I know all of us are deeply grateful to our Lord for bringing us here and for meeting with us, making His presence so very real and practical to us. I just want to voice my gratitude to Him, but also to you, brothers and sisters. It is a rich blessing that the Lord has chosen to shower out upon us. I am grateful for the graciousness of the Lord that has been manifested through you.
We want to read some verses in the Epistle of James this morning: James Chapter 2, beginning in verse 14 through the end of the chapter.
What use is it, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but has no works? Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food,
and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,”
and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?
Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”
You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.
But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar?
You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected;
and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God.
You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.
In the same way was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?
For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
Let us pray.
Lord, we ask You to look upon our hearts and there discover an offering of thanksgiving. Lord, for myself, I just do not find adequate words to express the gratitude that I sense in my heart for Your mercies, for Your faithfulness, for Your goodness, for Your longsuffering, for Your patience with us even during these days.
Lord, it is quite evident as we come to this last meeting that You have given of Yourself to us in wonderful ways. We do not want to neglect the necessity of coming and returning to You and telling You that we deeply appreciate You, and that we appreciate what You have done for us during these days.
Now, Lord, we thank You that You never change. So we cast ourselves upon You as the capable and faithful One, that today You would once again take Your written Word and the spoken word and make it a living, personal word to each one of our hearts.
Lord, we rejoice today to know of the great love that You have for each one of us in this place. Lord, it seems to me that the love You have for us has determined that we would be like Yourself.
Lord, help us today. Give us hearts that can hear You, hearts that are willing to obey You and cooperate with You as You speak Your Word to each one of us.
We want it to be that, at the end of this time—not just the end of this meeting, but the end of the conference—there would be something that would bring such great pleasure to Your heart. Lord, somehow may we all be able to sense the joy that You have because of what You have accomplished during these days together. Put Your final touch upon it now. We ask it in Your name. Amen.
James has gotten a bad rap. He has been looked down upon in many ways because there has been a history of people thinking that there is not much to be gained from the Epistle of James.
But it seems to me, as we read these latter books of the New Testament, that something is happening among God’s people which requires a different kind of approach. Apparently, the ones to whom James is writing are people who are already informed about the treasures, the riches, and the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ. But somehow it has been pushed off to the side, and it is not having practical impact upon the lives they are living.
James later refers to his readers as his beloved brethren. Now, brothers and sisters, sometimes when you read what James says, it does not seem as though he is writing to his beloved. But he is writing to his beloved: the people of God, redeemed through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, with whom apparently James had enjoyed a wonderful relationship in the past. Yet now they are scattered in different situations and going through very difficult times.
James’s burden is to write to them very directly. He does not sugarcoat what he has to say. He tells us the way it is. For example, this is a difficult one to swallow, brothers and sisters:
If a man does not bridle his tongue, his religion is useless.
Now, that one requires some sugar around it. You know, when I was a kid, we had to take Castor oil, but a little bit of sugar makes medicine go down. James does not give any sugar. He just tells it the way it is.
Is James irritated and upset, merely trying to get something off his chest? Absolutely not. He knows by revelation what great damage is done to human beings when we, as human beings, do not have control over what we say. So he simply calls it what it is.
But we must understand, I believe, brothers and sisters, that these statements James makes, the writing that we have here, come out of a heart of deep love for his readers.
When we begin reading this epistle, we find James getting right to the point:
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials.
He did not say if you encounter various trials, but when. They are absolutely part of the life of every child of God who has committed themselves to be everything God has decided He wants them to be.
God tailors no coincidences and no accidents. He engineers and tailors—or at least He allows someone else to be the instrument of tailoring—the trials, difficulties, and problems that we encounter.
Remember this morning, brothers and sisters: it was the Lord’s idea for Job to go through what he went through, but Satan was the instrument of what God desired to do in Job’s life. As our brother Lance said the other evening, sometimes—many times—Satan, without even realizing it, is one of God’s faithful servants, accomplishing God’s work.
We need to realize that you and I are still living in a very imperfect world. The prayer our Lord Jesus taught us to pray is for His kingdom to come and His will to be done. Why is such a prayer necessary? Because all we need to do, brothers and sisters, is look around and see that this is not reality now.
We are part of what God is doing. Now, I have to be careful, brothers and sisters, because we could go off and consider many things together, but we need to stay as much as possible on the point. My problem is that I put too much on the front end and do not leave enough room on the end. So I want to be careful not to do that. I am committed to letting you out on time—11:40, right?
