James chapter 2, I will start with verse 14 and read to the end of the chapter. Let's give attention to the reading of God's Word before we read the Word. Let's come before Him in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that You have not left us to wander in the dark, but You have given us Your Word and the promise of Your Spirit. Fill us with Your Spirit. Open our hearts and our minds. Guide my lips and give us ears to hear. In Jesus' name, amen. James chapter 2 starting at verse 14. What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith and hath not works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled, notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead. being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works. Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God. Thou doest well. The devils also believe and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works when she had received the messengers and sent them out the other way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." All of scripture we know is the work of one author. That is God himself. God cannot lie. God cannot err. God cannot be mistaken. God does not change his mind in one book or in one era and add something new in the next era, contradicting what he said before. God, by his spirit, breathed out his word through human authors. And so each book has its own style and its own historical background and its own culture and its own way of using words that are peculiar to the author of that book. But all scripture is breathed out by God, who cannot err. This is crucial for us to understand. If we miss that scripture has no contradictions and that God cannot err, then our interpretation of scripture is simply picking verses that we like better than other verses. And theological discussion is just picking as many verses as you can come up with, and whoever runs out of verses first loses the game. But if there are no contradictions of Scripture, then when we come to what appears to be a contradiction, we know first of all that there are no contradictions, and therefore we prayerfully seek wisdom and understanding, and we will find ourselves putting off the way we normally think and beginning to think God's thoughts after Him. In our text, James very clearly says that faith without works is dead, and so it is. Paul writes that we are saved by grace through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast. And at first glance, these two seem to contradict one another. But as we will see as we progress, this contradiction exists only in our mind. It exists because we generally have a false definition of what saving faith is. Once we clearly define faith as the scripture defines faith, the contradiction and the difficulties in this text vanish away. Many people define faith the way John Locke defined it. His influence is still felt today. That is, faith is somewhat below fact and somewhat above opinion. That's the popular definition. A fact is something, according to popular thinking, a fact is something that is scientifically verifiable and faith is something that can't be verified but we just feel strongly in our heart might be true. And opinions are just biased ramblings. We see Locke's definition at play in the normal use of our word, I believe. A lawyer, for instance, will ask a witness on the stand, did you see the defendant pull out a gun? And the witness says, I believe so, yes. And that means I'm not sure that it's a fact, but I think it is right now. The lawyer will demand more than that. Because in popular usage, I believe means maybe, I think so, but I'm not sure. If you try to import that definition of I believe or that definition of faith into the scripture, you will end up hopelessly confused. Another way that the word I believe or faith is used in scriptures is simply to make a choice for something. It's used synonymously with I decided to walk down the aisle. or I decided to let go and let God, I decided to join a group, I decided to say a prayer, and sometimes it means I accepted Jesus into my heart. But then you get into debates known as the Lordship Salvation debates, where you wonder how many works are necessary to add this to this definition of faith, and you debate back and forth whether it's necessary to receive Jesus as Lord, as well as receiving Jesus as Savior, and you end up with a huge mess. Those who insist on lordship salvation hold to the belief that it isn't enough to accept Jesus as your Savior, you also have to accept him as Lord, but there's no way to do that without introducing salvation by works into the mix. This has recently resurfaced in the writings of several different theologians. It is my job as a pastor to warn the church of false doctrine being taught, and there is false doctrine being taught by very prominent Ministers, it's the doctrine of final salvation. We are justified by faith on this earth, but final salvation at the last judgment is going to be a declaration based upon our works. And therefore, it's possible to be justified on this earth and not enter into heaven when you die if your works are not up to stuff. That's being taught by John Piper and Mark Jones, that initial justification is by faith, but final justification is by faith and works. That view has been rejected over and over again by every reformed denomination and every reformed confession, but it is still a battle that must continue to be fought. And so we ask ourselves, what then is faith? Those who confuse faith and works either believe that, like John Locke, faith is a strongly felt belief without any facts, or like Arminius, that it's a decision that you make. Or they sometimes think it's like Rome, where faith is believing what the church tells you to believe, whether you understand what it is or not. So the question is, are we saved, as Paul says, by faith alone apart from works? Or are we saved, as James says, by faith and works? When you know what faith is, the confusion clears up. So I'd like to take you to our Heidelberg Catechism, question number 21, which will help us understand this. What is true faith? And listen closely. True faith is not only a certain knowledge whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word, but also a hearty trust, which the Holy Ghost works in me by the gospel, that not only to others, but to me also, forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits." First