Introduction
Let me begin with a discipleship question: will we trust and obey Jesus in the real decisions of everyday life? Christ forms us through truth received, repentance practiced, and obedience lived out.
Main Points
Grace and Justification
i'm gonna invite you to turn to the book of james chapter two this morning um if i don't know you my name is kirk i'm the pastor of communities and missional discipleship if i can say that and uh been here about eight months and my one kind of drawback of getting up to preach is just that i don't know everybody yet and that's hard for me because i like to have a connection and so if i haven't got to know you i'd love to do that if that's possible also we all have limitations on how many people we can know so anyway it's good to be here it's a privilege to share god's word with you and that's what we're going to do so if you have an app or bible like i said we're in james chapter 2 in verse 10 to 19. and i'm going to read that for us and then we will dive in okay so james 2 starting in verse 10 says this for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it for he who said do not commit adultery also said do not murder if you do not commit adultery but do murder you've become a transgressor of the law so speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty for judgments without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy triumphs over judgment 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 warm 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 your works and i'll show you my faith by my works you believe that god is one you do well even the demons believe and shudder let's pray father thank you for this passage of scripture thank you that you have spoken to us and i pray god that we would not just hear your word but it would come alive now um your word is living and active and i pray it would come alive in our hearts and our minds so that it can come alive in our lives lord jesus that's my prayer i pray that you would give me the ability to speak in a way that would honor you glorify you and that you give us all an ability to follow you jesus from this time together in your name amen okay so like i said we are in james two we're in this series called the gospel on the ground and i love that name it's a great name for this series and we've been looking at how the gospel does inform our trials how it informs the way that we live with one another that was the message last week was how does the gospel deal with our partiality and how do we deal with the fact that in this church and these churches these scattered communities there were people who were being looked up to because they were rich and cared for and then people who were poor that weren't being cared for as much and this is a pretty common dynamic we see throughout the ancient world and in the in the in the bible like it happens in first corinthians as well and so this partiality that he's writing to them about um i think in one sense we've been looking at james as like this playbook for trials i think i see a little bit of why they might be partial and that is because um you know what it's like when you play for a sports team and you start losing right have you guys ever been on a sports team you've started to lose um and what happens is people start chipping at each other right and people start getting upset and they say losing causes problems and winning solves everything and i don't know if that's true in life but on sports teams it does seem to be that way i've been i've been a coach and i've done various things with sports and i think that like that does kind of happen to be true and so i think that in one sense i can understand the temptation towards partiality in the midst of trials that these people are going through when you start to go through difficult things you start to look at other people and say well why are they getting through on that and why are they that way and you start to have this mindset that i think is unhealthy and he's dealt with that last week as we looked at verses one to eight this gap between honoring the rich and honoring the poor um that's what james has been dealing with and what he does here in verse 10 where we're going to start today is he's going to just double down he's going to actually say let me tell you even more reasons and actually the death blow reason why partiality is unacceptable and not in step with the gospel at all okay and so he's gonna he's gonna do that for us so um as i give a preview of where we're going just to help you a little bit what we're talking about today in this section is james showing us what real faith looks like okay so what does real face faith look like and what does false faith look like and to have the gospel on the ground in our lives we need to know what the true effects of the gospel should be or else we're not going to be able to discern if this actually is taking root and effect in our lives at all and so from this text today we're going to see three things first of all real faith is full of god's mercy secondly real faith is living and active and then third real faith must be complete okay so real faith is full of god's mercy real faith is living inactive and then real faith must be complete so start in verse 10 let's look at that again as we begin it says once again for whoever keeps the law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it okay what i love about where we're starting today is that james is going to give us a really clear understanding of what the gospel is in this section okay and he starts out where the gospel the good news always starts out and that is the bad news in the reason though he's doing this is because he's trying to show these scattered communities that the partiality they're experiencing is out of line with the core foundational aspects of the gospel because the gospel levels