A week ago when we were together—or I guess it was just two days ago, though it seems like a week ago—we had fellowship about this matter of faith, because James is talking about the testing of our faith. We cannot go back and even try to sum up quickly what we shared on that occasion, or we definitely will not have enough time.
But it seems to me that God made things simple. We want to make them complicated, but He insists on our returning to simplicity. Faith is not a complicated matter.
Now, let us distinguish between easy and simple. It is impossible, unless God does something in us and then shows us mercy after He does it in us, for us to know this matter of living by faith. God Himself is the source of the faith that He requires us to have and to use.
We can only get it from Him, either as a gift or by the working of His Holy Spirit, taking the Word and causing faith to be built into us. Then He takes our lives and puts us in various experiences whereby that faith is increased and strengthened, and we are able to walk by faith and to live by faith.
As good evangelicals, we emphasize very much what Paul has to say about being justified by faith. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters, that is what God makes available. We are justified.
I have to be careful, because some of these things mean so much to me. It is hard for me just to say “justified” and move on to something else, because we tend to forget what it means to be justified. You know the best definition: “Just as if you had never sinned.”
It is not that He sees you merely as a forgiven sinner. He sees you as if you had committed no sin ever in your entire life. Do you know how righteous you are in Him? In His view, you are as righteous as His Son, because His Son is our righteousness.
My dear brothers and sisters, you have to stand in that one for a while until it begins to soak in and get hold of you. We stand before a holy, righteous God who penetrates every part of our being, and He says to us, “In terms of your standing before Me, you have committed no sin at all.”
Now, that is not the end of the process, but it is the beginning. Paul talks about being justified by faith. But brothers and sisters, let us not pitch our tent there. What is to happen according to the Scriptures after you are justified? What are righteous people supposed to do?
The righteous shall live by faith.
Not merely be justified by faith, but live by faith. James wants to help us understand that our heavenly Father wants to make this matter of living by faith real, practical, and ongoing in the life of every one of His children.
It is sad and grievous how certain things get worked around among God’s people, and we find ourselves using language that we should not use and thinking thoughts that we should not think. When we use, in certain circles, the phrase “living by faith,” who do we usually have in mind? Those who do not have a secular job. They do not go to work every morning at eight o’clock and get off the clock at whatever hour. Apparently, according to us, these are the only people who live by faith.
You do not have a job; you just trust the Lord. Well, my question for you, brothers and sisters—because I happen to fall into that category—is this: What are you living by? In whom have you placed your faith?
If you are a righteous person before God, then God’s requirement and expectation of you is that you walk and live by faith. Everybody.
James, realizing that his beloved brethren are facing some big crises, writes to encourage them to allow God to do the work of proving their faith—testing it.
God has to prove to us that He is Who He is. Now, He has never changed. He is eternally faithful. He is eternally righteous. Whatever word we may use to describe Who He is, He is eternally that way.
But the fact is, brothers and sisters, we do not know Who He is. Even when we become one of His children, we come with minds filled with distorted ideas about Who He is. It is a major undertaking on His part to get us to rethink our ideas about Him.
Let me give you an example. In 1970 or 1972, we were flying on an airplane from Louisville, Kentucky, to Long Island, New York. Seated beside us was a gentleman reading a newspaper. While he was reading, just out of nowhere, he made this loud declaration: “What kind of a god could do that?”
He got everybody’s attention. We came to find out that the article described an event between a father and his little son. They were out in the yard mowing the grass, and somehow, through some strange accident, the little boy got mangled in the lawn mower.
When this man read that newspaper article, he came to an absolutely faulty conclusion because, in his mind, he had a faulty idea about God. “What kind of a god could do this?” What evidence did he have? He was judge, jury, and everything all at once. He took God into the courtroom and judged Him guilty without any evidence, because his thinking was all wrong.
It is true with every one of us, brothers and sisters. We need revelation about Who He is. It is the Holy Spirit, by God’s mercy, Who has been sent here to focus our eyes on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In seeing Him:
He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.
In seeing Him, we are able to make the adjustment in our thinking, have our minds renewed, and know the truth about Who He really is.
To me, James is trying to help his beloved brethren face the difficulties that come and let God use them as a means of bringing them into a knowledge of the truth about the living God.
