Sermons – Grace Evangelical Free Church // Wyoming, MN

John 1:6-13 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Our passage for this morning helps us to see something truly profound about our salvation. God sent prophets for centuries before the Christ, promising and describing the Christ. God even promised one final prophet before the Christ to add one last, definitive piece of evidence of His coming. That prophet was John the Baptist. John was sent from God to bear witness about the Christ, the Light of the World.

From this, we can’t help but think of Isaiah 48:3-5 in which God said, “The former things I declared of old; they went out from my mouth and I announced them; then suddenly I did them and they came to pass. 4 Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass, 5 I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you…” God told His people what He would do well in advance so they would not miss it or give credit to someone else for it.

And yet, in spite of all of this, when the True Light came and revealed himself to everyone, the world did not recognize Him. He stood there in front of them, further confirming His nature and purpose through teaching, signs and wonders, but the world still did not know Him. John (the Gospel author) tells us that this is because before we can recognize the light, we must be born (again) of God. Let’s pray that God would help us grow to better understand and appreciate His sovereign grace in giving us the right to become children of God!

Once again, John’s primary aim in his Gospel was to convince his readers that Jesus was the Christ God promised to send, in order that they would believe in Him and have life. How exactly would he convince his readers of this? We find one of the ways in vs.6-8. In them, John presented evidence in the form of a witness.

As I mentioned last week, it’s easy to make significant claims, but quite a bit harder to back them up. Indeed, generally speaking, the more significant claim, the more evidence required for a reasonable person to accept it. If any of you claimed to be able to run a mile in under 20 minutes, I’d probably believe you simply because that’s not a very fast time and most of you are reasonably fit—not a lot of non-readily available evidence is needed. It’d be a little different if you were to claim to be able to run better than a 6 minute mile. And it’d be another thing entirely if any of you claimed to have broken 4 minutes. Not many people have done that in the history of the world, I follow running enough that I usually know when someone does it, and too many of you eat donuts with me on Fridays. I’d need quite a bit more to go on before I’d believe you weren’t pulling my leg or crazy.

But what are we to make of claims so great that no evidence is truly sufficient? How do you actually prove a claim, for instance, to speak on behalf of God? Indeed, a common theme throughout the Bible is God’s people struggling to listen to and believe those God truly did send to be His messengers. Some of that is understandable. After all, anyone can, and many did, falsely claim to speak for God. Cults and false religions always stem from some version of this. There is always a need to carefully consider this kind of claim. In fact, it was so common and such a problem that God gave His people a number of tests/pieces of evidence over the years. John himself spoke of this in his first letter.

1 John 4:1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

But, how exactly do we test to see if someone is from God? How might their claims be verified? What evidence might they or God give us? Again, in love, God gave His people a number of different ways to do so. For instance, in Deuteronomy 18, God gave the simple test of whether or not the man’s words came true.

Deuteronomy 18:20-22 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ 21 And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’— 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously…

Another (occasional) means God gave to validate the claim to speak on His behalf was the ability to perform some type of miraculous sign. He gave Moses a staff that could turn into a snake (Exodus 7:9) and hold back armies (Exodus 17:11). He also gave Moses the ability to perform other signs to show that he was God’s messenger (Exodus 4:6).

Similarly, Jesus was able to heal the sick and perform miracles to validate the fact that His teaching and mission were truly from the Father (Matthew 9:6).

The early Church leaders were given the ability in the Spirit to perform great signs and wonders. To show that Christ was risen and that they spoke on His behalf, God granted them the ability to heal (Acts 20:9) and preach with power beyond their natural means (Acts 4:13).

Well, we find another means of testing the authenticity of One claiming to speak on God’s behalf in John 1:6-8.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

In order to help prove the claim that Jesus is the Christ, John told his readers of a man “sent from God” to bear witness concerning Jesus. The man was John the Baptist (which will become even more clear as we continue to work through the first chapter). In simplest terms, remarkably, God sent a prophet (Isaiah 40:3) and an angel (Luke 1:13-17) to prepare the world for the coming of John the Baptist, who would prepare the world for the coming of Jesus, the Christ. John the Baptist’s aim in preparing the way for Jesus was the same as John the Apostle’s aim in writing this Gospel: that all might believe in Jesus as the Christ. Again, that’s the heart of v.7.

7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.

Again, don’t miss the simple fact that God gave significant evidence for the Christness of Jesus. He told His people in advance (like Isaiah 48) what to expect, so they would not miss Jesus when He came.

In the end, John the Gospel writer made sure to make it crystal clear that as remarkable as John the Baptist was, he was merely a messenger, pointing to one greater than himself. That’s what v.8 is about, “He [John the Baptist] was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

A few key takeaways for us are:

1. Be on guard against believing false claims about God. Doing so today means testing every claim concerning God against the Word of God. By God’s grace, as participants in the New Covenant, we have the most straight forward test of all, the Bible. We can now know if someone speaks for God by comparing what they say to what God has revealed to us in the Bible, since it gives us everything God requires of us (2 Timothy 3:16).
   
2. Be the most faithful witness you can be concerning Jesus, that all might believe through you! If you have seen the Light, it is your privilege and responsibility to bear witness to it. And, like John, our witness ought to be to everyone, indiscriminately. It’s not up to us to decide who should hear or who might receive the light. We must simply call on everyone to believe through our message. And also under this banner, as witnesses of the Light, the manner in which we proclaim/bear witness to the Light really does matter. To be a credible witness is to love and walk in the light ourselves.
   
3. We must remember that we are not the light. We are not the point of our ministry of light. It’s not about us. We delight ourselves with leading others to Jesus for His glory, not our own.

All of this will become even more clear when we get to the second half of chapter one and into the “Book of Signs”. There’s we’ll be introduced to the person of John the Baptist, hear of his illuminating ministry, and see its result.

Again, John was not the light, but his presence and ministry indicated that the true light, the Christ, Jesus, was here.

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

The time had finally come. After centuries of waiting and longing and hoping and struggling, it was time. God loved the world (as we will see) in such a way that He waited until just the right time to send the Light of the world; and that time was now. Praise God for this, Grace Church. What a gift of grace.

What’s more, we see here that true light must shine. It can’t not. Jesus cannot “turn off” the light, or fail to give it, anymore than He can turn off goodness or truth or love. He can’t not give those things because He is those things. Where Jesus is, He is giving light. As we saw last week, then, this verse does not say that Jesus came to give light, nearly as much as it says that He came and His light with Himt.

But even more central to this simple verse is that Jesus gives light to everyone. We’ll unpack this week after week throughout our time in the Gospel, but let me simply name a few aspects of this now.

1. Jesus gives light to everyone in several ways. It is for all, in that it is what all need. It is for all, in that it both is and illuminates the way to fullness of life. And it is for all, in that it is available to all who encounter it to either accept or reject.
   
2. The manner in which those who encounter the Light respond to it, does not alter the lightness of the Light. Whether we miss it entirely, see it and hate it, are angered by it, reject it, deny it, or embrace it in faith, the light is still the light for all.
   
3. In these key ways, we cannot impose the True Light on anyone. This is very different than the way the world talks about the light of Jesus, but the way the God talks about the light is more important than the way His creatures do.

This, of course, leaves us with the question of how the world would respond. God promised, John the Baptist announced the arrival, and now the Light had come. How would He be received?! Vs.9-11 answer that question plainly.

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

Before getting into the specifics of these few verses, I need you to imagine how silly the scene would be if you were trying to convince someone standing in front of the sun (the giant ball of fire in the sky) that it’s real and bright and hot. It’s right there, shining in all its fury, blazing heat and blinding light, but you’re charged with the task of convincing someone who simply cannot already see or feel those things. What would you say? What could you say? What evidence might you present that would be able to do what standing in front of the sun itself couldn’t do?

As I mentioned earlier, and as I’ll mention again at the end, this is such a significant aspect of John’s understanding of what it means to “receive him [Jesus]” and “know him” that it’s hard to overstate. Jesus, the Christ, the very Son of God, the true light of the world, came into the world. He walked among men and women, the men and women He’d created, men and women who were standing on the earth the Father had made through Him. He is the one to whom all things belong, perfect in holiness, and the exact representation of the invisible God. He stood shining for all to see, and yet He wasn’t even recognized. He wasn’t even seen as light.

He came first to the children of Abraham, John wrote; to those who had the covenants and promises and feasts and laws and had experienced the Exodus and the giving of the Promised Land and the victory of the Dividic rule. “11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

But as we saw, He did not shine only on “His own”. “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him” (v.10). This is like the most dramatic version ever of Undercover Boss. The very one who made the world, walked on the world He made and the world had no idea.

Again, what do you say to someone staring at the face of God, who cannot recognize they are looking at God? What helpful evidence can you give that God is real and present and good and glorious beyond measure and offers Himself to someone, if God standing in front of them offering all of those things, cannot convince them?! That’s the heart of what John was trying to communicate in these few verses in his Gospel and throughout it.

This is the case for all of us at all times. We have the Word, we have creation, we have the heavens, we have the testimony of the saints, we have the image of God woven into us, we have the gospel, and so do our friends and neighbors and family members, and yet, so often, we cannot see the true light that has come into the world.

So, what do we say? “Try harder”? “Just believe”? “Work at it”? No, we cry out to God and urge everyone else to do so as well, “God, open my eyes to behold your glory. If you do not grant eyes to see, I will never see.”

The big idea that this passage introduces is the reality that John’s aim is to help people believe that Jesus is the Christ in light of the fact that His presence alone should be more than enough.

And that leads us straight to the final point.

In spite of all that God had offered and promised, and in spite of the announcing ministry of John the Baptist, the world rejected the True Light. So where does that leave us?

First, John wrote, the offer still stands. And until Jesus returns, it will always stand. “12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…”.

To “receive Him” is to acknowledge the authority—the life-giving, illuminating authority—of Jesus. And to “believe in His name” is to accept all that Jesus claimed about Himself as true. Combined they signify a change from trusting in ourselves and treasuring created things, to trusting in Jesus and treasuring Him above all.

To all who receive Jesus and believe in His name, God will adopt as His own children. No matter what we’ve done in the past or when we do so in this life, if we will truly receive and believe in Jesus, God will give us the right to become His children. No amount of our rejection or hard-heartedness will keep us from God’s love if we will receive and believe.

But that still leaves us with the critical question of how that happens. How do we do so while it’s possible to stand in front of the True light, the source of all light, brighter than a billion suns, and not even know we’re doing so? The answer is found in the final verse.

To believe and receive, we must see the True Light. But to see the True Light, we must first be born. Well, that means we’re all good, right? If you are in this room and can understand my words, you definitely meet the qualification of being born, so you must be able to see the True Light of God and, therefore, receive it and believe in His name. Simple. Not quite; for, to see, receive, and believe, John wrote, not just any birth will do. It takes a special kind of birth.

Before we briefly consider the three kinds of birth that will not allow you to see, receive, and believe, and the one kind of birth that will, I invite you to consider with me the simple fact that being born is perhaps the most passive thing we can possibly do. If you pay careful attention to John’s Gospel, you’ll see this many times in the teaching of Jesus as we work through it.

With that, what kind of births won’t do?

1. First, it is not a birth of blood. God did not give the right to become His children to those, “who were born… of blood…”. In simplest terms, this means that merely being born by natural means is insufficient. Something more than being born as all babies are born is necessary.
   
2. Second, it is not a birth of the will of the flesh. God did not give the right to become His children to those, “who were born … of the will of the flesh…”. Again, simply, this means being born as a result of natural (physical) desires is insufficient as well.
   
3. And third, it is not a birth of the will of man. God did not give the right to become His children to those “who were born…of the will of man…”. That is, being born according to our parents’ plans is not the kind of birth that allows us to see, receive, and believe in Jesus.

Those are certainly the three main components to every normal birth. If none of them are sufficient, what’s left? What kind of birth will do? John does not make his readers wait long before he gives the answer.

1. It is a new birth of God. “he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Again, the rest of John’s Gospel helps us to see what exactly that means, but for now, please understand this simple, but entirely profound teaching of John: a kind of new birth of God is necessary to see, receive, believe, and then become children of God. The question, then, that John raises and answers over and over in his Gospel, is whether we believe in order to be born or if we must be born in order that we can believe. Do we trust in Jesus so that new birth can follow, or do we receive the new birth so that trust can follow?
   
   Plainly, simply, directly, John’s Gospel is emphatic about the facts that Jesus is the Christ, that life is only in Him, that life comes from believing in Jesus, and that belief comes from being born of God.
   
   So, why can we stand before Jesus unaware and unmoved? Why can we share the gospel with the world and have them reject it in anger even though the Light is in the world? Why did you believe in Jesus when so many don’t? Because seeing, believing, and receiving, come after being born of God.
   
   What this means, how it works, and the truly glorious nature of it will become clearer and clearer as we walk with Jesus in John’s Gospel.

Grace, God promised that the Christ would come, and He has. He is the light of the world. He is shining now for all to see and believe and receive. And the call on your life and mine is to do that today—see, believe and receive Him. If you do, you will have life and you will be given the right to become children of God. This is an awesome, undeserved gift. Would you receive it today?

John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Since we began looking at John’s Gospel three Sundays ago, we’ve zoomed in a little tighter each week. On the first Sunday, we started with an overview of the entire Gospel. Then, last week, we looked a little more closely at the first 18 verses, John’s introduction. And now, this morning, we’re going to zoom in again on vs.1-5.

I don’t know if there’s a more significant passage on the nature of Jesus Christ than our passage for this morning. Of course it’s easy to make dramatic statements like that, and hard to really quantify them. Nevertheless, wherever this passage falls on the official significance-of-the-nature-of-Jesus Christ list, it’s without question near the top. In it, John makes nine specific claims about “the Word;” that is, about Jesus, the Christ: The Word was in the beginning (1), the Word was with God (1), the Word was God (1), the Word was a person (2), all things were made through the Word (3), in the Word was life (4), within the life of the Word was the light of men (4), the light of the Word shines in the darkness (5), and the light of the Word overcomes the darkness (5).

Because every one of these claims is exemplified in the life and teaching of Jesus throughout in John’s Gospel, it’s important that we get our heads around them now. That way, we’ll be in a better position to appreciate them when we see them in action.

The big idea of this passage is that the Christness of Jesus was even more awesome than anyone could have imagined. And the big takeaways are more fervent worship, eager obedience, and well-founded hope. Let’s pray that God would grant all three.

Matthew’s Gospel begins, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

Mark’s begins, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Luke’s Gospel begins with a bit longer first sentence, but with the same sentiment, ” Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught [about Jesus].

Each of the other three Gospels begins in a manner that we might expect, promising to tell the story of Jesus. John’s Gospel, on the other hand, begins differently, “In the beginning was the Word.”

Two questions ought to rise straight to the surface of our minds. First, in the beginning of what? And second, what is “the Word”? Let’s consider each in reverse order.

The answer to this first question is both simple and profound. It’s simple in that for John, “the Word” is Jesus (vs.2, 14). It’s profound in the reason for which John chose that title. By referring to Jesus as “the Word,” John was indicating that Jesus is the full and final revelation from God. This is what we read a bit more directly in Hebrews 1:1-2, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…”.

John’s central point here, in referring to Jesus as the Word of God, is that Jesus is the incarnate manifestation of God’s power and wisdom. Jesus would speak only that which is true and He would perfectly accomplish all of the purposes for which He was sent. And so we can trust Him and follow Him and do so in the knowledge that He will never lead us to the wrong place or fail to bring us to the right place. He is the Word of God and you can trust Him, Grace! We’ll see this more clearly in passages like John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.'”

But that leads us to the second question. Jesus, the Word of God, was in the beginning of what? Just like the first, the answer to this second question is both simple and profound. Simply, John clearly meant to draw his readers’ attention to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The “beginning” refers to the creation of time and space, heaven and earth, of all that has been made.

The profound part of the answer to this question is that this is a statement concerning the preexistence, or the eternality, (or aseity) of Jesus. Even though it isn’t as obvious in the translation, grammatically, it’s entirely clear that John 1:1 is speaking of the fact that the Word, Jesus Christ, existed (“with God” as we’ll see in a minute), continually before anything that was made was made.

We’ll see this lived out in Jesus’ life and teaching in passages like John 17:5, “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” What a claim. What a Christ!

The Word was in the beginning and the Word was “with God” at that time (1). Again, this is a staggering claim that John made. Not only has Jesus existed eternally, but He has done so “with God”. That too is a part of the John 17:5 passage I just read, “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

Embedded in this claim–that Jesus was with God from the beginning–is the very purpose of our being. We too exist to be with God. Contrary to what most people think when they think of Christianity, Christianity is not mainly a sexual ethic or list of rules or prohibitions. Christianity is not mainly about Sunday mornings or giving money. And the main offer of Christ isn’t your best life now. Christianity, at its very core, is an offer of eternal fellowship with God through Jesus Christ. And it’s available to us because Jesus has eternal fellowship with the Father.

This will become clear in the Gospel in passages like John 17:20-21 where Jesus prays for His followers, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us…

I imagine you can already tell that there is a sense in which John is building in his portrayal of Jesus. That He is the Word, the manifestation of God’s power and wisdom, is remarkable. That He has been that eternally, is more shocking still. That He has eternally been that in the presence of God is yet another level. What’s next? How could John’s claims get any more staggering? Well, we’ll see as we consider the third claim John made.

What’s been hinted at already is made explicit in the final clause of v.1. We might ask how it’s possible for Jesus to be the Word, the eternal, incarnate power and wisdom of God, who lived forever in fellowship with God. And here John tells us that it is possible because Jesus is God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

What we have here is a fairly explicit statement concerning the very nature of God. It’s clear that Jesus is not the Father (for He was with God), but it’s also clear that He shares in the divine nature with God. We’ll come back to this again and again throughout John’s Gospel (as I mentioned in the introduction sermon).

John 5:18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

John 8:58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.”

