2024-09-29 - Covenant CRC - sermon only - Joel Kok

James 2:13ff

Transcript

Today, to help us follow Jesus, we're going to listen to James and what we call the epistle of James. And this morning, it's going to be a little bit different. I'm going to read from the English Standard Version, and I think we have that. We can share it up front. The reason I'm doing that is because our Lord has a lot of revealing things to say to us this morning about “works.”

And I think “works” is the better translation for the Greek word there, and our NIV keeps talking about deeds. So we will read from the ESV at James 2, beginning at verse 14. I will read from the ESV at James 2, beginning at verse 14, and reading to the end of the chapter.

We'll pray for illumination, and then go into James 2.

Hear God's word after we offer this prayer of illumination. Let's join in this prayer for the Holy Spirit. Gracious God, your words are sharp and alive. By your grace and spirit, your words can make us alive so that we can work with you. We pray for all that to happen. As we listened to the epistle of James this morning, we pray, Lord Jesus, that we can hear you in a life-transforming way.

And we trust you to be at work to make this happen. We pray that we can work with you. So we pray for the illumination, the light of your Holy Spirit. We pray this, Lord Jesus, in your name. Amen. So again, James 2, beginning at verse 14. Hear God's word. And again, I thought we'd be up on the screen. It's not there? Okay. So you can look along in your NIVs then, but I'll be reading from an ESV to bring out this word works. Hear God's word, and where you read deeds, I'll say works, and we'll reflect on that. James writes, beginning at 2, verse 14,

What good is it, my brothers, 'if someone says he has faith, but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 'If a brother or sister is poorly clothed 'and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled, 'without giving them the things needed for the body, 'what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works.

Show me your faith apart from works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works. And the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. And he was called a friend of God. That a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way.

For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Friends, as we just heard in our reading, our Lord is speaking many words to us about works. And in addition to that, our Lord is working with us so that we can work with our Lord as His friend, as His covenant partner, as is described of Abraham.

And in the light of our reading, we can put the message we're going to explore this morning this way. Amen. That our Lord is saying to us, in effect, I'm working with you right now in this worship service to make your faith more alive, in fact, even more perfect, as we'll explore a little bit later. In the message, our Lord is also saying I’m working with you In your relationships your friendships. I'm working with you in order to expand the family of faith and bring us more together in Christ. And a little bit later in the message, we'll get a biblical picture of our Lord working with us with respect to works in all these ways. When we hear James in a different Bible reading talk about how our Lord is working in all these ways to make us into a tent, and not just a little tiny tent, but a tent that is so wide that it's going to bring all people together in Christ in an amazing way. All the nations of the earth are going to come into a whole new creation. And James is going to help us think about that with this picture of a tent.

To participate in our Lord working with us in our worship, as he's speaking to us through these words about works through James, we can begin with James himself. But I don't think we can ignore the apostle Paul, who seems to say some very different things, and eventually, we'll spend a little bit of time with our friend Martin Luther, who says, in some ways, some opposite things about faith and works. So let's notice James 2 verse 24 as a verse that we can't ignore, where the Lord, through his spirit, speaking through James, our Lord says, a person is justified by faith And by, I'm sorry, a person is justified by faith and not by works and not by faith alone.

I've got this habit of saying we're justified by faith. James says a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And that can make us wonder how that fits with some of the things that Paul says about faith and works in Romans and Galatians. And, again, we can't help but think, how does that fit with Luther saying, sola fide, faith alone? That's how we get justified and made right with God. Martin Luther emphasizes it is by faith alone and not by works. Luther says that repeatedly in his writings, and we'll return to that again a little bit later in the message, but for now, let's just explore questions we can honestly have About faith, works, and James, Paul, and eventually Luther, we can have an honest faith that seeks an understanding of all those different perspectives and angles and truths and to get some further understanding with a faith that seeks understanding. We can begin by looking at James, and we can begin by looking at James working one way and Paul working another way. Eventually, we will see the Lord bringing James and Paul to work together more closely.

And what we'll want to see here is that our Lord is working through James and Paul in wonderful ways that we can participate in as we listen to God's word and God's whole story about these two apostles. So let's begin with, even though James doesn't emphasize the word grace in our reading for this morning, the only reason that James is able to talk about faith and works, always going together, is because Jesus showed him all kinds of grace.