You know, it is probably true with you, and it certainly is true with me: you read passages of Scripture and perhaps are embarrassed, or unwilling to face the fact that you do not understand what they mean. So you read them quickly and go past them very quickly.
But there is a verse in John 17:3 that has been haunting me for the last few years. The Lord Jesus, in His prayer to His Father, says:
And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
I want to ask you a question. You do not have to speak out, but be honest with yourself: is that the definition or description you would give of eternal life?
If someone said to you, “I read the other day in John 3:16 that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life. Tell me, what is this eternal life?”—what would you say?
I think I can be almost one hundred percent assured that, unless you have been meditating on John 17:3, you would not have given the answer the Lord Jesus gave. For most of us, eternal life means that when I die, I live forever. But that is not what the Lord Jesus says it is.
Eternal life is coming to know the only true God. I am sure there is much more to this than I will ever understand while I am here on this earth, but one thing has come home to my heart: eternal life is mine when the eternal God comes to take up residence in my life, introduces Himself to me, and I get to know Him.
Hopefully, through our experiences, we continue step by step to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what eternal life does. Certainly we are going to live forever, but that is shallow, my brothers and sisters. Please forgive me if somehow that does not register with you, but that is shallow.
Do you want to stay the way you are for eternity? I am going to tell you something: I do not want you to stay the way you are. And I know, I know, I know—you do not want me to stay the way I am, either. You have to live with me.
We need to step up onto the level that the Word of God brings us to and begin to understand that this eternal, almighty God—the God of glory, Whom our brother has been sharing with us about—wants us to know Him. Not merely know about Him, but know Him in experience and interchange.
You have never seen Him. I am not saying you have not had a vision of Him, but you have never seen Him. You have never seen even the Son of God in incarnate form. Yet you know that He is real. He is more real than we are, even though we cannot see Him. He wants us to know Him.
One brother has entitled his book, Don’t Waste Your Sorrows. Do not waste the trials, difficulties, and problems that come. See them as mercy from God, because, my brothers and sisters, you and I will not go down this road from faith to faith without a push—without something behind us to push us out of our refuge into a deeper knowing of our Lord.
What does James say? When the problems come, do what? Have a pity party? Call all your friends and tell them how horrible it is? Is that what he says to do?
He says, have a party, but not a pity party. Get all your friends together and say, “Will you rejoice with me? Let’s have a great time. I’m going through a horrible experience, but let’s rejoice in the Lord.”
Now, I have never been to one of those parties. I have never had one of my brothers or sisters call me up and say, “Ernie, it’s so tough. I don’t know if I can make it through the day, but I’m having a party tonight. I want to rejoice about it. Will you please come?” It just does not work that way.
But brothers and sisters, is this the Word of God? Remember Jehoshaphat? Remember Paul and Silas in Acts 16? Does it work? A prison was thrown open by two men who had been severely beaten, thrown into prison, and at midnight, what did they do?
Did Paul say, “Silas, obviously I’m really hurt. I don’t understand why these guys did this. We didn’t do anything wrong”? They could have commiserated with one another, but they did not do it. What did they do? They began to praise the Lord.
That is what James says we need to learn to do. Now, you know, this is not us, right? This is not who we are. But it is God’s way.
Why? First of all, He has not changed one bit. This is what happens to us when we get into one of these situations we consider almost impossible. All of a sudden, God takes on a different complexion for us. He is no longer the faithful One Who blesses with blessing upon blessing. All of a sudden, I am going through this trial, and God has gone to sleep, ignored me, or whatever. He is no longer the faithful One He was before.
How many experiences do we have to go through until it finally dawns on us? My experiences change, but He never changes. He is faithful, loving, compassionate, gracious, generous, and so forth. He never, ever, ever, ever changes, even when you are going through these situations.
So James says, when it happens, be careful how you respond to it.
There is something else I want to mention for a moment before we get into these verses in James Chapter 2. As I was considering the verses in James Chapter 1, I saw that James tells us that as we respond to the trials and difficulties that come into our lives, it produces endurance—the ability to hang in there when a bigger one comes.
God is building something into us that enables us to face the next round. There are a couple of places in the Word of God that really encourage us along these lines.
One is Matthew 7, where the Lord Jesus says:
Every one therefore that heareth these words of Mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock.
This kind of response to His Word involves a building work that will stand any test that comes—any test. We know, my brothers and sisters, from reading the Scriptures that God’s judgment is going to come. We do not need to have our heads in the sand, ignoring that reality.