John 20:28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”

Ultimately, this is the source of our hope in every one of Jesus’ promises, and especially His ability to atone for our sins and bring us into fellowship with God. It is because He is God, the sovereign ruler of all, the Word, that He is able to accomplish His every purpose and that His promises will never fail. It is also because He is God that He did not have sin of His own to be atoned for. It is because He is God that He was able to die for all of the sins for all who would receive Him. And it is because He is God that He can legitimately offer everlasting fellowship with Himself! What a claim. What a Christ!

The second verse, ” He was in the beginning with God,” is simply a restatement of the beginning of the first verse, with one slight (albeit critical) addition. If all we had was John 1:1, we wouldn’t have any real understanding of what John was talking about concerning the Word. The word we translate as “Word” (logos) was a common enough word in both Greek and Jewish culture. For the Greek it referred to the impersonal idea of reason or knowledge. It wouldn’t have been surprising at all to hear that reason existed eternally with the gods. Likewise, to the Jew it referred most specifically to “God’s powerful self-expression in creation, revelation, and salvation” (Carson, 116), and more generally to God’s wisdom. Again, it is not hard to imagine a faithful Jew nodding along in agreement when John claimed that this was with God from the beginning.

What we find beginning in v.2 (and more significantly still in v.14), however, is the idea of the “Word” being a “He” (literally, “the one who”); that is, a person. This would have been unintelligible to the Greek and at least a bit eye raising to the Jew. Proverbs describes wisdom personified (as a woman), but John is talking a bit differently still.

The Word, the logos, for John was no mere abstract concept. It was far more than a simple declaration that God is eternally wise or eternally working. It is a declaration, once again, that the Word was a person. And this too is directly tied to our purpose in life. Our ultimate end, through faith in Jesus, is not fellowship with an abstract principle, but with a person, the fullest and most complete and perfect person, Jesus Christ. It is not an overstatement to say that all the good we’ve ever sought in friendship or marriage or parenting or in any other person is found fully in Jesus. Every relational need that we’ve ever felt is found fully in Jesus. Likewise, none of the things in another person that break or limit our fellowship with them are found in Jesus. His highest promise is that He will withhold nothing of Himself from us when He comes back for us from heaven.

1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Are you getting a sense of how truly remarkable John’s introduction is and how truly staggering is his description of the Christ is? Well, he’s not done yet.

Another question that we might ask from John’s opening words is, what was Jesus doing “in the beginning with God”? There is certainly more to the answer than what John gives us in v.3, but there is not less. That is, John fills us in on an important piece of the answer.

3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

In the beginning Jesus was with God, creating the universe! The passage we’ve considered several times in Hebrews echoes this, “…through whom also [God] created the world.” That’s quite an accomplishment to have on your resume.

Without getting too far into the weeds, John reveals something really remarkable within this remarkable claim. Consider again, the very beginning of Genesis.

Genesis 1:3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light

Genesis 1:6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters7 … And it was so

Genesis 1:9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so

Genesis 1:11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so

Genesis 1:14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night…” And it was so

Genesis 1:20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens…And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds…” And it was so.

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”…and behold, it was very good.

Do you see what this means? “God said” and it “was so”. That is, God created all that He made through simply speaking it into existence. He created through His Word. He created, John wrote here, through Jesus. Jesus was the Word through which God made all that has been made.

What a claim. What a Christ! Grace, ” these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

The sixth claim made by John was that in the Word was life. In v.4, John wrote, “In him was life…”. From the previous point, this may seem redundant. That is, we just saw that God made all that has been made, including all living beings, through Jesus. In other words, it doesn’t sound like anything new to say that “in him was life.”

That might be part of what John meant in the beginning of v.4, but that’s far from all of what he meant. The main point here is that Jesus doesn’t simply give life, He is life! As we saw earlier, in John 14:6 Jesus didn’t say “I have the life”. He said “I am the life”. Similarly, when we get to passages like 5:26, we’ll get an even fuller sense of what John had in mind. There, Jesus taught, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”

There are so many implications of this that it’s hard to even begin to address them. Many will come out as we see this reality play out in the Gospel. Let me simply mention two here. First, to say that Jesus offers eternal life, is to say that Jesus offers Himself eternally. We’re seeing over and over in these opening verses that the greatest gift we might receive is Jesus! Jesus is eternal life. Jesus is salvation. Second, this means that issues of life are not ultimately tied to the dignity of the person (although it is tied to that too), but to the dignity of Jesus. The fact that Jesus is life is at the heart of how we ought to think of birth, infertility, abortion, birth defects, murder, and euthanasia, for instance. If He is life and all life has life in Him, there are few things that should cause us to tremble more than undervaluing or devaluing life in all who are made in His image.

To have life in any sense is to have Jesus in some sense, for in Him is life. And to have eternal life is to have Jesus in the fullest sense. What a claim. What a Christ.

Seventh, in v.4, John wrote, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

OK, Grace, I know I say this kind of thing fairly often in my preaching, so I wouldn’t blame you if it produces a diminishing rise in attention. Nevertheless, this is a big deal. It means two things that are absolutely critical to the living in this world.

First, every day, all day, we are all (every person on earth) faced with choices—moral and ethical choices, logistical choices, relationship choices, worldview choices, job choices, family choices, education choices, entertainment choices, money choices, clothing choices, housing choices, food choices, and on and on. Further, every choice every one of us makes is made on some basis; on some set of beliefs or preferences or goals or desires or authorities.

In this short, simple clause, in the second half of the fourth verse of his Gospel, John declared that the Jesus alone is the true light, the only true source of wisdom and understating, the only true source of reason and rationality, and within all of that, the only legitimate basis on which we can make our countless every day choices. Jesus alone illuminates the way things truly are.

This is what Jesus meant in John 14:6 when He said “I am the way and the truth.” This is also what He meant in John 8:12 when He said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Second, the fact that in Jesus was life, and the life was the light of men, means that the light comes only, fully and truly after the life. It is only once we have new life in Jesus—the new life, which is Jesus—that the illuminating, wisdom we need to live as we were made to live in this world comes. The reason for this will become clear in the next, and second-to-last point. But what a claim. What a Christ!

We just saw that the wisdom and understanding, the light, of Jesus always, only comes on the other side of life in Jesus. The reason for that, John tells us in the first part of v.5, is that we are born in darkness. That is, we are born in sin. The light isn’t shining into light. It’s shining into darkness. And the most definitive characteristic of darkness (in the morally contrasting sense in which John/Jesus uses it), is that it is opposite, opposed to, hates light. Apart from the life of Christ, we love the darkness. But John wants his readers to understand that once the light of Christ shines upon us and through it, the life-giving grace of God, we see!

5 The light shines in the darkness…

This, we’ll see more clearly in passages like John 3:19, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For now, let’s praise God that while we were still in the darkness the light of Christ shown into it. Praise God that God did not wait until we came to the light on our own that He sent the light to shine in our darkness while we were still in it.

Finally, and most gloriously, not only did the light shine in the darkness, but it did so victoriously.

5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

This is big news in the literal and immediate sense—there were some who tried to kill Jesus and snuff out His life. Nevertheless, He rose from the dead—they could not overcome Him. But it is bigger news still in the eternal and eschatological sense. Grace Church, there will never be a single speck of darkness that will gain victory over the light of Jesus the Christ. Because of the cross and empty tomb, never, anywhere, ever, will darkness overcome the true light of Jesus. Neither Jesus, John, nor I are ignorant of the evil that seems to be winning all over the world. So this will certainly need some explaining. And that will come when we get to passages like John 12:35: “So Jesus said to them, ‘The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.’”

For now, however, and in conclusion, believe the promise of John and Jesus, that the darkness has not, nor will it ever, overcome the light, which is Jesus, who is the glorious Christ. Place your hope in that and you will not be put to shame. Seek your rest in that and you will know peace.

The Word was in the beginning (1), the Word was with God (1), the Word was God (1), the Word was a person (2), all things were made through the Word (3), in the Word was life (4), within the life of the Word was the light of men (4), the light of the Word shines in the darkness (5), and the light of the Word overcomes the darkness (5). What claims. What a Christ!

John 1:1-18 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

Welcome back to the Gospel of John. Last week I gave you an introduction to the whole of the Gospel. In it, I mentioned that in the most basic terms, there are four parts to John: An introduction (1:1-18), a longer section on Jesus’ teaching and ministry (1:19-12:50, the Book of Signs), a longer section on the last few days of Jesus’ life (13-20, The Book of Glory), and a conclusion (21). This week is a type of introduction to the introduction.

My simple, but lofty aim is to help you all appreciate more fully John’s central claim that Jesus is the Christ, in order that you would more fully live in light of that glorious, eternal, guiding and life-giving reality. To do so, this sermon has four parts. First, I want to simply present a number of the Old Testament passages in which the Christ was promised and described (Christ is the Greek/NT translation of the Hebrew/OT word, Messiah). Second, I mean to revisit and reiterate John’s claim that Jesus is the fulfillment of all of those passages. Third, I’ll help you to see how John’s introduction, our passage for this morning (1:1-18), relates to all of that. Finally, and most briefly, I intend to give you a few glimpses into how the Christ-promises of John 1:1-18 are demonstrated and proven in throughout the rest of the Gospel.

Let’s pray that God would show us the glory of Jesus Christ and transform every fiber of our being in light of it.

By some accounts, there are nearly 600 OT references to the Christ. And as I mentioned in the introduction, the first part of this sermon is a survey of a number of them. The passages I’m about to share with you offer a number of descriptions of the Christ God promised to send. Some will be familiar from Christmas time, but I specifically chose a number of less familiar ones too, in order to give you a fuller sense of the scope of what the Bible says. My aim is not to do a deep dive into any of them, but to help you appreciate the vast array of Christ-promising OT passages. My hope is that you would be amazed as you consider the glory of the promised Christ.

And my sense is that doing so will require you to imagine yourself in a truly tough spot (maybe really sick or in deep financial trouble or in what seems like a broken relationship), imagine not being able to see any way out of that problem, and then imagine God promising you that someone like the person described in the following passages would come and rescue you. How awesome would that be? Do I dare believe? Oh, if only it were true and he would come quickly!

The very first OT Christ-passage comes almost immediately after the Fall of Adam and Eve. Genesis 3:15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. This is a simple promise that the Christ would be a descendant of Eve and would one day defeat the power of the devil that had just won a tragic battle.

Genesis 49:10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

The Christ would come from the line of Judah and would rule forever.

Numbers 24:17-19 I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab …19 And one from Jacob shall exercise dominion and destroy the survivors of cities!”

The Christ will conquer and destroy all His enemies.

Deuteronomy 18:15-18 “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— … 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

The Christ would speak on God’s behalf and with even more authority than Moses.

Job 33:23-28 If there be for him an angel, a mediator, one of the thousand, to declare to man what is right for him, 24 and he is merciful to him, and says, ‘Deliver him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom; 25 let his flesh become fresh with youth; let him return to the days of his youthful vigor’; 26 then man prays to God, and he accepts him; he sees his face with a shout of joy, and he restores to man his righteousness. 27 He sings before men and says: ‘I sinned and perverted what was right, and it was not repaid to me. 28 He has redeemed my soul from going down into the pit, and my life shall look upon the light.’

The Christ would be an angel (messenger), a mediator, a ransom, a merciful redeemer, and a restorer of righteousness.

1 Samuel 2:10 The LORD will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

The Christ would be anointed and strengthened by God in His kingly rule.

2 Samuel 7:12-13 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

The Christ, the eternal king, would come not only from the tribe of Judah, but also from the line of David.

Psalm 2:7-9 I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. 8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. 9 You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

The Christ would be begotten of God and God would bring everything under subjection to Him.

Psalm 22:16-18 For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet— 17 I can count all my bones—they stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

The Christ would be pierced and mocked, but not broken.

Psalm 16:10 you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.

The Christ would go to death, but not remain there.

Isaiah 7:14 the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

The Christ would be born of a virgin.

Micah 5:2 But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.

The Christ would be an ancient ruler from the city of Bethlehem.

Malachi 3:1-2 the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. 2 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.

God would send a messenger to prepare the way of the Christ and the Christ would come with fire.

Isaiah 40:3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Again, the way of the Christ would be announced by one set apart by God.

Malachi 4:5-6 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.

The prophet Elijah would come and bring about a revival of repentance to prepare the way for the Christ.

Zechariah 9:9-10 Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10 I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

The Christ would be king of the whole earth and would bring righteousness, salvation, and peace while humble and mounted on a donkey.

Zechariah 12:10 I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.

The Christ would suffer and die to bring the mercy and grace of God.

Isaiah 53:1-12 he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? 9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. 11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.

There is a lot more that could be said about every one of these verses and the many other OT Christ-passages, but I invite you to truly imagine the hope these promises would bring to a lost and lonely and desperate people. Imagine how wonderful these words must have sounded to all who would dare to believe. They are but a brief sampling in order to help you more fully appreciate the Christ-promises and with that, the next section.

Once again, the overall purpose of John’s Gospel is to show that Jesus is the Christ promised in all of those passages. As you stand amazed at the promises of the Christ, stand in even greater awe and wonder that all of them were speaking of Jesus! In chapter 20 John tells us directly.

John 20:30-31 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God…

It’s hard to put into words just how significant of a claim this is. To even begin to grasp it (as I mentioned earlier), we have to try to put ourselves in the place of Abraham’s children. We have to remember God’s promise of being with them as their God. We have to remember God’s promise to make them into a great nation and provide for them a great land. And within that, we have to try to recall their centuries long history of a roller coaster of high highs and low lows. Remember that the main covenantal promises of God (of countless offspring and fertile land) came first to Abraham. And with that, remember Abraham and his wife Sarah getting older and older without a child. We have to remember miraculous conception God eventually granted to old, barren Sarah. We have to remember the fledgling, wandering family through Abraham’s son, Isaac, and grandson, Jacob. We have to remember the betrayal, imprisonment, and eventual rise to power in Egypt of Jacob’s son, Joseph. We have to remember the slow, but steady increase in number of offspring to the point that they made the greatest power in the land (Egypt) nervous, resulting in a centuries-long enslavement. We have to remember their covenant-defining, spectacular rescue at the hand of God.

We have to remember the giving of the Law, the promises, the sacrificial system, and the feasts. We have to remember the taking of the Promised Land. We have to remember the prophets, judges, and kings who both faithfully and tragically led Israel. We have to remember the pinnacle of Israel in King David and the building of the temple under his son, Solomon. We have to remember the sin-wroght, divided kingdom under Solomon’s sons and the gradual and devastating decline of the nation to the point where God was silent for 400 years.

We need to remember Abraham’s children’s spectacular oscillations between acknowledgment and rejection of God; between obedience and disobedience to God; between faithfulness and faithlessness; between desperation and ecstasy; between God’s blessing and curse; and between their prideful, ridiculous confidence in themselves and a broken, conquered realization of their need for God’s help.

And within all of that, we need to remember that God promised to send One who would fully and finally deliver Israel from her enemies and, more importantly, from herself. That is, we need to remember Israel’s deep, deep longing for the promised Christ to make all things right when it seemed as if all things were wrong.

The claim that John made, therefore, that Jesus was this Christ, the very Son of God, was truly earth-shaking. There was perhaps no bigger claim that John could make about a man. This was the very thing that God’s people had so long, longed for! And to make sure that everyone who read his Gospel knew that he knew how radical of a claim it was, he wrote,

These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

I’ll mention these things over and over because they shape and flavor all of John’s Gospel, and because they ought to shape and flavor all of our lives.

As we work through John, we’ll see that even though Abraham’s children had a spectacularly high understanding of who the Christ would be and what He would accomplish, and that even though they were right to long for His coming, deliverance, and reign, their view wasn’t right in either content or intensity. They missed the true nature of the Christ and how truly awesome He would be. It is for all of these reasons that John began his Gospel by making Christ-claims about Jesus that were even more remarkable than the Israelites were expecting. That’s where we’ll turn now.

At the end of his Gospel, John told us why he wrote what he wrote—to prove that Jesus was the Christ. At the very beginning, in the first 18 verses, John described the Christ he wanted his readers to believe in in staggering terms. He certainly claimed some of the OT passages we just read, but he also went even further than all of them. With that, let’s look again at our text and the unfathomable claims it makes about Jesus of Nazareth.

With all the weight of centuries of waiting and expecting and longing for the Christ, John’s Gospel begins…

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Much that John would claim about Jesus as the Christ would fit neatly with the what was described in the OT Christ-passages. Indeed, the idea of the Christ being “with God” in a certain sense, would not have been surprising at all. Likewise, the Christ being linked with the wisdom of God would not have been hard to fathom (Deuteronomy 18:18). However, linking the Christ with the Genesis 1 creation account, along with the idea of the Christ being eternally with God, as God, was something different, altogether. This is hinted at in the Genesis 3 passage we read earlier, but no one would have been prepared for what John wrote. Similarly, the idea of the Christ being the wisdom/knowledge incarnate was not something Abraham’s children would have expected.

To understand this even in a child-like way is to be absolutely awed. It is to find help for every trial and hope for every struggle. Jesus, the Christ, John wrote, was eternally with God, indeed He is God, He is wisdom embodied, and He participated fully in the creation of the world.

4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

This is more familiar territory. We saw in a number of passages earlier that the Christ would bring life in the way of salvation and redemption. We saw earlier that the Christ would be a guide—a light—to the people of God. We saw earlier that the Christ would be righteous. And we saw earlier that the Christ would be entirely victorious! Jesus was all of this according to John. Jesus is life, He is light, He is victorious, and He is the Christ.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

Before the Christ would come, John wrote, God would send a messenger to announce His presence (Mal 3:1-2, Isaiah 40:3, Malachi 4:5-6), John the Baptist was that messenger, and Jesus was that Christ.

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Again, while God would send many people to reflect His light to the world and while the enemy would send many counterfeit lights, Jesus, the Christ, John claimed, was the one true light of God. And yet, as a number of OT Christ passages promised (like Isaiah 53), the light of Jesus would be rejected, even among His own people because they loved the darkness. To those who would receive Jesus as the Christ, however, John taught here that they would be born again of the Spirit as God’s children.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

The Christ would be born as a man and would live as a man, but would have a glory, a glory of grace and truth, that was from God. And the Christ alone, being from the Father alone, has seen God and came to make Him known. This is Jesus, Grace Church! He became flesh and dwelt in divine glory among us! He is the only Son of God. He is full of grace and truth. He has seen God because He is God!

