Christian Forensics

Read James 2

Some time ago we learned a verse from Hebrews about faith.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 

Faith is tangible yet intangible.  You can’t see it but we say it has substance.  We talk of evidence of things not seen.

What in the world is evidence of things not seen?  I get a perfect example for about 300 plus days each year from my office.  I look out of the window, that I am thankful we decided to put in what is now my office, and see the American Flag at the post office.  It is not hanging down the pole it is flying full mast with a full-value wind.

I can’t see the wind, but I can see the evidence of the wind.  I have seen the evidence of things not seen.

James says show me your faith by your deeds—by your works.  He gets a little terse here and there.  If you really believe in God then show me your faith by what you do.  That’s a good ole Missouri, Show Me!

You want to say that you believe, but consider the fact that the demons really believe in God.  They don’t have any doubt.  It scares the hell out of them because they know that the one true God is a righteous God and has consigned them to hell. They know with certainty their eternal destination. 

Make no mistake, they believe in God.

So how are we different?  James says, look at the way you live.  Do you live by the law of love or do you just love the fact that God’s grace keeps you from keeping company with the demons?

But I believe that God is real.  By the evidence of creation itself, I know that God has to be real.  I believe that Jesus died for my sins.  I believe that the Holy Spirit is with me now. 

James says, let me introduce you to Forensic Christianity.

If all that you say is true, there will be evidence.  There will be evidence of things not seen.

If you see a person who is hurting—maybe hungry or homeless—and you have the means to help but do nothing, then there is no evidence of this thing called faith.

If a person who does not believe in God helps this pitiful person, there is evidence of a good deed but no profession of faith in God.  You can have good deeds without faith.

Not everyone doing good things has faith in God and not everyone who claims faith in God seems to have evidence to support that claim.

There is a song by Everlast titled What It’s Like.  Most of you my age haven’t heard them and probably wouldn’t like them.  Some folks here don’t need to listen to them.  Their lyrics are very real but just too raw for most people.

We've all seen the man at the liquor store beggin' for your change

the hair on his face is dirty, dreadlocked and full of mange

he asks a man for what he could spare with shame in his eyes

get a job you blanking slob is all he replied.

Now the song is about walking in another person’s shoes and it goes into some situations where we could just point fingers of blame and excuse ourselves.  You got your own self into that mess, now deal with it.  That is, unless we were called to live out our faith.

Think to the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The man who was beaten, robbed, and left for dead should have known not to travel the road between Jericho and Jerusalem alone.  He was just asking to be robbed. 

But Jesus is answering the question, Who is my neighbor?  He uses this parable.  At the end of the parable, you know how this goes, it is the Samaritan who shows mercy.  It is the Samaritan who loved the man left for dead.  It is the Samaritan whose actions showed him to be a neighbor.

If you have received Jesus as your Lord, I will see your faith.  You will see my faith in acts of mercy.  My mercy does not make me faithful.  My faithfulness makes me merciful.

My acts of goodness do not bring me to salvation but my salvation brings me to acts of goodness and mercy.

I have told this story in different groups from time to time.  Once upon a time I was a newspaper manager for The Oklahoman.  I had a territory that went from Canute to Mangum to Cement/Cyril  and to Hinton.  After a couple years I was promoted and was responsible for things south of I-40 and west of I-35 with a little spillover here and there so a town didn’t get divided in half.

There had been trouble with service in Chickasha right before I was promoted.  It was really bad.  The area had gone through 7 managers over the past year and carriers were quitting every week.  As I interviewed manager prospects, I told them that Chickasha was a hornet’s nest.  Don’t ask for this job unless you are ready to deal with 100 customer complaints on day 1.   I spent most of my first two months putting Chickasha back together while culling through manager prospects.

Sometimes I would overnight there.  Sometimes I would drive back and forth.  I grew tired of Chickasha and the drive to and from this place.  Now, I had the other fourth of the state to take care of as well, but Chickasha was just sucking the life out of me.

One evening, I was ready to head home knowing that I would be back in a few hours.  I had not eaten all day, so I pulled into Arby’s to get the 5 for 5 special.  I don’t like drive-throughs so I went in to get my drink and 4 sandwiches and got in the car to head home.

As I looped around the back of the restaurant, I see a man digging in a dumpster.  I continued and made a left on the road heading west.  I was ready to be home and get my 2 hours sleep.  It was about half a block later that I made a U-turn.  I think it could have qualified as a Bat-Turn. 

My company car was a Dodge Magnum.  It had a long wheel base but I spun that baby around like a pro.  It took under a minute to get back to Arby’s and the dumpster and the guy was gone.  He wasn’t inside or walking anywhere nearby.  He was gone.

I knew that I was supposed to help that guy.  Yeah, I can eat 4 sandwiches.  I hadn’t eaten all day.  I was on the hungry side, but this guy was dumpster diving and I drove by him.

