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but one thing i do forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead i press on toward the goal to win the prize of god s heavenly calling in christ jesus all of us who are mature should embrace this point of view as i said last week when we are freed from the guilt of sin the knowledge that we are still a sinful people loses its ability to discourage us into inaction we have been freed not to seek our own desires but rather to unleash this new found love that resides in our hearts and actually make a difference in the lives of those we meet for the one whose heart is filled with god s love james makes the point that in loving others we are loving those who are made in the image of god and so all of this comes back to what we have been talking about all along and that is making our hearts look like god s heart there is no greater example of the love god holds in his heart for us than to look at what jesus did for us so great was his love for us that he went to the cross every year on good friday we read the passage where jesus asks if there is any way for the cup to be taken from him jesus didn t want the cross he didn t want the suffering the pain or the humiliation and yet his love for us superseded all of his own desires and needs to the point of giving his life for us because of love the call for us and indeed the challenge is to allow this incredible love of god to so permeate our hearts that that love becomes readily apparent in our actions and in our words amen posted in uncategorized leave a comment sermon 2020 09 06 james part 4 september 8 2020 james begins the second section of this chapter with another parable a person encounters someone who is poor and is lacking food and clothing this person wishes the poor person well saying go in peace keep warm and well fed then continues on their way go in peace keep warm and well fed is an interesting passage the go in peace part is a standard hebrew form of dismissal much like we would say see you later but it s the keep warm and well fed part that needs a little explaining likely stated in the greek in a passive voice this phrase takes the meaning of instructing the poor person to do something to help themselves to pull themselves up by their bootstraps as it were keep yourself warm and find yourself something to eat might be a better translation of a phrase designed to encourage the poor person to find their own way how prevalent do we find this mindset today when discussing the poor one of the best ways to ease the conscience when confronting poverty is to blame the poor for being poor when one assumes that their troubles are brought about by laziness one creates an excuse for not having to be bothered to extend any help because surely if these people will just get their act together then they will be able to help themselves without needing anybody else s help then everyone can congratulate themselves for having given this poor person the swift kick that they needed to put them on the path to personal responsibility james is having none of this he makes the point that not only do these empty words do nothing for the person in need these empty words do nothing for the person speaking them either i d like to step away from my remarks for a moment to tell the story of a person with whom i became friendly he worked at a fast food restaurant that was close to where i once worked so i saw him rather often probably too often he was a christian and had one of those wonderfully continually upbeat personalities that i so wish that i had a person who spread joy to everyone he met he was meticulous at his job always repeating your order to make sure that he got it exactly right when they were busy he moved quickly trying to make sure that people weren t kept waiting and no one ever left the counter without him giving them a big smile and saying god bless you today as someone who has spent an entire adult lifetime as a retail manager i would categorize this gentleman as a dream employee someone who took great care to do his job efficiently and accurately all the while being a great ambassador for his company s brand this friend of mine dropped out of high school to take a job to help support his family when his father died he eventually married and had two children of his own and bought a small house in a not very nice neighborhood lacking a high school education his job options were quite limited and he never had the time to get a ged because after he leaves his full time nearly minimum wage job at the fast food place he takes a bus to home depot where he works overnight full time at an also nearly minimum wage job stocking shelves even with two full time incomes he can t afford a car and he barely makes ends meet he is missing two bottom front teeth because dental care is an unaffordable luxury and the little amount of time he gets to spend with his children is precious to him because working 80 hours a week doesn t leave a whole lot of time for family so he cherishes every minute that he gets and this is the lazy poor person who some people think needs to get his act together the world sees this man sees his well worn clothes and his missing teeth and somehow sees him as being less than fully human somehow he isn t seen as being deserving of earning a living wage he isn t seen as being worthy of having healthcare or dental care meanwhile the people who take advantage of his lack of education and his social status and pay him so little that he has to work two full time jobs are seen as being successful people and are called role models these are the folks being led to the prime seats in the assembly just like the folks we talked about last week while my friend is invited to take a seat on the floor are there some people in this world who are genuinely too lazy to work and who game the system for anything and everything that they can get out of it of course there are and there always will be my wife worked almost her entire adult life for a legal aid organization her job was to help indigent people find attorneys that would help them with their legal problems without charging them she hadn t been working there for long at all when one day she told me that if you decide that you are going to help people you are going to be used by some of them and she said that being used is just the price that you have to choose to pay when you are choosing to help those who are in need if we have love in our hearts the sufferings of the poor and the marginalized become personal to us we find their poverty to be completely unacceptable and we will find ourselves not only seeking to help when we are able but also to become a people who advocate for fairness and justice this is really the essence of what james is teaching us here the difference between speaking about having love in your heart and actually having love in your heart is that actually having love in your heart will move you to act in ways that just wouldn t happen if that love did not exist the heart moved with compassion for someone who is hungry will do whatever it is able to alleviate that person s suffering this is the natural and unavoidable extension of god s love working in our hearts these aren t works that are saving us because the salvation has already happened once and for all no these works are works that are the evidence of the heart that we have allowed god to remake into his