part of faith, sure or certain knowledge. It's based on the nature of who God is. God cannot lie. There's nothing that he does not know. There's nothing that he has not decreed. He knows the hairs on your head, for he put them there, and not one of them falls out without his decree. He knows himself thoroughly, and he knows you thoroughly, even when you do not know yourself thoroughly. He is incapable of not being God, so he cannot and will not err, misdirect, or lie. When you believe that, then you know for certain that what God has said is true. And what He has said is what is revealed in His Word. That sets us apart from John Locke's view because when we say, I believe, we are even more certain about what God has said than we are about scientific facts. For scientists can and do lie. They can and do make mistakes. They misinterpret evidence. They have biases. That's why they need to be peer-reviewed. We are in the middle right now of a crisis between scientists who cannot agree. Scientific facts change with each generation as new discoveries are made. But God does not change. God does not lie. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. That's a fact, for God has told us so. He rose from the dead on the third day. That's a fact, because God has told us so. Faith does not mean believing that which is not verifiable by science. It means believing what God has said, whether it's verifiable or not by science. This is why Jesus said, you must receive the kingdom of God as a little child. For a child believes what his parents tell him. Unfortunately, parents lie and are frequently mistaken. But God cannot lie and he is never mistaken. And so when he says, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, we believe it. Faith is accepting God's Word as unquestionably true, even in the midst of extremely difficult circumstances. One example of this would be Abraham. God told him that through Isaac and through Isaac alone, God would bring a Redeemer into the world. I will look at this thoroughly in another sermon, but I want to mention this in passing After God tells Abraham that, Isaac grows up and when Isaac is a young man, in his early teens most likely, God tells him to take Isaac up to the mountain and offer him as a sacrifice. What was going on in the mind of Abraham? God tells us in Hebrews chapter 11, He says, By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said that an Isaac shall thy seed be called, accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence he also received him in a figure. For God does not lie. The promise will come through Isaac. And God says, Sacrifice Isaac. God is all-powerful, God does not lie, so I can obey without fear, Abraham reasons it himself, for God is able to raise the dead and therefore God knows what's going to happen. And therefore God can be trusted, which brings us to the next part of our catechism. True faith is not only a certain knowledge but also a hearty trust, a trust from the heart that God is my Father and God is my God. The redemption and forgiveness of sins are mine. I'm accepted to God because of the work of Christ. And therefore I can rest in Him and be at peace and I can trust Him. And God is able to raise these bones from the dust and He will do it for He cannot lie. It won't be because I earned it, or because I'm better than everyone else, or because I learned some secret knowledge, or happened to be at the right place at the right time, but because God chose me from the foundation of the world, and therefore I can trust Him. We are His folk, He doth us feed, and for His sheep He doth us take. And so with that in mind, look at this text again. Verse 14, what does the prophet, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can faith save him? The faith that James is speaking of here is not saving faith. It's a flutter in the head. It's an intellectual exercise. It's an opinion to debate at a coffee shop, but it's not faith. Dead faith isn't faith at all. We know from scripture that when we abide in Christ by faith, when we believe his word, when we trust in his promises, we have eternal life. And therefore it follows that if we have true saving faith, we are united to Christ and we will act like people who are alive. We will act as if what we believe is actually true and not just a flutter in the head. If you truly believe that something is sure, cannot be mistaken, then you will always act accordingly. So in our text I've defined how James is using the word faith. I would also like to define how he's using the word works. It doesn't mean man-made laws. It doesn't mean putting on a pretext of holy behavior in front of your neighbors. And it certainly doesn't mean putting on work so that you can impress God and convince him that your faith is really, really genuine. All of that's a lie of the devil. It means those actions of a person who truly believes that what he believes is true. It's an action based on a belief. He uses the example of Abraham and one specific thing that he acted on because he believed what God said. He uses another example of Rahab who does what she does because she believed what God said. And in the context, he's talking about the kind of person who never, ever, ever acts according to compassion or mercy. One who despises the outsider. As I said last week, the one who hates the repugnant cultural other. How can he act that way if he has genuine faith? If he truly believes the record God gave us of his son? Can you truly treat someone without any mercy or compassion if you have received mercy and compassion yourself? And when one is rebuked for sin, generally the response is something along these lines. Well, I don't really need to change my behavior because I believe in Jesus and His righteousness is mine and so I can do whatever I want to and I'll still go to heaven. It won't change my standing before God and so therefore I don't have to repent and believe. James is saying that if that is your belief, if you think that you can do whatever you want to because you're now saved, then you don't have saving faith at all. Your faith is dead. And dead faith isn't saving faith. Dead faith doesn't save anyone. It's empty belief in belief. You might believe in something. In fact, everyone believes in something. Faith itself is not a virtue. Every single human being has faith. It's what you believe. You might believe that you're wise