I knew exactly what the Spirit that lives within me was telling me to do.  I knew exactly what my faith was compelling me to do and I had not done it.

I should have taken those sandwiches back and gotten a refund because as I ate them on the drive home, they were the worst tasting sandwiches ever. 

My faith did not manifest itself into works, at least not as it should have.  I should have been so in tune with my faith and the Spirit that lived within me, it would not have taken half a minute to realize what I should have done.

I want you to consider two different and provocative concepts: Worthless faith and faithless works.

James uses the example of Abraham and Isaac and how Abraham demonstrated his faith by offering his son as a sacrifice to God.  No father here ever wants to have their faith tested in that way, but Abraham had faith that God would fulfill his promise that he would be the father of many nations and that promise would come through Isaac.

At the end of this example, James gives us the formula for faith and works.  Neither is a stand-alone entity.  Faith and deeds work together.  Faith is made complete in our works.

There is no such thing as an academic faith.  Faith moves us to action.  Our actions are incomplete without faith. 

But every time that I think of faith and works, I think about being saved by grace not works.  I am saved by grace through faith.  My salvation comes completely from God.

That statement should be rock solid in your foundation of faith.  I am saved by grace through faith!

Saved by grace through faith is absolutely true.  There are no asterisk or caveats.  It’s true.  But is it true for you?  Have you received Jesus not only as Savior but as Lord?

If we have truly professed our faith in the words that we know so well, Jesus is Lord, then we are helpless to do anything but respond to this incredible gift with action.  Sometimes our action is delayed but we are compelled to action nonetheless.

Our salvation comes from God in the blood of Christ Jesus.  Our salvation is completed in our response to his great love.  We could call this the fullness of our salvation.  I most often use the term discipleship.

Jesus said that once we believe in him, we pass from death to life.  Before we received Jesus as Lord, we were under a death sentence.  Our existence without Jesus was death. 

James makes the analogy as the body without spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.

We try to dissect God’s instructions to us.  His instructions to us are less for analysis and division and more for synthesis—receiving the full Biblical witness and unison—living in one accord as the body of Christ.

You can only dissect faith and works in a corpse.  You can’t do this in a living being.  I am going to patent the Faith and Works version of the game Operation.  There’s no bones or hearts or kidneys to remove, just faith and works. 

If you take either one out, that nasty buzzer sound goes off.  Your patient is dead!

Faith and works work together.  They are a package deal. 

Everyone who is saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ is predisposed to good deeds.  That is your new nature.  To live otherwise is to deny the Spirit of God that lives within you.

So, here are the test answers for those taking the course for credit.

Faith and actions work together.

What you do completes what you believe.

Faith without works is dead.

Amen!

Live by the Royal Law

 Read James 2

We are going to begin with favoritism but get to some meaty theology in this short message.

Don’t play favorites.  It’s easy to do.  We like the people who like us.  We like the people who are like us.  We like the people who like what we like.

It’s sounds like we are a likeable people.  But what about the people who are not like us?  What about the guy who is a victim of years of bad decisions?  What if that guy shows up to one of our worship services?  What if he needs a bath?  What if she is missing most of her front teeth?

We welcome them just as if they were like us.

We are blessed to have homes with heat and air, running water, something to cook on or in.  We are blessed to have a washer and drier, and somebody who will pick up all the clothes from all over to wash and dry them so we may scatter them about again.

We are blessed to have a choice of what to wear on Sunday morning.  It might be a suit or a dress outfit or a tee-shirt, but we have a choice.  Some don’t.

We don’t look down on others.  By the same token, we don’t need to suck up to people of money and privilege.  Just because the guy makes $500,000 a year doesn’t mean he gets the red-carpet treatment.

Just because she is a television celebrity, doesn’t mean we save her the best seat in the house.

Who is honored in this place?  God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The rest of us are here to worship Holy God.  The rest of us are new creations because of the blood of Jesus and we don’t bring who we used to be along with us.

James gives us a little rationale to go with not playing favorites with the upper crust folks.  He tells us that those are oftenthe same people who will take you to court if you owe them $100.

They might want you to wait a couple weeks to get paid for cutting their grass, but will start eviction procedures on you if you are two weeks late on your rent.

What’s James saying?  Often times, the people of status in this world live for this world.  They need the truth about a Savior more than they need the best seat in the house.

Often times, the people that we tend to pay homage to are the very same people blaspheming the name of God.  These folks need truth and ministry not privilege and preference.  The world gives them enough of the latter.

Don’t give in to the patterns of the world.

Not let’s talk about how to live.

James says that if you live by the Royal Law—the law of love.  The law that says love one another.  The law that says all other laws and prophecies hang on two commandments:

Love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

If your life is governed by love, then you are fulfilling the law.

