Good morning everyone. Welcome to The Edge Church. My name is Neil Schori, and I’m one of the pastors here. I want to share just a little bit about The Edge. We are a church that believes that we don’t have anything to offer really outside of what God has given us. Those aren’t just words that we say, but we actually believe it, and we really try to live that out like it’s true. We’re not here to offer our best self-help or advice or tell you how to live your best life, but we’re here to point you to the one who lived and died and was raised to life — all because of his love for you.
Speaking of being raised to life, last Sunday was Easter, and we got to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, and we believe as a church that that was the most important, the most significant event in all of human history — more important than any political dynasty or dictator, more important than the election of a president or the Declaration of Independence. All of the things that we tend to give our attention to and all the things that we focus on ultimately on earth will pass away. Only what is eternal is lasting. So as a church community, we want to make it abundantly clear to you that we put our imperfect faith in Jesus. He’s the one perfect person, and we invite you to put your faith in him too.
Easter presents to us, every year, this great challenge because if you really do believe that there was this man named Jesus, and he really did die, and he really did rise from the grave, it means that he defeated death — and this person who defeated death really changes our lives because when we put our faith in someone who did that, it should have great implications for our lives today. So, in light of that, I’m super excited to get to help us kick off this brand new series called James: The Intersection of Faith and Life, because the book of James in the New Testament is truly one of the most practical books of the Bible, and it challenges us to make sure that our faith is a faith that is full of action and not just words.
James was not someone who messed around with the theoretical, but he was all about the practical. So if you are someone who is really wanting to get more involved with your faith and causing it to be full of action, then this is going to be a sermon series for you. And if you’ve been around The Edge for very long at all, you’ve probably heard me talk about the importance of context in understanding the passage that we’re reading, and it’s going to be all that much more important as we read the book of James because one of the things that happens when it comes to James is that we tend to have almost a rivalry among biblical authors.
Not actually among the authors, but people who read James and Paul sometimes create this sense of competition between the two. I believe there probably is a tension but certainly not a rivalry, and it’s mainly centered around this passage, James 2:14–17. It says:
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead (NIV).
Unfortunately, sometimes we read that, and then we read what Paul repeats over and over in his epistles, in his writings in the New Testament, and we can get confused, like when we read Ephesians 2:8–9, and it says very clearly:
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — 9 not by works, so that no one can boast (NIV).
And suddenly, we can have this perception that there’s a conflict in teachings, and camps are formed around these two leaders because that’s what people do. Lines are drawn and denominations are created when I believe the teachings are actually entirely consistent. I don’t believe for one second that Paul taught that we didn’t have to do anything once we came to faith, and I also don’t believe that all that James believed that works would save anyone. There’s a tension here, of course, and that’s where we sort of work out our salvation, but I believe that we’re invited by God to lean into the tension instead of running away from it, and I hope that we’re going to have a lot of moments like this in this sermon series as we seek to better apply our faith to our real lives.
Today, my goal is really simple: I want to only focus on the backdrop of this book, and we’re going to answer three questions. The questions are simple.
Who is James?
Who was his original audience?
Why was he writing to them?
So let’s start with: Who is James? It’s almost universally believed that James was the brother of Jesus. So you might, if you don’t know a lot about the background of Scripture or about James, you might go into this book thinking that James almost had to believe in Jesus from the start — almost like he inherited faith because he was in the same family system, that he actually grew up with Jesus. But we’re told otherwise because listen to what happened after Jesus had just called the 12 apostles. Mark 3:21 says it very succinctly:
When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind” (NIV).
One of my best friends, Brian, is a highly specialized doctor, and he just told me this week that his own mom will more readily listen to a random nurse — She just got her Coronavirus vaccine this week, and the nurse told her something that went against what Brian had told her, and she believed the nurse — over her son who is a highly specialized expert from medical school. In Mark 6:3–4, we see how this really is just a part of human nature, isn’t it? Even Jesus experienced it after teaching people and the disciples witnessed these great miracles, and his family saw that he did these things over and over. He healed the sick, but this is what they said:
3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”
And then it says:
And they took offense at him.
4 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home” (NIV).
You could almost hear the snark and the exasperation from Jesus in this encounter. Like, “Oh my gosh! All these other people see what’s true, but the people closest to me, the ones that I grew up with and experienced life with, they have a hard time believing.”
One of the things about Scripture that I love the most is that things are not covered up. Like, the Bible is so much more credible in my eyes when I read about real human nature — it’s not covered up. The reality of the doubters actually makes me want to listen more when I see how they come to the other side of their doubts. And don’t be mistaken: James was changed. Listen to what Paul wrote about him. 1 Corinthians 15:3–7. He says:
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
And here’s what’s key:
7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles (NIV).
I want you to really hear this. God is not scared away by your doubts. He is not angry at you if you have a hard time believing. He wants you to bring your doubts, bring your honesty, bring all that you have. Be honest about it, and he will meet you there, just like he did for his brother James.
So that’s who James is, but who was he writing to? We get clues about his audience from the very first verse, James 1:1, and it says:
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
And it says then who he’s writing to:
To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:
Greetings (NIV).
The first question we should really be asking when we see this is: What tribes, and why were they scattered? And the answer to this can be found in the book of Acts. Acts 6 is where we’re told about how the first deacons were picked, and Steven was kind of the head of the deacons, and deacon just means servant. And we’re told in Acts 6:8 that:
Stephen was a man full of God’s grace and power, and he performed great wonders and signs among the people (NIV, paraphrased).