The simple point, once again, is that in this introduction (that we’ll look more closely at in the coming weeks), John was making spectacular claims about Jesus—that He was the fulfillment of every OT Christ-promise and more still! He was and is the hope of the nations and the hope of you and I!

As I’ve tried to make clear, in the first 18 verses of his Gospel, John wanted to put all his cards on the table. He claimed all of the OT Christ-promises for Jesus and even expanded on them. It’s one thing to make claims, however, and it’s another to back them up. The rest of John’s gospel was meant to back them up. The stories about and the teachings of Jesus that John recounts in his Gospel are all meant to demonstrate and defend the spectacular claims he makes in the introduction.

The main takeaway for all of us is to recognize afresh that more than anything else, we need Jesus. More than anything else, Jesus is our help and hope and healing. More than anything else, Jesus is truth and life. More than anything else, Jesus is our guide and our way. And all of this comes—not through our own good works or righteousness, but—through God’s mercy and grace to all who will receive him, who will believe on His name. Would you do that today? Would you receive Jesus Christ and call on His name, that all of the promised blessings of the Christ would be yours forever!

I was especially helped by D.A. Carson’s “The Gospel According to John” (Pillar) and Edward Klink’s “Exegetical Commentary on the NT,” vol. 4, John (Zondervan) in preparing this introductory sermon. Although I only quote them once, their fingerprints are all over this sermon.

In grad school, before you can write your final thesis or dissertation, you have to turn in a prospectus and have it approved. A prospectus typically includes your paper’s rationale, a brief survey of relevant scholarship, the basic game plan for your paper, and a comprehensive bibliography. While a thesis or dissertation can be hundreds of pages, a prospectus is usually pretty short—just a few pages. What really caught me off guard when it came time to write mine was how much work needed to be done in advance. For the most part, you have to gather all the books, do all the reading, form your arguments, determine your structure, and even have a tentative conclusion. Basically, you have to do all of the work except the actual writing. For someone like me, who wasn’t really expecting that, it’s a pretty overwhelming starting point.

As I’ve mentioned to a few of you, beginning to preach through a new book of the Bible is a lot like that. It takes a lot of work to get your head (and heart) around the whole, so you’re in a good place to preach the parts. I’ve spent the past two weeks doing just that. This week’s sermon is a prospectus of sorts. Having read and listened to John many times, having read hundreds of pages in commentaries, and having prayed a great deal for myself and all of us, I’m eager to share with you all the background of John, its relationship to the other gospels, its basic structure, its distinctiveness, and John’s aim in writing it. And all of that is meant to serve as guiding lights as we work our way through John in the coming months. Thanks for loving God and valuing His Word enough to free me up to share all of this with you.

Let’s pray and then we’ll dive in.

The title given of the book I’ll be preaching on for the foreseeable future was given to it all the way back at the beginning of the second century: The Gospel According to John.

Gospel (with a capital “G”) is a specific title given to the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life found at the beginning of the NT. One commentator notes that it indicates the book’s “message, its subject matter, and even its purpose—to ‘evangelize’ or ‘announce good news’” (Klink, ECNT, 43). The Gospel according to John, therefore, tells the story of Jesus Christ and the good news it is for the world. In that sense, it is profoundly historical and theological. What a gift!

On a deeper level still, John’s Gospel, wherever it describes the nature, teaching, and works of Jesus, is in its truest sense, an autobiography. Since God is the ultimate author of all Scripture, every passage that speaks directly about God is autobiography, and the Gospels are in many ways the purest version of that. What a remarkable realization that is for us to make. How much more carefully and eagerly and humbly will we read and listen if we can keep this in mind—it is ultimately God’s telling and interpreting the story of God? What a gift!

With all of that, it is good to get our heads around the human author of this Gospel. Given the title, it might seem like an obvious answer: John! But even that needs some explanation as there were a number of Johns in the NT. I’ll save you countless pages of reading and cut straight to the chase. Both by the internal evidence in the Gospel itself, and by every noteworthy account, it seems that the Gospel According to John was written by the Apostle John, the author of 1, 2, and 3 John, and Revelation, the brother of James (not the same James who wrote James), the son of Zebedee, and the “beloved disciple” described in John 21:24-25, “This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true. 25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

We’ll consider the internal evidence for John’s authorship more as we work through the Gospel. Regarding the accounts of John’s authorship, it goes about as far back as possible. One of the church fathers named Irenaeus knew well another, earlier Church Father named Polycarp, and Polycarp knew the apostle John and wrote of his authorship of the Gospel.

That John the Apostle wrote this Gospel is important because it means that it was written by one of Jesus closest disciples. John (along with Peter and James) certainly had a front row seat to the most significant events of Jesus’ ministry. There is, perhaps, no greater witness to call on concerning the nature, character, teaching, actions, and implications of Jesus, than John. What we have here, therefore, is (once again) truly a gift.

It is also helpful, as you’ll see as we move through John, to have a decent sense of when this gospel was written. While there is some debate as to the date, most scholars who hold to inerrancy believe that John’s Gospel was written somewhere between 80-95AD; after the martyrdom of Peter and the destruction of the Temple.

Finally, in the way of background, it’ll help us to best make sense of what we have in John if we know who he had in mind when he wrote his Gospel. Without getting too far ahead of myself, from John’s stated purpose (in chapter 20), as well as the focus, language, and perspective within the Gospel, it seems clear that John primarily had a skeptical (skeptical of Jesus) Jewish audience in mind. This too, we’ll look more closely at as we move through the John.

As you all know, there are four Gospels. Three of them—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—are very similar. They follow a common chronology and have most of their stories in common. For that reason, we refer to them as the “Synoptic” Gospels (synoptic means “able to be seen together”). The fourth Gospel, John, is different. Even a casual reader will almost immediately notice a dramatically different style and structure in John than the others.

The more I read over the past two weeks on the background of John, the more I became convinced that it’s good to say a few words on the relationship between John’s gospel and the other three. Sifting through it all, there are four things that rise to the top.

First, there are significant differences, and even apparent contradictions between events in John and that of the other three. There are no story parables in John, while they are staples in the Synoptics. John is also missing any account of the transfiguration, any account of an exorcism, and even of the institution of the Lord’s Supper.

What’s more, in John’s Gospel, John the Baptist denies being Elijah while Jesus teaches that he is in Mark. In John the disciples almost immediately call on Jesus as Messiah in John, while it isn’t until much later in the other Gospels. In John, Jesus cleanses the Temple right at the beginning, while that isn’t recorded in the Synoptics until the very end of Jesus’ ministry. There are three Passovers mentioned in John and only one in the Synoptics. Even the time of Jesus crucifixion seems to be different in John from the rest. The simple point I’m trying to make here is that it is good to pay attention to these things as we move through John (for reasons I’ll explain in the fourth point).

The second thing to note concerning John’s relationship to the rest of the Gospels is that John provides remarkably helpful details that explain parts of the other Gospels that we wouldn’t otherwise understand. For instance, John reports much more of Jesus’ ministry in the south (Judea) than the other three. When we get there, we’ll see how truly helpful this is in making sense of some of the things we read in the Synoptics concerning Jesus’ ministry in the north (Galilee). Likewise, John helps us understand the charges against Jesus concerning His promise to destroy the temple. The Synoptics record the charges, but only John records the things Jesus actually said to bring them upon Himself (2:19). And although John records no exorcisms, he does explain the nature of the demons in a way the Synoptics (which do record exorcisms) don’t. Again, the simple point is that John fills in and explains a number of things that are hard to make sense of with only Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Third, there is a lot of discussion in the commentaries about whether John had read or otherwise been exposed to the content of any/all of the other three gospels. There’s a lot of discussion, but no agreed upon conclusions. Many of the arguments on both sides make sense and seem to have some merit. The main reason it matters is in relation to the first two points. If John had read any of Matthew, Mark, or Luke, it would almost certainly prove that any apparent contradictions were just that (apparent) (1) and the manner in which John fills out some of the other Gospel accounts (2) was intentional. If John didn’t have access to the other Gospels, we’d need to look elsewhere to explain those things, which many have done convincingly, but the consistency we find would be an even greater attestation to the divine origin of all four. In other words, knowing definitively whether or not John had access to the Synoptics might be interesting, but not necessary.

And fourth, there are noticeable differences between all the Gospels, and especially between the three and the one. Combined, however, the four Gospels tell a unified story of the life, ministry, teaching, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Combined, they tell a fuller and richer version of the story than any would on their own. Combined, they create a sense of awe and wonder that is more colorful and textured than if any were missing. In other words, by God’s design, we get the fullest and sufficient picture of Jesus life on earth not through any one, two, or three Gospels, but through (and only through) the combination of all four. For God’s glory and our good, I’ll do my best to point these things out as we work our way through John.

Having briefly considered John’s background and relationship to the other three Gospels, it’s good to be aware of two important things concerning the structure of John’s Gospel.

First, while there are certainly more subdivisions that could be made, it seems plain that the Gospel of John is made up of four main sections. There is an introduction in John 1:1-18, a long description of Jesus ministry on earth in 1:19-12:50 (sometimes called “The Book of Signs”), an account of the passion week (probably only the last two days) in 13:1-20:31 (sometimes called “The Book of Glory”), and then a sort of conclusion in chapter 21.

In the introduction, John makes some startling claims about who Jesus is (more in a minute). In the section on Jesus’ ministry, John organized his stories to best verify the shocking claims he made in the introduction. And within each major story, Jesus performed a sign or made a claim that forced people to make a decision about whether they would follow him or not. In John’s account of the final week of Jesus life, everything came to a head and Jesus fully and finally proved Himself to be the long-promised Messiah in His teaching, prayers, death, and resurrection. And finally, in the epilogue, Jesus presented Himself to His followers in His glorified body and commissioned them again; Peter specifically.

The second thing that we ought to have a firm grasp on concerning the structure of John’s Gospel is the fact that John was least concerned among the Gospel writers with structuring his Gospel chronologically. For the most part this is tied to his purpose in writing (more on that in the final section of this sermon). For Luke, who was mainly interested in faithfully recording the facts of Jesus’ life, chronology was critical. But for John, who was mainly interested in demonstrating that Jesus was the long-promised Messiah and that eternal life was found in Him alone, chronology wasn’t nearly as important as was describing the events in Jesus’ life and ministry that most clearly demonstrated that.

The structure is relatively simple, but there is unimaginable glory within it. Keeping in mind which of the four sections we are in will be an important part of truly understanding and rightly applying the truths of John’s Gospel. I’ll try to regularly remind you of where we are within the Gospel as we move through it.

I mentioned in the introduction that, even if you have no idea why, it’s easy to tell that John is different than the other three Gospels. John’s somewhat unique purpose (again, more on that at the end) helps explain some of it. That he focuses on Jesus’ ministry in the south plays a role also. So too does John’s use of extended speeches, emphasis on signs and wonders, contrasts (light/dark, good/evil, etc.), distinctly Jewish focus, and his different style of language. Above all of these, however, two of the most distinct aspects of John’s Gospel are that (1) It is more theological than any of the other Gospels, and (2) Within that, it is more Christological than the others.

Of course, the entire Bible is filled with theological insights; including the Synoptic Gospels. Certain books of the Bible, however, are especially theological in content. John’s Gospel is one of them. To give you a taste of what I mean, please listen carefully to some of the introduction and the tremendous amount of theology it contains.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

… 9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

In these few verses alone, we find significant and explicit teaching (theology) on creation, sin, salvation, and the nature of the Father and Son. Throughout the rest of the Gospel, we’re given even more on all three persons of the Trinity and the relationship between them. We are given remarkable clarity on how God views prayer, what happens when we pray, and how to pray—including the greatest example of prayer in the Bible (in chapter 17). In addition, John gives much concerning the theology of miracles, regeneration, the devil (as I mentioned earlier), discipleship, and the purpose for which Jesus came to die.

Again, John’s Gospel is remarkably theological—certainly far more than the other three Gospels. Above all other theological points of emphasis, however, is its decidedly Christological focus; which is where we’ll turn to now.

It might sound strange to suggest that John is distinct in having a Christological focus when the whole point of all four Gospels is clearly Jesus. By Christological, though, I don’t simply mean that John’s aim is to talk about Jesus. I mean that his aim (which we’ll see more clearly in the next and final section), is to explain and prove who Jesus is; and within that burden John’s Gospel is distinct in both (1) the emphasis it puts on the fact that Jesus is God, and (2) in the way it explains that in specific categories.

1. Jesus is God. More than any other Gospel, indeed, more than any other book in the Bible, perhaps, John makes it crystal clear that Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity.
   
   John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.John 1:3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
   
   John 1:23 “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
   
   John 5:18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
   
   John 8:58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
   
   John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.”
   
   John 20:28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”
   
   Some of the verses I just read are clearer than others, but collectively (along with others in John) they make an airtight case for the divinity of Jesus. John’s Gospel is distinct in its focus on the fact that Jesus is God. And under that banner we find specific expressions of what this means.
   
2. Jesus and the “I am” statements. As we just saw, in John 8:58, Jesus assumed for Himself the most holy name of God—first revealed to Moses from God Himself in Exodus 3:13-14, “Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?’ 14 God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’’”. Again, then, when Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Before Abraham was, I am,” He was clearly claiming this title for Himself. As remarkable as that is, John made sure to go a step further still. In His Gospel he carefully recorded seven specific “I am” statements of Jesus—seven aspects of Jesus’ divinity.
   
   John 6:35 I am the bread of life.
   
   John 6:41 I am the bread that came down from heaven.
   
   John 8:12 I am the light of the world.
   
   John 10:7 I am the door of the sheep.
   
   John 10:11 I am the good shepherd.
   
   John 10:36 I am the Son of God
   
   John 11:25 I am the resurrection and the life.
   
   John 14:6 I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
   
   John 15:1 I am the true vine
   
   John 8:58 …before Abraham was, I am

What an awesome gift this is for the people of God. Grace, as we move through the Gospel, let’s keep in mind that John is not presenting Jesus merely as an interesting person to be considered or admired. He’s not even merely presenting Jesus as a savior to be trusted in. He’s presenting Jesus as a God to be worshiped and obeyed. We certainly cannot sit through John, therefore, with indifference. We cannot sit through it merely interested. To sit through John with a genuine understanding of what John is claiming, is truly an invitation to take your every care, concern, treasure, possession, relationship, accomplishment, failure, hurt, sickness, and hope to Jesus and hear His words (21:22), “what is that to you? You follow me!” John gives us a Jesus who is more than able to receive all of those things and completely overshadow them with an infinite and eternal glory!

Finally, then, everything we’ve covered so far leads us to the very purpose for which John wrote his Gospel.

Beyond the date and authorship of John’s Gospel, beyond its relationship to the other three Gospels, beyond its structure, and even beyond its distinctives, is John’s aim in writing it.

The main thrust of John’s first letter (1 John) is that his readers might know that they have genuine faith in Jesus. But that begs the questions of who is Jesus, what exactly do we need to believe about Him, and why. That’s where John’s gospel comes in. It was written, John tells us in chapter 20, “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” As we just saw, John was not interested in merely conveying facts or information about Jesus. His main aim was to help his readers understand and accept the shocking fact that Jesus is the Christ that God had long promised to send, in order that they (we) might believe upon Him and have life.

John wrote that his reader might believe. That they might believe what? That He is the Christ that God promised to send. Send for what purpose? That through Him all who would receive Him might have life in His name!

In the end, then, and in conclusion, that’s my hope for all of us as well as we make our way through the fourth Gospel; that everyone of us would become convinced, or further established in the fact that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and through that to find everlasting life in the love and redemption of God.

We are not in James anymore. Good morning, it’s good to be with you. Pastor Dave has been working to prepare for John’s Gospel beginning next week. This passage has intrigued me for a long time and I’m excited to be able to preach it this morning.

In our passage we see several things happening in this encounter between the LORD and the Philistines. God’s ways are not our ways, and he can accomplish multiple things at once. And often he uses people to accomplish his purposes, but he doesn’t need to. In this case he does all the work with his own glorious, heavy hands.

Father, thank you for your Word. Thank you that we can gather to read, sing and hear your word. All of it is profitable. Help us to understand this passage and apply it to our hearts. May it spur us on to worship you today and this week. Strengthen our faith. Father, I pray that the places that are difficult, you would make clear. In the places that might confront or challenge us, that we would submit to your Word.

Jesus you are the same yesterday today and forever. May we see that a story from 3,000 years ago still has relevance for us today. You are still glorious and work your purposes. We are still frail sinners who are prone to chasing after false gods.

Holy spirit, please apply this text to our hearts. Strengthen us as a church this morning. May we delight in the glory of this passage. Fill us with joy. Help me to clearly explain and preach I pray. Amen.

The fun part of preaching standalone sermons is I get to find interesting or fun passages. The downside is it takes a little more work to set the proper context. So before we get to chapter 5, I wanted to quickly look at some of the pieces in Samuel that help us understand chapter 5. First Samuel and Second Samuel are actually one cohesive book. And the big theme of Samuel is the story of establishing an earthly king under the rule of the Lord as the ultimate King. So it’s about Kings and worship and authority.

Israel is in the Promised Land. The temple hasn’t been built by Solomon yet. The tabernacle had come to rest in a semi-permanent place in Shiloh. Remember that within the tabernacle, in the holy of holies, was where the ark of the covenant rested. This was the place that the high priest would make atonement through blood sacrifice. And the LORD himself would be present and rest above the ark between the cherubim and his glory would be present.

Israel also has God’s law and covenant. There are Covenant blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience.