But if you chose instead to live by the Law of Moses, which has not been abolished and has not been set aside, then your batting average had better be 1.000.

Has anyone ever fulfilled the law?  Only Jesus.

So how can we be expected to fulfil the law that no man—even the revered patriarchs-was ever able to fulfill?

With love.  Our lives are guided by, governed by, and blessed by abiding in God’s love.

If we truly love our neighbor, we will not show favoritism in our worship services.

I will differentiate, discern, discriminate—judge if you will—between the guy who can cut my grass the right way and the one just hitting and missing to get a buck

I will discriminate who I hang out with for my social life.  I will connect with anyone and everyone but remember that I am on a mission.  I will remember that Jesus went to meet sinners where they were but he did not adopt their lifestyle.

When I need to relax, I will remember that bad company corrupts good character.  Jesus ate with sinners but he did not adopt their lifestyle.

Understand that there is a difference between discerning good decisions and playing favorites.  If I am going to err in showing favoritism, it will be towards the disadvantaged.  The rich may take a few lumps if they have to.  They have plenty of comforts in the world.

So, I can drive myself crazy trying to live up to 613 commands or directives or instructions—not all pertain to everyone—or I can really lean into the Royal Law—loving one another.

Am I going to bat 1.000 at either?  No, and God will not kick you to the curb.  He is a God of mercy and he calls us to be merciful.  We are all called out of disobedience.

The Law of Moses is still there.  It is valid as the day it was given.  It was given for our own good.   It will not pass away, but Christ gave us another way to fulfill the law.  We are to love one another.

We are to become people of mercy not judgment.

How can love fulfill a law that is so directive and stringent?  Here is a human example.  There are multiple criteria to become a United States citizen.  We are a nation with many immigrants and many have jumped through all of the hoops and become citizens.

Some didn’t have to jump through very many hoops because they served in the United States Armed Forces.  Honorable service fulfilled the requirements.

The requirements did not go away or were they diminished in any way, but honorable service fulfilled the requirements.

Love fulfills the law.  The royal law is the law that must govern us.  Love God and love each other.

When we curry favor with people of money and power, we are not living by the Law of Moses and not living by the law of love.  Either way, it goes in the books as a strikeout.  Strikeouts kill the batting average.

We are to live and act by the law that gives freedom.  What?  We are to live by love as those who have received mercy and now are called to give mercy.

We are people who forgive 7 times 70 because we have been forgiven so much more.  That does not mean there was no offense for surely people have wronged us many times.

It says that we are now people of the royal law.  We live by love, forgiveness, mercy, and grace.

We see God in every face and long to lead many to the grace that we know and that we live by.

We live by the Royal Law.  We live by love.

Amen.

God is Love. We are God's Love in Action!

Read James 2:14-26

We have been proceeding through the topic of love.  In recent weeks we have looked at love and action and how we love God directly and how we love God by loving others.  Trusting in the Lord was surely one of the most direct ways in which we can love God.

I challenged you that trust leads to obedience.  Trying to obey God without trusting him is frustrating.  Trust is essential in loving God.  So too, faith comes into the picture when we talk about love and action.

Somewhere down the road, we will take on faith as its own topic.  Before then, we will make stops at peace and rest, but we need a dose of faith when we talk love and action.  So we come to a letter written by James to Hebrew believers scattered all over the known world.

These are people who knew the law, once lived by the law, and now surely are wondering how they are to live considering the fact that Jesus took care of their salvation in a single sacrifice.  The short answer to how are we to live is we are to live in love.  But what does that mean?

James says if you see a brother or sister in severe need, he says without clothes or daily food, and you just walk on by saying, good luck with that; you missed the boat on loving your neighbor.  You are disconnected from your discipleship.

Our response to God’s great love that we saw poured out on the cross is discipleship. It should be rooted in love, governed by trust, and demonstrated by faith and obedience.

Salvation is all from God, but how we respond is our discipleship.  We can say that we have faith and live in love, but our actions say more than our words.  This is not to say that we should all be mute.  On the contrary, we should acknowledge God in everything that we do.  We should share the good news at every opportunity, but our words and our deeds must be in harmony.

You can’t say that you love God and have faith in God and ignore hardship among others who cross your path, especially fellow believers.  Love and faith will produce action if they are genuine. 

James is not talking about the lazy and foolish—the Proverbs have plenty of counsel for those cases.  He speaks of those with legitimate need.  If we encounter someone with real need, we help.  Love compels us to help.  Our faith compels us to help.  Our discipleship which couples love and faith leads us to obey the Spirit within us and we help.

Our love, faith, and deeds are in harmony. We may not be able to dissect what was love and what was faith, but our response was our discipleship.  We helped because we obeyed the Spirit that lives within us.  Faith and deeds, love and action were in harmony.