us all before god okay and he's in doing this is showing that our greatest need for every single individual on the planet whether rich poor black white young or old man woman citizen or immigrant all of our greatest need is the mercy of god because all of us are lawbreakers in god's world so we got to stop here for a second because um a that sounds kind of harsh sometimes to some people b i'm not sure everybody agrees with the premise that james is talking about here okay his premise is if you've broken one law you've broken them all i mean how many of us struggle with that or have dealt with that a little bit like saying well that doesn't quite make sense to me like if i've stolen something i haven't murdered anyone if i have you know lied i haven't really committed adultery but that's because our modern way of thinking is a compartmentalized way of thinking that isn't the same as ancient cultures okay so for example both the roman culture and the ancient israeli and hebrew and in other cultures mesopotamian cultures they viewed morality as a full system okay for example rome um the roman moral as seneca claimed in one of his treaties that he said he who has one vice has them all right and then the in the law of god the picture we get in the old testament is that it's all interconnected it's holistic um and this makes sense in a way if you think about it because if i have not honored god first the first commandment if i've made idols those first set of commandments if i've not honored god then what's going to flow out of me in biblical terms is going to be things that aren't honoring to other people i'm not going to honor my parents i'm not going to i'm going to feel free to lie to people because there's no god keeping me accountable i'm going to feel free to steal from people all this kind of stuff that is in the ten commandments and so to the jews the law was more was not like this pile of stones that you can take one and kind of place it to the side and say like oh okay it's still standing the law was like a piece of glass okay the law was like a piece of glass and so let's think about that a little bit um have you ever broken a piece of glass okay when i was a teenager i sat down on my parents table one time just being goofy and stupid and just broke a sheet of glass on the table with my bum um but more than that when i was uh in england uh one of the things i noticed was that the backyards were really tiny and kids would play soccer in their backyards and all i can say is that english kids kick the ball really hard because they're good soccer players unlike many in america if you're a soccer player i'm sorry america's fine i'm just saying like look those kids kicked the ball really hard and what would happen from time to time is some ball would go through the window kind of like baseball's here in america right so um imagine this you're in this yard and the kid kicks the ball through the window and his defense to his parents as he comes to explain what's happened is well look um it's not i just hit one part of the window and look it's not completely broken look there's still some full jagged pieces out of the frame right there it's okay like it's the window's not fully broken no it's broken and there's no coming back and that's kind of the right way to think about morality in god's terms in the bible is that god this window to god his law and it perfectly reflects all that he is in his nature and who he is and what his goodness is and his desires for mankind and we've broken that in origin our first parents adam and eve and every single one of us in some way has broken that picture of who god is and it's he's the lawgiver and it's a personal offense and it's also just a shattering of that window so unlike the way we think about it the moral law is not multiple choice okay you don't get to say oh i'm 6 out of 10 there i'm doing okay um no in fact james clarifies that for us in this passage because the next thing he says is that um he who said don't commit adultery also said don't murder if you don't commit adultery but you do murder you're still a transgressor of the law so we've had the kid in the yard picture right that kind of analogy now let's think of another analogy like you're in a courtroom and that courtroom there's somebody who's definitely guilty like you guys have been following i'm sure there's a famous trial going on and some people think he's definitely guilty he's definitely innocent whatever like um but so we're in a courtroom we all can see clearly like dude that guy did it he's got like the proverbial o.j simpson glove on his hand and it fits you know um and so like he's guilty of that murder he's guilty of that crime and imagine then is this guy has killed somebody taking somebody's life and he comes up on to request you know to testify and he says judge listen i know the evidence is stacked against me here i know what it looks like but i just want to tell you i want to make it clear i've been faithful to my wife the entire time we've been married what does that have to do with anything you've murdered somebody you've taken the image bearer's life this we're not talking about your lack of adultery here and so james takes this very intentionally just like jesus did in the sermon on the mount right this is the way james and the sermon flow together jesus said if you've been angry with someone you've murdered if you've lusted then you've committed adultery in your heart and so james is doing the same thing here where he's trying to show us like hey there is no out okay and there you could come up with all the excuses that you haven't done this or haven't done that but in reality you are a law breaker and i think it's really interesting too in the context of the favoritism that's going on in these communities that he uses this idea of murder because think about it for a second poor people are not being