Sermon Video: The Wisdom that comes from Heaven, Part 1 - James 3:13-18

What is wisdom, how do we recognize it, and where does it come from?  Important questions, no doubt, to which James offers the answer by explaining that wisdom is something that is reflected in how a person lives as it must result in a "good life" and in deeds done "in the humility that comes from wisdom."  This active wisdom comes from above, having God as its source, and stands in opposition to human wisdom, which revolves around envy and ambition.  How we conduct ourselves, our attitudes, tactics, strategies, etc. must reflect God's wisdom, not man's.  It is unacceptable for God's people to behave in a way that brings shame to his name, acting as if the ends justify the means, or as if a win at all cost mentality were acceptable to God.  God does not require, nor does he desire, unscrupulous or immoral defenders.  By way of example, one such self-proclaimed defender of the faith who by his actions has proven that God's wisdom is lacking, is Pastor Steven Anderson.  When our speech is filled with invective, when our zeal causes us to claim that other Christians are following the devil (as he has with his KJV Only rants), it cannot thus be God's wisdom we are speaking.  {For a video from Dr. Michael Brown on the topic of Pastor Steven Anderson's ranting, click on the following link: Dr. Brown on Steven Anderson}
God's people must instead be peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy, impartial, and sincere.  That is what real wisdom looks like, and that is how we must act as the people of God.

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Sermon Video: Tame Your Tongue - James 3:1-12

How potentially powerful are the words that we say (and by extension the things that we write)?  Historical examples abound of the power of communicated ideas, and we all could find an example of the impact of what someone said or wrote in our own lives, for good or for ill.  James takes this level of acknowledgement of the power of the human tongue a big step further by warning us that what we say has the potential to ruin our lives (and/or the lives of others).
As Christians, we have an obligation to control our tongues, to utilize the gift of communication to promote righteousness, and not to spread evil.  In addition, we must always bear in mind that each person we communicate with is, like us, an image bearer of God.  How can we, as his people, praise him on Sunday, and with that same gift, curse those made in his image the next day?  In the end, taming our tongues may be the most difficult challenge of overcoming temptation that most of us face, but it is a crucial task, and by the grace of God we will achieve it.

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Why must I as a Christian love all people?

The following quote from John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 7, section 6) illustrates our duty as disciples of Jesus Christ.  In light of the anger and vitriol on social media by Christian who should not be acting in that way, this reminder of what our Lord requires from us is certainly needed.  Brotherly Kindness is not optional.

Moreover, that we may not weary in well-doing (as would otherwise forthwith and infallibly be the case), we must add the other quality in the Apostle’s enumeration, “Charity suffiereth long, and is kind, is not easily provoked,” (1 Cor. 13:4). The Lord enjoins us to do good to all without exception, though the greater part, if estimated by their own merit, are most unworthy of it. But Scripture subjoins a most excellent reason, when it tells us that we are not to look to what men in themselves deserve, but to attend to the image of God, which exists in all, and to which we owe all honour and love. But in those who are of the household of faith, the same rule is to be more carefully observed, inasmuch as that image is renewed and restored in them by the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, whoever be the man that is presented to you as needing your assistance, you have no ground for declining to give it to him. Say he is a stranger. The Lord has given him a mark which ought 
to be familiar to you: for which reason he forbids you to despise your own flesh (Gal. 6:10). Say he is mean and of no consideration. The Lord points him out as one whom he has distinguished by the lustre of his own image (Isaiah 58:7). Say that you are bound to him by no ties of duty. The Lord has substituted him as it were into his own place, that in him you may recognize the many great obligations under which the Lord has laid you to himself. Say that he is unworthy of your least exertion on his account; but the image of God, by which he is recommended to you, is worthy of yourself and all your exertions. But if he not only merits no good, but has provoked you by injury and mischief, still this is no good reason why you should not embrace him in love, and visit him with offices of love. He has deserved very differently from me, you will say. But what has the Lord deserved? Whatever injury he has done you, when he enjoins you to forgive him, he certainly means that it should be imputed to himself. In this way only we attain to what is not to say difficult but altogether against nature, to love those that hate us, render good for evil, and blessing for cursing, remembering that we are not to reflect on the wickedness of men, but look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, should by its beauty and dignity allure us to love and embrace them. - John Calvin.

