James chapter 1 verse 5. Turn over there with me if you would. I really like the book of James. The fact of the matter is a lot of people and sometimes even preachers will steer away from the book of James because they feel like there's some things in the book of James that are hard to digest or explain or preach or they don't but I I love the book of James I really do just because there's there's so much in it and what I feel like James does a great job of is placing the responsibility squarely on our shoulders placing the responsibility not allowing us to duck out from under things out a couple of those one of those Keys to that is this theme verse. This key verse, James chapter one, verse five says, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that give us to all men liberally and a braid if not, and it shall be given him. You know what that says? If you don't have the wisdom that you need, to live for God and to serve the Lord and serve people. If you don't have the wisdom you need to help people, ask for it. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, which giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given unto him. And I know the rest of the passage there, the next several verses go on to expound on that a little bit. But you know what that does? That says if I'm lacking in the area of wisdom, that's my fault because I'm not praying about it enough and seeking the Lord on it. Now, that doesn't mean that if I pray about it, I'm going to be as smart as Brother Leo or Dr. Williams or anybody else in this room. We're talking about wisdom, the discernment, knowing what to do with the information. You know, knowledge The accumulation of information you have the information, you know, you know the information Understanding is knowing what that information means. There's one thing to have the information something different to know what the information means wisdom is Properly applying your knowledge and understanding it's knowing properly What that means for me and how to use the knowledge and understanding that I have there's a lot of people for instance if I memorize John 3 16 That's knowledge. I have the knowledge. I know the verse Understanding is me understanding what John 3 16 means. What does that mean? wisdom is Me putting that into practice is me using my knowledge and my understanding and putting it into practice. And he says, if you lack wisdom, there's a lot of people that have the knowledge or maybe have the understanding, but they lack wisdom. And he says, if you lack wisdom, ask God. And guess what? If you ask him, he'll give it to you. You know why? Because God knows that what he's called us to do requires wisdom. And so he wants us to have the wisdom that we need to accomplish the task. Several of the folks, my wife, I've asked her to oversee the food for VBS. I've asked a couple of our men to build things for VBS. And in order for them to accomplish that, one of the things that I've been asked on every front is, tell me what you want. Give me some idea of what you're looking for. But then taking that information and applying it and using it to accomplish a task is where that wisdom comes into play. And so it is such an important thing for us to remember in the book of James as you read some of these things, the responsibility is on me. James talks about faith and works and show me your faith without your works. I'll show you my faith by my works Whose whose responsibility is that who does that? I have to do that. Nobody else can do that for me Keyword the word faith use 16 time first time chapter 1 verse 3 most significant chapter 2 verse number 22 Let's look at that for a minute it says see us see us vow how faith wrought with his works and By works was faith made perfect. It's talking about Abraham that you see When he was all going to offer Isaac on the altar And you read that in the previous verse there verse 21 verse 22 though. See us thou how faith wrought with his works He had faith. He believed God because God had promised that through Isaac. He was going to bless his seed and And then God told him to sacrifice Isaac Abraham didn't understand everything but Abraham believed God Abraham had faith in God and his faith worked with his work He took his faith said I believe God but God told me to do something So I'm gonna go do what God told me to do and I'm gonna leave the results of it up to God I don't know how God's gonna Keep his promise, but I know that he said that he would So whether that if he's gonna raise Isaac back up from the dead whatever he's gonna do He told me that he would bless my seed and that he was going to multiply and you know as the Sands of the seashore I'm trusting God to do it and because of that he carried it out with his works His faith wrought with his works and by works was faith made perfect talking about, again, that whole passage there in chapter two, that section talking about faith and works. His faith was displayed, was illustrated by his works. Then the next word that we see is