I grew up thinking that Pharisees were holier than thou religious types, the worst of the worst. They were horrible people pretending to be super righteous people. Was I wrong? Well, no they were and are that, but it was a naive and incomplete understanding of how universal the problem of self-righteousness really is. The world we live in at this moment is really not a very religious place. Yet, it is filled to the brim with self-righteous and hypocritical people that say one thing and do another while at the same time condemning anyone that would disagree or point their hypocrisy out as evil.

While the original Pharisees were religious establishment types, the modern Pharisees have their own religious beliefs and they love power, influence, and public respect fully as much as any biblical Pharisee. They are self-righteous or to put it another way, fully convinced of their own self-defined rightness. They condemn as evil all those that disagree and use public opinion as their source of authority.

With this awareness let’s have a look at a portion of Matthew were Jesus describes this situation in his day and see if any of this sounds familiar.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,

Not long ago I asked my grandson what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said, “I want to be an “influencer” on YouTube”. This made me laugh because of its raw honesty. We all want to be respected, we all want our opinions to be the guiding principles of others. And, we all like to pretend we don’t. The Pharisees were in just such a position in their society. They were the teachers, they were respected in the streets. Their opinions were sought after and people feared to contradict them. They decided who was in and who was out.

Our culture is no different, though the current popular religion has nothing to do with the true God, in practice it has many gods and many dogmas. And there are those that set and enforce those dogmas, they are the respected and feared ones. They are the ones that people fear to contradict. Think about it, people no longer fear to contradict Christianity, that’s how you can tell that Christianity is not the dominant religion in this world. If you want to know who the Pharisees are today just ask yourself who do I fear to contradict? Who sets the tone and who decides what is and is not acceptable? And who is it that is constantly fighting against Jesus and his teachings? These are the modern Scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees.

So why did Jesus talk about them so much?

Why did the Gospel writers spend so much time on them?

Two reasons come to mind for me.

* They are still around.

* The culturally powerful and influential are still at work resisting Jesus and his teachings. They are and always have been energized by the “spirit of antichrist”. They are the influencers and the “powers that be” and they never change because Jesus never changes. They are quite literally anti-Christ.

* We can so easily become them.

* This is the real threat. This is why the second half of this teaching focuses on making sure the disciples don’t become the very thing that they hate. It is all too easy to be right and wrong at the same time. Jesus instructs his original disciples and us to avoid even the language of “teacher” and “father”(both were titles of authority in the culture of Jesus’ time.)

* The way to avoid becoming the thing you hate is humility and service.

This Week

This week as we reflect on this I think there are two ways we can respond as well.

* First we must remember that having cultural authority does not make you right. Nor does agreeing with cultural norms. But our disagreement mustn’t degenerate into a self-righteous hatred either, lest we once again become the very thing we hate.

* We must humble ourselves and serve, allowing our actions be our strongest argument. We will still be hated by those that hate Jesus. But we will be hated unjustly since we will be hated for our actions rather than our hypocrisy and empty talk.

We must “Speak the truth in love” as Paul teaches, neither kowtowing to the mob nor being an ugly mirror image of the mob. But rather showing the reality of our words with our deeds. Loving each other as Jesus loved us and gave his life for us.

Have a great week!

When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked,

This is not my usual New Testament reading. But this story is timeless and one of my favorites. We see in this story that God is not and will not be defined by our human categories. This is why Jesus was so confusing to friends and foes alike. In this podcast I like to focus on topics that help us walk in the way of Jesus. So I have purposely avoided anything overtly political. Jesus was also stubbornly non-political if you follow his life through the gospels. His disciples and others were often encouraging him to be more political, and his enemies were afraid he already was a rising political threat. But thankfully through all these pressures Jesus stuck to his message and his mission and did not succumb to any of these voices.

Today I want to discuss how we can maintain a kingdom focus in a world that desperately demands that we choose to be either “right” or “left”. To begin, the commander of the army of the Lord has come and our orders come from him alone. When we realize this, all other distinctions and labels become meaningless. He is the end of all arguments, God has now entered the world and His word is final. Following Jesus the King of Kings will put us at odds with the world left, right, and center. (Libertarians won’t like it either) When the commander of the army of the Lord shows up (and he has) there is only one side that matters and only one question remaining.