and good, you might believe that you're a little better than everyone else, or you might believe that the mothership is coming any day to pick you up and take you to your real planet. You might believe that when the day of judgment comes you're going to be just fine because God is going to find you just as nifty as you find yourself. You might believe that Jesus was a pretty good guy who showed people how to love and accept one another and be good citizens. You might even believe that the Christian life is a life of order and that its laws are good and that what he commands are good. But it might not have anything to do with saving faith. If it isn't faith in the perfect, complete, and final work of our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins according to the Scripture, and rose the third day according to the Scripture, and His righteousness imputed to me as my only hope, then it isn't saving faith at all. It's dead faith. If you don't believe that certain promise that not only to others, but to me also, Forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and eternal life are freely given by God only for the sake of Christ's merits. If you don't believe that promise, you don't have saving faith at all. No matter what else it is that you might believe, you have a dead faith in dead things that's heading to the grave. And so to repeat his question in verse 14, can that kind of faith save you? It would be better translated that way in verse 14, rather than, can faith save you? There is a definite article there. What he's talking about is this kind of faith he's talking about. Can dead faith that doesn't have any effect on your life actually be saving faith? He says no. If it truly is saving faith, if you truly believe all that God has revealed in His Word, and if you trust in Him alone for salvation, then your body will do different things than it did before. Take, for example, Rahab. I preached about her a month or so ago, and I won't repeat everything I said. Just really briefly to recount the story. Jericho is doomed for destruction. Everybody knows it. The spies show up at Rahab's door. She sees an opportunity to act according to what she believes. Here's what she believes. Jericho is doomed. Israel were God's chosen people and Jehovah is the only true God over the whole of creation therefore she only has one option make peace with Israel no matter what it takes and so she showed the spies and protected the spies and sent them the other way and sent the soldiers the other way and begged the Lord for mercy Now look at James's point. Suppose Rahab doesn't believe those promises, or suppose that what she says she believes didn't actually enter her heart, that it's just a flutter in her head, another philosophical viewpoint. Rahab's at home reading her paper. The spies knock on the door. She opens the door. The spies say, hi, we're from the nation of Israel. We're spies. Can we stay here for a while? She says, sure, and she lets them in. They tell her all about God and his promises. They tell her all about the one true God who is merciful and kind. They say, we will protect you if you don't tell anyone our business. And she sits there and goes, oh, you guys are so smart. Oh, I just love listening to you talk. You remember the PTL club back in the 80s and 90s? There was always that guy on the couch whose job it was to go, mm, mm, mm, whenever anybody was talking. Sometimes he'd get carried away and say things like, mm, meaty, meaty. So Rahab's doing that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Tell me that story again. Oh, that's a good one. And then the soldiers come. And she goes to this door and opens the door. And she says to the soldiers, oh, yeah, those guys, oh, they're really smart. They're upstairs hiding under the flax. Did she really believe the promise? That's James's point. No matter what she said, did she believe it? No, her faith would have been dead faith, not saving faith at all. For if she truly believed what she said she believed, she only had one option, and that's what she did. Empty words mean nothing. Empty words aren't faith at all. You can go meaty, meaty all day long if you want to, but what happens when that faith is tested? What happens when the soldiers knock on the door? What happens when the olive trees don't blossom and the fig trees don't fruit and the rivers run dry? Jesus told the story about the seed thrown into the ground and he asked the question, what happens when the sun comes up? Because here's the fact, the sun of tribulation will come up. And that's when true faith is tested. That's what James is warning the church of. What happens when the sun comes up? What did Rahab do? She did the only option available for her, as I said a few weeks ago. When Paul said that we are saved by faith apart from works, he was speaking of a different subject. He was answering those who believed that you had to add the works of the law to the perfect completed work of Christ. And all of Scripture says unanimously, no. We are complete in Christ. We are God's beloved children in Christ. We are united to Him by faith. We are chosen from before the foundation of the world to be heirs of eternal life. There's nothing we could ever do to add to that, now or ever. For Jesus isn't half a Savior. leaving the rest up to us. He saves us completely. That's precisely what we embrace by faith. And so James is not saying that now we have to add works to our faith to somehow make it real. He's giving us the test of living faith as compared to dead or false faith. Living faith, that which saves us, is certain knowledge and hearty trust. If you truly believe the gospel, your behavior will necessarily change. If your faith consists of empty words, then know this, empty words never saved anyone. You may say in church, and in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord, while at the same time you tell the poor man to sit on the floor because he isn't worthy of your time. If you do that, your words are like the person that tells a hungry man, be warm and filled, without giving him any food and without giving him any warmth. What good did your empty words accomplish? None at all. Is it love to speak of warmth and food to a cold and hungry person? Or is it love to provide warmth and food? Is it faith to go mm-mm-mm at all the right times? Or does faith work itself out in the works of thanksgiving and