works. used 13 times first time chapter 2 verse 14 most significant chapter 2 verse 18 which says this 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 and I know it's kind of a rhetorical question it's kind of one of those things where hey Paul says show me thy faith without thy works It's an impossibility. You cannot do it. I can't show anybody my faith. I can say that I have faith, but I can't show anybody my faith without works. I think of it kind of like the guy, you know, somebody that's going bungee jumping or parachuting. they say I know brother Jack wants to go parachuting and him and I have talked about it and You know, it's one thing to say that you'll want to it's one thing in your head to say. Yeah, that would be a really cool idea Some people say I think that's retarded. Why would anybody jump out of a perfectly good airplane? There's something about it that I I know I just I I'm one of those people that likes adrenaline a little bit, but it does scare me to think about it. If I don't think about it, then it seems like a cool idea. But you know, bungee jumping, you're going to jump with a rubber band tied to your ankle. You're going to jump off of a bridge 200 feet up in the air. And we've calculated it out so that your head's going to stop a foot before you hit the water down there. Something about that just doesn't seem like a very good idea to me, but at the same time, I've got something inside of me that thinks it would be really cool to try it just once. But I'd be like, could you calculate it so that I stopped like 20 feet short of the water instead of one foot short of the water? There's something about that, but at some point, if I say I believe that that rubber band's gonna hold me when I jump off of this bridge, prove it. I believe it, I really do believe it. Okay, prove it. Well, you see, it's a perfectly good rubber band. They've got tested right here on the box that the rubber band came in. It said that it'll hold up to this amount of weight and it says it'll stretch this much and all those things. So there you go. Yeah, but do you believe it? Well, yeah, I believe it. It says right there on the box. Okay, prove it. Well, I'm not sure that I believe it quite that much. Hey, there's something about the idea that putting our faith into action, by our works, by stepping out on faith. And so often, as Christians, we miss out on things because we're afraid to step out on faith. I'll tell you, this whole situation with VBS is way out of my comfort zone. way out of my comfort zone. Now, I love doing VBS. Don't get me wrong. I love it. That is my comfort zone. I love it. I enjoy it. I enjoy putting it on. I enjoy all that. I love being around the kids. I enjoy all of that. But the whole idea of the unknown, of not knowing who's gonna come, and not knowing yet who's gonna be here for workers, and not knowing yet how things are gonna go. Understand, some of the things, I mean, Some of the games and things, for instance, that we had planned or that we're planning to do, I've said things to people, oh, we're going to do this thing. Oh, kids here won't do that. You might have got kids up in Illinois to do that. Or you might have got kids, you ain't going to get kids here to do that. Because there's some crazy stuff and everything. It is amazing. You'd be amazed at what teenagers will do. But it is a lot of unknowns for me. So I and then every time that somebody comes up with another idea on how we can advertise this thing. I'm excited about it I'm like, yeah, let's do that. But then I'm like, whoa, what if those people show up, you know? Hey, there's something about the Excitement of it, but the unknown but that's where faith comes in If we knew everything then they wouldn't require any faith. I If we had set limits, if you said, well, what are you going to do? If I said, hey, the first 50 kids that show up, the first 50 kids in the door are the only ones we're going to allow in the door for VBS after that. We're going to lock the doors now to let anybody else in. Then I know I was going to have 50. It'd be easy to plan for food. Or I maybe would have less than 50, but I knew I wouldn't have more than that. And so all of that. At some point, you gotta step out on faith and say, you know what? I don't understand it all, I don't know it all, but we're gonna go, we're gonna do it, and we're gonna trust the Lord to provide, we're gonna trust the Lord to take care of us. The theme is maturity. Through persecution from without, and through problems from within. How do we mature? It's like I said last week about talking about faith on Wednesday nights. We exercise our faith. Our faith grows by being exercised, just like a muscle. It's something that the more that you work it, the more that you use it, the bigger it grows. The more that you put it into practice, the bigger it grows. And so sometimes there may be somebody in the room this morning that you just need to take that first little step of faith. There's somebody maybe that has been spending their whole life