“What would you like me to do?”

The answer to Joshua is a curious one. “Take your shoes off because you are standing on holy ground”. There are several ways to think about the significance of taking your shoes off, but the one I keep coming back to is this: we make shoes to lift us up and to separate and protect us from the ground. When our creator tells us to take off our shoes there is now nothing man made between us and the dust we were created from. It is an act of humility and a recognition of sovereignty before our creator all in one.

So if we are to navigate the current conflicts step one is taking off our shoes and remembering we are but dust without God. Our commander has the only word we need to listen to. And victory will not come by our efforts alone. The right side is not mine or yours it is God’s.

There is a new way

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

The world wants us to go left or right. The world wants to divide us into classes of people, defined in various ways but always, always distinct and separate and at odds. The world cries for unity while dividing into groups and fighting. They shout down those in power while grasping for more power at the same time. They want to be heard, but they want to silence others. They don’t believe in objective truth, but will call you evil if you disagree with them. This is the world we live in, but this is not the kingdom of God.

Jesus is now the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and although this world is still in a state of confusion, governed by the lies of the Devil, the kingdom of God will be fully realized in time. And while we wait He has shown us another way. Let’s call it, “the narrow way” because Jesus called it that one time. It’s called narrow because the other ways are everywhere. Everything in this world wants to drag you down one of the other ways. The way of this world, which is the way to destruction, is wide and easy to find because it’s everywhere and it often looks quite hopeful and nice.

The good news is that the narrow way is not something we have to create, as we see in this passage, God has already created it we just need to walk it. The narrow way is Jesus, the broad way is everything else. This is why Jesus confuses us. We think we can fix our own problems, we can’t. We think we know what to do, we don’t. We think history is on our side, it isn’t. Any plan that deviates from God’s plan is doomed to fail. Jesus is frustrating because he does not join our causes, he demands we join his.

But if we can just take our shoes off and humble ourselves before him we will understand that HE has come. He did not come to join our cause He came to save us from our causes. If we follow Him the world will refuse to trust us, because we are not wholly sold out to one cause or another. The world hates people they can’t categorize and put in a box. Remember, they hated Jesus even though he did nothing but heal, feed, teach, and restore. But people wanted him to join their cause and fight their battles, or if they were in power they were afraid he was going to mess up the status quo. Either way they wanted Jesus to be either for or against them, because that the world can understand. But today just like in Joshua’s time Jesus says no, I am not with your team or the other guys, I am the commander of the army of the Lord - and I have come.

Jesus has come and He is the King of Kings, he is the commander. He did not come to join our causes he came to invite us to join his cause.

This week we will all continue to be bombarded with voices trying to convince us of a particular cause. They will manipulate and intimidate, they will play to our emotions and demonize all those that disagree. What will we do? Will we pray that Jesus joins our cause or will we pray to understand the orders of our commander in this fallen and evil world? We will walk and talk like those who have been set free to serve in love? Or will we take a side and put our faith in our side? Will we follow our commander Jesus in laying down our lives for the benefit of others? Or follow our misguided desires and fight with each other.

We live in an age where it is hard to find a moments peace so let’s take our shoes off, so to speak, and listen to our commander. There is a war to fight but it is not against people, it is against evil. This week let’s fight as our commander fought, let’s do whatever it takes to help people and set them free from the evil that wants to destroy us all.

Have a great week!

In our world mercy seems to be in desperately short supply. Everyone seems very confident that they are right and that those that disagree are either ignorant or evil and probably both. This week we are going back into the letter of James and we are going to look at a single idea, it is an idea we see Jesus speak to on more than one occasion. It is this idea of mercy and judgement.

Last time we were in James we looked at the sin of partiality and James said, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well.”. After which he goes on to describe how according to the law partiality is a sin like any other and breaking any law is damnable. Today we are going to look at his final warning regarding the sin.