praise? That's James's point. You say, Lord have mercy on me a sinner and go home and scream obscenities at your wife and beat your children without mercy. And James says judgment is without mercy to those who have no mercy. How can this be living faith? You say, Lord forgive me of my sin and then you head to the nightclubs to see who you can use and discard. I once knew a man that went to the nightclubs every single weekend. He was a professing Christian. He would pick up a new girl every single Saturday night. And he would say, it's okay because she's an unbeliever and going to hell anyway, and I'm a Christian who had been washed by Christ, so it's okay. That's what James is addressing. He doesn't need to add works to his faith, he needs to know what faith is. Because he has none of it. It isn't saving faith at all, it's dead faith. You don't need to add works to that kind of faith, you need to repent and come to Christ, for that faith is dead. You might say, I believe in the Holy Spirit and revile and slander and falsely accuse your neighbor. This is what James is talking about. He isn't contradicting Paul, for Paul never once said that empty faith is saving. Paul never once said that false dead faith can save you. Paul said that we're saved by saving faith, sure knowledge, hearty trust that unites us to Christ and breathes new life into these dusty and dry bones. James is saying that true faith, saving faith, affects the whole person. It changes how we view God and how we view our neighbor. Otherwise, it isn't faith at all. How can a leper come to Christ to be healed and at the same time not want to be healed? How can a sinner come to Christ for cleansing and at the same time desired not to be cleansed from sin? How can you come to Christ so that you might know God better and at the same time hate God and want nothing to do with Him? You can't. The solution is not to paste some outward fruit onto your dead body. It isn't to smear makeup on your dead corpse. It's to actually repent and come to Christ. But you can only come to Him if you know Him to be compassionate, gentle, kind, a friend of sinners. You can only come to Him once you know that He doesn't find you revolting and ugly and a waste of space, but He's calling sinners to Himself. He calls you to Himself as you are to be cleansed from that sin. and he reaches out to you as one who is sinful and weak and weary and foolish for he says I came to seek and save that which was lost my compassion fails not my mercy is infinite my patience and kindness calls to you for the devil know the devils know that there is a God the devils know that Jehovah is the only true God the devils know that Jehovah is angry with the sinner every day They tremble at that knowledge with rage and fear and hatred. They have knowledge but no trust. Saving faith is knowledge and trust. But if you have that trust, can anyone explain to me how you show faith without using your body? How can you confess Him without using your tongue and your lungs and your lips? How can you worship Him without using your hands and your feet and your arms? How can you come to Him for healing without leaping for joy? How can you come out of the tomb without coming out of the tomb? It is His power alone that saves. That's true. But He does actually save. And so throw off the bands of death, throw off the contempt and the rage at the world, and rest in Him alone. If you truly believe that God is our Father, that Jesus is our Savior, and the Holy Spirit indwells us, then what do we have to fear? James's point is, why do we continue to act as if those things aren't true, if we confess that they are true? Why do we act as if salvation is up to us and that our only comfort is here in this world and that our only hope is here? He's saying, come out of the tomb and live. A perfect example of this we see in John chapter 5. Jesus sees a man by the pool and the man can't walk. So he says to the man, do you want to walk? It's a good question. Because if the man is made whole and learns how to walk then he His whole life will change. He'll have to do the things that walking people do. He's been disabled his whole life. If Jesus makes him whole, everything will change. That's terrifying, isn't it? It's not that he has to be a walking man in order to become a walking man. is that once his legs are healed, it will naturally follow that he will walk. And that'll change everything. Do you want to be made whole? When Jesus calls us to repentance and faith, He says, do you want to be made whole? Do you want to be free of sin? If you do want to be made whole, that'll change everything. Jesus says to the man, rise, take up your bed, and walk. Immediately the man was made whole. It was the power of Christ alone, not of merit, not of works, that made him well. But now he is well. For saving faith is living faith. So getting up, picking up the mat, and walking was a natural reaction to someone who has been made well. And He even works a greater work on us. He says to you, do you want to be free from this body of sin? It's the only way you can come to Him. Do you want to be free? And when He speaks the word, you will get up and you'll walk and act like a living person. For He does make us alive. And so we walk in life, we look at our neighbors with compassion instead of as the repugnant other. We look with compassion and mercy on the poor and helpless. We begin to learn what love is and we start to put off envy and hatred and strife and bitterness. And we long above everything else to know God, to be in fellowship with Him, to be restored. And with that, everything else flows. We learn what it means to love our wives and love our children. We learn how to respect and listen to other people who think of things differently than we do, because we're no longer afraid of them. We've learned how to walk. And that's the psalm that says, taste and see that the Lord is good. That will change everything. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, breathe upon us, we pray, your Holy Spirit, and teach us to walk. We pray, Father, that we will leap with joy, that we will learn love and joy and peace. Fill us with that fruit. Thank you for your Savior that you have sent into the world to deliver us from this body of sin and how we long to be free and stand before you whole. Everything else fades in the presence of your grace and glory. In Jesus' name, amen.