James inserts what he expects will be a conversation among his readers.  One says that I have faith.  Another says I have works.  He tells us that just saying your have faith doesn’t amount to much.  It’s much more tangible to validate that faith by what you do.

For the hard cases that say, I have faith that there is one true God, that might seem impressive if you compare yourself to a bunch of atheist that are espousing a cosmic accident; but it’s nothing to put on your resume.  Even the demons believe that.   That sort of faith held by the demons does not lead them to obedience to God.  They know enough to realize that their day is coming, and they are shaking in their boots about that, but they don’t have faith.  Their knowledge does not lead to love and obedience.

So, if your stance is that I have faith because I believe there is one true God, you haven’t separated yourself from a very ungodly crowd.  James goes so far as to say that faith that is not accompanied by action is a dead faith.

How would you feel if every morning you were greeted with,” Hey, you’re looking good, but your faith is dead?”

Nobody wants to hear that their faith is dead.  But, but, but, I believe in God. But you have no actions to show for it.

This ersatz conversation is not for the purpose of determining who has faith.  It is not a litmus test that screens out the wannabes.  It’s not a heaven or hell discriminator.

It puts in juxtaposition two incongruous conditions—faith and lack of deeds.  For if there is faith there will be deeds.

James extends his previous thought in metaphor. 

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

Think of it this way.  We talked about loving God by trusting him with all of our heart, even over our own understanding.  Our trust in the Lord becomes visible in the deeds of our faith.  Our works are the visible image of our invisible trust and faith.

Jesus is the image of the invisible God.

Our works are the image of our invisible faith.  Love in action is the visible image of our faith.  I can’t see your faith but I can see the works that proceed from your faith.

James is telling us that the person who receives Jesus as Savior but not as Lord is a preposterous creature.  Receipt of the greatest gift ever should result in the response of love and discipleship, but some don’t want the discipleship.

Some do not want to receive Jesus as Lord.  Thanks God for the get out of hell ticket, but I’m not much at having a Lord in my life.  This following Jesus business is just a little much for me at the moment. 

James is telling us that this response is outrageous, perverse, and abnormal for the new creation that we have become. New creation is Paul’s term.  Let’s say for the disciple that we have been born again to be. 

Our faith is made complete in what we do.  Our love for God is visible in our love for others.  This is our natural state as a born-again believer.  This is who we are made to be when we belong to the Lord.

What do you call a person who belongs to the Christ?  He or she is a Christian. 

How do you know a person belongs to the Christ?  They will know us by our love.

Can we belong to the Christ and not see our love and faith manifested in deeds?  Such a condition is unnatural.  It’s like swimming upstream; yet, it seems so many are trying to do just that.

Our response to the love that we know in Christ Jesus is discipleship.  Discipleship manifests itself in love, faith, and trust.  These become visible in obedience and in deeds.

God’s love in action is the visible manifestation of our faith.  Action completes our faith.  Action by itself is not pleasing to God. Faith without deeds is dead, so faith and action must be companions. 

Here are three unnatural conditions for those who claim to be Christians.  These conditions should not exist in the believer.

·      Faith without deeds.

·      A Savior who is not also Lord.

·      Salvation without discipleship.

Now here are three conditions that we might not think go together but God says that they do.

·      Peace granted to us without understanding.

·      Trusting God over our own understanding.

·      Forgiveness that comes without merit (grace).

There are things in the carnal world that don’t seem to go together but they do.  There are conditions that for the Christian should not coexist.

·      Faith without deeds.

·      A Savior who is not also Lord.

·      Salvation without discipleship.

We have been talking about love and action.  This discussion has taken us to trust, obedience, faith, and deeds.  It all comes under this umbrella of discipleship.  So the question to us is, do we want to be his disciples?

Jesus tells us to take his yoke and learn from him.  He says that his burden is easy.  The load is light.  He does not say that we won’t have trouble in the world.  We know the answer to that.  We will, but we can learn from our Lord.  His commands are not a burden to us.

He tells us that people will know we belong to him by our love.  Don’t we want to not only be his disciple but look different from those who are not?

His invitation is to follow him.  Are we up to this?

The answer for one who has received unmerited forgiveness from God—grace—salvation through grace—must be yes.  The answer must be yes.

Words like Christian tourist, Christian spectator, and Christian consultant, Christian commentator are oxymorons.  These are words that don’t go together.  Where there are disciples there is action.

Grace compels us to action. 

Many of you know this.  I see so much love in action every week.  What I hope that you understand is that action is now your natural response as a follower of Christ.  Action is your natural condition.  You are God’s love in action.

We understand that God is Love.  Now understand that we are God’s love in action.

The carnal man asks, “Should I help?”

The disciple asks, “How should I help?”  Wisdom and discernment follow—God grants wisdom generously—but action is automatic.  It is natural for us as a Christian.  We will do something to help with the real needs of people.

Our faith is made complete in our action.

Amen!