In the beginning of the book, there is a family of priests, the house of Eli. The father Eli was kind in many ways, but he also had allowed his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, to be wicked priests. They were adulterous, and were using their positions to essentially steal from the people. And Eli was not only complacent about it, but was participating. And worst of all, they were profaning worship before the LORD. The result was that the people reflected the priests, so the nation was pretty rotten too and profaned God in worship. So God sends a prophet to warn Eli that he and his sons would all come to an end in a single day.

A second piece to the background is the Philistines. They are Israel’s chief foreign enemy in Samuel. Way back in Genesis 10, the Philistines are mentioned in the line of Noah’s son, Ham. Ham is where almost all the Old Testament bad guys came from. The Philistines were descendants of another bad guy, Egypt. Further, they lived within Israel’s land. They were only 30 miles from what would become Jerusalem. It was a reminder that Israel had failed to drive out the nations when they possessed the promised land. So the Philistines will remain a thorn in the side of Israel for a long time.

Now we come to chapter 4 and Israel and the Philistines go to battle. To the surprise of Israel, they are defeated and lose 4,000 men. While they were stunned, they shouldn’t have been. They knew the law; they knew the covenant God had made with them. God warned them that if they failed to be faithful and keep his commandments, they would be cursed. Lev 26 and Deut 28 describe the curses that include being routed by their enemies. Israel got a taste of the curses, but it gets worse.

Israel decides to bring the ark of the covenant into battle. Israel brought the ark into battles before, but only with the proper reverence toward the LORD and not presuming upon the LORD’s holiness. Instead Israel treats the ark as a secret weapon to defeat their enemy. It didn’t work. The philistines prevailed again and it’s worse than the first time. 30,000 Israelites are killed, and worst of all the ark is captured. Eli’s sons die, then when Eli hears the news, he dies too.

The state of Israel at the end of chapter 4 is summed up in verses 19-22:

1 Samuel 4:19-22 Now his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant, about to give birth. And when she heard the news that the ark of God was captured, and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she bowed and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. 20 And about the time of her death the women attending her said to her, “Do not be afraid, for you have borne a son.” But she did not answer or pay attention. 21 And she named the child Ichabod, saying, “The glory has departed from Israel!” because the ark of God had been captured and because of her father-in-law and her husband. 22 And she said, “The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.”

The glory has departed Israel. The ark has gone into captivity. It’s dark for God’s people. It harkens back to Israel’s time in slavery under Pharoah. Only instead of the people in captivity, God himself was going into captivity. It was dark and from Israel’s vantage point, it was hard to know whether God would do anything. But He would.

As we turn to our text in chapter 5, we will quickly see the glory of God at work. First, he works against a rival god and then he’ll work against a rival nation. And after that we’ll look at what exactly God is doing in his work against his rivals.

Let’s look at verses 1 and 2.

When the Philistines leave Ebenezer with the spoils of victory, they take the ark of God. It was kind of like a trophy, but it was more than that. It was a sign that the Philistines’ god was greater than Israel’s. So they take the ark and set it next to their great god Dagon in Ashdod. And then things get interesting.

Look at verse 3.

This mighty Dagon, the chief god among gods who brought victory over Israel is suddenly bowing towards the ark of the Lord. That’s a little embarrassing. What’s worse is that the people have to pick him up and set him back on his pedestal. Maybe it was an accident? Maybe there was an earthquake. But his gives it away: Dagon is an idol who needs help.

Well, maybe it was an accident. So Dagon gets set back into place and the philistines will see what happens in the morning. But, just as things went from bad to worse for Israel in battle, things have escalated with Dagon. The next morning Dagon is again bowing to the ark, but now his head and hands are cut off.

What began as a contest between rival gods has become a rout. God has utterly embarrassed Dagon. He has no head. He cannot think or know. His wooden or stone hands have been severed. He has no power. Dagon the mighty is impotent! God will not be mocked, but he will certainly mock his rivals. God mocks his rivals to show how foolish it is to trust in false gods.

Isaiah 44 gives a picture of the folly of idols. It describes a carpenter who cuts down a tree, shapes it, planes it and makes it into an idol. But from the same tree he also makes a fire to cook food and heat himself.

There’s no difference. An idol is created by man from other things. There’s nothing transcendent like the true and living God. There is no other God. He has no rivals.

Isaiah 44:6 Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel
        and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts:
    “I am the first and I am the last;
        besides me there is no god.

Now, we can look at Dagon, made of wood and stone, maybe gold and think, I don’t do that. True, but we still bow plenty. John Calvin famously said that man’s nature is a factory of idols. Our idols are many, and any good thing that becomes all important can become an idol. But let me give one example, think about our phones. Imagine someone from Samuel’s time coming to a public place in our world. What would they think? All these individuals, even within families, all looking at their own phones? We bow our heads to the blue glow.

How do you use your phone? It might not be the god of fertility or agriculture, but how do we use them?

We use them for distraction, maybe away from our responsibilities or important things we don’t want to deal with. The infinite scroll can trap us for a long time.

We use them for comfort. We get into a habit of simply checking our phones and not knowing why. It’s almost superstitious. It can keep us from caring about real things because we have cheap and abundant entertainment. We can become dull.

We use them for likes and favorites. We can seek the approval of men. Suddenly we find ourselves conspiring to get more approval.

We can be more focused on what kind of post this will make than enjoying the moment in real time.

We can be enslaved to our employers by believing we have to stay connected.

We aren’t that different from the Philistines or Israelites. Our idols might be more sophisticated, but they are still idols. We are fools chasing after them.

Isaiah 44:9-11 All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. 10 Who fashions a god or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing? 11 Behold, all his companions shall be put to shame, and the craftsmen are only human. Let them all assemble, let them stand forth. They shall be terrified; they shall be put to shame together.

Grace, idols are nothing. There is no profit. Don’t be put to shame by trusting in idols. You will have to do work to discover your particular idols. Let us help one another and recognize the futility. Recognize the fleeting pleasures and that they are creations not the creator. Recognize that our phones and what they promise will disappoint. Fight against their pull. Let’s help one another in that fight.

Not only is God the only true and living God, Our God does not need help from anyone, as we will continue to see in our story. We move now to the next section, verses 6-12, where God continues his march through the Philistines. He’s humiliated their god, now he’ll humiliate the people.

In an ironic turn, the Philistines’ god now has no hands. But the true God of Israel, who doesn’t actually have hands, is shown using his hand against the Philistines. And it’s a heavy hand. The Hebrew word for heavy is the same hand for glory. So while it’s a heavy hand of judgment against the people, it’s also the glorious work of God that he alone can do. Remember, Ichabod symbolized that the glory had departed. But that didn’t mean that the glory had disappeared or departed forever. God’s heavy and glorious hand is at work to subdue all rivals and restore right worship among his people.

The similarities between our passage and the Exodus account are also very strong. Through a mighty hand God worked signs and wonders to deliver his people from Pharoah. Now he will work to deliver the ark back to Israel. And he does this by sending plagues upon the Philistines. And once again, the plagues go from bad to worse for the people.

Dagon is finished, just like the gods of Egypt were humiliated by darkness, frogs and blood. Now God sends a plague on the skin of the people. Instead of boils, the Philistines suffer tumors. The plagues start in Ashdod, but the people send the ark to another Philistine town, Gath. Again, maybe the people are thinking there’s a rational solution to the plagues. If we move the ark, the plagues will stop. But Gath is just as bad. It doesn’t tell us in our passage, but chapter 6:4 looks back at the plagues and tells us that there were mice ravaging the land. The plagues are increasing: False gods, check. Plagues on the people, check. Plagues on the land, check again. The people try to move it to a third city, but the people of Ekron refuse. But it is too late. The plagues reach Ekron, including death. And the ones who don’t die are terrorized and afflicted by the other plagues. A cry goes out to heaven and the Philistines recognize that the ark, and the Lord’s presence, are causing all the destruction.

Just like in the Exodus, God makes it clear that he alone is God. There are no other rivals. There are no other nations that can compare to God and his glory. Maybe you can follow why a false god like Dagon would be destroyed, but why would God destroy a nation? Because they are pagans and don’t honor the true God. They are defiled and wicked. God is holy and cannot be in the presence of wickedness. It’s only in his mercy to any of us that we are not consumed for our wickedness.

So what are we to make of this? Why exactly is God going to the trouble to allow Israel to suffer defeat, go into captivity, only to ruin the Philistines? Psalm 78 provides an explanation:

60 He forsook his dwelling at Shiloh,
    the tent where he dwelt among mankind,
61 and delivered his power to captivity,
    his glory to the hand of the foe.
62 He gave his people over to the sword
    and vented his wrath on his heritage.
63 Fire devoured their young men,
    and their young women had no marriage song.
64 Their priests fell by the sword,
    and their widows made no lamentation.
65 Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
    like a strong man shouting because of wine.
66 And he put his adversaries to rout;
    he put them to everlasting shame.

This was all God’s doing. Who else but our Almighty God can do so many glorious things at once? He wasn’t defeated and had to go into captivity. He chose to go into captivity. Who else can humble his own people through their enemies, deal with the enemies and show and warn us all in one glorious action?

God uses means to accomplish his purposes. Sometimes he takes matters into his own hands. In this case he judged his own people through defeat. Israel was unfaithful to the covenant, so God disciplined them through defeat to correct them.

He can mock false gods by bringing them low.

He can judge and punish his enemies by sending plagues by his heavy hand.

He can restore his people and grant mercy

He can warn and instruct his people. This story is for our benefit. It’s a warning to us to flee idolatry. It’s a warning to offer right worship and trust the LORD to fight for us.

All at the same time.

So how can we avoid the judgment of God? How do we avoid the fate of Dagon and the Philistines?

The answer is to worship the LORD, whose hand is mighty. The One who crushed the head of the serpent through his death. Who accomplished multiple things through his death. The One who is holy and cannot stand the sight of sin and rebellion. So the call is to turn to him in faith and repentance.

Let me say a little bit more about this LORD who is worthy of worship. The Bible describes a bigger story about God defeating his rivals. Dagon losing his head isn’t merely about his knowledge or representing the Philistines. It’s part of the story of God defeating all enemies and crushing their heads. From the promise in the garden to crush the serpent, to numerous examples in the Old Testament of Israel’s rival nations getting their heads crushed. God’s enemies are in the line of the serpent. Dagon’s head is crushed. Later in Samuel you’ll find the famous story of David and Goliath. Now, instead of a battle between gods, it’s a battle of two men representing their nations. And the LORD’s anointed defeats the Philistines’ secret weapon, Goliath of Gath. Goliath falls on his face, bowing to David and David takes his head as a trophy.

There are others along this story but we can fast forward to 30AD. We have another battle between rivals. The anointed God-man who went up to Jerusalem and was crucified outside the city on a hill called Golgotha. And without weapons or any fight at all, he bore the wrath of the Father. He bore the covenant curses for us, the covenant breakers. The idolators who have offered profane worship. And he was buried. And again it looks like the bad guys have won. Some were basically asking, ‘Has the glory departed?’

But Jesus Christ rose again. Christ rose from the dead to defeat death and sin. Colossians 2:14-15 says that at the cross Jesus canceled our spiritual debt by nailing it to the cross. And he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. He’s mocking his enemies.

Ha Ha! Death has no sting! Sin has been defeated through Christ. And that will be true for all of Christ’s enemies. He will continue establishing his kingdom. Philippians 2 tells us that after his resurrection, Jesus ascended to heaven and that there will be a time when all the earth will bow like Dagon before his rule. Everyone will acknowledge the one and true king, either in worship or in judgment.

Now, with all of this heaviness and destruction, there might be the question, isn’t Jesus about love and mercy? What about his kindness and grace? He is, but we don’t want to pit his attributes against one another. He is the same God who defeated Dagon. He is jealous for his glory, a glory he will not share. Yes, Jesus is gentle and lowly, but that is only part of his character. He is also a conquering king who will judge and destroy his enemies. And this is different from any other human ruler or king. It is not rash or arbitrary, but based on Christ’s holy standard. This is a theme that runs throughout the Bible. Read the Psalms and notice how frequently this theme comes up. And doesn’t stop in the Old Testament. It runs all the way to Revelation. All Christians believe this. We will differ on the timing, but all Christians believe and should long for the day when all is put right by Christ.

Jesus is still crushing idols and sending plagues in judgment. He removed Herod in Acts, he destroyed the temple in 70AD. The Roman empire fell. We’ve just spent 8 months in Sunday School looking at God’s work through the last 2000 years of history. It’s not always easy to discern God’s purposes in our current day. We don’t have scripture explaining exactly what God’s intentions are. But we do have the story of scripture and God’s law to inform the things we see in our day. We can see lots of parallels between the days of Samuel and our days. We have tyrants acting like gods. We have increasing lawlessness. There is theft at almost every level of society. We have people who have no regard for children or protecting them. We have a nation that hates God and is trying in vain to exist apart from God and his righteousness. We have lots of people thinking that there are no consequences to their actions.

We have many churches in our day that look like the House of Eli. Pastors who are complacent grifters with no regard for the glory of the Lord like Hophni and Phinehas. And many of the churches in our nation look like their pastors.

But we can see the story of scripture that God is able to do multiple things at once. Is he judging our society? Is he vanquishing his foes? Is he warning us and teaching us? Yes. He is doing all of those things.

So the call for us is to by holy. Kill your idols. Raise godly families. Let’s pursue holiness as a church and worship our Holy God with fear and trembling. And pray for our country that God would either grant repentance to people and destroy his rivals. That might mean difficulty even for God’s faithful people. We may have to endure suffering as God works. But God is at work and no false idol or rebellious nation will stand in the end.

There is only one true God, the triune God of the universe, Father, Son and Spirit. He is holy, he is glorious and he is actively at work putting all enemies under his feet. He often acts through us to accomplish his purposes, but he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t need weapons or worldly power; he can vanquish his foes without any help. He worked in Israel, he worked through the early church and he is working today. Our God will establish his perfect rule and defeat all enemies in his path, until at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

LORD we exult in you this morning. You are kind to us. We rejoice in your salvation. We deride our enemies because they are your enemies. There is none holy like you LORD. There is no rock like our God. You have worked mighty wonders through your glorious hand. Please do it again we pray. Help us this morning as we expect to hear from you now. Humble us, help us to examine ourselves. Bring us low where we are arrogant. Strengthen us where we are weak and feeble. Feed those who are hungry. Help us to see your glory in this passage. You are savior and judge. Even your judgment is glorious, help us to see that.

The pillars of the earth are yours and on them you have set the world. You have promised to guard the feet of your faithful ones. We ask that you do that for us. Cut off the wicked. Bring low those who hate your word and hate your son. Break your adversaries to pieces. That’s a hard prayer to pray, but it is according to your word that we pray. Do it according to your holiness. Like Dagon you will bring all false ideas and all false gods to pieces. You will rout all nations who hate you. We pray that justice will be upheld. Give strength to your kind and exalt the horn of his anointed. We pray in our king’s name. Amen. (I Sam. 2:2-10)

After many months, we’ve come to the end of the book of James. As I mentioned last week, Pastor Mike will preach next Sunday and then we’ll begin a season in John’s Gospel on September 4th. This morning, though, we’ll spend one more week in James, looking back at the big picture of the letter.

This sermon consists of revisiting three high level truths about James and then twelve main themes in James. My main hopes in doing this are:

1. To fill in a few James-gaps from sermons you may have missed.
2. Look again at what it means to have genuine faith in Jesus according to James, and encourage you to do so.
3. Recap James’s description of what it means to live out our faith in Jesus, and encourage you to do so.
4. Remind you of the great grace of God that is already working all of this out in those who believe.

Let’s pray that God would use this final James sermon to reignite (or ignite for the first time) our burden to follow Jesus wherever He leads and whatever it costs in the knowledge that, that is what we were made for and that He is more than worth it.

As I mentioned in the introduction, I believe there are three high level truths about the book of James that drive the letter and are good for us to keep in our minds if we are going to take James with us as we ought.

First, James was Jesus’ half-brother. (Half-brother in that Mary was their mom and Joseph raised them, but Jesus was conceived—not by Joseph—but by the Holy Spirit). This is significant for two main reasons.

First, as everyone who has siblings knows, they see you in a very particular light. Having a front row seat on your life, there are few secrets. I love my sister and she loves me. She appreciates and respects my faith in Jesus. But having grown up with me, I can promise you, nothing I could say or do at this point would convince her that I am the sinless Son of God. The fact that James was convinced that Jesus was, is a really big deal. The fact that he was so convinced that he ended up as a key leader in the early Church and eventually died as a martyr is a bigger deal still.

But there’s another side to this as well. The second reason it is significant that James was Jesus’ brother is in the fact that he did not believe in Jesus as the Christ at first. John 7:5 tells us that “not even his brothers believed in him.” We’re not told why they didn’t believe, but we are told that it was only after Jesus’ resurrection that James became convinced of who Jesus really was. And this is significant because it’s not the kind of thing you’d lie about if you were trying to pull a fast one. The honest, often unflattering portrayal of the key figures in the Bible is part of what makes it so believable.

The first big truth about James that I want you to lock in and remember is that it was written by Jesus’ brother.

The second big truth concerns the main thrust of James’s entire letter. It is a charge for Christians to obey God’s Word, not merely listen to it. Hearing God’s Word is necessary, but it is not sufficient. It’s necessary because we cannot know who God is, who we are, or how to live in a manner pleasing to God apart from God revealing those things to us. But knowing those things alone is insufficient because God reveals them to us in order that we might be transformed by them, not merely store them up.

For those reasons, James wrote, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like” (1:22-25).

You cannot rightly understand James, much less live in light of it, if you don’t understand that his primary aim is to remind his readers that God’s people do what the Bible says, they don’t merely hear it or study it or like it or believe it.

And that leads us nicely to the final big truth.

James is a book of commands. There are between 55-61 commands (depending on how you count). That’s a lot of hearing to do; a lot of instructions to obey. But before we just turn them into a checklist, there are a few things we ought to keep in mind.