We've discussed this in other messages, so maybe you remember. When Jesus was living his life on earth, in his flesh, when Jesus was doing all that work to seek first the kingdom, James, and this is the half-brother of Jesus, James, not the James and John, the son of Zebedee. This is James, the half-brother of Jesus.

James did not have faith in his half-brother, Lord Jesus, at that time. Without faith, he didn't work with his half-brother, Jesus, to seek the kingdom of God and its justice and righteousness coming to earth. So James had neither faith nor works. And so how did Jesus come to him? Paul says that when Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to his half-brother, James.

I think we can just wonder what kind of encounter that was. It would be wonderful someday to get some vision of it. But for now, we can just know there was grace there because instead of Jesus saying, "You didn't believe in me, you didn't work with me, get out of here," Jesus brought him into a faith that could lead to works.

Eventually, those works led James to become a hard worker in Jerusalem to help a very small and afflicted Jewish church. We really want to keep this in mind. James is working with a Jewish church in Jerusalem and helping them find ways to understand how faith and works go together. As Jesus is working with James in that way, Jesus also leads another disciple. We'll get to Paul again in a minute, but here, we can just mention Peter.

Peter, at first, thought he was going to be just working with Jews, pretty much. But Jesus leads Peter to start to reach out to non Jews, to Gentiles. And then Peter has to get away from Jerusalem for a little while, because even though he's going to get martyred later on, it's not time for him to die yet.

So Peter has to leave Jerusalem. He's reaching out to Gentiles, and that leaves James again to rise more and more as this hardworking leader who becomes known as someone who prays so much that his knees have these marks of having prayed all this time. He's working hard, and he's working well in helping his fellow Jewish followers of Jesus understand how our Lord fulfills all the teachings that they had received from Moses and how they can live them out.

With a faith in Jesus that leads them to work those teachings of the law, the Torah, in all kinds of new ways. And so that's what's going on. James is working hard with fellow Jewish believers in Jerusalem. And while he's doing that, it's wonderful in all kinds of ways, but something else wonderful is going on.

And that is, Jesus is working through the Apostle Paul in a way that starts with Jews but reaches out even more to Gentiles to bring them in. As Paul starts working with those Gentiles, he emphasizes different things in his teachings about how faith and works go together. So, maybe with James 2, verse 24 in mind, a man is justified not by faith alone but with works.

We can listen to Paul in Romans 3 verse 28, where Paul emphasizes and writes, We hold that a person is justified, that's put in right relation with God and his people. We heard here that we hold that a person is justified, Paul says, apart from works of the law and the Torah. With those words, Paul could seem to be disagreeing strongly with James, who's emphasizing how the faith and the works of the law of the Torah go together.

Paul says actually, we get justified apart from those works of the law. That would be a total repudiation in the way of James if Paul didn't go on to explain more of his context and what he is working on. Because Paul says that we are justified apart from works of the law. The Torah, then Paul goes on to ask, Or, is God the God of the Jews only?

That's where he uses this phrase, which we're going to hear a few times this morning. Paul says, By no means! God is not the God of the Jews only. God is the God of the Gentiles also, because there's this one God. And how is this one God, who for a while had deliberately separated Jews from Gentiles, how is this one God now bringing Jews an”

It is through faith. It's a grace that leads to faith that can bring these Jews and Gentiles together. And that is why Paul emphasizes that God justifies, that God makes right relationships through faith. Even apart from works of the law and then Paul knows how people could hear this in the wrong way says well now Wait a minute Do you think when I talk about how faith comes to us in a way apart from works of the law?

Do you think that means I'm overthrowing the law? I'm just saying ignore all the teachings of the Torah. Do you think I'm saying in effect? We'll just do whatever you want and That's when Paul goes back to that phrase, by no means, no way am I saying that kind of thing, Paul says. He says it's the contrary.

I emphasize how you're justified by faith, and I emphasize that that gracious gift makes it possible for us to uphold the law, to fulfill, as Jesus was doing, everything that the law, the Torah, and the teachings are all about. Faith is the way we can participate in that fulfillment by upholding what the law is meant to do.

The Torah law was meant to shape people who could help others come to know God, trust, and live for the Lord. So Paul knows that Gentiles don't know the Torah, they don't know all kinds of things, and they need to be able to come directly to Christ.

So he gets an angle and says, "It's about faith, that faith you receive by grace, that will help you get into this story that begins in the Torah." As Paul does that, he knows all too well that some people will hear his emphasis on grace and faith. And they are either intentionally or foolishly going to distort and misunderstand what he's talking about.