James 2:13 For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Our need of mercy is clear to anyone that still has a conscience. If we were to try and justify ourselves based on our perfect adherence to any law we would all be condemned. When we fail to recognize this, we begin to demand a sort of variable justice on others. This is how this passage connects to James’ teaching on the sin of partiality. When we start to value money, power, and influence over faith in the mercy and grace of God we invariably start to pervert justice and fall into sin.

Without the pure gift of God’s mercy and grace we could never stand before the justice of a righteous God. When we forget our own depravity we lose our ability to show this same mercy to others. When we withhold the grace of God from others we shut off our own supply. Jesus describes this in Matthew 7:1-2.

“Judge not, that you be not judged.

Can we stand up to our own judgment? How will we measure up to our own standards? Jesus tells us we will be measured with our own ruler.

And again in Matthew 6:14-15 we see how our forgiveness from God is connected to our forgiveness of others.

For if you forgive others their trespasses,

There are many other such references in the teaching of Jesus as well. To show mercy is the best way of proving that the mercy of God is real. To show mercy to others opens the gates of heaven to us, and allows God’s mercy to flow to us. It is the height of arrogance to think that we are entitled to a mercy that others are not worthy of. It is the height of wickedness to receive mercy and then refuse to show mercy. Let’s look at one more story to illustrate the point that we must never receive the mercy of God without showing it to others.

“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.

This story gets even more shocking when you convert the amounts used in this story into more familiar amounts. The first servants debt would take more than 1000 lifetimes to repay at a day laborers wages. The second debt would take just over 3 months to repay at day laborers pay. This should help us to forgive this week. We must remember that the debt we owed to God was literally unpayable and he forgave us at great cost to Himself. The debts of others to us are trivial by comparison. It is only when we forget the magnitude of the mercy that we have been shown that it becomes difficult for us to show mercy to others.

This week, let’s remember the words of James, “judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment”. And let’s, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” as Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians. This week let’s let the unimaginably great mercy and forgiveness we have been given, flow through us to others.

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,

This is the blessing Paul gave the believers in the Philippian church and it can be ours this week as well, if we will learn to let the mercy God has shown us flow through us to others.

Have a great week!

I like the picture for today, because it says so much without saying a word. In it we can see and almost feel what the process of training is like for these football players. Training is never a passive pursuit. No one accidentally gets trained. Training requires both a trainer and a trainee and they both need to be actively involved or training never happens. Today we are going to take look at some of the ways that the grace of God trains us.

Titus 2:11-14 [ESV]

We are not alone in this world, the grace of God has appeared(in Jesus through his death, resurrection, and the Holy Spirit) it brings salvation for all people, and it is this grace that trains us to renounce ungodliness. This grace is also the source of our hope that our great God and Savior Jesus Christ will return.

But grace is not a passive gift. It is not a “get out of jail free” card. It is a transformative gift. It is a gift that teaches us. But even teaching is too weak a word. It trains us and disciplines us. I think coach or schoolmaster comes closer to the original idea of the Greek word, that is why I chose this picture of a football coach for this article. The grace of God trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.

But it seems to me that in our time grace is often seen as thoroughly passive. Some even act and speak as if grace makes sin irrelevant. Grace covers all so we can live as we please. No. Just no.

Because of this passive attitude, we are also seeing God’s people turn from the grace of God and deny the truth the moment the world applies even the slightest pressure. This lack of perseverance is a sign that we are failing to allow the grace of God to train us. We have chosen our desire for acceptance and status and comfort over the grace we find in the cross of Christ. But the cross is not a symbol of passivity. It is a symbol of self-sacrificial love.

But how does grace teach us?

Grace is a strange concept in some ways. On the one hand even a child can understand that grace is favor that is completely unearned, it is a gift. But when you get into the question of what exactly this gift really is and does the questions get more difficult to answer.

Like everything else, grace begins with God and comes to us through Jesus. It is a gift and it is our only hope in this life. In some traditions grace is understood to come through various means like, baptism and communion. But I think the “means of grace” is better described as, our response to the gift of God’s grace, and this response can take many, many forms beyond simple outward participation in the sacraments.

This passage tells us that the grace of of God teaches us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions(desires). So to respond to this grace we must listen and obey by renouncing ungodliness and refusing to cave in to the pressures of our own desires. But grace is something that is more like a who than a what, consider this passage from the gospel of John.

