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"North American religious society statistics tell us is remarkably schizophrenic that is to say double-minded.
Let me give you some statistics to prove the point.
In North America, if you take a survey, in excess of 90% of the people will tell you they believe in God.
35% of the population, generally speaking, will call themselves Christian.
And 63% will declare that they believe the Bible is the authoritative Word of God, so far, so good.
That's what people profess to believe.
There's a dark side, their actions deny their beliefs because looked at this.
Only 15% of people who profess to be Christian would declare that God is their highest priority.
16% profess to read the Bible with any measure of regularity.
And only 29% claim to attend church regularly, and that would be south of the border.
In Canada, the percentage I guarantee you is much lower than that.
That is the general adult population.
Youth figures are also very interesting.
60% of youths who go to church would call themselves committed Christians.
66% would declare the Bible to be the Word of God, and 43% of those youths are active in the local church.
Not bad, pretty good figures.
Again, that dark side, 73% of youth surveyed indicate that they have been involved in some kind of occult activity.
That figure does not include reading horoscopes.
There, the figure climbs to 80%, 25% of which claim to order their lives by such reading.
50% of such youths will have had sex by the time they're 18, and only 9% profess to believe in moral absolutes, that is to say, some things are always right, and some things are always wrong according to a biblical standard.
So here you have this double-mindedness. We have, on the one hand, this great body of belief that we confess.
And it all sounds pretty good until you begin to measure how we behave over against what we profess.
And you've got this huge chasm. There is this great separation between what we believe and what we practice as a matter of fact, surveyors will tell you.
And researchers will tell you that generally speaking, the life of the Christian community in areas like divorce and abuse and other major social issues is not significantly different.
From what you encounter among the population at large.
And certainly we are not wrong this morning in asking ourselves the question, why this chasm, why this double-mindedness, why this inconsistency?
And while I think there are many answers to that question, certainly one of the most obvious answers is that in today's society we've made a separation between faith and practice.
We live in a culture that tries to personalize faith. Don't shove your religion down my throat. You'll hear politicians when they are campaigning for office.
And somebody puts a finger on the fact that they profess to be professing Christians. We don't want your Christian faith to affect your policy decisions. It's a funny thing. They never worry about that with people from the other side of the fence.
And if you ever noticed how quickly we scurry and we say, well, I'm not going to let my personal beliefs dominate my policy decisions as if it's a virtue to believe one thing privately and another thing publicly.
You see, we have divorced our faith from our actions. And that's the issue that James now addresses as he continues his discussion here about why it is wrong to favor the rich at the expense of the poor.
And so far, just by way of a very quick review, we have seen that in the book of James, this issue really weighs heavily on his mind. All of chapter two is devoted to it. And so far we have looked together at three reasons that he gives us.
Why judging on the basis of your socio-economic standards is desperately wrong. Number one, he says, because we set ourselves up as judges. That's not our business. That's God's business. We don't know what truly lives in the heart.
We use worldly criteria when we set ourselves up as judges with evil intent. And then as we saw together last week, we violate God's royal law.
That is to say the commandment to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Whenever we make a preferential judgment on the basis of worldly stinging, James says we actually insult the poor.
And when we insult the poor, we insult the God who is their maker. Serious business from a biblical point of view. Well now, so as to carry the ball forward and yet to marshal still another argument, he gives us a fourth reason.
This kind of preferential treatment is so desperately wrong. And here it is. It denies our faith. It denies our faith. And this morning as we take a little bit of time to walk through the passage that we have read together, let's try to unfold unwrap, if you will.
The argument that he presents trying to lead us to this understanding. It's almost like this is so deeply rooted even among Christians in our culture that he's got a marshal every argument that he can and to show us how wrong it is to favor the rich over the poor.
And here is his first observation. He says faith without works is dead. Not again, how he begins in verse 14. What good is it, my brothers? If a man claims to have faith, but has no deeds, can such faith save him.
And then at the end of that paragraph in verse 17, he says faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. And then in between those two bookends, he gives the illustration, suppose a brother or sister is what I'll close in daily food.
If one of you says to him, go, I wish you well, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about his physical needs. What good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead.
True faith must always lead to action. If true faith, if faith does not lead to action, it's whatever else it is. It is not faith, because words alone don't do it, words must lead to action.
I can illustrate it this way. Let's suppose that you're on a ship crossing the ocean, and like the Titanic many years ago, you hit a nice burger for one reason or another, the ship sinks.