So in Romans 3, Paul says, Now I know there are people out there slandering me by saying, Oh, he talks about faith, so he doesn't care about works. And in Romans 6, when he's doing grace upon grace, he says with all that grace, does that mean we can sin and not be judged? No, by no means again. And that's this important phrase.

Paul really wants us to understand faith and grace as coming in a way that makes God's Word through the Torah and the Prophets come true, but in ways that are slightly different from the way Jews and Gentiles, who are one in faith, can follow Jesus in slightly different ways.

And that's why when we go back to James, we see James emphasizing not so much about Jews and Gentiles coming together, but James would love Gentiles and all that, but he's talking to his fellow Jewish believers, and he's saying, please know that this faith and this works, they go together. Don't get mixed up abou”

Don't get misled by your own evil desires. Instead, work with Jesus because you believe in him. Do works that show you working with Jesus. Paul and James do that with the Jewish church in Jerusalem in wonderful ways, while Paul is bringing Gentiles in wonderful ways. These two wonderfully inspired apostles have different emphases, leading to people asking questions and then getting into fights about the exact way to think about this. What do you need to know and believe exactly to have faith and to get saved? And that's going to lead to some discussions about the Sabbath. What did Jesus teach about the Sabbath? As James works with his fellow Jews in Jerusalem, he knows Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath in a saving way, but they could still, right?

Celebrate the Sabbath beautifully on Friday evening, leading into a day of rest and worship on Saturday. Paul is saying that the Sabbath is wonderful, but you Gentiles, you're not used to that Friday/Saturday thing, and what you can do is focus on your Sunday morning worship, so that's one difference what to make of the Sabbath.

Another difference is what to make of the different foods. For James, Jesus, again, declared all foods clean in some ways, but he also continued to work as you observe the kosher laws, where you eat certain foods to express your knowledge of the presence of God and participate in His holiness.

James is saying that's the kind of, Eating of the food the keeping of the laws about food in Leviticus that we can do as Jewish followers of Jesus, while Paul is saying you don't have to eat or drink in that specific way as in Leviticus. That was a temporary teaching of God. And then there's the issue of circumcision, and that becomes a pretty central issue.

Again, James and his fellow Jewish believers should continue in this tradition that goes back to Abraham, which they've been practicing. To gather, to this day, when Jews who are just Jews with the Torah, or Jews who believe in Jesus, gather for a circumcision, it can be a beautiful ceremony of people being together in a way that they're participating in a life that goes centuries back.

But Paul says, for you Gentiles, you don't have to do that circumcision thing. I'm going to emphasize a baptism, which is not just something we do for boys when they're only eight days old, but baptism now can happen in whatever's the right time for boys and girls. You get anointed in Christ. So that's the kind of things they were arguing about what to do about the Sabbath, what to do about food laws and Leviticus, what to do about circumcision.

And it got so intense that it was, that even though James and Peter, Paul were both working in marvelous ways, some people started sending out the message, Look, circumcision is a major central teaching, and so let me warn you, Gentiles, these people were saying, if you don't practice circumcision, you're not going to get saved.

You can't be part of the family of Abraham that started that circumcision. You need to get circumcised, or you can't get saved. And so that's the kind of dispute attacks against Paul that started happening. And that's what led to something else happening with James and Jerusalem. So, James has been working with the Jewish church in Jerusalem in beautiful ways.

But now, something else is going to happen in Jerusalem. And what happens is what we call the Council of Jerusalem. And you can read about that in Acts 15. And that is when followers of Jesus got together to say, boy, I know that circumcision goes back to Abraham, that it was going to be kept forever.

What are we going to do about circumcision and Gentiles? Paul and his partner, Barnabas, they come. Peter comes back to Jerusalem for this, and James is there too. And there's all kinds of people gathering together. And then God in Christ works with all of those people in a way that helps them work together in yet another wonderful way.

So again, when these certain people have been saying unless you're circumcised, you can't be saved. The first person that Luke describes in Acts 15 who speaks up is the Apostle Peter. And so Peter, who had really emphasized his Judaism and following Jesus as a Jew, he's been reaching out to Gentiles. He says, ” Our Lord has been sending His Holy Spirit in a way that leads to these people having faith that purifies their hearts.” Of course, that leads to new lives, new works, and good deeds. But He wants to emphasize the Spirit connecting them to Christ by faith, so Peter makes that point.