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Grace comes from, and in some sense maybe is, the indwelling of Jesus through the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit of truth in us, given to us by Jesus, that is teaching us. This presence in us teaches us to give up our former desires and habits of mind and body and to enter into a new life that is godly and upright, a life that practices self-control. A self-control that is only possible now that Jesus has conquered the power of sin and taken up residence within us. We are not alone, we are not orphans according to Jesus he has come to us, and dwells in us. And through His Spirit he teaches us and transforms us into His image.

For those whom he foreknew

The grace of God has been freely given to us all, the only question left seems to be, “What are we going to do with it?”. In all of the verses we looked at today, and in quite a few more scattered throughout the new testament, we see that God has already made the first move. And God through His grace continues to do all the heavy lifting. It seems all we need to do is allow Jesus to do His work in us. We need to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions” as he has taught us. We can do this because He now resides in us by His Holy Spirit, and His Spirit in us can do what we never could on our own.

We are a new creation now, all things are new, but the old still exists. If we choose to, we can still live according to our old nature. But why would we want this? Jesus indwells us, the Holy Spirit indwells us, God is in us in other words. God himself is conforming us into the image of His Son. And as Paul concludes after recounting all of this, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”.

This week

Grace has been given to us, it is a grace so great that I think we often disbelieve it. We wonder, “how can this be?”, but the testimony of prophets and apostles is that God really has done this. So we need to listen to the grace that has been given to us. We need to consider our forgiveness and stop exploiting God’s grace by continuing to live as though nothing has happened. This week we need to listen to the voice of God’s grace through the Spirit and trust in that grace to give us the strength to do what we could never do on our own. Let’s take courage and renounce whatever is left of ungodliness and worldly passions. Join me in being “zealous for good works” this week, as we wait for the blessed hope of Christ’s return as the true king of heaven and earth.

Have a great week!

I once knew a woman who, for over 20 years, was married to a raging grizzly bear of a man. No one would have condemned her for leaving him, but she was a godly woman and trusted her future to God. One day this grizzly bear met God and radically changed, the grizzly bear became a teddy bear. Still a bear, but a bear of a very different kind. The transformation was shocking to all who knew him, but undeniable.

Today we are going to consider another bear of a man who God changed from a raging animal killing and terrorizing the church into a raging missionary terrorizing the Devil and his kind. The change went so deep that his name needed to be changed. This is the story of how Saul became Paul.

But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Is it the day before or the day after?

It occurs to me as I read this story that meeting Saul the day before his conversion, and meeting Paul the day after his conversion would be a very different experience, especially if you were a Christian. And it caused me to think about the people in my life, am I talking to them the day before or the day after?

Far too often I put people in little boxes that I have built for them in my mind, boxes that are more like cages in reality, because I am very reluctant to let them out of those boxes.

Ananias needed a new box

Ananias had a box like this prepared for Saul, and very understandably so. Saul was a genuine threat to any Christian in his day. People talk today of “existential threats” but rarely are they talking about anything like people riding around with the authority to do harm like Saul. Ironically though, Saul saw Christianity as the existential threat to his beliefs and he was not going to sit around and wait to see how it turned out, he was going to act.

So you see, when God told Ananias that he should pray for Saul his response was quite understandable. People like Saul just don’t change, he was quite sincerely an avowed enemy of the faith. Ananias was no child, he knew how the world worked, but now he was being told something that did not fit in his box at all. He was being told to believe something that was exactly opposite of all his experience. He was being asked to pray for healing for a man who had come to harm him and his friends. He was being asked by God to let Saul out of the box he had him in, and allow Saul be who God created him to be. God gave Ananias a new box for a new Saul who would now come to be known as Paul, a man God used to change the world.

With this in mind let’s consider a passage from 2nd Corinthians where Paul was reflecting on the change he experienced which is the change we must all experience.