1. It is good to obey. To be a Christian is to acknowledge that Jesus is King. That is why James began his letter by describing himself as, “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ…”. There is more (as we’re about to see) to obedience in James, but there’s not less. Jesus is Lord and James is filled with commands that Jesus rightfully requires from His people.
2. Obedience is a mature Christian’s highest desire because it is the path to fullness of life and joy. James means his readers to obey, but not merely because Jesus has the right/power to command. This is made clear in James from the very opening. James’s readers were suffering significantly because of their obedience to Jesus. While we might expect James to give them a few tips on how to minimize, mitigate, or even outright avoid their suffering, instead he calls on them to “count it all joy” (1:2). Christians must obey, but we do so in full assurance that every command of Jesus is a description of the one and only path to pleasures forevermore.
3. No amount of obedience can ever make us right with God. James is emphatic about this in the middle of chapter 2. If you wish to be acceptable to God by obeying His law, you’d better keep all of it, perfectly (2:10-13). Of course, none of us can do that, which is why Jesus came, suffered, and died on our behalf. Christians obey because God’s favor is already upon us, not in order to earn or gain it. And that leads us to the last part of this last big truth.
4. Every command of God is ultimately a description of what Jesus did for us and the work God is already doing in us. This is the heart of the commands of James and a Christian understanding of obedience. Every call to obedience is a reminder that Jesus already obeyed on our behalf because we couldn’t. And every call to obedience is a promise that God is already working that in us. What amazing grace!

To really appreciate and then live in light of this letter of James, we need to begin by getting our heads around a few big truths that it is built upon. Among them are the fact that James is Jesus’ brother, the main theme is one of listening to God’s Word and obeying it, and the commands in James are ultimately descriptions of the character of Jesus and the grace of God in us. From there, we’re in a good place to quickly move through twelve of the big themes in the letter.

In my very first sermon I mentioned six, broader themes. Here, I mean to shorten and separate them to cover more ground, in less time, and with a bit more nuance. And all of that, once again, to help us lock in, love, and live out all the goodness that God has for us in this letter. My strong encouragement is for each of you to pick one or two of these themes and hold on tightly to them.

1. God uses every trial in a Christian’s life as an instrument for our growth in godliness. He also rewards everyone who remains faithful through trial with the “crown of life” (1:12). For those reasons we ought to consider our trials as “all joy” (1:2-4). That is not to say that God uses trials to tempt His people or entice us to sin. God cannot be tempted and he tempts no one, James wrote (1:13-16). Therefore, when we suffer and are sick, we pray; entrusting both to God who reigns over them for glory and good (13-18).
   
   Coming to truly believe, trust, and even delight in this principle will make more of a difference in our lives than almost anything else we might do. We live in a world marred by sin. That means we live in a world where suffering is inevitable. Therefore, if we will receive God’s promises regarding suffering, we will be able to navigate in a manner that will truly stand out and show the unique power of the gospel.
   
2. God’s people need wisdom to navigate this world, God has all wisdom, and God delights to give it to those who seek it from Him (1:5-11). True wisdom comes from above and produces “good conduct” (3:13) that is “peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere,” and it produces “a harvest of righteousness” (3:17-18). Fake wisdom comes from demons and produces “bitter jealousy,” “selfish ambition,” boasting in falsehoods, “disorder, and every vile practice” (3:14-16). James wanted his readers to know that there is no comparison between the wisdom of God and the “wisdom” of the world in either its source or effect. James calls on us to know and pursue the wisdom from above for all of life.
   
3. Temptation to sin comes to Christians when the lingering effects of our old sin nature well up inside us. That is, temptation comes when something deep in us promises things it cannot truly deliver and delivers things we’d never want (1:14-15). This is especially true, James wrote, with regard to sinful fights and quarrels among Christians. When we love things more than people, we’ll be willing to harm others to get what we want from them (4:1-3).
   
   The main point here is that while our sins have been entirely paid for by grace, through faith in Jesus, their effects will not be entirely driven from us until heaven. If we’re not careful, therefore, we’ll give in to their wicked enticements instead of holding fast to the promises of God. James helps us with this.
   
4. God only gives good gifts to His people, and good gifts come only from God (1:17-18). This is not to say, of course, that hard things don’t happen to Christians, that non-Christians don’t often mean well, or that Christians don’t do genuine good at times. But it is to say that everything God does—painful or pleasant—is good for those who love Him. As we saw in the very first point, even the most severe trials Christians face are good gifts in that they are means of sanctifying grace. At the same time, God alone is truly good. People do good, therefore, only when we act as conduits for God’s goodness to flow through us. James wanted his readers to understand that anything good that flows out of us ultimately from God, so that we’d continually look to God for that which only He can provide—for us and others.
   
5. Godly people listen first and most. We are slow to speak. We are even slower to anger (1:19-20). And when we do speak, God means us to be very, very careful (1:26). This is true for every Christian, but it is especially true for those who are teachers (3:1-12). In the end, James calls the tongue “a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (3:8) and he commands his readers not to “speak evil against one another” (4:11). Above all, when we do speak, we ought to speak plain, simple truth (5:12). We are not to speak in ways that are wishy-washy, unscrupulously ambiguous, or intentionally false. Our yes’s are “yes” and our no’s are “no”.
   
   Simply, our words flow from our hearts and have great power. To hang on to James, therefore, means understanding that we ought to grab ahold of every word that forms on our lips and do two things with them. First, we need to consider what kind of heart inclination they grew out of. And second, we need to prayerfully swallow those words that were produced by something rotten and only let out those flowing from love.
   
6. Godly people continually work to put off sin and to walk in righteousness. We see that in 1:21 and other passages, but maybe most clearly in 4:7-10. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” As I mentioned earlier, no person can earn God’s favor by sufficient obedience or sufficient sin fighting, but no one can rightly claim to be in God’s favor if we are not growing in our hatred for sin and our desire to put it to death within us.
   
   As we leave James, then, let’s take with us a reminder of the sinfulness and destructiveness of sin, and therein a fresh determination to work to put it off wherever we find it in us and put on that which is good.
   
7. James tells us that the greatest form of Christian obedience, the kind that most honors God, the thing he wants us most to hear and obey, is the charge to care for the most vulnerable in society—especially orphans and widows (1:27). Similarly, James is emphatic about the fact that favoritism is bad. It is of the devil. Ungodly people evaluate others based on external factors like appearance and wealth. Ungodly people consider others in light of what benefit they might provide. But godly people love everyone, and especially the poor and needy, not because they are worthy, but because God loves us apart from any worthiness in us (2:1-9). Likewise, ungodly people hoard stuff up for themselves, even at the expense of the vulnerable, while godly people lay their lives down for those in need (physically, emotionally, and spiritually) (5:1-6).
   
   James has helped the Church, even our church, see the simple goodness of foster care and adoption more than any other book in the Bible. I cannot even imagine how many kids and families have been blessed by the Church throughout history by simple obedience to James 1:27. Even as we leave James, let’s continue to allow it to drive us toward care for the most vulnerable among us.
   
8. Faith apart from works is dead (2:14-26). This is tied to James’s main thrust (be not hearers only), but it’s also a more specific claim. “Be not hearers only” is a charge to Christians who have grown lax in our obedience. This teaching, that “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead,” addresses the very nature of salvation. In essence, James taught here that genuine salvation always produces good works. In other words, in this short passage James indirectly answered the question of how we can know for sure that our faith is real (and not like that of demons or those Jesus will deny knowing). We know by the resulting change in affections, attitudes, and actions. Where those things are not increasingly becoming more like Jesus, we do not have good reason to believe our faith is genuine. And all of this is because the grace of God that results in genuine conversion also results in genuine transformation, every. single. time. The order, timing, and rate of our transformation will vary, but the fact of our transformation won’t when our faith is real.
   
   Grace, please take this principle of James with you. Thank God for the good fruit you see in yourself and others and the assurance of salvation that it brings. And where fruit is sparse, turn it to God in humility and faith, find someone to pray for and with you, remember the promises of God, and walk in the Spirit’s power.
   
9. Worldliness and godliness are incompatible (4:4). James earnestly wanted his readers to know that everyone has a greatest love—something we love most. And the only options for that greatest love are God or something God has made. To love the things God made the most is to be friends with the world and enemies of God. To love God most is to be friends with God and in a place to rightly love the things of the world. Along these lines, James told his readers that it is folly to love or trust in wealth. Their value and protection always fade and eventually fail. They always, eventually corrode and rot. Whether now in repentance or in eternity in condemnation, all who have placed their trust in financial security will “weep and howl” (5:1-2).
   
   Grace, the enticement of the world often seems innocuous and even desirable. James reminds us that this is a lie. Anything that presents itself as above, even with, or even within 100 billion miles of God in its ability to satisfy and bless is a lie from hell. James repeatedly pleads with us to remember this that we might not be duped. Take this with you, Grace.
   
10. God is in charge (4:13-17). Another key theme in James is the fact that God is God. That is, He is always actively governing the universe. Because He governs in fairly predictable ways, there is discernible order, science works. and making plans is often wise. But rightly living in a world governed by God means not merely functioning based on patterns we discover in God’s governance. It also means trusting in God, not the rhythms He’s created. James leaves no room for functional deism or practical atheism. “You do not know what tomorrow will bring” … therefore, “you ought to say, ‘if the Lord wills, we will…do this or that…” (4:14-15). Everything else is boasting, arrogance, and evil (4:16).
    
    Let’s take this with us as well. Let’s resist the ever-present temptation to trust in God’s ordering rather than the God who orders. James gives us great help in this.
    
11. Christian love looks different than worldly love. In the eyes of most, love means making a big deal out of me. Similarly, when we say we love someone, what we usually mean is that we like the way they make us feel. The point is that the normal, non-Christian idea of love is self-centered and selfish. The kind of love God has for the world and the kind He calls us to is different. Its aim is always for the greatest good of another. This begs the question, of course, of what is the greatest good for others. In the highest sense, the answer is always the same: it’s God. God is the greatest thing for all things. Therefore, love in its fullest sense always points people to God through Jesus Christ. But love also, always takes specific forms as well. One specific form named by James is, counterintuitively (as we saw last week), addressing sin in one another. The basic argument is this: if God is what we need most, and sin is by definition opposed to God, calling people to turn from sin and to God is at the very heart of true love.
    
    I’m not going to re-preach last week’s sermon, but I do want to remind you that taking James with you means loving one another as God defines love, not as you or they do. Loving others means laying your life down to bring them what the need most, not what you most want from them or what they most want from you. I’m so thankful that our church does that in so many ways. May we continue and even grow in that all the more.
    
12. Finally, the last big theme in James is that Jesus is coming back and will set all things right (5:7-11). “…Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (5:8), James wrote. In this knowledge, James called God’s people to be patient and gracious in our trials and suffering. We are to be willing to endure mistreatment in the knowledge that God will make all things right. True and complete justice will prevail in the end. Not one single act of injustice will be left unrighted. This will happen finally and fully when Jesus comes back and so we can live today in a kind of freedom and hope that looks strange to those who do not have that hope.

There you go, Grace. James is yet another expression of God’s kindness, another description of His grace, and another reminder of our need for that which only Jesus can provide. To rightly receive James is to be amazed by the goodness of God, to trust in His transforming power inside us, and to give ourselves to living as He made us to. For James’s readers, as for us, this is meant to be done within Christian community and for the glory of God. What a gift this is. May we receive it with all the thankfulness, gladness, earnestness, and hope it offers. May we, by God’s grace, be doers of the Word of God and not hearers only.

James 5:19-20 My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 20 let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

For the 15th and final time in this letter, James addressed his readers as “My brothers”. As I’ve tried to make clear throughout our time in James, James cared deeply for those to whom he was writing. They were not enemies he needed to conquer. They were not strangers he was indifferent to. They were not even mainly disobedient children that needed to be corrected. Above all, they were James’s “beloved” brothers and sisters in Christ who he wanted to help and encourage to put God’s Word into consistent action—for God’s glory and their good. It’s fitting, therefore, that James closed his letter in the same way as he began it, by restating his affection for his readers.

Let that be a lesson to us all. Our primary relationship to one another as members of Grace Church is beloved brothers and sisters. Our first God-given disposition toward each other is love and our primary God-given duty is encouragement in Christ. And in our passage for this morning, James gives us one final, specific God-honoring way to love and encourage one another in Jesus: bringing each other back from sin. This is rarely easy or popular, but James (along with the rest of the Bible) makes plain that it is good and right.

My main hope and prayer is that God would use this sermon to do three things: 1) Convince you of, or further solidify in your mind, the biblical basis for confronting sin in one another, 2) Help you to do so in a gracious manner, and 3) Help you to receive that kind of correction in a gracious manner when it comes. Let’s pray for God’s help in all of that and whatever else He has for us.

Just a few verses earlier (5:16), James commanded his readers to confess their sins—to voluntarily admit the ways they were dishonoring God—to one another. In this passage, James has in mind sinners who have not yet done so. His main charge here, then, is that when Christians see other Christians walking in sin, we have a responsibility to help them come back to obedience.

My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 20 let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Far from unique to James, though, this is the consistent teaching of the Bible.

In Luke 17(:3) Jesus taught, “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him…”.

In a similarly broad way, in Galatians 6, Paul wrote, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.”

Referring specifically to elders Paul also wrote, “As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear.”

And in regard to someone who sins against you personally Jesus said, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (Matthew 18:15).

Again, the main point is that Christian love means it is not an option for someone professing faith in Christ to sit idly by when they come across another professing Christian wandering away from Jesus. It is our privilege and responsibility to seek to bring them back—like a loving mother does with a lost child; James is calling for a spiritual amber alert. By God’s design we can be a critical conduit of God’s saving and sustaining grace.

Tragically, it’s all-too-rare for Christians to directly address sin in one another. More tragically still, it’s rarer still for Christians who do, to do it well. And most tragically rare of all, are Christians who receive the kind of “bringing back” James speaks of in a humble, godly way.

We often fail to confront because we don’t want to come across as unloving, legalistic, or hypocritical. Sometimes we fail to do so because we’ve heard people misinterpret Jesus so often about not judging (Matthew 7:1-5). Sometimes it’s because are legitimately humble and aren’t sure we understand everything perfectly. In my experience, however, the two most common reasons we fail to confront sin in one another are that (1) we fail to understand the seriousness of sin (James says that nothing short of soul-death is on the line), and (2) we fear man more than God; that is we fear making people upset with us more than the price of disobeying God.

On the other side of the equation, we don’t often receive correction well when it does come, mainly because we are prideful people who love our sin more that God. When we’re sure of ourselves and happy in our sin, it’s annoying at best, insulting on average, and infuriating at worst when someone asks us to consider whether or not we are walking in sin.

In other words, there are all kinds of reasons for our failure to correct and receive correction well, but none of them change the fact that it is a means of God’s death-saving, sin-covering grace when Christians bring Christians back from sin. Evidently, all of that was the case in James’s day just as it is in ours, which is why he wrote this passage.

Taking everything I just said into account, in practice, as you probably know, attempting to bring someone back from sin can be fairly intimidating and scary. It’s often a humbling endeavor. But if you’ve ever been a part of helping someone turn back to Jesus, you know that it is also remarkably exciting. There are few joys in life that match seeing someone come to Jesus for the first time and seeing them turn back to Him after wandering away from Him.

Before dive a bit deeper into this passage and its application, there are three things to be clear on right now. First, this passage is not referring to Christians confronting non-Christians in their sin. There are passages that speak to that, but this isn’t one of them. This passage is a charge to confront those who have wandered from the truth in order to bring them back, not those who have never accepted the truth and who need to come for the first time.

Second, this passage is primarily a word for Christians who have explicitly committed to one another, typically within a local church. Its main thrust is not that every Christian is equally responsible to address sin in every other Christian they come across. The local church is the main context where James’s charge is meant to be lived out. The local church has a significant and prominent place in God’s plan of saving and sustaining-grace distribution. That’s why one of the first questions we ask you in our membership class is whether or not you want to be held accountable for your doctrine and conduct and whether you’re willing to hold others accountable. Promising to watch out for one another’s souls is one of the most fundamental aspects of church membership.

And third, Grace, in this passage we have yet another reminder that what someone thinks they need is never the best indicator of what they really do need. That distinction belongs to God’s Word alone. In other words, just because someone says, “Why can’t you just be supportive?” or “Why do you have to be so judgmental?” or “Who do you think you are?” or “Love is love” or whatever other form their attempts to deflect the conversation away from their sin might take, God’s word remains true and every man a liar (Romans 3:4).

With that, let’s now consider the relationship between truth and sin in all of this.

A key observation we all need to make in this text concerns the relationship between truth and sin.

My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 20 let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Grace, let’s not miss the fact that James essentially sees (1) wandering from the truth and (2) sinning as synonymous. Understanding that wandering from truth and falling into sin are one and the same is really important because it helps us to see the truly gracious nature of James’s charge.

If something is true, it is also good and beautiful. Which means that if something is false, it is also bad and ugly. Sin, every sin, is a lie at its core. To call someone back from sin, therefore, is not merely to call them back from something factually inaccurate. It is also to call them back from something that is bad and ugly as well. And more importantly, it is to call them to something that is good, beautiful, and true. That’s a gift whether the person we’re speaking with knows or believes it at the time or not.

In other words, what James calls his readers to do is not to be nitpicky or even merely to try to keep one another on the up and up. What he calls his readers to do in restoring one another from sin is to call them back to truth and therein, fullness of life and joy and purpose.

So let’s get really practical. Let’s consider how to correct sin well (first) and how to receive correction well (second).

How do we address sin in others in a truly godly way? First of all, it is good to settle on the fact that sin is deadly and needs to be corrected to keep the sinner from falling further into great peril. Imagine someone falling overboard on a ship and unbeknownst to them, being circled by sharks. In that moment, their main need isn’t a sympathetic friend on the ship deck offering words of encouragement. Their main need is someone who will shout out the danger and throw them a rope or lower a ladder…fast!

Sin really is like that in some ways. There are definitely times when our sin puts us in such a perilous place that kind words, and even a kind heart from someone else is a distant second to what we need most—an immediate and harsh call to turn back.