taking little steps of faith and it's time to take a big leap of faith. I don't know where it is, but everybody's at different stages. Just like you may have somebody, you might have one person, you can go into the gym over here at the rec center, and people are in there lifting weights, and you might have one person that's just starting out lifting weights, and he's doing all he can, he's on the bench press, he's doing all he can to push up 50 pounds. He may take all the weights out of the bar and just bench press the bar, because that's all that he can do. And you might have somebody else. I got Samuel Sparks, Brother Ross Sparks' son, told me he's got one of his friends. And those of you that are local here, you know, I don't remember what the kid's name is. I want to say it's Dylan, but he's a big kid. And he can bench press like 500 pounds. And Samuel said he was going to come with him probably at least a couple of the nights over here to VBS. I said, well, that's the kind of guys I need around here, just make sure kids stay in line. But there's something about guys like that or Ryan that comes. Ryan Camps that comes with Jesse from over here at Truett. And you got big guys like that. Ryan's a wrestler. And for them, if you give them a bar with no weights on it and say, try and bench press that, that doesn't require any faith. That doesn't require any, they're not gonna push themselves. They could do that a whole lot of times before they'd max out at the bench press. And so to them, they might say, well, that's no big deal. It's the same way with faith. You might see somebody else that for them, putting $5 in the offering plate is a huge step of faith. It's kind of like the widow's mite for them. You might see somebody that comes this week of VBS and just them being here, being around those kids for the week is a huge step of faith for them because it's way out of their comfort zone. you might see somebody else who's been around kids, used to it, can handle it, no problem at all, and that for them, when Pastor King calls them up on the stage to help with a game, that might be a huge step of faith for them. But you never know, you say, Pastor King, I'm not coming if you're gonna make me, I'll use the young kids, don't worry, I won't embarrass any of you. I love embarrassing the kids, but I don't do that to adults, I've learned my lesson. But there's something about stepping out of your comfort zone. And there's two things that help us to grow in maturity. And those two things are persecution from without and problems from within. Sometimes the things that we struggle with in here is what stretches our faith. what causes us to grow as Christians. You may be dealing with something today that nobody else knows about, but it's just an inner struggle that you're having, and overcoming that with the Lord's help is going to require a great deal of faith on your part. You may have persecutions from without. You may be struggling with things that everybody knows about, but even those, if you walk through them by faith and you trust the Lord and ask God to help you, it'll help you to mature as a Christian. The truth is, I've said this many times, those that are mature Christians today, they can look back and tell you, I've been through this, and this, and this, and this, and going through those things is what has brought me to where I am today. I wouldn't have chose that for myself, and I wouldn't choose it for anybody else, but going through that is what brought me to here. When I got to Illinois, I've told you this before, when I got to Illinois as a youth pastor, It was out of my comfort zone as a large church, a large youth ministry, a lot of responsibility, a lot of pressure. And I told Pastor Kingsbury, I said, if I had come here right out of Bible college, I'd have quit in a month and I'd have never went back to the youth ministry. But I had been, up until that point, through some things that, again, were difficult things that we went through in some other churches and difficult times and all these different things. But God used all of those other things to prepare me for what He had next. I don't know what God's using in your life today to prepare you for what He has next. He may be preparing you to be a blessing and a help to somebody else. But that's what God does. That's how God works. That's how God grows our faith. The date of the writing, A.D. 45 to 50. Before the fall of Jerusalem, it's probably one of the earliest books written in the New Testament. James is the writer. It's written to the 12 tribes scattered in dispersion. Michaela typed this up for me, and when she did, when I was proofreading it, she had wrote, the 12 tribes scattered in depression. It was but it's a twelve tribes scattered in dispersion They're dispersed about the Bible says in chapter 1 there verses 1 & 2 is written from Jerusalem It's the 59th book of the Bible 20th book of the New Testament 5 chapters 108 verses the purpose is to show the conflict between the inner and outer man and