image but now james wants to take this a step further in the same way james says faith by itself if it is not accompanied by action is dead it s important to understand here that james is not saying that your works contribute to your salvation james is saying that your salvation precipitates your works warren wiersbe explained this beautifully when he said we are not saved by faith plus works we are saved by a faith that works james then makes a powerful statement but before we talk about that please let me give you just a little bit of background in mark 5 we read the story of jesus encountering a demon possessed man and driving the demons out of the man and into a herd of pigs the pigs now possessed of the demons ran down a hill into a lake and drowned what is interesting in this story is what the demon said to jesus what do you want with me jesus son of the most high god in luke 4 jesus is teaching at a synagogue in capernaum a man with a demon was in the synagogue and he cried out go away what do you want with us jesus of nazareth have you come to destroy us i know who you are the holy one of god james makes the point that simply to recite the shema to confess that the lord our god is one isn t sufficient to save a person because even the demons believe that god is one and they shudder at the thought the demons in these passages instantly recognized jesus as the holy one of god yet their confession of him does not represent a saving faith and the reason that it doesn t is because there is no love in their hearts that precipitates loving acts douglas moo says genuine faith must go beyond the intellect to the will it must affect our attitudes and our actions as well as our beliefs last week we spoke of the royal law as a law the foundation of which was love of god and love of others now james teaches us that the very foundation of our faith also is loving god and loving others one cannot have a personal experience of the magnitude of god s love without being profoundly affected by that experience those who respond positively to god s love will find that the spirit will completely re create their hearts and their attitudes i often say that the object is to make our hearts look like god s heart and indeed the spirit will instill compassion and grace and empathy in our lives the likes of which we have never before experienced when jesus said that we will be born again he meant it through the spirit those who are willing will indeed become an entirely new creation now none of this means that sin disappears from our lives but two things definitely happen with regard to sin first this new found love in our hearts means that some things that we may have done in the past will become things that would be unthinkable for us to do now so the quantity of sin in our lives will decrease the second thing that happens is freed from the guilt of sin the knowledge that we are still a sinful people loses its ability to discourage us into inaction we have been freed not to seek our own desires but rather to unleash this new found love that resides in our hearts and actually make a difference in the lives of those we meet our friend peter had already met jesus but after the miraculous catch of fish when peter first saw jesus power in action peter said to jesus go away leave me lord i m a sinner and yet peter freed from the bondage of his sin became a man whose words and actions changed the world forever next james turns to abraham the father of the jewish faith to illustrate his point james mentions abraham s willingness to sacrifice his son isaac as proof of his righteousness this story was quite commonly used in jewish teachings so it s not surprising that james would reference the incident also but james has a slightly different take on this from the traditional jewish interpretations douglas moo says abraham s faith was a working faith an active faith a faith that was not so much the source of his works as it was a constant partner of his works this constant cooperation of faith and works is highlighted with the use of the imperfect tense of the greek verb συνήργει a word that we translate working with the imperfect tense indicates continual or repeated action faith was not something that abraham exercised on one occasion it stimulated directed and cooperated with his works but abraham s faith not only did something to or with his works his works also did something to his faith they completed it abraham received approval from god because of his faith expressed in his actions of course abraham was the quintessential jewish man of faith and as one who had been richly blessed by god it would be expected that someone of abraham s stature would show the fruits of his faith in his actions but then james continues this thought with a somewhat less than stellar example rahab lived in jericho in a house that was built into the city wall rahab was most likely a prostitute when the israelites sent spies into the city of jericho to evaluate the defenses before they invaded this land that they had been promised the king of jericho found out that the spies were in his city and were staying with rahab and he sent messengers to rahab to tell her to turn the men over to him rahab hid the spies and told the messengers that the spies had already left the city after the messengers left rahab said to the spies i know that the lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you we have heard how the lord dried up the water of the red sea for you when you came out of egypt and what you did to sihon and og the two kings of the amorites east of the jordan whom you completely destroyed when we heard of it our hearts melted in fear and everyone s courage failed because of you for the lord your god is god in heaven above and on the earth below rahab then asked the spies if they would spare her life and the lives of her family when the israelites invaded which they did rahab is mentioned in hebrews 11 where her action in hiding the spies is accepted as evidence of her faith rahab hid the spies at great personal risk she made a statement of faith to the spies and she also predicted that the israelites would defeat the canaanites this woman of questionable background who had no previous experience with the god of israel nevertheless believed in god and her faith was exhibited in her actions rahab is one of only two women mentioned among the faithful in the book of hebrews of course after rahab and her family were spared in the invasion of jericho she became a jew and married a jewish man named salmon salmon was the father of boaz who married ruth they were the parents of obed who was the father of jesse who was the father of king david so rahab was king david s great grandmother and as we all know jesus was a direct descendant of king david james wraps up this section of his letter by saying as the body without the spirit is dead so faith without deeds is dead james has no interest in barren intellectual faith james is calling for a vibrant active faith a faith driven by love of god and love of others a faith that acts justly and mercifully simply because it has no other mode of operation i d like to close with the words of martin luther his words here are made all the more interesting because they are from the introduction to his commentary on the book of romans in introducing christianity s single most eloquent exposition of salvation by faith alone luther had this to say oh i...