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this:

This Week

Let’s take a little time to think about the way we think about others. Do we see them as new creations in Christ, or do we still have them safely wrapped up in the box of who they were. Are we helping them to become all that God has created them to be or do we continue to treat them as if nothing has changed. You might be saying, “what about the people that don’t change?” well that is another article, but today we are talking about the people that have turned to Jesus in sincerity. For those that have yet to repent their behavior is on them, but our behavior is on us. We do not change people God does. The question for us is, are we going to help in the transformation like Ananias did? Or, are we going to be an obstacle to God’s work in their life? That’s a question that we can actually answer.

This week let’s encourage the transformational work of God everywhere we see God working in people. Let’s be Ananias to someone God is changing this week. And remember, today you might be talking to Saul, but tomorrow God might transform him into Paul. So if you meet a “Saul” this week remember Jesus loves him, and if you happen to meet a “Paul” this week, let him out of your box and help the poor guy he probably still can’t see very well.

Have a great week!

In George Orwell’s book, “Animal Farm” he writes,

"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS".

This little line has become something of a sarcastic proverb since then. But the problem is real and it’s certainly not new. Current culture and politics have clamped onto the concept of equality to the point that a calm conversation about it is almost impossible in the unbelieving world. Sadly, it’s not always easy to have a calm conversation about it in the church either. Culture is a powerful force.

Today we continue our walk through the book of James. James is not afraid to tackle the cultural poison that has crept into the churches of his day. As we enter chapter 2 James comes out swinging against the sin of showing partiality among the believers.

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.

What is James Saying?

The nice thing about James is his direct and blunt style of communication. He is saying exactly what he means, no figures of speech or obscure idioms. We are simply told not to show partiality between believers. Then he gives the example of showing partiality to the rich. His first statement is not exclusive to the churches treatment of the rich it is a principle that can be widely, if not universally, applied.

However, his example of showing partiality to the rich is as valid now as it was then. So why do we almost instinctively show partiality to the rich (or powerful, or successful, or influential take your pick)? Two things come to mind for me:

* We are looking for favor in return. James reminds his readers of reality here, the believers are more likely to be sued and abused by the rich and powerful than rewarded. It is this lust for reward that James refers to when he says, “have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”. They have some selfish return in mind with all their so called “honor”.

* We assume that being rich means they are wise. How often do we assume that we need to look for rich and successful people when we are looking for church leaders? James contradicts this notion by reminding the readers of something he assumes they should already know. That being, it is the poor that God has chosen to make rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom. Faithfulness is wisdom in the kingdom of God. Poverty is not a virtue in and of itself, but God does bless the poor in spirit as Jesus himself promised in his sermon on the mount.

Love is the thing

James ties this teaching off with a simple but direct contrast.

* If you love your neighbor as yourself

* You are doing well

* If you show partiality

* You are sinning

And the sin of showing partiality is as wicked as any other sin you can commit.

This last line is the most sobering. I along with most every other Christian I have ever met tend to think that socially unacceptable sins are far worse than socially acceptable sins. Just one sin is enough to land us all in the category of sinner. The type of sin we commit is ultimately unimportant. Though not all sins carry the same short term consequences, every sin is equally damnable.

The book of James is sometimes criticized for being a little light on Jesus and the gospel. But I think a closer look at this book in its historical and literary context shows just the opposite. This book is intended to be corrective and instructive not evangelical. James assumes that his readers know the hopelessness of their sinful state and their need of Jesus. They know the foundations of their salvation. His language in this passage and elsewhere seems to assume that they should know better. In this little teaching he warns them of the sneaky nature of sin, and that we can easily engage in sinful behavior even while we are worshiping together.

This Week

This week let’s help each other to see people the way that Jesus sees them. Let’s remember that faith is the currency of eternal riches. Let’s remember to check our hearts as we deal with others to see if we are truly loving them for their sake, or if we are in fact giving honor and praise to others in the hope of some form of personal gain down the road.

“God shows no partiality” according to Paul in Romans. And we are his children, so let’s walk as true children of God this week.

Have a great week!

There are many “benedictions” or statements of blessing in the bible. Romans 15:13 is one of my top three biblical benedictions. Not only is it a blessing but it is a very intentional blessing to all those who believe, Jew and Gentile alike. This is a New Covenant blessing for all who can hear and believe. Today’s passage is found in the conclusion of Paul’s argument for the inclusion of the Gentiles in the blessings of God through Jesus. I am starting towards the end of the passage so if you have the time I would recommend reading over this section in its entirety.