You're a passenger on the ship. The ship, as you can see, is going down fast. What are you going to do?
Well, if you really believe the ship is sinking, you're not going to spend your time polishing the brass, rearranging the deck chairs, or going into your bunk for a little afternoon app.
Because any of those actions would indicate that you haven't really clued into the fact that your ship is going down, and you're going down with it.
If you really believe the ship is sinking, what are you going to do? You're going to do everything you can to get off that boat, jump into the water, hopefully get into a life boat.
If you can't get into the life boat, at least you're going to try to swim away so that the swirl doesn't take you down under, hoping that you'll grab some piece of junk off the boat,
so that you can stay afloat until you can be rescued.
True faith will always produce action.
Now, James says the same thing is true in terms of our walk with God. If we really believe there is a God, and we really believe that he created all the world, and that there is a day of judgment coming whereby everybody will stand before God,
and we're going to be measured by the royal law that says, "Love God above all, and love your neighbor as you love yourself." If you understand that Christ is God's provision so that you can pass that day of judgment,
and that God is inviting us through faith in Christ to live in such a way that we can stand courageously before Him by the blood of Jesus, worthy of His new kingdom,
then it is inconceivable that your life is not going to change.
Because if you really believe those things, you're going to do everything you can to flee the wrath that is to come.
True faith will always produce a changed life.
I don't know how many of you here have ever heard the name Tom Skinner for many years was the most well-known and famous black evangelist in the United States of America
at a very interesting life. He was born in Harlem to a preaching family, and for much of his growing up years, he was astonishingly successful at most everything that he did.
He was president of his school student body. He was a member of one of the intellectual societies in that school. He was president of the Shakespeare Club. He was a member of the baseball team, and he was president of the young people at his church.
Outwardly, he conformed to all the religious norms that were required of him, but inwardly he was restless and rebellious.
So much so that one day in the streets of Harlem, a gang member approached him and asked him rather ingest, "Hey, would you like to join again?"
You can imagine his amazement when this preacher's kid said, "Yes, I would." And the other guy said, "Well, you know, we'll have to see if you're tough enough to be part of our gang."
And so they took him through the initiation loops, and you know, a few robberies and fights and whatever else was part of that initiation later, he joined one of Harlem's notorious gangs.
There were about six weeks into that. He said to himself, "Why should I be a follower in this gang when I could be a leader?" So he took on the gang leader, beat the snot out of him, took over the leadership of that gang.
And for the next period of time lived an amazing double life. In the daytime, he was the preacher's son going to school, getting good grades, and everybody's model of student leadership. And then by night, he'd be a jackal and hide, and he would lead his gang.
And by the time he came out of that gang life, he had 22 notches on his knife, indicating how many times that knife had been used on somebody in conflict and in battle.
And so his life, his double-mindedness, was going on until one day as he was listening to the radio, a preacher came on the radio. Now this was not a very good preacher, and Tom Skinner felt considerable disdain as he listened to his poor grammar, and his poor way of phrasing things.
But the Scripture says the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it's the power of God into salvation, and he couldn't tear himself away from that message.
And that night God spoke to him, brought him to his knees, led him to conversion. He got up, went back to his gang, broke it off with them, led many of them to Jesus,
and then proceeded, as I said earlier, to become one of America's foremost black evangelists proclaiming the good news of Jesus.
And I remember many years ago when I was a student at Calvin, listening to Tom Skinner in one of his life presentations.
He's now dead, he died in the early 1990s. True faith. True faith will always lead to a transformed life. If it doesn't, it's simply not true faith.
So that's where James begins in this passage, faith without works is dead, and then he goes on to say that not all that passes as faith is saving faith for notice how he continues.
Verse 18, somebody will say, "You have faith, I have deeds." See, a good teacher, a good preacher anticipates what the objections are going to be.
And he anticipates that somebody is going to turn spiritual on him and say, "Well, you've got the one, and I've got the other."
You've got to admit it sounds pretty spiritual because the Bible talks about diversity of gifts.
And so it's an impossible that God gives you the gift of faith, something deeply hidden within your heart, but He gives me the gift of action, and you want to accept me the way that I accept you.
Well, he's about to debunk that argument and listen to how he does it. Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.
You cannot simply have faith on the inside without that showing up on the outside. Later on, you will recall, he says, "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead."
And then he goes on to sort of administer the kuda graya, or whatever you...