He has to judge because He is a righteous God, and He wants everything in His universe to be righteous. He has to eliminate all that which is not according to the standard of His righteousness. It is coming. You cannot cancel the appointment. It is coming.
The question is: are we responding in such a way today that a building is going on inside of us which will stand whatever test should come?
Then in 2 Peter 1, Peter mentions a number of things that need to be part of our lives, and then he says:
For if these things are yours and abound, ye shall never stumble.
To me, brothers and sisters, that is a wonderful promise. God is able, by His Holy Spirit, to do something in us—with our permission, cooperation, and willingness to keep on believing Him and taking the experiences that come into our lives—so that we can stand the test and never stumble.
At the end of Jude’s letter:
Now unto Him that is able to keep you from stumbling, and to set you before the presence of His glory without blemish.
Can you believe it? If it were not the Word of God, I could not believe it.
God, in His great mercy, does not allow us to see all the things that are wrong with us at one time. If He did, it would destroy us. We would not be able to take it. We would go into such deep depression because of the hopelessness of the situation.
But in His mercy, He allows us to go through experiences, and we learn by His grace to go through them. Through this, He enables us to endure, to run with endurance the race set before us. The outcome of this endurance is that we are made perfect, complete, mature, and conformed to the image of the Son of God.
Last night we sang, “Ten Thousand Thanks,” and one of the verses talked about ten thousand lives. If I had ten thousand lives—if we had ten thousand lifetimes to live, and if we could live one hundred years in each of those lifetimes—do you think that, if we worked a certain amount of time every day seeking to make ourselves into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, we would make any progress at all?
Even after ten thousand lives, we could never accomplish it. But God is at work in our circumstances, producing an endurance. If we will stand in that and learn how to respond to the situations God brings into our lives, then through this He is doing what we could never do: conforming us to the image of His Son.
My brothers and sisters, this is glory for us. In Romans 8:
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren:
and whom He foreordained, them He also called:
and whom He called, them He also justified:
and whom He justified, them He also glorified.
To me, being glorified and being conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ are one and the same. This is what God is after in your life.
Somehow, by God’s mercy and grace, may we remember this when the trial comes: God is at work in the midst of that trial, building something into us that will enable us to respond in a way that a great, eternal, glorious work can be done in every one of us.
In James Chapter 1, James says that God wants to work in you until you are lacking nothing. Nothing is lacking. But if you lack wisdom, there seems to me to be a relationship between the trial James is talking about and the wisdom he says is abundantly available to every one of God’s children.
What do you need wisdom for in this kind of situation? When the trial comes, how do you respond? How do you get through it?
Many of us think, “Well, it is up to me now. I have to buckle down, grit my teeth, find the best resources of my wisdom, and find my way through this situation.” What does James say?
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, Who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
I do not know exactly how to translate the word upbraideth, but I think James is trying to say that you can keep coming. God never complains about how many times you come and ask for wisdom. Yes, wisdom to get through the situation.
It seems to me that our great God, in His great wisdom and out of His great love, designed us and created us to live one hundred percent dependent lives upon Him.
We know that justification is nothing we can offer. Sanctification—we cannot pull it off on our own. We are willing to admit that there are certain things we cannot do, but we reserve the idea that there are a few things we can pull off on our own. So we live independently in those areas.
It seems to me that through these trials, these impossible difficulties that come our way, He is seeking to deliver us into total dependence upon Himself.
Our Lord Jesus is God’s model Man. If you want to understand what was in God’s heart when He created man—what He wanted man to become—we find it in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know what I hear Him say?
The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing.
I do nothing of Myself.
I speak not from Myself, but the Father that sent Me, He hath given Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.
To me, this is evidence that the secret of the perfect life the Lord Jesus lived was that He lived in total dependence upon His Father.
But this poison that came into us through Adam’s failure and sin infects us in such a way that we think it is God’s will for us to pull it off. In many places in the world where I go, people have this philosophy: “God helps those who help themselves.”
That is, try your best, and when you get to the end of your efforts, then bow your knee and ask God for help. Is that the way you look at it? If it is, it is not what God has called you to. It is not what He offers you.
Think with me about John 15:
I am the vine, ye are the branches.
Apart from Me ye can do nothing.
How dependent is the branch upon the vine? If it gets detached from the vine, what happens to the branch? It is one hundred percent dependent upon the life that is in that vine.
