot go find the bodily remains of Jesus because he's not there.

He rose from the dead.

That didn't happen.

But when it does happen, it tends to open your eyes and you tend to see things that you've never seen before.

And James didn't just hear.

Hey, hey man, I was over there.

I was over there and I saw your brother.

He's walking around after he rose from the dead.

No, you know what Jesus did?

I gotta get over to James.

So this is what it says 1 Corinthians 15.

After that, he, Jesus, appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time.

That's the church, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep by the time they wrote that.

Then he, Jesus, appeared to James.

Then to all the apostles, and last of all, he appeared to me also, Paul, as to one abnormally.

See, so when certain things happen, you when you see certain things, you can't unsee them.

I know they killed you.

I watched them crucify you, I watched them bury you, and yet here you are.

And by the way, just so you know, he predicted he would be back.

That's a little detail.

They're gonna kill me, but three days I'm gonna rise from the dead.

Oh, yeah, sure.

And then he did.

Fodder for the skeptics, encouragement for the faithful.

But can you imagine when James saw Jesus and Jesus saw James?

Can you just imagine the look in their eyes as they looked at each other?

And James goes.

And all of a sudden, all the lights are going on in his brain, going, Oh, I see it.

I see it.

And the hug and the embrace and the wow.

Now, just a couple more things I want to tell you about James, and I'll be done.

The thing you need to understand that James goes on to become very, very prominent.

Okay, he's gonna become the head of the church in Jerusalem.

He is gonna be the spokesman of the church in Jerusalem.

The reason that's significant is Jerusalem is gonna be the epicenter of the burgeoning Christian faith as it begins to explode out.

Jerusalem is where it began.

That's where Jesus was crucified.

James is in charge there.

Uh Paul refers to James as a pillar of the church.

Peter references James after Peter gets broken out of prison in Acts chapter 12.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

He, in fact, let me just read it too.

Peter motioned with his hands.

He showed up at the house with a whole bunch of believers.

He said, Shh, shh, be quiet.

And he described how the Lord had brought him out of prison.

And then he said, Tell James and the brothers about this.

James is mentioned over and over again because of his importance to the city of Jerusalem and the church.

And that's what you need to understand.

Everybody acknowledged James was a leader.

That's why you didn't have to go into a lot of detail.

Everybody knew that's who that is.

And then one last thing I want to tell you about him before I close.

He was um he wrote this book somewhere, 46 to 49, 47 to 49 A.D., somewhere in there.

He was killed, he was martyred in A.D.

62.

He was condemned to death by the Jewish Sanhedrin.

I want to read this.

The story is that the Pharisees in Jerusalem so hated James' testimony for Christ that they had him cast down from the temple and then beaten to death with clubs.

And tradition tells us that when they were beating him with clubs, he looked at them and he said something he heard his older brother say.

Father, forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing.

So now you know who James is.

So get ready for a great study of a great book written by a great man.

But here's what I want to tell you as I close this out.

If you stick around with us and you go through this book, you cannot do this passively.

You cannot do this and go, yeah, I'm just gonna go, I'm gonna go fill my head with some stuff from scripture.

I'm gonna go learn the Bible.

But uh, if you come and you're serious about studying the book of James, here's what's gonna happen: you're gonna do something.

Christianity was never created so you could show off your muscle, so you could show off your shape.

You're you you you the Christianity is not an expression that's just stuffed inside you that never gets out.

No, when you encounter Jesus, it it begins to uh and and so uh uh I'm gonna put this big idea out there.

I'm gonna sum the entire book of James up in my words.

This is not official, this does not come from God.

If your faith doesn't move you to action, what you have isn't faith.

And I could spend an hour talking about all the other things it might be, but it's not faith.

Faith, and when you have the real thing, it will move you, it will change you, it will get you going.

It will stick uh literally a fork in your hiny.

You're not gonna be able to sit on it any longer without doing something.

Now, I wanna last thing I want to tell you.

I want to tell you a true story that happened to me when I was in high school.

Uh again, you've already used your imagination once.

I'm gonna ask you to tap into it one more time.

When I was a young man, I was an athlete.

I know it's hard.