And then Paul and Barnabas speak up, and Luke doesn't record what they say, but they could certainly tell many stories of Gentiles coming to faith and having a faith that leads to works of love, even though they don't do everything in the book of Leviticus. So they can offer that kind of testimony, which would help some.

But the way Luke portrays it in Acts 15, and the way historians have understood, the crucial event is when James, this utterly dedicated Jewish follower, half-brother of Jesus, James speaks up, and he certainly could have felt, and he certainly could have made a strong case, look, you need to learn more and do more and more like we're doing here.

We are really doing everything that the Bible teaches in Leviticus and beyond. James could have made that argument, but James is so much a loving follower of Jesus that he stands up and says, Listen to me. And that's a very Jewish thing. He's saying, Shema, which is listen, which is like the first commandment.

He's saying, in effect, God will speak to me. Shema, listen. And then he says, We're hearing about all these amazing things that God is doing among the Gentiles. And he says to his fellow Jews, You know what that is? That's a fulfillment of what God taught through the prophets. That's a fulfillment of this story that goes back to Abraham, actually back to creation, that was in the Torah, that's in the prophets.

And to show that it is a fulfillment, James is able to quote from this prophet known as Amos. Amos, in chapter 9 of his book of prophecies, he knows his people have been fighting against each other, going wrong in all kinds of ways. So what's our God going to do to people who have been messing up their works in all kinds of ways?

He's going to keep working with them. And the image Amos gives us, the image our Lord gives us through Amos, is he's going to rebuild that tent. And he's going to expand that tent, Amos says. Amen. Amen. So that not just God's chosen people, the Israelites who became known as the Jews, but all kinds of people from all kinds of nations can come together in that tent.

That's Amos chapter 9, which James is able to pass on to us, and that we can ponder for the rest of our lives, and we can connect it to other stories and prophecies in the scriptures that maybe we can get to in just a moment. But for now, what we can hear from James is someone who could have said, you need to be exactly like me; that someone says, no, all of us come into the story, and God works in different ways as he makes this amazing tent.

And there is this phrase, which may be all too familiar. I'm not sure how many times you've heard it, but I've heard it a lot, and I'm still very grateful for it. A truth that emerges from that amazing tent is that when we are united in Christ, we are not uniform in exactly how we live out that genuine faith in Christ.

So, unity in Christ, for which Jesus is praying right now in John 17, he starts a prayer that he wants us to be one as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus is praying for unity, but that doesn't mean uniformity. It doesn't mean everybody worships and lives exactly like us. And there, I would say, if you could hear Emily talk about her experience of the church in Tanzania, you'd just be amazed at the different things happening there.

There are all kinds of wonderful, different ways that our Lord is working. So even as he unites us in faith, hope, and love, that unity of faith, hope, and love says we will have different practices about the Sabbath or even what we do on Sunday. We will have different practices regarding the food laws in Leviticus, as well as food in general.

We're going to have some different practices there, including some different practices about circumcision. So we're going to have these different practices and emphases, but we're going to be united in the faith, hope, and love of Christ, which comes out in all kinds of ways. And then it turns out that unexpected unity, which includes non-uniformity, actually does fulfill the Bible story that people were calling on.

Because the God who commanded Abraham to start the circumcision tradition, that same God also said to Abraham through your family, all of the families of the earth are going to be blessed, all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed by the nation that comes out of your family. And that's why James can call on Amos 9. He could have called on Isaiah 19 as well, where the prophet there in Isaiah 19 he talks about some of the worst enemies of God's chosen people, the Assyrians and the Babylonians, these terrible empires that just wrecked God's people in so many ways and Isaiah is very aware of all that bad stuff.

But what's his final word? God's going to build a highway, that's his image so that Assyrians and Egyptians and Babylon can all come together to worship God, our Lord, and the Israelites will be a third group, another group in this group that Christ is uniting with. with his Holy Spirit as he fulfills Amos 9, Isaiah 19. And I think for us to understand how we want to be united in faith, hope, and love, even while we respect some different emphases in how people do, we can work with that tent narrative or picture.