This is what our Lord Jesus is seeking to help us understand: the life He has called you and me to live—every one of us—is a life of total dependence upon Him. God, in His mercy, arranges circumstances so that we have opportunity to learn that lesson again and again and again.
For the remainder of the time we have, I want to fellowship about what James says in James Chapter 2 concerning this matter of saying you have faith while there is no evidence in what is coming out of your life.
One of the dangers of coming to a conference like this is that we write things down in our notebooks, somehow remember them in our heads, go away, and say, “Lord, thank You so much for what You spoke to us.” But we never work it out. We never work it out.
Certainly the Lord is merciful to us. If we commit it to Him and acknowledge that this is the way we usually handle things, I think He will be merciful to us, and at the right time and under the right circumstances, what He spoke to us during these days can be implemented in our lives.
But the danger is that receiving information, even by revelation, becomes an end in itself. We assume that by receiving the information, the job is finished. But in reality, it is just the beginning.
The Lord Jesus says:
Every one therefore that heareth these words of Mine, and doeth them…
Not merely, “If you hear.” James takes the whole thought of what our Lord Jesus is saying and applies it when he says:
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.
Here in Chapter 2, it seems to me James is pointing out that if our faith in the living God is not a living thing, and there is no evidence of it being alive, then it is useless and can produce nothing.
The faith that God imparts to us, or works into us, is a living thing. It is not a theology. It is not a systematizing of the information we have about God. We can take this Bible and outline it and systematize all the truths we find in it, and yet there can be absolutely no evidence in our lives that we believe what we claim to believe.
That is, it does not change who you are and it does not change how you live.
When I was a very young believer, I went to college and worked at night. I was working with another gentleman. His father had been a preacher, and he had gone to a little church for many years. I was amazed that he could quote long passages from the prophecy of Isaiah.
But he was drunk. He would come to work drunk, but he could quote long passages of Isaiah. Was his faith a living thing? No, my brothers and sisters.
We need to face the fact that this can happen to us. The further you go down the road of following the Lord, the more you go from faith to faith, the danger is that what we have been given by the Lord becomes only information and never gets translated into everyday living.
This is what James is concerned about. He was concerned for those believers in the first century, and the Holy Spirit has preserved it for us so that He can speak to us again in our situation, in our generation.
May we not be people with a faith that is not living. May our faith be living, with evidence that we are willing to say, “I am willing to have my faith tested as to whether it is real or not.” It is not just some confession in which I say I have faith.
James is basically saying, “If you have faith, prove it to me. I want to see it in the way that you live your life.”
James says, for example, suppose a brother or sister came to you. When they arrived at your door, they did not have enough clothes. Let us say it is in the middle of winter. They have no outer coat, only very thin clothes, and it is evident they have not had a good meal in perhaps days.
And you say, “Oh, it is so wonderful to see you. I hope the Lord supplies for you. See you later.”
He says, “Is that faith? Is that the way you respond to the situation?” It is the same with those who say they have faith. You say you love your brother and sister, but there is no evidence. You do not practically demonstrate your love.
So he says it is the same way when you say you have faith. James says you need to have it demonstrated by the way you live your life.
I mentioned on Friday morning that James’s burden seems to be focused on this matter of practical righteousness. Sometimes, brothers and sisters, there are words in the Word of God that we seem to shy away from. They make us feel uncomfortable. But we need to be willing to stand before the Word of God and let it do its work.
We are sometimes satisfied with the first dimension of righteousness: God declares us to be righteous through the blood of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a perfect declaration of God’s perfect righteousness. There is now no record. There is no way they can dig up evidence on you to prove that you were ever a sinner, as far as God is concerned.
The record has been expunged—is that the right word? It is like a computer. There is a button on the computer that I like very much. You can click and drag, and then delete. This is what the Lord has done. It is as though He said to one of the angels, “Go in there, into the record, pick out every one of them, click and drag, and then push the delete button.”
It is gone. No record at all. Marvelous, brothers and sisters. It is something to rejoice over for eternity. But that is not the end. It gets better.
Do you know that our God wants us to be righteous people? He wants to be able to look into our lives with His piercing eyes and see the righteousness of His Son in our character.
You and I cannot produce any of this. We can respond to the discipline He brings into our lives, and that will produce the kind of righteousness He is looking for.
But remember what the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 5:
Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.
What is He talking about? What is the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? Self-righteousness.