[Paul continues to quote the Old Testament]

Hope comes from God

So where does hope come from? According to this passage hope, joy and peace come from God as we believe in Him. First, it’s important to notice that God is called the “God of hope”. Paul connects hope so tightly with God that he refers to Him as the God of hope. Are there other forms of hope? Sure, but they are false and temporary hopes. At best they can give a bit of momentary comfort, without God to anchor these hopes in eternity they are ultimately disappointing and short lived. God is the God of eternal hope. He gives a hope with eternal value. The hope God gives is a hope with substance. He himself is the thing our faith hopes for. He is life eternal and joy and peace. He is the source of all these things. In Him these things never end and never disappoint.

The world we live in has few sources of hope of any kind. The government is corrupt and incompetent, institutions are overwhelmed and often wrong headed and corrupt as well. Corporations, banks, modern philosophies all fail. They are corrupted and/or bankrupt. Then there is the American way, we trust ourselves. Well, we are corrupt as well, we are the ones that are individually and corporately responsible for the corruption of the world.

Hope is a miracle

To appreciate hope we need to take a long honest look at our own hearts. When we do that, we will stop complaining about evil and start repenting of it - in earnest. John Mayer once wrote a song called, “Waiting for the world to change”. In it he resigns himself to an empty and futile hope that with the next generation in charge things will get better. That was in 2006. When we see, honestly see, what is in our hearts, all hope that the world will “change” through our efforts will leave us. The world will change but we will not be the hero of that story, Jesus is the hero in that story. Only Jesus can save this world. There is hope, but that hope must never be in our own efforts to change things to our liking. The hope that is real is a miracle and a gift from God, just like life itself. Our hope did not begin with us and thankfully it does not end with us.

Hope is a Gift

Hope is a gift from God but it was never meant to end with us. Like Paul we need to actively seed this hope everywhere we go. We need to water that hope with prayer for all those who need hope. We need to cultivate that hope with our words and with our actions, so that all can see that there is hope. Not an empty hope that humanity will eventually “get it right”. But an eternal hope in a God that has been working from the beginning to create and sanctify a people to spend eternity with.

Have a great week!

When I was young there were several years where I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. He needed a fishing buddy to do all the running around a climbing over things that he couldn’t do and I was just the right age at that time. I loved going fishing with him, he was funny and came from a world I didn’t fully understand. He told great stories and always bought me snacks. It was awesome.

One day though, as we were driving I must have said something to offend him, I don’t even remember what I said or did. But I will never forget what happened next. I said, “I’m sorry Grandpa” but he very dryly replied, “I got a cellar full of sorry”.

I was stunned, he didn’t shout and didn’t even seem upset he just said it. When I recovered a bit from the shock, I asked him, “what do you mean?”. He just looked at me and said they exact thing again. I asked again and he repeated it for a third time. At that, I stopped asking and wondered what he meant by that for the rest of the day and far beyond. I still remember it clearly.

Thinking back I am sure he could of easily explained that figure of speech to me but he never did. He wanted me to figure it out. Whether he was inspired in that moment or just plain tired I will never know. But those words stuck with me and eventually I did figure them out. Sorry is as sorry does. Words without action are nothing but an assortment of sounds. As a guy gets older it would be easy to fill the cellar with empty meaningless pseudo apologies and vague regrets.

The book of James is a sermon concerned with issues that are closely related to the problem my Grandpa was trying to teach me about that day. So let’s pick up where we left off a couple of weeks ago and finish the first chapter of James.

 Know this, my beloved brothers:

James covers a surprising amount of ground in this short section. It begins with some amazingly good advice for life in general. We are to be:

* Quick to hear

* Slow to speak

* Put away filthiness and wickedness

* Receive the word you have been given with meekness

But the heart of what James is saying is in the next phrase:

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 

Even though Christianity was still a relatively new movement, James was already seeing some alarming trends among believers. People were giving lip service to all the right things, but were not actually doing them.