Work with me.

So I was a runner, I was a long distance runner.

Uh, and I had a friend, I was tracking cross-country, that's what I did.

And I had a friend who was one of my very best friends through high school.

I need to explain something to you for this story to make any sense.

He was much better than I was.

Uh in fact, I have a friend here today.

I saw him, his name's Rick.

He was on the same team.

You'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

So, Doug was one of my high school friends, and um Doug and I would train together, but what we did more than that is we hung out together.

We did life together.

We he loved to fish.

I this deep love I have of fishing, I would attribute in part to Doug because we would go out in his dad's boat and we'd have all kinds of fun.

And so we would run together.

Did I mention he's a much better athlete than this?

Important, did I say that?

Yeah, you got it.

See, one day we were training, and I went to Coronado High School in Scottsdale, and so we were running down.

We ran down McDowell Road, and we went to we would run some course.

It was him and I, not some course, some training thing.

And we got to 48th Street.

And if you remember back in the day, 48th Street had a big ditch that ran along it.

And it was like for irrigation, and not a creek, but a ditch that they would flood.

So we're running along this thing, and we look down, and we see something in that creek that gets our attention.

We see crawdads.

I don't know if you know what a crawdad is, but this is important to the story that this is a crawdad.

Uh the thing I need you to see on that craddad is what's at the front of the cradad.

Those are pinchers.

It's like a little miniature lobster.

Not exactly, definitely doesn't taste the same, but little tiny things, all right?

But these pinchers, when they get you, they get you.

But so the way you catch them is you reach in over them and you grab their back and then they put their claws up, but they can't reach you.

So that's how you catch them.

So Doug and I literally jump in this creek and we are catching these things and we're holding them, and they're doing everything, and we're trying to avoid getting snapped at.

We're having the time of our life.

And then Doug goes, we should keep these and let's go fishing together.

I'm like, awesome! We've got to find something to put these in.

So what we found, and I don't think they even make this anymore, we found what was called a Romex box.

A Romex box.

Romex is the wiring that goes in your house, it comes in a big coil.

And they used to put it in a cardboard box and they put a big circle in the middle of the box where the coil would come out.

I think they don't do that anymore, but that's how they used to do it.

We look at this Romex box, that's perfect.

We can load this thing up with crotats and they can't get out because they can't climb out.

It could not be better.

So we fill this box with crawdats.

And uh we're going back to school, we're excited, we're gonna we're gonna go fishing, we're gonna use these.

We get back, um, as God is my witness, what I'm telling you is what happened.

We get back to the school, and our uh very successful varsity football team is in the showers.

Some of you guys are ahead of me.

And uh I say very successful because these guys were not wimps.

These were this they were serious, I think next year they won the state.

The serious football team.

I need to tell you something else about Doug.

That uh Doug was popular.

I was not.

Okay?

Gotta know that.

Two important key points here.

He's faster runner and he's popular.

He sees these football players in what was then, I don't know how they do showers these days.

It was a community shower.

Shower heads everywhere, everyone's in there, everyone's in the shower.

And Doug goes, you know what would be more fun than going fishing?

And he knew those guys.

He rips the end off of this box and he just does this in the shower.

And those crad ads go spraying across the entire shower.

Did I mention he was popular and he was fast?

And that I was neither.

I'll let you figure out how that thing ended out.

But here's what I want to point out there's a time you can't just stand there.

You gotta get going, you gotta get moving, you gotta do something.

You were born to do something.

And if your faith in Christ does not move you to action, whatever it is you have isn't faith.

We're gonna talk about what we're supposed to do with our faith in the weeks to come.

Let me pray.

So, God, thank you for our time.

Thanks for this church, thanks for these people on all the campuses and online and traveling, wherever they are, wherever they're hearing this.

God, thank you for the grace you have poured out upon us, and thank you for the story of this guy.

Thanks for letting us just kind of ponder what it would have been like to grow up with Jesus, with you as a brother.

So much good, but so much challenge.

And so, God, as we embark on this journey, we just do so praying.

Open us up, teach us, move us to action.

That is our prayer.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Hey, great to be back with you guys.

Bless you.