Here’s a sermon I preached last week at the 8am service at BH.

I do note form, so you need to get in my brain to work out what goes in between!

…so this morning, I want to spend the first few minutes looking at the book of James as a whole – what’s it all about? Then the rest of our time in today’s passage, James 1:1-12

So what do we know about the book of James?

READ:      James 1:1

It’s an early LETTER

Written by James…  an apostle, church leader in Jerusalem, and the brother of Jesus

It’s written to Jewish Christians   (12 Tribes)

…who have been persecuted  (scattered among the nations)
…Acts 8:1 (after Stephen got stoned)

A very PRACTICAL book

…short, punchy, to the point   …often little explanation  …just do it!

BUT… James knows we don’t do things to merit God’s love… we do because of God’s love

James 2  -  “show me your faith without deeds”… faith that leads to action

Famous Verse…    James 1:22
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”

As church goers… We are in danger… we hear the word… but we must do what it says!

Let’s make that our prayer throughout this series on James (and any other time)… that we would HEAR the word and DO what it says.

Let’s pray that our hearts may be gripped and changed by the word!

PRAYER
READ:      James 1:1-12

Were you thinking what I was thinking??  Did he just say what I think he said??

v.2    Consider it pure joy… ??    Wow, what a way to start a letter!

Context:    Religious persecution (v1)  +  Poverty (v9)

Wider Context:    “Trials of many kinds”  (v2)
Make it personal…  Bereavement, Unemployment, Sickness, Loneliness etc.

“Whenever” - expect them to come, expect them to come again

BIG QUESTION  -  How do we move from trials to joy?

Follow James’ Argument…

Trials = Testing of Faith (v3)  -  (not Judgement for the Christian)

Testing develops Perseverance

Perseverance must finish it’s work so you may be Mature + Complete

This is Joy… being mature + complete in Christ!

But there’s a problem!!

v.4 – mature, complete, not lacking anything …that’s joy!
But…  v.5 – If any of you lacks wisdom he should ask God

We need God’s wisdom to persevere through trials!

v.5 God gives wisdom to those who ask in Faith

What is wisdom??

Wisdom  =  Seeing things God’s way

Seeing…    the BIG picture, God’s plan, Hope in despair, God’s sovereign hand at work

Seeing the Big picture takes us to verse 12  -  CROWN OF LIFE… a picture of Joy!!

I don’t know your trials… But let’s persevere!
…and lets ask for God’s help, his wisdom
…and lets focus on the prize, the joy of knowing Christ now, and reigning with him forever!

In the summer edition of The Briefing, Nathan Walter gives some tips on listening to sermons (back page)… he starts off with a gentle rebuke to people who say “Mark Driscoll says…”, I don’t know anyone like that, hmm… but that is always a danger isn’t it, that we hold too high an opinion of the words of [insert your favourite preacher here] diminishing both our own pastors and our personal time with God in His word. Here are his tips:

• Vary your diet of preachers, and, sometimes, why not simply listen to an audio Bible?
• Be wary of comparing the online preacher (publicly or privately) to your own God-given pastors.
• Don’t forget your responsibilities as a listener. Test everything. Never listen without your Bible open. Chase up the passages and write notes.
• Keep audio sermons in their place: like good Christian books, they can help us grow enormously, but we mustn’t let them loom too large. Nothing beats the godly discipline of reading your Bible.
• As with all preaching and teaching, don’t just listen to store up knowledge; listen to sermons in order to put the Word into practise. Listen to an iSermon on your iPod, but make sure you also have an iHarvest of righteousness.

Some good advice. The only one I would question is point 3 - while I agree in principle and certainly would do this when listening to a talk while at home, a lot of the time if I’m listening to a sermon on my iPod I’m doing something else; walking around town, travelling, at the gym (rarely but has been known)… it’s on my iPod because I’m not in the position to sit with open Bible and make notes.

Here’s a little outline from the talk I did at Medical Christian Union at Sussex 2 weeks ago…

Isn’t the Bible full of errors?

The short answer is NO!

If the Bible is God’s word as it says (2 Tim 3:16), then it will be true.

That is a massive circular argument, BUT it has to be - just like the American Constitution!

God’s word must be ’self-authenticating’, but we can look to other evidence to expand this circle of argument.

Expanding the Circle

Textual Errors?

• Eyewitnesses still around when words are committed to paper
• Huge number of copies to compare with one another for errors (see manuscript table)

Factual Errors?