Christianity is and has always been a transformitive experience. For example, the inclusiveness of Jesus is often commented on today, but this is a very incomplete observation of the facts. While it is true that Jesus spoke with the so called “untouchables” and “sinners” of his day. His message was, “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. Anyone could come to Jesus, but no one left in the same state that they arrived. They either repented and followed Jesus which changed everything about their lives(which is repentance). Or they walked away and became even more hard-hearted, but now without hope.

James is reminding them that if nothing changes nothing has happened. We not only lie to others with our empty words, but we deceive ourselves as well.

The Mirror of God

This segment concludes with an illustration of a man looking into a mirror. He sees the problem, but does nothing. Seeing is not changing. The deception that seeing evil is to rise above evil is everywhere in our culture right now. Everyone seems to be a “fact checker” or a “debunker” of “misinformation”. So what?

If nothing changes, nothing has happened. Seeing the evil in others does nothing for them, nor does it loosen the grip of evil on ourselves. Looking in the mirror is only helpful if you use that mirror to make changes. And until you get the “log out of your own eye” can you never hope to truly help anyone else.

The true measure of religion

James closes with a simple but brutal tool for assessing our faith. Does our tongue and our life match? If not, our religion is worthless. He goes on to describe what true religion looks like.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this:

to visit orphans and widows in their affliction,

and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

That is a lot to think about for this week. We all need help to keep our confession and our profession aligned. This week let’s look into the mirror of God’s word and ask God what we need to change before we fret about the rest of the world. Let’s help each other do the truth not just talk about it. And let’s not let the world teach us how to act. Thankfully, we are not alone in this, we have the Holy Spirit of God in us and the body of Christ around us to help. Let’s be the body of Christ this week, let’s be the physical manifestation of Christ on earth. Let’s work to make the church which is Christ’s body actually look like Christ.

Have a great week!

When we sin, do we ever imagine that Jesus is standing next to us? I doubt it, I know I don’t, and that’s a big problem. Years ago there was a Christian fad of wearing bracelets with the letters WWJD on them, or “What Would Jesus Do”. As fads go, this was actually a very good question. But, it only works if you believe that Jesus is real, alive, and present.

Without that living awareness of the presence of Jesus, faith becomes an academic matter. Nothing but a series of questions regarding various propositions that we believe to be true or false. But when you have a living faith, in a living Jesus, you are living every day in the presence of Jesus. And with that active knowledge of his presence, most of the so called difficult decisions we face tend to get real clear real fast. So why don’t we live in that place of constant fellowship with Jesus? That is the more difficult question and the one I plan to work on today.

Jesus as an Idea

As I think about this it occurs to me that Jesus has been abstracted down from being a living person that is always present with us, to various sets of abstract ideas, or theologies, or practices, or cultures. We do this because these are the kind of things that we can consider from a comfortable distance as if we were shopping online. There are now so many flavors of Jesus to choose from. We can shop around from church to church to find exactly the flavor that pleases us. We can choose to have a certain kind of Jesus but on our terms, rather than the Lord Jesus on his terms. As Paul once told Timothy:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching,

Now church hopping and “taste testing” is bad enough and I could fill this article and probably 5 more just looking at everything involved with that phenomenon. But I think the most destructive fruit of abstracting Jesus down from a living person to an idea grows in our private lives. We simply can’t have a relationship of any kind with an idea, you can only have a relationship with a living person.

Ideas don’t care and they don’t feel, but a person does. Ideas don’t get offended, but a person does. So if we understand Jesus as a person we need to understand our sins as offenses against an actual person. And not just any person but THE person who suffered beyond understanding and gave his own life to save us from the very sins we are committing.

Though you have not seen him,

Playing Peekaboo Jesus

When my grandkids were young they loved to play Peekaboo. And some of them when they covered their eyes believed that when they couldn’t see us we couldn’t see them. It was hilarious. But here’s what I am thinking, how often do we, or more importantly I, pretend that because we can’t see Jesus he can’t see us? And how often do we act as if he does not even exist?

The Psalmist understands this phenomenon and writes this song to remind us of the living reality of God.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?