cared for rich people are being cared for and you they could think like look we're so good we're like taking care of the body and we're doing this but then these poor people aren't being cared for and literally these believers were not completely naked but they were poor and impoverished to the point where they couldn't provide for their own needs and so therefore if they can provide for their own needs and they didn't have food what's going to happen to them they're going to die and so james really just says like you think you're so good in judging one another you know but you're really just like the law says murders and so this confronts us in so many ways in our society because we tend to lessen the effects of our sin all right um we look at how people are just vicious with each other now sadly like we are polarized in this world we are at each other's throats we judge each other so quickly we judge each other judge each other so deeply at such a superficial level we make assumptions about people and what they believe and who they are from one tweet or one post or whatever it may be and that's all because we've abandoned this leveling effect of the gospel the gospel levels every single person and any time that i would stand up to say like hey look at what you're doing while it may be true i'm just as much a law breaker and so by judging their neighbors partially they've been indirectly been judging god's law and now he's going to move on here in verse 12 and 13. he's shown us all that we all need mercy so um hopefully that helped you a little bit if you're a visitor or a guest and you're not yet a christian look we're not trying to offend you god's not true he's but he is holy not murdering is good not committing adultery is good not stealing is good not lying is good honoring parents is good this is objective truth whether our society says it or not and so i hope you even if you reject that law have like romans 2 says a law in your own conscience where you know you've done wrong in some way even the laws you built for yourself you're like yeah i've kind of messed that up like here's the reality the moral law shown in god's law and in creation and in our conscience just levels us all says we are not okay and that's bad news because um it says here that we need to speak and act as those who are going to be judged under the law of liberty there will be a judgment that takes place at some point in human history there will be a judgment that takes place in some point in our lives life is short it's a vapor like ecclesiastes says and one day we're going to stand before this lawgiver and he's going to have that perfect image there before us of himself and there won't be any way like you know like the guy in court saying like oh i didn't commit adultery there's no way around what we've done here's the good news though mercy in this passage is god's glorious triumph mercy is god's triumph mercy is what we all need mercy is what god gives in his triumph over our sin see the standard that god has is unbreakable is one sheet of glass but at the same time since we've broken it the good thing for us is that our god the god who is the creator of this universe is a god of mercy you see this all throughout the old testament i was just reading the psalms this morning and it talks about god being the father to the fatherless god being those who takes the solitary and puts them in families god is just this pictured as having mercy on all his creation just providing for all the needs that they have the air you know the water that we drink everything that we if we if it was taken away we would be very cognizant of our need for mercy and yet this is who god is he's a merciful god and that's demonstrated and that's kind of pictured here this passage is doing two things it's alluding to the mercy of god but then it's also saying then you should act that way okay so um first of all it alludes to the mercy of god in the fact that um if we go back to verse one there's something mentioned that i want to point out to you at the beginning of this passage it says my brothers show no partiality as you hold the faith of our lord jesus christ the lord of glory that's key phrase here because this is what the bible says about the glory of the lord the glory of the lord jesus and what he said so often over and over again was my hour is coming my glory is coming was the humiliation and the mercy that he acted upon on the cross to secure our forgiveness so that he could pour out mercy to you so if you would just admit that you are a law breaker that you have shattered that image if you would just do that then god says i've done everything i possibly could to secure the mercy that i need to give to you your greatest need is my great greatest triumph you know jesus expressed this that this is the heart of god when he said blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy in the sermon on the mount and here it's like hey judgment's coming and he kind of flips it like you're not going to get mercy if you're not merciful and the heart of this passage is showing that if you've ever seen god for who he is the merciful god you will have to be merciful with other people it will just come out of you that is the way it is one man said it this way those who never show any mercy cannot have internalized and accepted god's mercy it's actually an impossibility jesus and the cross of jesus becomes the benchmark for what god's glory looks like to the world it's unimpressive to the world it's a peasant jew dying on the cross but to god it is the very purchase of the forgiveness that he can offer to those in humanity who have been law breakers john chrysostom said that mercy is clothed with the divine glory and stands by the throne of god mercy is at the very heart of who god is and what he does um tucker has been taking us through the gospel on the ground through