You know, my French is a little lacking here. He drives the point home with one of the most astounding observations, I think, that is made anywhere on the pages of Scripture.
Listen to what he says in verse 19, "You believe that there is one God, good, even the demons believe that and they shudder."
Now demons, you know, are evil spirits. And evil spirits are either fallen angels or some people think they are disembodied spirits of people that have previously lived.
I don't know if there is a biblical warrant for that, but at any rate they are in league with Satan.
They are violently opposed to God into the purposes of God, and they're constantly at work trying to gain a foothold among humanity, so they can build Satan's kingdom.
They are not the friends of God. They are the enemies of God. But notice how James makes two very astounding observations about these demons or these evil spirits.
Number one, they believe. They believe what? They believe in God.
There isn't one theologically liberal demon anywhere to be found in the universe. There isn't one atheistic demon to be found. There isn't even an agnostic demon to be found.
They all know there is a God. And they all know that he made the universe. And they all know there is coming a day of judgment when every knee will bow, every tongue will confess. In fact, they even know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
And I find it fascinating in the gospels. That when Jesus first begins his public ministry. Who is the first creature that recognizes the divinity of Jesus? You'd think it would be the disciples or Mary or Joseph or all the other people that were in the great Christmas event. It's not true at all.
Scripture says it was a demon possessed man in the synagogue and the demon says this. What do you want to ask?
Jesus of Nazareth. Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are. The holy one of God.
The demons have faith in the sense that they know who God is and that he exists. Not only that says James. They do something much more than what most of us do. They shutter.
In other words, shutter in Greek is getting goosebumps. And so the image is your hair stands on end. And so these demons not only have an intellectual understanding that there is a God, they are so aware of God and who he is that everything inside them trembles at the presence of his majesty.
They are emotionally engaged and they live in the fear of God which is more than what a lot of people did. And yet says James. They do not.
Now listen to this. They do not have saving faith. There isn't going to be one evil spirit that makes it into the new creation. There isn't going to be one evil spirit that will be saved.
In fact, they will all go to hell. Why is that? Because they don't have saving faith. And I find it very helpful to remember that our forebears in order to clarify this issue of saving faith.
Distinguished among at least three kinds of faith. Let me just quickly walk you through that because it will help us to understand what James is trying to communicate to us here.
The first is an historical faith. You can also call it an intellectual faith. In fact, it's really what the demons had and it would be a dead faith. An historical faith or an intellectual faith doesn't deny the reality of what the Scripture teaches.
And you can believe there is a God. You can believe that Jesus lived, died and rose again. You can believe there is a coming day of judgment. You can believe all the right things you can be as orthodox as every demon in hell.
And yet not have saving faith if it doesn't really touch your heart or change your life. And a lot of us who grow up in church have to discover at some point the difference between historical faith, the stuff you just believe you because you grow up with it.
And saving faith is what we'll see in a moment that becomes your own. There's an historical faith but there's also a temporary faith.
Temporary faith is what Jesus talks about in the parable of the sower where the seed falls among thorns and rocky soil and it grows for a little while and then withers and dies under the pressures and the heat of the day.
Temporary faith is what you saw in North America after 9/11 what all of a sudden the churches were filled with worshipers, people that hadn't been a church in years and years all of a sudden felt themselves drawn to the church.
And I remember reading articles by the pundits saying North America isn't the verge of a great religious revival. Look at the way that people are streaming into church and I remember saying to myself and you left to forgive my cynicism, you just wait and see.
Because you see there's no atheist in a fox hall and as President Reagan used to say years ago in the discussion about prayer in the public school he said as long as there were examinations there will be prayer at school.
Because we all know what it's like to cry out to God in the midst of an emergency but let the emergency pass away we wave God goodbye and we continue on our journey.
And so 9/11 was not followed by a great religious revival in North America. It was followed by the typical Exodus out of churches so that pretty soon we were back to where we were before.
Temporary faith is not saving faith. Saving faith in the other hand has an intellectual and historical component but it's deeply wrought in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit.
You can't manufacture it, you can't drum it up but it's a faith that not only understands who God is, who Jesus is, who the Holy Spirit is and how creation redemption and restoration work.
But it's a faith that is somehow applied to the heart. It leads to true repentance. It leads to a willingness to turn away from running and controlling one's own life and handing it over to the Lord.
It means we learn not only to believe in Him intellectually but to trust Him for everything that we need increasingly with all that we are.