This week

Why do we hide? I suppose that there can be many reasons ranging from pure evil to crippling shame. Maybe we like our sin and don’t want to think about Jesus, or maybe the shame of our past sin causes us to want to hide from Jesus. But either way when we do this we walk in unbelief. We don’t believe in the resurrection though we say we do.(which only adds to the shame) We don’t believe that he really forgives, so we are afraid to look into his face. No matter what our idea it’s a bad one. Jesus died to restore our relationship with God. Faith is believing his death was enough. Jesus rose again to give us hope. He poured out his Spirit on us to give us strength.

This week let’s encourage each other in the faith that what Jesus did was enough. Let’s walk in the revelation that not only can we now walk with Jesus and look into his face he desires it enough that the cross did not seem to him to be too high a price. And when we feel overwhelmed let’s remember that the same Spirit that was at work in creation is in us by faith, and let’s have a great week with Jesus.

And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me,

Have a great week!

To be human is to face temptations of all kinds. Jesus was tempted in all ways as well, yet he did not sin. To often though we tend to think of temptation as some kind of external, even demonic or satanic force that is attacking us. But the truth is even more disturbing than an external demonic attack. Today we are going to look at the source of temptation and sin, and it is not pretty.

James 1:12-18 [ESV]

God is Good

We have talked about this before, but the first lie the snake told us was that God was withholding good things from us, and therefore if we wanted good things we were going to have to take them for ourselves. In other words, God is not good and cannot really be trusted. But did the temptation really begin with the snake or did it begin someplace a lot closer to home?

What were we doing under the one tree that God told us we could not have? Why were we examining its fruit to see if it might be good to eat? Why were interested in a source of knowledge that God had forbidden? The snake did not give us our wandering desires, he simply exploited them. The actual pressure to sin was not external it was internal.

From Desire to Death

James says we are “lured and enticed” by our own desires. So it seems that the true root of our trouble begins with our own desires. Are these desires universally evil? Well, no, but also yes. Take hunger it lets us know when it is time to eat. However, that same desire can cause us to steal or even to kill. At this point we are talking about temptation or enticement, not sin. But James describe our desires like they are living things things that conceive and give birth. They are not static or harmless they are relentless and progressive. And what do they progress to? Well, James tells us that when our desires “conceive” they “give birth” to sin. And when sin grows up it’s child is death.

To Sum up this passage

This little passage is an example of what is sometimes called an “inclusio”. Which is an idea sandwiched between two instances of another idea. It is a technique used in the Bible for emphasis at times. So here is the big picture inclusio of what James is saying:

* God is Good (He is not the source of temptation and evil)

* Our desire leads to sin which leads to death (on the other hand)

* God is Good (All good things come from Him and He never changes)

The point here, when you see these ideas together, is pretty obvious. James does not want his readers to forget that sin comes from us and only good things come from God. It seems then as now people are all too eager to blame others, the devil, or even God himself before considering the role of their own evil hearts in their failures.

Are we Doomed?

So how do we overcome ourselves? When I think of this I am reminded of my Dad who used to tease me when I was trying to impress him, “that’s nothin’, why, when I was young I could jump in a bushel basket and lift myself 10 feet in the air”. It made me laugh because even then I knew you couldn’t lift yourself into the air, not 10 feet in the air anyway. Funny how we think we can lift ourselves all the way up to God. Faith is believing that Jesus has done what we can not. Faith is believing,

that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.2 Cor 5:14-16

Our desires flow from our old natures, but we are not who we were. Through Jesus we have died and the enslaving power of those desires died as well. Believing this and walking in that faith is true freedom. We are not doomed to live a life of endless failure.

This Week

So this week, let’s not live as though nothing has happened, let’s not act as though we are on our own against our desires that entice us to evil. This week let’s remember that our new creation in Christ is an eternal life destined to be “conformed to the image of His Son”. When our desires rise let’s remember that Jesus has conquered, the cross is more powerful than our desires, and the Holy Spirit now does in us what we are not able to do for ourselves. And let’s encourage each other with that truth.

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh,

Our temptations spring from our own desires it’s true, but something greater than our desires is at work in us! God is good!

Have a great week!