With that said, however, the Bible is not silent on the kind of motivation and disposition that pleases God and is usually most helpful for the wayward sinner who needs to be brought back. Let me briefly offer four key heart-dispositions that make for godly correction.

1. Above all, correcting sin in a manner pleasing to God and good for the sinner, flows out of love. That is, it flows from a genuine desire for that which is best for the wandering person. Before anything else, this means that sin-correction is not our primary interaction with one another. Addressing sin in love, when it does need to happen, will happen in the context of a relationship marked mainly by encouragement and investment. The opposite of this is generally stand-alone confrontation flowing from self-interest. That is, all too often when we do address sin in others, it’s outside of the context of an up building relationship and happens because the person’s sin annoys or inconveniences us, not because we long for them to be in a right and safe and fulfilling relationship with Jesus. One key easy to tell whether love or self interest is our motive is to consider whether we mean, as James says, to bring them back (into truth, righteousness, and fellowship) or simply stop their sin. “Stop being so angry” is different from “Let me walk with you back to peace.” Grace, under ordinary circumstances if we are going to address sin in someone else, it ought to begin with making sure we’re doing so because we mean to be conduits of grace for them; that is, because we love them.
   
2. Second, and flowing from the first, rightly correcting others in their sin requires a good deal of humility. We really don’t know for sure everything going on in their hearts and minds. It’s always possible we’re mistaken about the facts or misinterpreting what they mean. What’s more, our correction ought always to be driven by the kind of humility that comes from knowing that we’ve sinned against God one million times more than the person in front of us has sinned against anyone else…and that He forgives us in Christ anyway. This kind of humility won’t keep us from addressing sin, but it will greatly inform how we do.
   
3. Third, as we saw earlier in Galatians 6, our correction should normally be given in gentleness. “Knock it off, Bill. I can’t believe how destructive your anger is.” (< Bad) (Good >) “Bill, I’m not sure I’m seeing this correctly, and there’s a good chance I’m not going to say everything as helpfully as I’d like. In addition, I’d love for you to know that I’m in this with you no matter what. That said, I’d like for you to consider whether or not you’ve been sinfully acting in anger toward your wife and kids. I’ve seen several interactions between you guys that make me concerned for you and them. Above all, though, I want to walk with you in a manner that is pleasing to God.” Gentleness is the opposite of harshness and very similar to kindness. It comes from a soft heart and isn’t adversarial. Under ordinary circumstances any sin-address should be done in gentleness.
   
4. Finally, we ought to correct out of a profound sense of dependence on God’s Word and Spirit. Our own standard of righteousness is not what others need. Righteousness as revealed in the Bible is what they need. Let’s be people who know this and share scripture with those we’re seeking to win back. Likewise, our own grasp of the Bible or persuasive abilities might temporarily halt someone for a particular action, but they are entirely impotent to bring about heart-change and genuine repentance. The Holy Spirit alone can do that. Again, then, when we speak to someone about their sin as James directs us to, it ought to be bathed in prayer and Scripture.

To get even more specifically practical, we need to consider something you’ve undoubtedly experienced: not every sinner sees their sin the same way, which means that not every sinner responds to having their sin pointed out in the same way either. There are basically three ways professing Christians relate to their unconfessed sin.

1. Sinners who don’t know they need to be brought back. I imagine we’ve all come across the person who is professing to be a Christian, but who is also walking in some kind of sin without really knowing it. They don’t realize that they have wandered from the truth. Within this group there are two significant (and significantly different) varieties as well. The first variety was never taught the specific truth they have wandered from. I’ve seen this quite a bit in people who did not grow up in a Christian home or who have not been a part of a healthy church. Typically, they carry some sinful aspect of their old culture into their new, Christian life without realizing that it. This might involve certain media intake or relationship dynamics or … Often, for people in this group it’s simply a matter of kindly and patiently showing them the biblical principle and they will quickly and remorsefully turn from it.
   
   The second variety of Christians who have wandered into sin in ignorance are those who do know the truth—that is, they have been taught it—but don’t believe it. They are ignorant in one sense, but are obstinate in a fuller sense. They’ve been taught that sexual relationships outside of marriage are sin, but they don’t believe it. They’ve been taught that cheating on their taxes is sin, but they have convinced themselves that there’s another way to look at it. They truly don’t know they are sinning even though they are and even though they’ve been told they are. This is a much harder group to confront. We need to bathe our attempts to address their sin in prayer (truly trusting in God to convict in His timing) and point straight to the clearest passage or two in the Bible. When someone already knows what we’re about to tell them, but simply disagrees, it’s usually best to use more words with God and less words with them.
   
2. Sinners who don’t want to be brought back. This second group are those within the church, professing faith in Jesus, who know already know they are in sin but have no real desire to turn from it. This is grievous. It is an indication that they may not truly be trusting in Jesus. Our role here is primarily to prayerfully move further into the Matthew 18 process of bringing others into the discussion and, perhaps, tragically, telling the church and removing them from membership. This is not a declaration that they are certainly not saved (only God knows that for sure), but it is a declaration that there is no longer good evidence that they are. And the aim of this is not punitive. It really is gracious. It really is for their good—that they might begin to see the true seriousness of their sin.
   
3. Sinners who want to be brought back, but seem stuck. Of all three types of wandering sinners, this one is often the most heart-breaking. Those who fall into this group know they are in sin, they know they are wandering from fellowship with God and Christian, and they want to turn back to Christ, but they feel stuck and powerless.
   
   Let me quickly say something before returning to this type of person. I’ve come across a number of people over the years—I’ve been one from time to time—who seem like they fall into this category. They know how to put on a show of remorse. That’s a different issue. In reality, they’re simply clever at disguising the fact that they’re in category #2 (sinners who don’t want to be brought back) and once we realize this, we need to treat them as such.
   
   But for those who have genuine disdain for their sin and can’t seem to kill it, we need to remember that sin is still sin, but a remorseful, repentant heart is strong evidence of genuine salvation. Therefore, we must not minimize the sinfulness of their sin, but we must maximize the amazingness of God’s grace. That is, we walk with those who seem stuck in sin, prayerfully encouraging repentance, while continually reminding them that God’s primary disposition toward them is one of mercy and grace. We let the Word of God wash over them with its many promises of God’s love and forgiveness and compassion and patience. Jesus is enough. His blood is sufficient to cleanse every sin. Our sin is great, but His grace is greater still.
   

Before I close, I want to say a brief word about how to receive sin-correction. So, what are you to do if someone confronts you about sin in your own life? Three simple things.

First, make it as easy as possible for that person to come.

1. Even if it turns out that the person misread the situation, and you hadn’t sinned in the way they thought, they ought to leave their encounter encouraged and thankful for your faith, not battered and bruised. Recognize it for the grace of God it is that someone would be willing to love you like that.
2. Assume there is some measure of truth in what they say and focus on it when you see it, not whatever they might have gotten wrong. Take some time to pray about it if you need to, but do so under the assumption that there’s something there.
3. Confess your sin as as quickly as you see it. Respond in a manner consistent with the Word of God. It ought to sound something like this, “Sally, to be honest, that kind of stung at first. My flesh made me want to deny and lash out. By God’s grace, however, I was able to quickly get past that and really consider what you said. I know I’ll appreciate it even more in the future, but even now I am thankful that you were willing to be honest with me and help me turn from my sin…and it is sin. I’m sorry for ____. Please forgive me. And please pray that God would grant me true and swift repentance.”

Second, having heard what the person shared, ask for the Holy Spirit’s help to determine which of the three categories of sinners you are in. You need to be honest with God and yourself before you’ll ever be able to be honest with the brother or sister in front of you and find the help God offers.

Regularly ask godly people in your life if they see any sin in it. Give them a blank check to talk to you any time they catch a hint of sin you don’t see…and remind them of that blank check often.

In conclusion, let’s end where we began. When someone professes faith in Jesus, but has given themselves over to unconfessed, unrepentant sin, they are in a really, really dangerous place. Their souls, James wrote, need to be saved from death and their sins need to be covered. Of course, Christ alone can do that, and has done that for all who are truly trusting in Jesus. But once again, Jesus often uses means to accomplish His purposes. James tells us that addressing the sins of others is one such means. Our aim is their reconciliation and restoration. Our motivation is love. And our hope is that by being faithful to God’s will in the lives of those calling on Jesus’ name, we will be participants in God’s work to “save his soul from death and… cover a multitude of sins.”

James 5:16b …The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

If I were to take a poll of everyone in this room concerning your prayer lives, what do you think I’d find? On a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being almost non-existent and 10 being practically Jesus), what do you think the average prayer-health score would be? How many of you regularly close your eyes at the end of the day thinking, “My prayer life is pretty much exactly as God intends it to be”?

From having spoken to many of you on this subject, my guess is that the average score would be between 5-6. The main reasons I’ve heard are the lack of consistency, the lack of a plan, the lack of a sense of God’s presence, and the lack of understanding of exactly how prayer works. Our passage in James doesn’t address and can’t fix all of that, but if you will receive it in faith, you will find a good deal of help in strengthening your prayer life.

In the second half of James 5:16, James wrote, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” That is such a significant promise that I thought it was worth entire sermon. There are few things more significant and mysterious in the Christian life than prayer. It is significant because it is at the very heart of our purpose for living and because God uses it to accomplish things that wouldn’t otherwise happen. And prayer is mysterious because it doesn’t seem logically compatible with certain, central aspects of God’s nature or ours.

After considering the significance and mystery of prayer, then, it is my hope that we’ll be in a better position to understand James’s specific teaching on prayer in this passage and the actual practice of prayer in our own lives.

The main point of all of this is that God has given prayer to His people as a means of communing with Him and as a means of accomplishing His purposes in the world. Therefore, God’s people pray. Let’s pray that through this text and sermon God would help us to pray.

There are few things more significant in the Christian life than prayer. I invite you to consider its significance from two angles. First, we’ll do so by taking a brief (but fairly thorough) flyover of prayer in the Bible. And second, we’ll consider its significance by looking more closely at two awesome aspects of prayer.

The first place prayer is explicitly mentioned in the Bible is in Genesis 20. In their sojourning, Abraham and his wife Sarah, came to an area called Gerar. There they lied about their relationship (telling the Gerarites that they were brother and sister rather than husband and wife) to protect Abraham’s life. Consequently, Abimelech, king of Gerar, took Sarah into his home with the intention of marrying her. To protect this couple and the covenant He’d made with them, God intervened, threatening Abimelech’s life if he did not return Sarah to Abraham. God’s final words to Abimelech were, “Now then, return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live” (Genesis 20:7).

From there, prayer is explicitly mentioned over 300 times, in most books of the Bible, in each testament and genre, and in most of the key figures among God’s people.

In Genesis 25, Isaac prayed for his wife Rebekah because she could not bear children. And in 1 Samuel 1:10 we read that Hannah prayed in deep distress and with bitter tears because her womb was closed. God answered both.

In Numbers 21:7 we read of God’s judgment having come upon Israel for their grumbling. Their response was to call on Moses to pray to the LORD on their behalf that He might relent. This is similar to the Genesis 20 passage, along with many, many other passages in the Bible, in that the heart of the prayer was a request for God to turn back His judgment for sin.

There is a remarkable prayer for God’s wisdom in Judges 13:8.

In 2 Samuel 7:27 we find David praying another common prayer in the Bible. God had made a covenant with him to provide land, victory over enemies, and an everlasting throne. David’s response was one of prayerful, hopeful thanksgiving. Likewise, Hezekiah prayed a prayer of exuberant praise in response to the LORD’s faithfulness in 2 Chronicles 30:18.

In 1 Kings 8, Solomon prayed for God’s continual and favorable presence among His people.

Elijah prayed and rain stopped for three and half years (1 Kings 18).

In 2 Kings Elisha prayed to the LORD and the LORD raised a child from the dead! The same thing happened when Peter prayed for Dorcas (Acts 9:40) and Paul prayed for Eutychus (Acts 20:9).

In 1 Kings 13:6 we find a payer for healing. This is made even more clear in passages like the one we considered last week in James 5:13 and 14. In Isaiah 38, the LORD added 15 years to Hezekiah’s life because he humbly prayed to God in his sickness. And in a similar way, God healed the father of Publius of dysentery when Paul prayed for him (Acts 28:8).

In 2 Kings 6:17, God granted spiritual sight to Elisha’s servant because of Elisha’s prayers.

Solomon also prayed, asking God to be gracious to sinners whenever they repent (which God promises to do in 2 Chronicles 7:14). We see this as well throughout the NT in passages like Acts 8:22

The LORD returned all that Job had lost and more when he prayed (Job 42:10).

In Psalm 5:2, David prayed for God’s mercy in the midst of his enemies gaining ground in their wickedness.

In Psalm 114:2 David prayed to God because he knew God always listened to his prayers.

David prayed for peace for the people of God in Psalm 121:6.

Wicked people futilely prayed to false gods in Isaiah 44:17. Isaiah promised that the prayer of a wicked man will not be heard (Isaiah 16:12). Similarly, God repeatedly prohibited Jeremiah from praying for the Israelites because they refused to repent (Jeremiah 7:16, 11:14, 14:11).

Jesus commanded His followers to pray for their enemies (Matthew 5:44), to pray simply, in secret, and not to impress people (Matthew 6:5), to avoid praying as if it were about informing God (Matthew 6:8), to pray to the Father for more people to proclaim the good news (Matthew 9:38), and to pray to avoid temptation to sin (Luke 22:40). He also taught on the importance of prayer by regularly slipping away to pray (Matthew 14:23, 26:36; Mark 1:35, 6:46, 14:32; Luke 5:16, 6:12, 9:28) and that the Father really does work through faithful prayer (Mark 11:25).

Judas’s replacement among the disciples was chosen through prayer (Acts 1:24).

The first deacons were chosen and then commissioned through prayer (Acts 6:6). So too were the first NT missionaries (Acts 13:3, 21:5) and pastors (2 Timothy 1:6).

After Jesus’ resurrection, His disciples followed His example by withdrawing to pray (Peter in Acts 10:9, Paul in Colossians 1:3).

Paul helps us understand that because God and His ways are far above us, we really don’t know how to pray, but we should do it anyway in the knowledge that the Spirit will help us (Romans 8:26-27).

In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul tells us that there are certain postures and dispositions that are more proper for prayer.

We find Christians in one area (Corinth) praying earnestly for Christians in another (Jerusalem) in 2 Corinthians 9:14 (Colossians 1:3, 9) as well as Christians in one area soliciting the prayers of Christians in another (Colossians 4:3, 1 Thessalonians 5:25, Hebrews 13:18).

Our prayers ought to be earnest (1 Thessalonians 3:10) and without ceasing (Acts 10:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:17).

Our prayers for one another are ultimately meant to end in the glory of God in the maturing of the saints (2 Thessalonians 1:11) and the salvation of the lost (2 Thessalonians 3:1).

We are supposed to pray for our governing authorities (1 Timothy 2:1).

Men (1 Timothy 2:8) and widows (1 Timothy 5:5) have special charges to pray for God’s people.

God’s people constantly prayed that their evangelistic plans would succeed (Philemon 1:22).

Failing to show understanding, honor, and tenderness toward their wives, hinders husbands’ prayers (1 Peter 3:7).

It is good to pray for both physical and spiritual health and healing (3 John 1:2).

And probably the most important passage on prayer is found in Matthew 6:9-13 where Jesus taught His disciples to pray what we call the Lord’s Prayer.

The Bible mentions people praying while standing, kneeling, on the ground, laying hands on, and even laying on top of people. They prayed in the mind and in the spirit. They prayed while awake and in dreams. Prayers were offered at all times of day and night. God’s people prayed in great joy, sadness, fear, guilt, innocence, relief, hope and doubt. People prayed by themselves and in large and small groups. They prayed for friends, enemies, and strangers. They prayed for people and things present and future.

Though far from exhaustive, in all of this we have a fair sampling of the Bible’s teaching on prayer. Combined, we find prayer commanded and modeled everywhere in the Bible. The vast quantity, universal practice, and amazing works of God that happened through prayer in the Bible speak loudly to its significance in the life of God’s people. And from there, we can easily see the second angle of prayer’s significance as well—its place in the heart and work of God.

The most significant significance of prayer is that it is at the very heart of our purpose for living and God uses it to accomplish things that wouldn’t otherwise happen.

1. Prayer is a key aspect of the purpose of our lives. Grace, we were made for fellowship with God, and in prayer we get a real taste of that. Prayer is talking to God in the knowledge that He is present to hear, that He lovingly cares, that He truly is responsible for the governance of the world, and that He answers us every time. In other words, prayer is a key piece of our communion with God, which is the very reason for our existence. Indeed, the great promise of heaven is that we will see God “face to face” and “know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12)—and our prayers today are a kind of firstfruits of that level of fellowship. Again, Grace, to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength is to long to be with Him and to experience His presence continually. Prayer gives us unlimited access to this.
   
2. God uses prayer to accomplish things that otherwise wouldn’t happen. In the different examples of prayer in the Bible that I gave a few moments ago, God opened wombs that would have remained closed, healed sicknesses that would have lingered, restored life that would have been lost, relented in punishment that would have continued, provided wisdom where there would have been ongoing folly, stopped rain where there would have been precipitation, granted sight where blindness would have persisted, brought peace out of perpetual war, made ministries fruitful when there would have been failure, humbled kings where there would have been nothing but pride, and saved sinners and granted repentance where there would have been nothing but death and rebellion.
   
   In John 14:13-14 Jesus promised His followers, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”
   
   Picking up on this, John wrote, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15).
   
   And of course, in our passage for this morning, James wrote, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
   
   Passages like these (and there are many more) teach us that prayer is significant in that God used the prayers of the faithful to accomplish thing that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.

Prayer is significant. We see its significance in that it is everywhere in the Bible—commanded and modeled. It is also significant in that it is at its very core, fellowship with God—the purpose of our lives. And finally, prayer is significant in that God uses it to accomplish things that otherwise wouldn’t happen.