The inner man, we're striving for the things you see in the first column there, perfection, excellence, maturity, character, and stability. The outer man, or the flesh, We struggle with these things, inner and outer. Our flesh in the inner man struggles with inner problems. Outer man, we have outer persecutions. Inner man struggles with inner experience. Outer man with outer exposure, things that we're exposed to. Inner man with misery. Outer man with misunderstanding. Inner man with conflict. Outer with conviction. Inner with sorrow. Outer with suffering. Again, all things that we deal with But that God can use if we'll let him to to bring about the things that you see in that left-hand column all of those things sorrow and suffering and conviction and conflict and misery and misunderstanding and experience and exposure and persecution and problems all Are what result in perfection excellence maturity character and stability That's why sometimes when you have a young person or a young married couple and you see the struggles that they're going through and they look at a couple that's been married for 50 years and they say, how in the world did you get to that point? How did you manage to do it? How did you pull it off? How are you still sane? They look at that and really what it is, is enduring all the difficulties you see in that left-hand column to bring about what you see now, today, years later. The divisions, I know there's an extra O in divisions. I saw it after I'd already printed them, so you can scribble that one out. It's not divisions. Divisions, the perfect man. patient in testing practices the truth power over the tongue a peacemaker not a troublemaker and Praise in trouble. So all of you if you have daughters granddaughters anybody that's looking for the perfect man That's what he is right there. That's that's say what who is the perfect man? He's all those things perfect lady to is just telling what is a perfect Christian? What are we to be striving for? What ought we to be? What are we to look for in a person? What are we to look for in ourselves? How do you handle testing? Are you patient in testing? Do you practice the truth? Not just speak the truth, but do you practice the truth? Do you live the truth? Do you have power over the tongue? That's a tough one. The Bible tells us it's a tough one. If you can bridle a tongue, you can control your whole body. Peacemaker, not a troublemaker. Somebody that prays in trouble. What do you do when you're in trouble? Some people try to work out of it. Some people stress through it. Some people pray about it. The outline is this, the introduction, Christ and his brother, that being James, the half-brother of Christ, chapter 1, verse 1. A Christian and his battles, verses 2-16 of chapter 1. First of all, his testings and his temptations. The battles that a Christian faces, if you read those in chapter 1. I see myself in those verses every time I read it. See myself in some of those struggles. Roman numeral 2, a Christian and his Bible, chapter 1, verses 17 to 27. The gift of the Word, the grafting of the Word, and the glass of the Word. When you behold yourself, you know, remember the Bible tells that we see, you know, the Bible helps us to see ourselves. It reflects who we are. Because we can see it and say, how do I line up? How do I compare with what God expects? Romans 3, a Christian and his brethren, chapter 2, verse 1-13. Partiality is a sin against the Lord. Partiality is a sin against the law. That's verses 1-7 and 8-13 there. Then Romans 4, a Christian and his beliefs, chapter 2, verses 14-16. Faith versus works is emphatically declared in verses 14 to 17. Faith versus works is energetically debated, 18 to 20. And faith versus works examples are delivered, 21 to 26. You can tell just in the reading of it, that faith and works was something that James was passionate about. It was something that was real to him, and one of the reasons why is something that you'll see in the miscellaneous information that you get down here a little bit later towards the end of the notes. James was the pastor of the church at Jerusalem. He was a pastor, and one of the things, as anybody in spiritual leadership that you struggle with on a regular basis, that we have to make sure of, be careful of, be watchful of ourselves, but also that you see oftentimes as people, or in people. is what we say matching up with what we do. I mean, you don't have to go knocking on doors very much or talk to people out in the community very much. Everybody or most people believe that you should be in church. Everybody thinks, yes, you should go to church, and everybody wants to be or says that you should be a good Christian, that you should read your Bible and that you should pray, but take that and compare it with the number of people that actually do. There's a vast gulf. between those two numbers. And James, as a pastor, as somebody that had obviously been around the ministry of Jesus Christ, he said, look, they've got to match up. Who you are