• Written when eyewitnesses were around, starting around 15 years after Christ
• Early Church and historians have no problems with so-called errors
• Eyewitnesses are named (Mark 15:21), 500 at one time (1 Cor 15)
• Secular history is not 100% accurate - see Hittite example where the Bible was right from the start
• If the Bible is fabricated then it’s a bad job - women witness the resurrection, first church leader denies Jesus, and the movement is based on a crucified leader

Social / Cultural Errors?

• Different cultures are offended by different bits of the Bible (see Mark 14, example from Tim Keller - Reason for God)
• We are arrogant when we assume our culture is more progressive than others!
• The Bible should contradict us (see Keller, ‘Stepford God’)

4 Main Points of Christianity

We shouldn’t ignore possible errors in the Bible, we need to think, discuss and research.

But we shouldn’t use possible errors to dismiss the Bible completely or to avoid addressing the central claims of the Bible…

1. We were created by God, for God
2. We’ve been happy to live in God’s creation, but without God, we deserve to die because of this rebellion
3. Jesus Christ, God-as-man, died. His death acts as a substitution, he dies where we should have died.
4. When we face God in judgement, we can take the punishment for our rebellion on ourselves or trust in Jesus that his death in our place restores a right relationship with God.

Take note anyone who puts sermons online and isn’t part of a church which has a super-flash content management system to do it for you… if you want a flash-looking CMS church website then visit me at Web4Christ.

Anyway… as part of my final-year project I’m building a website to manage sermon files for churches (or other Christian groups), it’s slow work, but it’s coming together.

I already mentioned the little feature where you can view the Bible verse of the sermon that you want to add, you can have a play and test by adding some new sermon records - Add some new sermons to the database

And then, the new bit, is the super-cool browse function. Using AJAX you can browse though the sermons without leaving the page, it’s very cool. Check it out (click the search image on the right side to activate browse) - Browse Sermons

It’s no where near finished, and there’s plenty of bugs, well less after today’s little session, but bear with it. If you think this system (be a visionary and see what it’ll look like when finished) is something that you/your church could make use of then get in touch… I don’t think I’m allowed to sell it, but it might be worth a donation…

Right, time for some Coke, a rock cake, and a book.

So here’s where I’m going on Sunday morning…

Setting the scene
Jesus has been teaching parables about the Kingdom of God around Galilee… last week, we saw the parable of the net and the sobering picture of the separation of righteous and wicked at the end of the world… now Jesus travels 20 miles south to his home town of Nazareth… this section seems a little out of place (it’s not a parable) but it’s here for a reason…

What’s going on here? - People don’t recognise who Jesus is!
v54 - he’s just a man… the people can’t see the source of his power
v55-56 - the people are blinded by his humanity… they think they know who he is, they know his family
v.57 - they took offence… no surprise, in Luke 4 they tried to throw him off a cliff!… ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’ - he’s the boy from next door, why should they listen to him?

Same situation today… Jesus is a prophet, great example, good teacher… and if he says anything offensive (like last week… weeping and gnashing of teeth) then we just ignore that…

C.S Lewis “Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Have you fallen at his feet and called Him Lord and God?

Why is this section here? - to show that the word of God divides
We know that’s true because it says so… Hebrews 4:12
Matthew 13 = division… seeds that grow and seeds that don’t… wheat and weeds… good fish, bad fish

Matthew 13:11-17… Jesus quotes Isaiah 6… v.15 “Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
v.58 “And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.”
This section shows us what Jesus was talking about… the people don’t see, don’t hear, don’t understand, don’t have faith… hence v58, no miracles

The word of God divides… some believe, some don’t
Origien (early church father) put it like this… “The same sun that melts wax hardens clay”… God’s word provokes a response!
Psalm 95 “Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts”
BHMC SofFaith… Bible is supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour

So… when we hear God speak in his word… let us not harden our hearts… but let us trust and obey
As the hymn says… “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

What about us? - Do we have a right view of Jesus?
Have you fallen at his feet and called Him Lord and God? Maybe you have, and have continued to do so for many years…
But let us not forget Jesus’ humanity… Hebrews 4:15 – “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin”

Let’s have a right view of Jesus…. Lord and King and Eternal God… yet personal, one who has known the pains and struggles of this world, one who left the joys of heaven, who humbled himself, becoming obedient to death on a cross, so that we might live!

Recently I’ve very much enjoyed Driscoll’s series on Ruth at Mars Hill. Some things I particularly liked was the use of video to produce a interactive bible reading, Dricoll’s own special way of bringing the story to life and helping us to understand 3000 year old events in today’s culture, and his emphasis on God’s redeeming grace in the life of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz. Also they made a nice desktop background to accompany the series. You can see all the series here…