We can also pick up the whole narrative of God working in wonderful ways through all kinds of different people. With that in mind, we can turn now to our friend Martin Luther because he really does disagree with James, and that's something we need to acknowledge. This man who says Sola Faith alone also says Sola Scriptura, the scriptures are my final authority. But he didn't exactly practice that with respect to the epistle of James because he called it an epistle of straw; in other words, just not the most important book. He didn't want to rip it out of the Bible; he wasn't trying to trash James or the epistle of James, but he was just saying to pay more attention to Romans 3 and Galatians, pay more attention to them. That's why when Luther was interpreting Romans 3, when Paul says we are justified by faith, Luther added the word alone, sola fide, faith alone. So he adds that word. And then again, he says, don't listen too much to James.

Now, too, we need to understand the story and the context. What led Martin Luther to emphasize faith alone so emphatically? In relation to our scripture reading, as James describes, "Oh, you believe? Even the demons can believe in one God, and they shudder.”

That was a good description of Luther's faith for quite a few years early in his life. He believed in God, and when he believed in God, you know what he did? He shuddered. He was scared. He was worried about going to hell for eternity because when he read words in the Bible like righteousness, justification, and making right, then he would look at his own life and say, Yeah. my works aren't exactly right. I'm not justified. I'm on the way to hell. I am so scared. Luther shuddered because of his faith in God. And so what did God do? God kept speaking to him through the scriptures, and God led him to focus on Romans, which is a legitimate focus. Luther just kept studying those words.

Also, as he kept praying and seeking to experience God, our Lord poured his spirit into Luther in such an amazing way that Luther, when he read about justification in Romans, came to experience this God who loved him utterly and assured him of salvation. Even though I could talk to Luther, I'd say I wish you hadn't said that about James, and I don't think it was right for you to add the word alone into Romans 3. Still, I would be able to say to him, Luther, you witness to God in Christ in one of the most memorable and wonderful ways in the whole history of the human family.

Here, I'll share that when I did my graduate work in the history of Christianity at Duke, I had a teacher named David Steinmetz who was able to portray Luther portraying the hiddenness of God in Luther's theology of the cross, and that helped me understand my own suffering. It helped me understand other suffering as God not abandoning us but working through us with a grace we can accept through faith. What Luther focused on was when it came to works to go back to James's teachings: Does Luther need us, or does God need us? Luther asks to bring him food and clothes. No, God doesn't need us to bring him food, and our neighbors do if they're poor, but God doesn't.

And that's why he emphasized faith alone, by grace alone. Because in his direct relation to God only, he received that kind of message, which did help him to believe. And he didn't become perfect, but he was able to work for and with God in all kinds of wonderful ways, as well as some broken ways. And as people who are still part of that one story, what we can do this morning, is just put ourselves in that one story.

And we can ask when we think about justification and righteousness, what comes to our minds? Do we think about how we're right with God? Do we think about how we're right with our neighbors? What does our God need to do to bring us united in Christ? Even when we did, that's something we can ponder on and on.

As we do, we can turn to one more word from James that we've mentioned a couple of times: perfect. That word is in our reading for this morning. Again, it doesn't get translated that way, but in verse 22, when James describes Abraham's faith getting completed, the Greek word there is telos, which is also a word that means perfected.

So God worked with Abraham through some hard times to complete and perfect his faith. And that has had an effect; that's how God is working with us right now. That is what our Lord is saying to us through the words of James, through the long story of the scriptures, and through the story of salvation that continues today.

Our Lord is speaking words to us, which have a purpose. And the Lord's purpose is a saving purpose. So, for us to not only believe in our Lord but also work with our Lord in a saving way, what we can do is continue to ponder, how am I right with God? How am I in a right relation with my fellow Christians? How am I in a right relation with my neighbors? Because as we ponder and pray about that, God will work with us through his word and spirit. And that word and spirit will have the purpose of perfection, which will be so amazing that in the end, we will be under a tent. We're going to be part of a new creation of people from every tribe, nation, and tongue will be worshiping, singing, and working all together.

It's going to be so glorious. And that's the kind of thing our Lord is saying to us through James this morning. He's saying in effect, work with me on that, not because your works are going to save you, because your work can help you participate in that salvation. So to do that, let's join in prayer.

Gracious God, we thank you so much for your words, and we thank you that your words accomplish your purpose. We thank you for working with us in that gracious way to bring us towards perfection in faith in your way, in your timing. And we pray simply that we can, out of trust, work with you in ways that are right, in ways that lead to the tent, the new creation to which you're leading us.

We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.