movies so i thought i'd play with that a little bit so i'm going to share a movie illustration this morning too who's seen the movie sandlot i mean if you haven't you got to see this movie right like you've got yeah you've got squints and wendy peppercorn you've got repeat you've got scotty smalls benny the jet anyway if you haven't seen it you got to see it i think it's on disney plus um so it's supposed to be clean um anyway so this movie is one of my favorites and particularly for one of the scenes near the end of the movie and the movie kind of revolves around a young boy who moves to town doesn't know much about baseball his stepdad really likes baseball he finds these kids starts playing baseball and in the midst of all of that makes friends and then they're playing in this sand lot every day pretty much and one day they're playing with the ball and this guy benny hits the ball and knocks the cover right off and uh beca because of that they're like oh what are we going to do this uh we don't have another ball and there's this house on the corner uh basically behind the field and there's this big beast they call them this dog that they'll never go in and find all the balls they've hit over the fence and so um anyway smalls this guy scotty smalls goes through step diet's uh trophy room and he takes out this baseball because he's a kid who doesn't know much about baseball what he doesn't know is that when it's signed babe ruth that doesn't mean a girl named babe ruth okay that means actually like a legend of baseball so he takes this baseball and he actually takes it out they start playing with it he hits a home run goes over the fence into the beast domain and they can't get it back well finally he gets it back um and through a series of events but it's ruined and slobber filled and scratched up and they had the dog got out they take the dog back to they finally they thought this guy they're scared of the neighbor the house they're like who is this guy and they walk up and they knock on the door and this charming old man named mr myrtle answers the door and they begin to talk and the guy is blind but he takes the ball he can feel it and he's just like oh you're in trouble aren't you small says that was my stepdad's ball and i took it without asking it was signed by babe ruth mr myrtle says you're not in trouble you're dead where you stand so the mercy comes where he says this here he takes them into his trophy room which is replete and he says here i'll trade you this one's not only signed by babe ruth george he calls him because he knows him and the rest it's signed by him and the rest of the 1927 yankees to which smalls replies why would you trade he says i got a lot of good stuff and you need it more than i do that is a picture of the mercy of god we come to god with our broken scratched up ruined baseball our sin that's all we bring nothing to him can we bring simply to the cross we cling and he gives us this treasure trove this ball of infinite value this pearl of great price what a picture of mercy and you see lamentations 3 22-23 says this it says the steadfast love of the lord never ceases his mercies never come to an end his mercies are new every morning great is your faithfulness and the picture there is that god has just fat stacks of mercy in his trophy room and he's just looking to say who can i give this out to i have got plenty so if you come here this morning you're like that first part was a bit harsh you're calling me a sinner and a law breaker and someone who has destroyed the image of god in the image of man yes but here's the great news of the gospel is that you have a god who is merciful and will give you all that you need that's how in christ mercy triumphs over judgment and so therefore he's saying stop being partial mercy should just triumph if cr if you have received this i want you to act with your brothers and sisters in christian community well um second we're going to see that not only is real faith full of god's mercy but real faith is alive with action look at verse 14. verse 14 says what good is it then my brothers if someone says he has faith but doesn't have works can that faith save him can that faith save him so this introduces us to a concept in both this week and next week uh somebody else will talk about next week we were talking about this idea of faith and works right and this is a constant thing like if you've been part of religious systems maybe even prominent ones here in town um then you'll know that this is often used as a disputation or a reason why salvation certainly couldn't be by only the mercy of god and the grace that he gives us it has to be by something we contribute as well and so people imagine when they read this section of scripture that there's a fight between james and paul and like martin luther thought this and that's why he called james the straw epistle like we should burn it up like but in reality there's no fight here at all i don't think i think it's a matter of context words are used in different contexts and so for to illustrate that like what if i told you this morning that um something was dope what would you think like some of you guys that are older might think like it sounds like a drug to me some of you might think um that sounds like a foolish person a dope you know like dopey the seven dwarf or whatever and then some of you know that means in our modern vernacular like hey that's pretty cool you know it's dope um that's what i think because i'm hip and you know all that kind of stuff no i'm just kidding that's a great dad joke isn't it see i'm embarrassing my kids i'm sure um so anyway if you use the word dope you know that's a contextual word that is defined by generation and context and it's the same way with faith and works in the context of the book of james so one guy jay gresham mock
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.