There has been an ongoing debate about Paul and James, as though they were at odds with one another. Some commentaries try to figure out whether Paul read James first or James read Paul first, and then they disagreed. No, they are dealing with different issues, brothers and sisters. Paul is dealing with self-righteousness, and James is dealing with unrighteousness.
Unrighteousness shows up in the misuse of the tongue. It shows up when you show favoritism to brothers and sisters who come among you, and in many other ways.
Why is unrighteousness manifested through the lives of God’s people? To me, it is very simple: they are unrighteous. That is who they are—not their standing before the Lord, but their character. There is something in them that causes them to act that way.
It is God’s plan and design that He would eliminate unrighteousness and fill us with His righteousness, the character of His Son.
Our brother mentioned the other day this matter of husbands loving their wives. Am I going too far, brothers and sisters, to suggest this morning that if husbands do not love their wives as Christ loved the church, that is disobedience?
Is it merely a good idea or philosophy of the Lord Jesus that husbands are to love their wives? Is it just a suggestion that will make your family better if you do it? I do not think so. I think it comes across as a command of what is required.
Why do husbands treat their wives unrighteously? Why do they fail to love them the way Christ loves the church? Because they do not have it in themselves. They seek to carry it out on their own, and they fail.
But, my dear brothers and sisters, think with me. If somehow we have experienced the love of God flooding our hearts, the love of Christ coming in and dwelling in our hearts, and it is with that love that we are loving our wives, you will not find any unrighteousness in that.
He has asked us to do the impossible. No, He has not merely asked us; He has required us to do that which only He can do. We are one hundred percent dependent. You will only find that kind of love in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, coming from the Father through Him by the Holy Spirit to us.
God’s objective is not just to forgive us. If God only forgave us of our sin and did not provide a way for us to become something other than sinners, it would be cruel on His part for us always to be coming back and asking Him for forgiveness for the same old thing over and over again.
Now, He will forgive us, but I want us to know this morning that He has made a provision so that this need not continue. That provision is to find the Lord Jesus Christ as our life:
It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me.
He changes our character. When we are changed into the image of God, the underlying quality in our lives will be this: God is love, and it will be the same in us.
Please understand, young brothers and sisters, what God has called you to. He has called you to an opportunity to cooperate with the Holy Spirit so that He can create in you the same character He finds in the person of His own Son.
There is another dimension to this matter of righteousness. He not only wants to see us as righteous, which He does; He wants to change our character so that we have the righteous character revealed in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. But He also wants that righteousness manifested in righteous conduct—the way we live.
It affects the way we relate to one another in the body of Christ, the way we relate to members of our family, how we deal with our finances, our honesty, and every area across the board. He wants there to be an outward manifestation of the righteous Christ Who indwells us.
So James says, “You say you have faith. Show me. I will show you my faith by the way I live my life.” He is not bragging. He is trying to say that this is what God is after. There needs to be evidence, proof, that you are who you say you are—that you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We use this language so much that it loses its meaning. What does it mean to be a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ? Does it mean that you believe there was a man who lived in Nazareth, who was a carpenter, who taught, was crucified, and was raised from the dead? Is that what it means to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?
I do not think so, brothers and sisters. In the most familiar verse, perhaps, in all the Bible:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
The King James Version and others try to find a way to say this, and some say “believe on” or “believe upon.” But the word in the original is to believe into the person of the Lord Jesus—where you are at a place of total reliance and dependence upon Him for everything.
Let me illustrate, if I can. Isabel and I have a friend in her hometown in Brazil. His name is João Batista—John Baptist. There are many John Baptists in Brazil, as well as John Waynes, Julius Caesars, and Billy Grahams. Brazilian people like to use famous names. I met John Sebastian once. He cut my hair.
But this brother called João Batista builds and flies model airplanes—motorized ones, where you build them, put a little engine in them, and fly them by remote control. He loves to build and fly these things.
We were talking to him, and I said, “John, why do you not come to the United States and visit us?” He said, “Oh, I could never get on an airplane.”
Now, if you had gone to him and said, “John, do you believe in airplanes?” he would say, “Sure. I actually make airplanes. I have seen them flying in the sky. I have read about them in books. I believe in airplanes.”
But he really does not believe in airplanes. When could he prove that he believes in airplanes? When he leaves his little town, goes to the airport two and a half hours away, buys a ticket, gets on the plane, lets them shut the door, and lets the pilot push that throttle as the plane goes down the runway and up into the air. Then he believes in the airplane—but not until then.