Sermon Video: Making Faith Complete - James 2:20-26

After his conclusion that faith that is not accompanied by works is dead, James offers two Old Testament examples to further prove the point.  The first example is the revered Patriarch, Abraham, a man renowned for his faith and righteousness.  The second example is quite the opposite, the Gentile prostitute Rahab, a woman with no interaction with God prior to the moment when she risked her life to save the spies sent by Joshua.  In both cases, actions confirm what faith has already begun, in Abraham's case, decades after it had begun, in Rahab's case, at its inception.  These two examples thus offer proof that actions (works, deeds, whatever they're called) are necessary to vindicate faith, for both those coming from a high position with a track record of faith, and those coming from a low position with no pretense of having a righteousness of their own.  The discussion of the necessity of actions along with faith by James offers a counter-balance to those who might misinterpret the writings of Paul and thus get stuck on the fact that our salvation is indeed by grace alone without moving beyond our initial repentance to focus upon the absolute necessity of having works of righteousness as part of our discipleship.  The path to being reconciled with God is grace (faith in what Christ has already done for us), the only way to walk with God once we have been reconciled is for our faith to propel us to take action.

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Apes, children, and the value of life.

There was a recent incident at the zoo in Cincinnati, Ohio, involving a three-year-old child falling into the gorilla enclosure and the subsequent killing of a male gorilla named Harambe by zoo officials who was either threatening or protecting the child, depending upon who you ask.  Setting aside the question of whether or not Harambe would have harmed the child if the zoo had instead tried to use a tranquilizer on him, for that ought to be a question answered by gorilla experts, we all ought to be able to agree that Harambe could have easily killed the child he was holding on to, whether intentionally or not.  Thus the question should not be about the intentions of the gorilla, but instead about the value of the two lives involved.  One of the two was a endangered gorilla, the other a human child.  How can these two lives be weighed, how can one decide their relative value?
For those who do not believe in God, and thus have no concept of humanity as having an immortal soul, nor of humanity created in the image of God, the question is a much more difficult one to answer.  If you don't believe in God, humanity is simply on step above primates, higher, but only relatively so.  If we are only the product of evolution, and our place at the top of this planet's food chain is only the outcome of chance, and not the design of a Creator, there will be little separating humanity from other life in terms of value.  For those who don't believe in God, the idea that a human life could have less value than an animal's life becomes a possibility.
To those who do believe in God as Creator, who see humanity as a reflection of the divine image, every human life must have an inherent value qualitatively different than any animal life.  Without God, human life is greater in a difference of degree, not a difference of kind.  But for those who see the hand of God in the face of every child, the gap between human life and animal life is, and must be, vast.
I would choose to save a human life, at the cost of any animal's life, even a great number of animal lives.  I would choose a 90-year-old with Alzheimers disease over an endangered baby animal.  I would choose a severely handicapped human life, mentally or physically, over any animal's life.  Why, because that human being has a soul, that life is a gift from God, and it is our duty to protect it in any way that we can.  In case this implication isn't clear too, I would also certainly choose the life of an unborn child over an animal's life as well.
Do I love animals?  I certainly do, some of my best memories and interactions have been with my dogs, and we've taken our one-year-old daughter to the zoo twice already.  My wife is obsessed with hiking in the woods out West to look for moose.  We've done this many times, and will undoubtedly do so again soon when our daughter is old enough to trek along.  I think moose are awesome, and would oppose cruelty or senseless killing of them or any other animals.  But don't think for a second that I would hesitate to protect my wife or child, or any other human life, if it was threatened by an animal.
This recent controversy over the killing of an ape to save a child has been greatly inflated by a significant number of people who have erroneously concluded that the life of the child and the life of the ape have a similar value.  Such belief is wrong, dangerous, and not connected to the teaching of the Word of God.  Perhaps the zoo could have used a tranquilizer, but to do so they would have put the life of a child at a greater risk in order to save the life of an animal, and that decision would have been not only unacceptable, but immoral.  They chose human life because they valued it as they should have.