My hope in sharing all of that with you is that it will help you consider carefully what the Bible really does say about prayer so that you will pray in a manner pleasing to God. Then end goal, once again, is that we’d all grow this morning to pray as God means us to. Let’s turn our attention now to the mystery of prayer.

The Bible repeatedly teaches that God means His people to pray. Indeed, as we’ve seen, He commands His people to pray. Those things couldn’t be any clearer. Likewise, it is clear in the Bible that prayer fits perfectly with certain aspects of who God is and who we are. Praying to God makes total sense in light of the fact that God is omnipresent (He is always with us to hear our prayers), omnipotent (He is fully able to answer every prayer), omniscient (He perfectly knows the best answer to every prayer), loving (He delights in hearing our prayers), good (His answers to prayer will always be best), and kind (He is patient when we are foolish). And the fact that we are sinful, needy, weak, ignorant, dependent, and vulnerable means that prayer is the most reasonable thing we can do.

In particular, the kinds of prayers that confess sin and acknowledge the unmatched glory of God fit perfectly with God’s nature and ours. So too do the kinds of prayers that give thanks to God for His marvelous works.

At the same time, however, there are other aspects of God’s nature and ours that make certain kinds of prayers and the way God uses them truly mysterious. I’m talking specifically about prayers that ask God to change the course of events; the kind of prayers that we just considered whereby God uses them to accomplish things that otherwise wouldn’t happen.

What is it about God’s nature and ours that seems incompatible with this kind of prayer?

On our end, it’s the exact aspects of our nature that I listed above. The fact that we are as fallen and limited and ignorant as we are means that asking for anything in the universe to change is in a very real way, absurd. To ask a two-year-old to serve as chief planner and navigator on a family road trip is a million times more reasonable than to ask God to adjust anything on account of our selfish, fallen, and short-sighted desires or perspective.

The Bible highlights this in passages like Romans 9:20. To the one who questions the manner in which God saves sinners Paul wrote, “… who are you, O man, to answer back to God?”

We see this in a far more thorough and dramatic way in God’s questioning of Job (38:16-41),

Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? 17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? 18 Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this. 19 “Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness, 20 that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home… 22 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, 23 which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war? 24 What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth? 25 “Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt, 26 to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, 27 to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass? 28 “Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew? 29 From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the frost of heaven? … 31 “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? 32 Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or can you guide the Bear with its children? 33 Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? 34 “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that a flood of waters may cover you? 35 Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’? 36 Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind? 37 Who can number the clouds by wisdom? Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, 38 when the dust runs into a mass and the clods stick fast together? 39 “Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, 40 when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in their thicket? 41 Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God for help, and wander about for lack of food?

The point, of course, is that we know nothing compared to God. Our greatest wisdom is God’s folly. So, what sense does it make for us to ask God to do anything based on our understanding of things?

Even more to the point, though, is the mystery surrounding this kind of prayer and God’s nature. Where the passage in Job I just read points to the severe limits of the knowledge and power of man, where every man’s answer to every question is no, it also points to the unimaginable wisdom and might of God, where His answer to every question is YES!

God is God. That is, God is king over all. That is, God rules over every aspect of His creation. Rooted in His very essence is the fact that God leaves nothing in the universe up to chance. And there is nothing that happens outside of God eternal, good purposes. God is filled with all wisdom and knowledge. His purposes are sure. His promises are certain. He does not change His mind. His every way is perfect.

In Ephesians 1:11, Paul describes God as one who ” works all things according to the counsel of his will.”

Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.”

In light of who God is and who we are, how does it make sense for us to ask God to change anything in the universe? And in light of how God works to govern the universe, what good do our prayers do? Again, prayer is significant, but it is also mysterious. What are we to make of that? Two simple things.

First, like children, we are to trust God. The Bible is filled with mysteries like this. But given who God is and who we are, how could it not be? How could God be as high as He is and us as corrupted by the fall as we are and there not by mystery? The simple fact is that we do not understand how prayers of supplication work. God commands His people, ” in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6), and so we obey in faith. The Bible says that it is good for us to make our requests known and so we do. The Bible says that this brings joy to God and so we do. The Bible says that God uses them to change things and so we do.

And second, this is only true for those who are in Christ. It is because Jesus goes before us and therefore the Spirit lives in us that God accepts our prayers and works through them. Apart from Jesus, we have no hope that God will hear us. Apart from Jesus, we have no prayer-merit at all. Apart from Jesus we have no access to God. Apart from Jesus, we are God’s enemies. In Christ, however, we are children of God, and God loves to hear from His children and respond in blessing.

The heart of prayers of supplication is a simple trust that in Jesus, God invites and even commands His people to pray them and so we do.

All of that brings us to the specific statement made by James, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” I hope it’s easy for you to see that there is nothing new in these words. All of them are wrapped up in what we’ve already covered.

God does great things through the prayers of those who have the righteousness of Jesus, and so we pray when we are suffering, cheerful, and sick. We pray when we are lonely, excited, and well. We pray when we want God to grant relief, sustain our gladness, heal our sickness, meet us in our pain, commune with us in our loneliness, fill us with the knowledge of His presence, save our unbelieving child or neighbor, change our appetites, mortify our flesh, provide what we need to care well for the people of Grace Church, strengthen our missionaries, comfort our mourners, fight for justice, humble our leaders, hold back our enemies, and every other request we have.

We pray in these ways not because we understand perfectly how they fit with our nature and God’s, not because we know what God will do with them, and not because we want to override God’s perfect plans, but because God commands us to, because God promises that for all who hope in Jesus, there is great power in them, and because by doing so we are taking part in fullness of life in fellowship with God.

In conclusion There will always be mystery surrounding prayer, but we are to pray in faith anyway. Specifically, and finally, we are to…

1. Pray biblically. That is, we are to pray as the Bible calls us to. In fact, we are to pray the Bible. Your main prayer-practice ought to be to read your Bible and respond to it in prayer. The Bible is God’s Word to us. Prayer is our response back to Him. Modeling this is part of why we pray through a passage of Scripture each week in the beginning of the service.
2. Pray personally. As I’ve mentioned, pray in the knowledge that God is with you when you do. Pray knowing that God is eager to hear in the same way (and more) that you are glad when your children come to you on your best days. You are praying to a real person who loves you more than you’ll ever realize and cares more for your situation than you ever will.
3. Pray expectantly. Our passage in James teaches this. We ought to pray expecting God’s power to be unleashed through our prayers. Earlier, James expounded by commanding us to pray and not doubt like double-minded people do. The expectation isn’t that God will do exactly what we ask, but that He’ll make His power and presence to bless known whenever we pray.
4. Pray constantly. Prayer ought to be our native tongue. While we’re driving, walking, with friends, at church, at kid’s sporting events, watching TV, when we wake up and when we lie down. We ought always talk to God in adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. As you notice something right or wrong, praiseworthy or broken, ordinary or miraculous, tell it to God and ask Him to work in it.
5. Pray systematically. While most of our prayers will be spontaneous, it is good and right to ask consistently and systematically for the things we are most charged to care for—your own soul, the health of your family, Grace Church and our leaders, our missionaries, our neighbors, our unbelieving family, etc. Have a prayer journal. Check back on it and update it often.
6. Pray corporately. Pray with others. Let your best relationships and friendships be marked by praying together for God’s will to be done. Share your burdens and carry those of one another in prayer. Share stories of God’s faithfulness.

Let’s close by praying together the prayer our Lord taught us to pray.

Matthew 6:9b-13 “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

James 5:13-18 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

The Puritans developed an important category they called “practical atheism”. The main idea refers to non-Christians who profess to believe in God and, perhaps, even in the Bible as His Word, but who actually live as if God is not real and His Word is not true. They are not confessional atheists (they claim to believe in God), but practical or functional atheists (they don’t live as if there is a God).

The Puritans got this idea from passages like Romans 1:21 in which Paul laments the fact that there were many in his day who, “although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

But practical atheism is not something that exists in non-Christians only. Stephen Charnock is especially helpful in explaining what practical atheism looks like in Christians. In “The Existence and Attributes of God,” he notes that all sin is the result of at least temporary practical atheism. Meaning, every time we sin, we are acting as if God does not exist. If you believed in all that God is in any given moment, you would not talk harshly to your wife or exasperate your kid or lie to your boss or watch garbage on the TV/internet or fudge your taxes or demean your employees or gossip about your friends. When we do those things, we’re practically atheists.

You might be wondering what any of this has to do with our passage this morning? Good question. In it James mentions Christians who are suffering, cheerful, and sick. At its heart, these few verses are a call to acknowledge God’s sovereignty over each of those things, and to do so primarily in prayer. Practical atheism creeps into all of us when, instead of looking to God in prayer in every circumstance, we think mainly in worldly terms.

When we suffer, instead of prayerfully resting in God’s promises, we often grow bitter and despondent. When we are cheerful, instead of celebrating it in song as a thankful acknowledgement of God’s kindness, we tend to treat it as an end in itself. When we are sick, instead of hopefully soliciting the prayers of the saints, in full assurance that God works through them, we typically lament and despair. In short, once again, we are prone to practical atheism. These few verses are meant to help address and correct that tendency. What we have here, therefore, is a defense against and an alternative to practical atheism in suffering, cheerfulness, and (especially) sickness. Let’s pray for God’s help to hear and do what James commands.

James forms these six verses around three questions. The first two get a single verse, while the last question, indicating its importance in James’s mind, takes up the final five. All of them, however, point to the same basic principle: God is a good god over our every suffering, cheerfulness, and sickness, and prayer is the most appropriate way to acknowledge that. Practically, living in light of that principle makes all the difference. Let’s consider each as we strive to live thoroughly theistic lives.

The first question James posed to his readers was: “Is anyone among you suffering?”. The word translated “suffering” typically refers to persecution, but can also refer to any type of hardship. From what we’ve already read in James, we know that James wasn’t actually wondering whether any of his readers were going through a hard time. He knew there was suffering among them; significant, serious, and prolonged suffering. His intention was to give advice, not gain information. A good paraphrase of James’s idea, then, would be something like, “Whenever you find yourself suffering…”

Before considering James’s prescription, let’s pause here and consider our response to suffering in our own lives. What do you do when you suffer? Imagine some ache or pain that just won’t let up. Imagine your employer instituting a policy that goes against your conscience. Imagine being diagnosed with some type of degenerative disease. Imagine being in a really hard marriage. Imagine having kids who renounce their faith when they are older. James is about to tell us what we should do, but it’s good for us first to settle on what we probably would do? And I say that knowing that some of you don’t have to imagine because it’s your reality right now.

As I mentioned in the introduction, more often than we’d probably like to admit, the answer is that we forget that all things work together for good for those who love God (Romans 8:28), we forget that God uses every evil for the greatest good (Genesis 50:20). We forget that the cross and empty tomb are a perfect guarantee that perfect justice is certain (Romans 3:26). In other words, tragically, our response to suffering is often to act like practical atheists. Whenever our first thought and greatest hope is anything other than God’s glorious promises of sufficient grace, unwavering fellowship, sanctifying work, and greatest good through it, we are practically atheists.

Until Jesus returns, we will always struggle with this. Our sin, our flesh, and the devil all conspire to turn our hearts and minds away from God in our suffering. In acknowledgement of this and as a means to help in this, James instructed his readers on what it looks like to respond rightly. God’s people avoid practical atheism and honor God in our suffering, James wrote, when we respond to suffering by turning to God in simple prayer. James didn’t elaborate on the content of the sufferer’s prayer. His main point is one of disposition. But we know that it is good in our suffering to pray, “God make me strong enough to endure this in faith.” And, “God, give me wisdom to know how to honor you in every moment of suffering.” And, “God, help me to experience your presence throughout this trial, for that is sufficient.” And, of course, “God, please deliver me from my suffering, but at the same time let me live through it as though deliverance is Christ and death is gain.”

The practical atheist response to suffering is to think only in terms of the pain and getting out of it and to be miserable until it comes. The response of the fully sanctified follower of Jesus is to hope wholly in the promises of God and to know the peace of God that surpasses understanding regardless of what transpires. Because we always fall somewhere between the two, we pray.

What about the other end of the spectrum? What does practical atheism look like when we are cheerful and how to we avoid it?

Think of the last time you were really happy. Some of you have beamed with pride recently in telling me about an accomplishment of one of your kids. Krista getting to 100% support. Jack with his Pride and Joy. Two different Lukes when their employers were especially generous. Gerri when the TFG team really pulls together to serve a mom in crisis. I’ve been privileged to have many of you share the objects of your cheerfulness with me.

The crucial question for us all, once again, is what do we do when that kind of cheerfulness comes. It’s a crucial question because just as we can be practical atheists when life is hard, so too can we be when life is good. Was there any practical atheism in any of the examples of cheerfulness I just mentioned? If so, what would it have looked like?

Practical atheism delights in the kids’ accomplishments apart from an overwhelming sense of God as the giver of the gifts that led the accomplishments. Practical atheism celebrates 100% support merely as a chance to be done asking for money or as a green light to depart, rather than as the kind provision of the God who commissioned the going. Practical atheism laughs at a joke without thought of the fact that laughter is God’s gift to remind us of His pleasure in His children. Practical atheism delights in a generous raise from a non-Christian employer simply as a means to maintain a comfortable lifestyle, rather than as an unlikely expression of God’s common grace. Practical atheism produces cheerfulness merely in the physical and psychological help TFG provides for hurting moms and kids rather than first and most in the beautiful reminder it is of the spiritual help God offers in Jesus.

In short, practical atheism is cheerful in something as an end in itself, while godly cheerfulness always recognizes God as the only giver of good gifts. Practical atheism sings praise to the object of our cheerfulness only, while godly cheerfulness results in vertical and then in horizontal praise.

That’s the essence of James’s command at the end of v.13. “ … Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.”

Practical theism, godliness, therefore, finds all cheerfulness rooted first and most in the unwavering belief that every good and perfect gift comes from God (James 1:17). It therefore responds to every blessing, every happiness in a song of thanksgiving to God.

Finally, the third question James asked was, “Is anyone among you sick?” This involves, of course, a more particular form of suffering. And as we all know, sickness is often one of the most practical-atheism-tempting experiences we can have. It is for that reason that James spent more time on this question than any of the others.

One more time, it’s good for us to consider what happens when we’re sick. What’s your first impulse? Practical atheism causes you to think only or mainly in terms of diagnosis, prognosis, and healing. Practical atheism produces an entirely earthly view of those things. Practical atheism can’t think much beyond doctors, medicine, and surgery.

Of course, all of those things can (and usually should) be a means of God’s grace. By themselves, however, they fail to recognize the fact that both sickness and healing are entirely in God’s hand, even as both are God’s grace for all who are hoping in Jesus. Sickness is God’s grace in that it humbles us, reveals idols, and causes us to recognize our finitude and dependence on God. And healing is God’s grace in that it puts the power of God on display, it provides a picture of the greater spiritual healing that God does in Jesus, and it is an opportunity to praise God for specific kindness.

For all of those reasons, James told his readers that their first impulse when they fell ill ought to be to acknowledge God’s sovereignty over their sickness. And for that reason, their first action ought to be to pray and solicit the prayers of the saints, and especially the elders.

14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

This passage has caused a good deal of controversy within the Church over the centuries. What is the nature of the sickness? Was James referring mainly to spiritual sickness (some) or physical sickness (most)? What does it mean to anoint with oil? What is the purpose of the oil (healing, ritualistic, symbolic)? Is that necessary every time? Was that limited to the apostolic age? Is this a promise for healing? If so, in this life or the next? What is a prayer of faith? Whose faith; that of the sick individual or those praying on his behalf? How much faith is necessary to expect healing? Should we confess our sins when we are sick because all sickness is tied to sin? You get the idea. I’m sure most of you have wondered about at least some of these things.

Some of these questions are truly important and some less so. Some the text answers with clarity and some it doesn’t address at all. The main thing I want you to understand, though, is that most of them miss the clear and main point. The clear and main point once again is that sickness and healing are in the hands of God. God’s people, when we are acting faithfully, don’t respond to sickness in the same way as non-believers do. We don’t think in the same terms. Our hope is not in the same things. Our goals are different. Where practical atheists only know how to look to the things of earth and god only as a last resort, James calls his readers to look to God alone as savior, raiser, forgiver, and healer. He often uses means to accomplish these purposes (elders, oil, prayer, confession, doctors, and medicine), but those things are merely ways God brings healing, not true sources of healing.

In simplest terms, James’s antidote for practical atheism in sickness has two parts. First, whenever James readers fell ill, he commanded them to call their elders to pray over and anoint them, to confess their sins to one another, and to entrust their sickness to God. And second, he called his readers to have faith in God’s promise to use those things to save, raise, forgive, and heal.

With all of this, there are four specific principles that are good for us to consider and apply.

1. There is nothing special about the prayers of an elder. James also calls each sick individual to pray for themselves and the whole church to as well. The fact that James calls on elders to pray for the sick is not meant to suggest that elders have some type of extra measure of healing power in our prayers. In this, elders are like the bread of communion in that while it is just bread, God has chosen to do special things through it. Nothing in the bread was especially worthy before communion and nothing about it changes during communion to make it worthy of representing Jesus’ body. In the same way, there is nothing uniquely meritorious in an elder that makes us better conduits for God’s healing grace other than that we are sometimes God’s chosen means of healing.
   
   All of this is embedded in the simple phrase, “in the name of the Lord” at the end of v.14. We saw last week the seriousness of breaking an oath made in the name of the Lord. That’s because God is holy, holy, holy and, therefore, calling on His name is to invite the highest scrutiny possible. On the other hand, as we see in this verse, the same power of God that is against those who take His name in vain is for those who call on it in righteousness. God is the power. Elders are at times merely the conduit through which God has chosen to make it flow.
   
   
2. V.15 is not a promise that every time an elder prays and anoints that sickness will be healed.
   
   15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up…
   
   This is not a promise of immediate and universal healing, but it is two important things. It is (1) a godly vehicle for the godly impulse to turn to God, and it is (2) a genuine means of grace.
   