It is so cheap for us sometimes to say, “Oh yes, I believe in the Lord Jesus.” But do you believe in Him?
We sang about Him being our all in all. Brothers and sisters, it does not cost anything merely to say it. Please forgive me; I am not trying to be unkind to us. My question is: do you believe what you are singing? Is it reality to you? Is He everything to you?
Do you find in Him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge? Paul says that in Colossians 2. Have you discovered that all the fullness of the Godhead is located bodily in Him, and that you find your fullness in Him?
Have you found Him experientially to be your Shepherd—the Good Shepherd, the Great Shepherd of the sheep? I know you have read Psalm 23, but do you know experientially? Can you say with David, “The Lord is my Shepherd”? He is not merely a shepherd; He is my Shepherd. David was speaking out of experience, brothers and sisters.
It is cheap sometimes for us to make these statements. We can say all of this stuff. But do you think it is asking too much for it to be said to us, “Where is the evidence? Where is He?”
I do not want to put a guilt trip on any of us this morning. We are all in the learning process. But hopefully we do not get caught in the trap some of these beloved brethren of James got involved in, where saying it was enough, repeating it was enough, and singing it was enough.
James says it needs to be accompanied with action. There needs to be a proving and some evidence that what you say is true.
Do not merely be satisfied with saying, “I believe that God is one.” James points out that the demons also believe that God is one. But do they respond to Him as One? No, they are in rebellion against Him. You cannot say, “I believe,” and not respond to Him.
Our Lord Jesus says again in Matthew 7:
Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father Who is in heaven.
Then they say, “Lord, Lord, did we not perform miracles in Your name? Did we not cast out demons in Your name?” But He says to them, “Depart from Me. I never knew you.”
They call Him Lord, but they act independently of Him. It is a contradiction, brothers and sisters. When we call somebody Lord, what does that make us? Obedient servants—servants who look to their Master and ask, “What does He want? What is His will? What is His way?”
When we are going through a trial, if we lack wisdom, do not go looking merely in a book. Do not rely on your own understanding. Go to Him. Ask of Him Who gives liberally, and He will give.
But, my brothers and sisters, we use this word Lord until it loses its meaning. May God, by His mercy, recover it for us so that when we use the name “Lord Jesus Christ,” it means exactly that: He is the Lord of my life. He has sovereign rule over me. It is in my heart to please Him, and to please Him only.
Not just to call Him Lord or give Him a title, but from your heart to surrender your whole being to Him. It is in your heart to walk day by day in ways that please Him, under His control and under His direction.
James is saying: you say it, and then back it up with your actions. He gives us two examples, two illustrations, of people in the Old Covenant who did what he says we need to do. First of all, Abraham.
Let us look at James Chapter 2, verse 21:
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar?
Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect;
and the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness”; and he was called the friend of God.
James is saying, “This is what I mean when I talk about faith plus works.” Not faith as a way of making you righteous, but faith that enables you to manifest righteousness in your life.
Abraham was already declared righteous by God. But when it came to Genesis 22 and the Lord said to Abraham, “I want you to offer your son Isaac as a burnt offering,” it says that he arose early in the morning.
At this point in Abraham’s life, God had dealt with him until he knew the blessedness of being obedient to his God. By faith, he put into action what he believed the Lord was telling him to do: take his blessed son Isaac and offer him. He did it as a way of acting out his faith, of living out his faith. His faith was a living faith in the living God, and he manifested it in a living way.
Then James uses another very unlikely example:
And in like manner was not also Rahab the harlot justified by works, in that she received the messengers, and sent them out another way?
My brothers and sisters, please do not think James is saying that Rahab was forgiven of her sins because she did the right thing. Rather, God considered what she did to be an act of faith. She obeyed.
It is worth giving thought to how God used this particular person and now sets her forth as an example of what it means to have living faith. She acted upon the information she had received. Apparently, she had heard about how God had marvelously been with the children of Israel as they came across the Red Sea.
When the two spies came to Jericho and came to her house, she immediately put into action what she knew was the right thing to do. This is faith that works. This is faith in action. This is living faith being manifested.
She did not merely say, “I have heard about how God wonderfully took you through the Red Sea and how all these other wonderful things have happened. Just wonderful. Maybe I will write it down in my journal.” No. When these two men came, she acted.
She hid the two men, and when the people came looking for them, she told them they had already gone. God saw this as righteous, and she and her family were delivered. She has a place in the lineage of the Messiah. Amazing. Amazing grace.