Most of us here, I suspect, have heard about Charles Blondon, even if you don't remember the name, you will remember what he is famous for.
Charles Blondon was a high wire artist and just to test your great linguistic skills, do you know what the technical term is for a high wire artist?
But you don't know it. I wouldn't have known it either unless I found it. It's a fun embolist. You ever hear that word?
He was a Frenchman. Charles Blondon was a stage name and in the summers of 1859 and 1860 he made a lot of money stretching an 1,100 foot rope across the gorge in Niagara Falls.
And then walking across it between those two summers, he crossed it 17 times through huge crowds, 25 cents a shot, another quarter if you wanted to seat.
Never did the same thing twice. First time he'd walk across it this way. The next time he walked across it backwards. Then he walked across it blindfolded.
Then he walked across it and stilt. Then to really top it off, he brought himself a table and a stove and he cooked himself breakfast in the middle of his rope walk.
I have a picture of it to prove it to you. I'm amazing. One time in Paris, he put his four-year-old daughter in the wheelbarrow,
carted her across while she threw rose petals at the crowds below. The authorities didn't like that very much. It sort of shades of Michael Jackson dangling that kid out of the window.
And the picture that you see here, I don't know how well you can see it, on his back there is his manager, a fellow by the name of Harry Cole Cod. That trip just about killed him both.
Because when they got to the middle of the rope, the rope started swaying like crazy and they had to run to get to the next guy wire and then the guy wire broke.
They were sweating. By the time they finished, what should have taken them 20 minutes took them 42, but he pulled it off.
At one of those events, the Prince of Wales was present. And so at the conclusion of his little walk, he invited the Prince of Wales to see if he would want to climb on his back.
Well, that man was too wise to step out into that. But put yourself in that situation, put yourself in that crowd. If somebody had asked you then, do you believe that he can carry a man across every hand would have gone up?
But then what if he pointed his finger at you? And he said, you're next. Now that's the difference between saving faith and temporary faith and historical faith.
True faith means that at some level of our lawyers, we not only believe, but we trust ourselves to Jesus as our Lord and our Savior.
Faith without works is dead, says James, not all faith is saving faith. And then so as to ultimately prove his point with one final clincher, here is what he does.
He draws on two Old Testament examples to prove that already historically, faith always produced action.
The first person that he refers to is Abraham, was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar.
Most of us here know the story of Abraham, how he was an idol worshiper and ear of the called ease and God came and revealed himself and called him out of ear of the called ease to the land that he would show him and how he promised him a son and how ultimately Isaac was born.
And then as Isaac was growing up, the Lord came along and tested his faith and he said, I want you to sacrifice Isaac to me on Mount Moriah. Don't know how well you can see that picture, but here of course is Abraham and there is Isaac on the altar.
And the Bible says concerning Abraham that he believed God and that he believed that God could raise Isaac from the dead if he were obedient to the call of God on his life.
And James goes back to that story and he points back to Abraham's faith and he says can't you see that Abraham's faith counted as righteousness because he offered his son in obedience to God.
Faith he says always leads to action and then he uses still another story and that is the story of rehab in the same way was not even rehab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction.
Rehab was an innkeeper you will recall at a house built on the walls of Jericho when Joshua and the people of Israel were about to capture the promised land.
She was likely a prostitute a lady of ill repute. The spies came to her house because they were being searched for and instead of turning them over to the authority she hid them, let them escape.
And in so doing through in her lot not only with the people of Israel but also the God of Israel.
She was according to the New Testament a woman of faith and again James uses the story and he says rehab faith was not a faith in abstraction or in the privacy of her own heart.
It was a faith that produced action she gave lodging to the spies and she sent them off in a different direction.
Now here's what's really fascinating particularly about James's use of Abraham because if you know your New Testament well this morning you will know there is somebody else in the New Testament who also uses the example of Abraham and his faith.
Who is it? The Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul in the book of Romans. The Apostle Paul in the book of Galatians. And you know what's fascinating about what Paul does Paul argues exactly the opposite way from the same story as does James.
Paul argues that Abraham illustrates that we are not saved by works but we are saved by faith alone. Listen to how he puts it.
Romans 3.28 we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law and then he goes on to say what then shall we say that Abraham our forefather discovered in this matter.
If in fact Abraham was justified by works he had something to boast about but not before God. What does the scripture say Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.