at church has got to match up with who you are at home. Who my kids see at church better be who my kids see at home. who my kids see. My kids have had the opportunity in the last several months really, actually since we've been here, to spend time around a lot of our church folks. My daughter Michaela got to be with Miss Betty yesterday for a good portion of the day. Who she saw yesterday was the same person that she sees when she sees Miss Betty at church. That's important. Emily spent the day with Miss Fanny the other day. Got to know Ms. Fanny a little bit better, heard a little bit about her life and her family and different things. But you know what? Who Emily saw at Ms. Fanny's house is who Emily sees Ms. Fanny be at church. That is so important for young people, but also for adults, for young Christians to see that who you are at home is who you are at church. Who you are at Walmart, who you are anyplace else is who you are here. You say, well, the people at church don't see me at home or don't see me at work. Okay, that's fine. But what about when your neighbor or somebody from home or somebody from work comes and visits church? Are they going to see the same person? How do those match up? A Christian, Roman numeral 5, and his behavior. Sin must be revealed and sin must be resisted. That's chapter 3, 1 through 4, 12. We you know sin must be revealed. The first step to solving a problem is admitting that we have a problem, right? We have to reveal the sin We got to say okay This is the sin and then we have to deal with it and then we have to resist and once the sin that's present has been dealt With we need to resist sin for the future in order to be successful Roman numeral six a Christian and his boasting chapter 4 verses 13 through 5 6 wrong to boast about his plans and wrong to boast about his prosperity. Now again, there's a big difference between sharing blessings and boasting. The difference is this is what God did and this is what I did. Let me tell you about me or let me tell you about God. My mom, yesterday when I called her, I let Makayla get on the phone with her and I told her about the blessing. And the first thing that my mom said to Makayla when she got on the phone with her was, it almost makes you believe that God wants you to go on a missions trip, doesn't it? It's important. I had already talked to Makayla about that, but it's important that Makayla was reminded of that as a young person. from her grandma or from anybody else. Hey, what a blessing to see what God has done. The first thing Miss Betty said when I saw her right shortly before they were done, I saw them, I was over there and she said, it's just amazing to see how God blesses. And it is. It's tremendous to see the way that the Lord works. Roman numeral seven, a Christian and his burdens, chapter five, verses seven through 20, the burden of poverty, the burden of proof, the burden of prayer and the burden of people. See, people are a burden. People can be a burden. We have burdens to bear. And the Bible talks about that there in chapter number 5 of the book of James. Miscellaneous things, information about the book of James. It is a general epistle. In other words, it's not written to a specific church or a specific person. It's to the churches that are scattered abroad and he writes it In in general called the Proverbs of the New Testament because it deals with a lot of different issues Probably first book of the New Testament that was written practical guide to Christian life conduct it deals with ethics and morals and it is filled with metaphors and figures and The contrast between the book of Hebrews and the book of James. Hebrews is doctrine. James is about deeds. Paul lays out a foundation in Hebrews. James builds a building on the foundation in James. Paul talks about heaven. James talks about works. Paul talks about beliefs. James talks about behavior. By the way, Both book they do both talk about the other things some but what I'm saying in both of those things. They're both vital It's not one over the other. It's one results of the other they work together and Just another great picture of how the Bible fits together Some information about the person of James the one that wrote the book. He's the half-brother of Jesus Servant of God servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says these things about himself son of Mary and Joseph Pillar in the church at Jerusalem. He was the pastor of the church at Jerusalem called the old He was called old camel knees Just one of the names that he was called thrown to his death by Ananias from a balcony and then stone Just some things that he of course went through but It's amazing to see the way that the Lord used James the half-brother of Jesus Christ And the book of James really is one of my favorites. I know I got a lot of favorites, but I really like the book of James. I encourage you to read it. If you've never read it, read through the book. It's not a long book, but it'll be a challenge to you, I promise. Let's pray.