   Calling on elders to pray and anoint is a godly vehicle for the godly impulse to turn to God in our sickness. In His kindness, God, through James, tells us what to do with our desire to honor him when we’re sick—call the elders to pray and anoint. In this passage James was not making a promise of certain healing, but he was helping his readers to know what godliness looks like when they became sick.
   
   And second, even though James was not promising certain healing, that is not to suggest that the prayers of faithful elders is powerless. Indeed, they are a particular means of grace for those who are ill. God really does use them to save, raise up, forgive, and heal the sick in the same way that He uses quiet times to commune with His people and baptism to strengthen our faith and evangelism to encourage us.
   
   Not every quiet time leads to overwhelming worship, but it is right to say that the quiet times of the saints will revive our souls. Not every baptism casts out all doubt, but it is right to say that baptism strengthens the faith of God’s people. Not every evangelistic encounter is positive, but it is right to say that it is a means of God’s encouraging grace. And not every faithful elder prayer for the sick results in physical healing, but it is right to say that the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick.
   
   
3. The end of v.15 is not a promise that elder prayers have the power to impart forgiveness.
   
   15 …And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
   
   This statement is an acknowledgement that the kind of heart that looks first to God in sickness and then to His appointed means of grace, is the kind of heart that has genuine faith in Jesus; and the kind of heart that has genuine faith in Jesus is certainly one to which 1 John 1:9 applies, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
   
   In other words, the prayers of others don’t effectively bring about the forgiveness of our sins, but the whole exchange, rightly engaged in, is an expression of the kind of faith, through which God saves sinners.
   
   
4. There is a grace connection between confession of sin, the prayers of the saints, and physical healing.
   
   16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.
   
   The Bible is explicit that not all sickness is tied to the sin of the person who is sick (John 9:2-3). But the Bible is also explicit that some sickness is (1 Corinthians 11:28-30). James’s logic in v.16 seems to be that (1)If we are to be freed from sin-induced sickness, it will include confession and repentance. (2) Even when our sickness is not sin-induced, it is a reminder that we need righteousness. And (3) since, confession and repentance are gifts from God, we ought to pray for one another that God would grant them continually, and especially when we are sick.
   
   The principle here is that sickness is like hunger. God gives physical hunger to teach us to long for righteousness. Every time we feel our bellies growl, we ought to turn that to a prayer for holiness. “God, just as I long for food, knowing that my body need it to survive, so too and even more, I’m reminded to long for righteousness as my soul needs that to survive.” That’s how fasting works. Hunger may or may not result from some type of personal act of unrighteousness, but every time it is a reminder to seek the righteousness we were made for.
   
   In the same way, not every time we are sick is it a direct result from some particular sin in our lives, but physical sickness is every time a reminder of the soul sickness that lingers in us. Every time we are sick, then, we ought to pray and invite others to join us in praying, “God, I long for you to heal my body, but I’m thankful that in this moment of sickness, I’m reminded that my greater need, one you’ve already met and are continually meeting in Jesus, is for healing in my soul. Drive out every sinful desire. Forgive every sin in Jesus. Even if this illness takes my life, may my soul be fully and forever sanctified by grace through faith.”
   
   And James’s true promise here is that this kind of prayer pleases God, and in these ways, always works. It is for that reason that he ended this verse saying, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” And as proof of that, James offered Elijah’s prayers as an example.
   
   17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.
   
   When God’s people seek God’s will in the ways God has prescribed, there is great power as it is working. Living in suffering, cheerfulness, and sickness in light of this reality is the opposite of practical atheism and the exact kind of heart that glorifies God.
   

Grace, is anyone among you suffering? Is anyone cheerful? Is anyone among you sick? Acknowledge God’s sovereignty over each of them and do so primarily through prayer. Invite others to join you in prayer, that you may honor God in them and therein grow in the assurance of your salvation.

And in all of this, remember the gospel. Remember that none of us have done this perfectly. Remember that in this life none of us ever will. Remember that the consequences of this rebellion is death. Remember that these things are the reason we all need a savior. Remember that God has given us the savior we need in Jesus Christ. Remember that He is ours not by works, but by faith alone. And remember that the gospel is the good news that God has provided for us and is already working out in us all that He requires of us. That’s good news indeed.

James 5:12 But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.

I really appreciated John’s sermon last Sunday. It was mildly surprising to find such parallels between what Israel had given themselves over to a few thousand years ago and what many in our society (inside and outside the Church) have today. The line in the text that most haunted me was v.15, “Truth is lacking and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.” The two specific ideas from John’s sermon that most stood out were, first, the fact that unrepentant and unchecked sin corrupts the whole person (Isaiah mentions hands, fingers, lips, tongue, feet, and mind). And second, while Isaiah wasn’t a participant in the sins of Judah, he was a participant in the consequences of their sin. Unrepentant and unchecked sin not only corrupts the whole of the person who sins, but also the whole of the society in which he/she lives. Sobering. My main practical application is to more consistently share the larger story of God’s plan for the people I meet. Thanks, John.

And now, welcome back to the epistle of James. Hopefully you remember that in this letter, James’s consistent charge to his readers was to listen carefully to God’s Word and then do it; to be doers of the Word and not hearers only (1:22). Much of what James wrote was meant to address the various ways his readers were failing to do so.

Regretfully, we too live in a culture for which both parts (hearing and doing) are becoming increasingly alien. It has long been a problem for people to listen to God’s commands without any real intention to put them into practice. And that’s bad, of course. But worse still is the fact that today a rapidly growing number of people are refusing to even listen to God’s Word. That is, more and more people are denying even the existence of any kind of binding revelation from God. Directly and indirectly James addressed both problems and we would be wise to heed his divinely inspired charge.

Critically, therefore, putting this larger principle of James into practice requires first an acknowledgement of God’s Word as God’s word along with a growing love for it; a growing appetite for it and trust that it is the way, the truth, and the life. Grace, we must continually cultivate that through prayerful time in the Word.

And with that, obeying James also requires specific content. Even with an acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God and a growing love for and trust in it, we still need to know what, exactly, we are to hear and obey. James has given us a number of answers, but one of the main ones that he keeps coming back to concerns our manner of speech. James repeatedly explained how powerful our words are, how much they are tied to Christian maturity, and how critical they are to Christian fellowship and faithful ministry. Our passage for this morning provides yet another example.

What, then, is the essence of this new speech-command that James calls us to hear and do? I think the simplest way to communicate the main point in v.12 is this: Keep your word always because that is what God does and because there is condemnation for those who don’t. My main hope and prayer, therefore, is that all of us would grow in our love for God, His Word, and His perfect word-keeping, and that our words would increasingly reflect all three. Let’s pray that it would be so.

Before we get to the specific content of James 5:12, it’s important to note that it is almost an exact quote from Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:33-37.

33 Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.

James clearly had Jesus’ words in mind when he wrote this verse. Undoubtedly, v.12 came from James having heard his brother say the words we have in Matthew’s Gospel.

What’s more, Jesus Himself certainly had yet another passage in mind when He said what He said in Matthew 5. That is, James was quoting Jesus who was quoting His Father from Leviticus 19:12, “You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.”

The main point for us to see, and an important part of the reason for the initial clause in the verse (“above all”), is that in writing what he did, James wasn’t writing anything original. Far from a new command, James was tapping into one of the oldest commands God has given His people—to be promise-keepers, especially when invoking God’s name. Rightly understood, this ought to help us better appreciate the importance of, and lean a bit further into, the passage.

And now, to the text itself. Look with me at James 5:12. As I just mentioned, the first three words of v.12 ought to cause us to sit up and lean in. James has said quite a few things to this point (I counted over 30 specific commands), but here he said, “But above all”.

Now to be fair, James didn’t mean that what followed truly was the most important command of all. Indeed, he’d already referred to the “royal law” in 2:8 (the law of love). It did mean, however, that among all the things James had written, this was genuinely important; certainly at the top of the pile.

In typical James fashion, James didn’t feel the need to explain why he would attach such a significant label to this command, but it is good for us to understand in simplest terms why he did. The most basic explanation is found in two simple sentences spoken by Jesus and recorded a little later in Matthew (12:34-35), “…out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.”

One of the main reasons (we’ll see another later) James put such a high value (“but above all”) on the speech habits of his readers, and the one he was about to give in particular, was that the words of his readers revealed the heart of his readers. The way his readers spoke to and about one another told more about the condition of their hearts than anything they might have said about their hearts. And making false promises in God’s name indicates a heart that is desperately sick.

Again, this too ought to help us appreciate the importance of what follows. And what follows is a two-part charge, accompanied by a two-part reason. The first part of his charge is a negative version of the charge (“do not…”) and the second part is a positive version (“but let…”). Let’s turn our attention now, then, to the negative version of this ancient and essential command.

As I stated in the introduction, James’s main point is that God’s people must always keep our word.

Negatively, James commanded his readers: “…do not swear…”.

To swear in this sense does not mean using cuss words or vulgar language. It means making a promise or an oath. Oath-making was a significant part of the custom of the ancient world. At times it was even commanded by God (Exodus 22:10-11; Numbers 5:19-22). In other words, James’s command was not a prohibition against making any kind of oath. But it was a prohibition against making a certain kind of oath—the kind that was disingenuous and not intended to be kept. In short, it was a prohibition against making false or misleading oaths.

There are two levels to this that are worth noting. The first is that God’s people were explicitly and repeatedly prohibited from breaking any promise, but especially those made in God’s name (Leviticus 19). To swear by the name of God was to invoke the most severe scrutiny.

I’ve shared this before, but I think it’s worth repeating here as a concrete example. When I was a kid I lied a good deal. I said what I felt like I needed to say to get what I wanted. If I could do so without lying, that was preferable, but definitely not required. I had one weakness, however, and my less scrupulous friend eventually found it and exploited it. Because I lied so often (as did my friend), we learned to be skeptical of one another. Consequently, to simply say something like, “I’ll pay you back,” was dubious at best. Our word was not sufficient collateral for either of us. However, one time I must have really wanted my buddy to trust me because I added the clause, “I swear to God I’ll pay you back (or something similar).” I wasn’t a Christian, but there was enough common grace fear of God in me that I was not able to break that oath. Of course, my friend picked up on this and going forward refused to believe anything I said unless I added the words “I swear to God”. My days of gaining by lying to him came to an abrupt end.

As silly as it is, this is almost exactly what James, Jesus, and the Father all had in mind. Like me, the Jews were unscrupulous enough to lie regularly, but they also feared God too much to do this when swearing by His name.

And that leads to the second level, and one James gets at most directly. As you can see, James didn’t merely command his readers not to swear, but not to swear”…either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath.”

Again, there was enough fear of God in James’s readers not to break an oath made in His name. However, like many other Jews, they’d given themselves to the practice of swearing by something significant, but (in their minds) not as significant as by the name of God. Instead of the name of God, they’d swear by heaven, the earth, one’s head, or some other oath. It’s kind of like saying, “I swear on my mother’s grave.” Doing this was one step short of swearing by the name of the Lord, but one step greater than merely swearing by their own word.

This was a problem for a number of reasons. Chief among them was the fact that they were doing so to lie with a clearer conscience and less consequences. But as we’ve already seen, this did nothing to lessen the seriousness of their lies in God’s eyes.

When making a false oath, they’d swear by heaven, but Jesus reminded them that to swear by heaven is to swear by the very throne of God. Likewise, to swear by earth, is to swear by God’s footstool. To swear by Jerusalem, the city of the temple of God, is to swear by God’s special city. To swear even by their own head, was to swear by that which belongs to God. And to swear on their mother’s grave was to swear by something entirely in God’s hands.

James commanded his readers to stop doing that. He told them to stop swearing by anything at all as a means of swearing falsely because lying is wrong and lying by anything belonging to God is the same as lying in God’s name.

It’s helpful to know what God doesn’t want us to do. It’s often even more helpful to know what He does want from us. For that reason, James stated his charge negatively as we just saw, and positively, as we’re about to see.

“…do not swear…but let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no…”.

“The first ‘Yes,'” Thomas Manton writes, “refers to the promise, the second to the action” (James, 326). That is, James’s command was to let your saying “Yes” result in your doing yes. There should never be a disconnect between the two.

What James was driving at here is that when an oath is taken, it should always be to show the goodness and seriousness of the situation, not to make the agreement more certain.

For instance, when we get married we’re eager to hear the vows our spouse makes, not because that somehow makes them more likely to be faithful; as if neither of you were certain how it’d turn out until the solemn vows were taken. How absurd is that?! Instead, we delight to hear the words because they remind us of what a wonderful and serious commitment we’re entering into.

Let me say this a little more straight-forwardly. If you are waiting to hear your spouse’s vows at the altar before knowing whether or not you can trust them, you are in a whole heap of trouble. It is because you know they are trustworthy that you decided to marry them in the first place. Your wedding vows are just public declarations of the wonderful commitments you’ve already made to each other and the firm trust you already have in each other.

More specifically, as God’s people, we must never need to add anything to our “yes” for someone else to trust that we will follow through, or to our “no” to know we will steadfastly refrain.

To make this even clearer still, let me say a few brief practical words about this principle before finishing the sermon with James’s reasoning for his command.

1. Never lie. Keep your word, every time. Obeying James’s command means that others ought to know you as someone whose word is as certain as is humanly possible (“if the Lord wills”). People should be truly caught off guard if you say you will do something and don’t, or if you say you won’t do something and do. Never lie.
   
2. Say “yes” and “no” to right things. If we are going to keep our word without exception, we need to make sure we are very careful with our yeses and nos. Of course, this means not agreeing to engage in some type of sin or refusing to obey one of God’s commands. But probably more helpfully, it means not saying “yes” to lesser things or “no” to greater things. Don’t tell your buddies that you’ll go golfing on your wife’s birthday. Don’t say no to a friend asking you to share the gospel at the farmer’s market because of some TV sporting event. In other words, don’t say yes or no to things that godliness will require you to walk back.
   
3. Do what you say, as you said you’d do it. The first two practical points focused on more black and white yeses and nos. The final two focus on more subtle yeses and nos. Don’t exaggerate and don’t constantly alter your commitments. Don’t imply that you will do more than you plan to. Don’t tell a friend that you’ll help them with their roof if you only intend to drop by for an hour. Don’t agree to disciple someone if you know you’re only available for a few minutes every few weeks at 4am. And don’t tell someone you’ll come over at noon, then one, then three. When you give your word, do what you said you’d do.
   
4. Finally, say “yes” and “no”. Don’t be wishy-washy. Another more subtle form of disobeying James is by never saying “yes” or “no”. Letting your “Yes” be yes and your “No” be no means giving clear yeses and nos. Don’t make it so that everything is always mushy and no one knows what you are agreeing to or not agreeing to. Minnesota nice often encourages us to say “yes” to things merely to be pleasant. It’s not that we plan not to do what we say, we just don’t necessarily plan to do it. That might be proper in Minnesota culture, but it disobeys James.

Do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no.

You shouldn’t need to add anything to your oaths or promises for people to know they can trust you and that you will do what you said as you said it. Should you ever take a formal oath, it ought to be to highlight the seriousness and significance of the promise, not to make it more certain. Those things are at the heart of James’s command.

Hopefully you’re clear on what it means to keep your oaths/promises. Likewise, hopefully you’re clear on the fact that it is really important for Christians to do so. But why is this so important? Why is it so essential for Christians to be promise-keepers? I mentioned earlier that James shared a bit of his reasoning for this command. One part of his reasoning is explicit and one part is implicit.

Explicitly, James commanded his readers to avoid swearing falsely and instead to do what they said they would do, because failing to do so leads to condemnation.

“…do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.”

The bottom and simple line is that people who lie without remorse and refuse to acknowledge deceit as sin, betray the fact that their hope is not in Jesus and that they remain condemned in their sin.

1 Timothy 1:9-10 Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine…

Have you ever considered the company lying keeps in the eyes of the biblical writers?!

Oath-breaking is a sin. And like every sin, its wages is death. Our only hope in escaping the condemnation and death that our sin (any of it and all of it) deserves is by the grace of God, credited to us through faith in Jesus. Where there is not an acknowledgement of this, a fight against this, and a (even if maddeningly gradual) lessening of this, there is condemnation. In other words, explicitly, keep your oaths, Grace Church because not doing so is a really big deal.

Implicitly, and even more significantly, James commanded his readers to avoid swearing falsely because that’s what God does, perfectly, every time.

Numbers 23:19 God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

Likewise, Hebrews 6:18 says that it is “impossible for God to lie.”

Indeed, our great hope in life and death is that God will continue to keep His promises to us, to save us in Jesus. If He doesn’t, we are doomed. But thanks be to God, He always has and forever will keep His every word. All of that was Paul’s point in Titus 1:2. Christians have the “hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began.”

This means, therefore, that we ought to always keep our word in God’s name because in doing so we are helping people understand God’s glorious nature and the trustworthiness of the gospel. Conversely, it also means that, as James’s readers were doing, when we break our word in God’s name we are lying about who God is and keeping the world from seeing the gospel’s true power.

In conclusion, I imagine that most of you have no problem admitting that keeping your word is right. But I also imagine that most of you have a decent sense that doing so perfectly, every time is hard. Indeed, it’s impossible in your own strength. Grace, we cannot obey James’s command here (or any other of God’s commands) on our own. We can’t even want to. But God has not left us on our own. He has not left us to obey in our own power. In His Son we have forgiveness of our every broken oath and in His Spirit we have power for every obedience.

What’s more, as you’ve heard me say many times before, every command of God for every one of the people of God is a description of what He is certainly making us into, not some kind of impossible feat of strength. James’s words here, therefore, are not mainly a call to a good, but insurmountable task we’re meant to futilely pursue until Christ returns. Take heart in the fact that they are instead a charge to be what we are graciously becoming.

Keep your word, therefore, Grace Church, every time. But do so in the knowledge that in Christ your broken promises have been forgiven, your condemnation is gone, you have all the strength you need to keep them starting now, and God is certainly transforming you into one who loves the True God with all you have and all you are.