And anytime you see something like that, know that opposition is coming, and it came in the form of the Jewish leaders, and they convinced the leaders to arrest Stephen based on false charges. They got people to say that he had committed blasphemy against Moses and against God. So people falsely testified against Stephen, and the result of the trial was that Stephen was stoned to death. He was the very first person to die because of his faith in Jesus. So you skip ahead to Acts 8:1–3 and we see the result of it. It says:
8 And Saul approved of their killing him.
On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison (NIV).
So James was writing to these descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel who basically were Jews who converted to Christianity. They committed their lives to Jesus, and they were paying with their lives; they were paying with persecution. They were scattered, and they were scared, and they were traumatized. Imagine if someone came to your house and said, “You have to get out of here or we’re going to kill you. And if we don’t kill you, we’re going to take away your livelihood. We’re going to turn your family against you. We’re going to make your life so miserable.” So they took off and they were tormented. These were the people James was writing to, and he still called them to live lives that were transformed by God even in the midst of these incredibly extreme trials.
In light of all that — I just want you to really think about this — can you believe that this is the man who wrote James 1:2–3? He said:
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance (NIV).
Wow, that’s crazy when you understand what he was referring to. And this is the man who had the audacity to say:
My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry (NIV).
That’s James 1:19. He’s telling people that are persecuted to slow down, be slow to speak, be slow to become angry. He’s the same person who later in the chapter told people to tame their tongues and to live humble lives and to always submit themselves to God and to be patient people.
I don’t know about you, but if I’m being really honest, when I read all the things that he challenged them to do, I sorta want to scream, “But that isn’t fair. That isn’t fair. Deal with these evil people first, God, and then I will live out this righteous path that you want me to.” But then I’m reminded: The life of a Christian is not easy. We’re going to have all sorts of challenges. James saw what happened to his brother, Jesus, the one that he didn’t believe until he saw that he was resurrected. But then he came to faith in this risen Jesus, and he realized, he looked back and he realized, my brother’s the only one who hasn’t done wrong things, and he suffered unjustly, and he didn’t sin in his response to the people who had done the greatest evil to him.
The bottom line is, if we are going to live out this Christian life that God has called us to live, we are going to go through really hard times, and bad things can still happen to you even though you follow Jesus. As a matter of fact, we’re promised that hard times will happen, and yet God still calls us to do it. Understand this: There is nothing easy about it. And if anyone tells you that when you follow Jesus life just gets easy, run away from that person. They are not telling you the truth. They are not telling you the reality of the Christian life. But know this: What God has called you to, he will see you through. 2 Peter 1:3–4, it says:
3 His divine power [speaking of God] has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires (NIV).
You know what that means? We’re not going to live perfect lives, but we are going to live lives that are honoring to God in spite of the hard circumstances that we go through. And it’s going to make us stand out in the most unusual of ways. We’re going to shine light into the darkness. We’re not in denial of hardship, and we’re not going to pretend like things don’t hurt in life, but we are going to live lives that point to a reality that goes beyond this mortal life no matter the earthly consequences we have to pay.
James didn’t just talk about this. He didn’t just challenge people to live out this Christian life and then he stood on the sidelines. No, he lived it out, and it cost him his life, just like it did Jesus’s. You don’t read this in the Bible, but according to the historian Josephus, James — who was the pastor of the church of Jerusalem — he was summoned by the Pharisees to meet with the high priest, who described James as being of an exceedingly bold and reckless disposition. In other words, he didn’t like him, and he wanted to get rid of him, and they called on James to renounce his faith in Jesus. And they said that if he didn’t do that, his punishment would be death by stoning. History records that they took James to the pinnacle of the same temple that Satan tempted Jesus, and they demanded that he renounce his faith before all of the people, and this is what he said — can you imagine standing there, knowing that you were facing death on top of this temple? — this is what he said:
“Why do you ask me about Jesus, the son of man? He sits in heaven at the right hand of the great power, and he will soon come on the clouds of heaven.”
The Pharisees were so angry about this, and in one moment they pushed him from the top of the temple, and he landed on the ground where he should have died, but he lived. He was injured, and he got on his knees and he prayed. And history records him as saying, “I beg of you, Lord God our Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.” That should sound familiar. That was such a similar prayer to what Jesus prayed when he was dying on the cross. The crowd got angrier, and they stoned him until one priest who was standing there reportedly yelled for them to stop, and he, the priest, said, “The righteous one is praying for you. You have to stop.“ But it was too late because a man stepped forward with a club and hit James in the head, and he was dead after that one strike.
May God help us to learn from this man who lived out his faith so fully and completely. But let’s always keep Jesus in our line of sight first. Jesus was the object of James’ faith, and he’s the point of ours too. And his love and sacrifice for us is entirely from another world. Let’s be very clear about that; this is not a natural love that we can find here on this earth, and we will only learn to walk in his steps when we learn to turn from our lives and our ways and embrace him and his. Acts 2:38–40 tells us exactly how to do that. You don’t accidentally get on the Christian path. You don’t accidentally become a Christian. This is a conscious choice for you to make for yourself. What will you do with the risen Jesus Christ? The apostle Peter told the crowd when they asked that question, “What do we do to be saved?” And he said:
38 “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
40 With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation” (NIV).
If you’re interested in taking next steps on your faith journey, we would love to connect with you about it. We also love to leave you questions to consider throughout the week. You might do that right now in your house church or later on in the week with family or friends.
What is your main takeaway from the message today?
Do you naturally lean more towards Paul’s theology like what we read in Ephesians 2:8–9? Or do you lean more towards James? And why? Really explore that.
We talked about James’ story and how it led him to be willing to sacrifice everything for the Lord. What’s your story, and does it give you confidence in God? Why or why not? There is no judgment. Just be real about it, and I promise you, God is going to meet you in your story.
God bless you and have a great week.