Sermon Video: Living Faith in Action - James 2:14-19

In an effort to explain why his previous instruction about favoritism and discrimination is of the utmost importance, even beyond the prior notice that doing so is breaking the royal law of loving our neighbor and thus rebelling against God, James follows those thoughts up with a stark example of inactive faith that does not lead to action.  The conclusion about such "faith", of a kind that could watch a fellow Christian in a near-death scenario of need and do nothing in response, is that it is dead.  James doesn't call such "faith" weak or diseased, he flat out labels it dead.  Without actions being produced by faith, actions of righteousness, the only conclusion we can reach is that the person in question has no real faith at all.
Intellectual assent to the idea of God is not enough.  Saying that you believe in Jesus is not enough.  If these words are not matched by actions derived from faith, then the words in questions are just words, and not life changing professions of repentance.  We cannot be saved by works, James agrees with Paul on that (sorry Martin Luther, you were mistaken on this one), but we must have works once we are saved, works that show that we are in possession of a living and active faith.

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The agreement of Paul and James

The book of James has at times been viewed, most famously by Martin Luther, as being in opposition to the message of salvation by grace alone preached by the Apostle Paul.  While this misunderstanding of James has been explained and the reconciliation of James and Paul made clear by theologians long in generations past, an interesting bit of serendipity has occurred to me of late.  I have been preaching verse by verse through James on Sunday morning, and at the same time, working through Romans, verse by verse, in my Wednesday morning Bible Study.  Working on the two of them together, I have been impressed by how many times I have been able to explain something in Romans using a reference to what I had previously preached in James.
Paul's message of salvation by faith, through grace alone, is in no way opposed to James' emphasis on a living and active faith that demonstrates its viability through works of righteousness.  Paul is explaining how a person can become a Christian when he insists upon sola fide and sola gratia, James is showing instead how a person who already is a Christian needs to be living in order to prove it (A theme that the Apostle John takes up in I John as well).  We cannot be saved by our works, but she had better have them once we are saved.  This same point was made again and again by Jesus in the Gospels when he demanded "fruit" from God's people lest they be uprooted and tossed aside as worthless.
To put works before faith is to put the cart before the horse, but to preach a faith that never asks for works as a demonstration of that it is alive and well is empty and foolish.  If you want to quote Ephesians 2:8-9 to talk about salvation by grace through faith, that's the right place to start, but don't forget to keep reading through verse 10, "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."  God saved us by grace, we couldn't do it ourselves, but don't let the necessary emphasis on grace fool you into thinking you don't have work to do for the Kingdom of God.

Sermon Video: The Problem with breaking some of God's Law - James 2:8-13

In order to impress upon his readers the seriousness of their willingness to show favoritism (and thus discriminate), James connects this misdeed to the "royal law" of Leviticus 19:18, "Love your neighbor as yourself".  Jesus taught that this was the second most important commandment, now James adds to the weight given to this commandment by pointing out that breaking one of God's laws is akin to breaking all of them.  Why?  Because breaking the Law of God is not simply a trespass against the Law, it is also an act of rebellion against God.  The Law of God reflects the nature of God, and tells us the will of our Creator, to ignore it is to reject God's authority over us.
In light of the gravity of breaking the Law of God, which all of humanity is guilty of, as a people who have been forgiven by God for our sins, it is incumbent upon us to live our lives now with mercy toward everyone, knowing that one day we will all give an account before God for the use to which we put the grace that he bestowed upon us.

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