Have you ever stopped to think what the writer of Hebrews is trying to get across to us in Hebrews 11, where he makes a list of all these people?
By faith Abel.
By faith Enoch.
By faith Noah.
By faith Abraham.
By faith Isaac.
By faith Jacob.
By faith Moses.
By faith the children of Israel.
What is he saying? These are men and women whose faith was living faith. It was not a doctrine. Many of them had no Bible at all. They did not have anyone to write a systematic theology for them.
They came to know the living God in a living way, and they responded in a living way by being obedient to what they understood God wanted them to do.
Today, my dear brothers and sisters, I worship God that we have such a heritage of those who have gone before us with a lot less information and a lot less revelation.
Listen to what the writer says in Hebrews 11:13:
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
They were faithful to the little bit that they saw.
My brothers and sisters, how merciful our God has been and is. In the beginning of the letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 1:
God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners,
hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son.
God has given us a perfect revelation of Himself in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When we get to Hebrews 12, the writer is seeking to encourage people in a very critical situation. They are about to go back to where they were living in a cave, seeing only the shadow, when God in His mercy had given them the light of reality.
His encouragement was for them to run with endurance the race set before them:
Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith.
I do not want to be guilty this morning, brothers and sisters, of oversimplifying anything. I do not want to cheapen things having to do with God. But my dear, dear brothers and sisters, God has been so merciful to us to make it very simple.
He has given the clearest revelation of Himself in His own Son, and now He says, “Fix your eyes on Him.” Look unto Him. Consider Him. Sit down and spend some quality time, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, thinking about and meditating upon this One Whose name is Jesus, because He is the full revelation.
It was in my heart this morning to point out some of the great salvation that is ours. It is a so-great salvation. Do you know how great it is? It can make you like the Son of God.
It can restore God’s universe to total wholeness and completeness, until everything in it manifests the glory of God. This is the so-great salvation.
When our brother Lance was talking the other night, he mentioned that sometimes we personalize the Lord Jesus Christ. I am not sure it is right for us to speak of Him as a personal Savior, because I find in my Bible that He is a propitiation not only for my sins, but also for the sins of the whole world. To me, that makes Him a universal Savior.
We can have a personal experience of Him, but He is not ours personally, because we tend to make Him way too small.
I know some of you young brothers and sisters may say, “This is just too much. It is way beyond me to think about Jesus being my all in all—everything I need now, today, and all the way into eternity. I find every bit of it in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Some may say, “Do you not think that is an overstatement, Ernie? A little preacher exaggeration?” If I am guilty, brothers and sisters, I trust God will severely judge me. But I believe what the Word of God says: that in Him, in our Lord Jesus Christ, we find everything we may ever need under any circumstance. It is available to us.
What does living faith do? It fixes its eyes on Him and Him alone, looking unto Him, the Author and Perfecter of faith. He becomes the reality.
How will you ever know Him as your Good Shepherd, as your Shepherd, if you never go through an experience of needing a shepherd? You can go through an experience of needing a shepherd and try to pull it off on your own, get help someplace else, or turn to Him and discover by experience that He is Who the Word of God says He is.
He is a Great Shepherd, a Good Shepherd, a faithful Shepherd, and a compassionate Shepherd.
Do you find all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Him? How many young people, when you are going through classes at university, simply try to pull it off on your own? Or do you ask Him for wisdom—how to study, how to prepare for an exam?
Well, my brothers and sisters, I wish someone had told me this when I was a student. But I want to say it to all of us: every, every, every area of our lives—in Him we find all we need.
Let us take the encouragement from James. Let us not be satisfied, brothers and sisters, merely to say and sing, “Jesus, You are Lord. Jesus, You are my all in all. You are my Good Shepherd. You are my high tower. You are my refuge.”
There is nothing wrong with saying that. But may it be in our hearts to say, “Lord, bring me into experiences of You being this to me.”
Let us pray together.
Father, thank You for putting in Your Word that which we need to hear, even though it is not easy to hear. Lord, it is Your mercy that You would somehow alert us to the dangers and perhaps even the conditions of our own situation.
We want to come this morning and lay our hearts before You. We ask You, Lord, if there is anything of what James is talking about in our lives—if we are merely those who talk and say, with no reality behind it, or if there is little reality—we ask for Your mercy.
Bring us through experience until our faith is a living faith. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.