Many years people have argued our James and Paul in opposition to each other. As a matter of fact Martin Luther the great reformer whose life was changed from a legalist to salvation by grace through faith in Jesus by his reading of the book of Romans.
Or like the book of James didn't think it ought to be in the Bible called it a straw in pencil. For James undermined the argument of salvation by grace alone through faith.
After all doesn't he say you see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. But you see James often gets misrepresented because James is not saying that we aren't saved by faith.
James is saying that true faith and Paul would say the same thing that true faith always produces a truly changed lives or life.
You see that his faith and his actions were working together and his faith was made complete by what he did. You see true faith, true faith, saving faith will always demonstrate itself in a changed and in a transformed life.
And you say why do you make such a point of that. Well because it brings us full circle to the schizophrenia in North American religious society.
Why do we have so many people who say they believe all the right things but it doesn't translate into a transformed life.
How can we have a society in which the bulk of people profess to be born again Christians and yet the social agenda repeatedly moves away from God instead of towards it.
How come we can have people in religious and political and economic positions of authority and power and yet nothing changes.
But the downward drift continue I'll tell you why we have made a separation between faith and action. And without taking a lot of time it is rooted in a separation of justification and sanctification.
We have brought into the notion that somehow or another I can confess Jesus as my savior without also confessing him as my Lord.
I can claim all the riches that I have in God in Christ without that somehow permeating my life and changing my life and it's not true you cannot divide Jesus.
If you're in Christ you're not only justified you're also sanctified and you're already glorified and it is our reality before God already today.
And if that reality is a part of our lives if we are truly justified and Christ truly lives in us then it is inconceivable and I'm calling scriptures inconceivable that somehow somewhere in some way my life does not begin to change or bear fruit.
Now hear me well this doesn't mean that we are without struggle. It doesn't mean that all of a sudden we are without sin.
It doesn't mean that all of a sudden we've got it all together. It doesn't mean that when we fall short of this standard we are not Christians at all and that now all of a sudden our salvation is based on what we accomplish.
Now but what it means is this that if you've really come to Jesus and he really lives in your heart and he is working away in you then you will become more and more aware of your sin.
A lot of people think they get better and better. I'll tell you most of us never knew what sin was until we came to Jesus. That's true. I mean life was a lot easier before you met him because now you've got to be guilty about the things that you don't do that you ought to do in vice versa.
But that's the evidence of the working of God's Holy Spirit. Before you met Jesus you could take God's name in vain and it didn't bother you one bit everybody thought maybe you were worshiping him.
But now that you know Jesus the Holy Spirit comes along and he zaps you and say that was not good. Please forgive me. Isn't it true?
Life begins to change because on the one hand we become more aware of the sinfulness of ourselves and of the world.
At the same time we become more aware of the standards of God. He increases our hunger for God our hunger for the things of God and how ever slowly or gradually the process may be.
We grow in the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus we grow in our love for God we grow in our love for our neighbor and our life begins to change.
And please remember this change is not first and foremost a function of emotion. A lot of people think unless you have a certain emotional experience you are not saved or unless you can testify to a particular feeling while particular feelings are wonderful.
And yes the Spirit of God promises to bear witness to our spirit that we are the children of God. But do I remind you that even the demons believe and they shudder if anybody has a liver shiver in the presence of God it's the demons.
A liver shiver doesn't change you and all kinds of people who are all kinds of wonderfully spiritually inspired and their lives are as rotten and as unchanged as they can be fundamentally the question before God is not first and foremost what do you feel as much as it is as your life really changed.
Since you've come to know Jesus and so here's the question I want to leave you with this morning what kind of faith do you and I have is our faith historical is it intellectual is it dead is it temporary.
Do we call on God were in a pinch and then when we're no longer in a pinch do we turn our backs and go back to doing what we were doing before or is the faith that we have a true and a saving faith that is somehow written on our hearts by the power of God's Holy Spirit.
Yes it has an intellectual component and yes hopefully it even has an emotional component but most of all it has a volitional component it changes our will it changes our hearts it changes our lives we learn to hate sin more when we fall into it we repent more deeply and we long more than ever for the day.
When God's kingdom will come at all its glory and its power and Jesus Christ will be exalted as Lord overall.
If you can't answer that question with certainty this morning then I invite and encourage you to do what I had to do when I was in college some of you know this story I was in college studying for the ministry had grown up in a Christian home.
Couple of friends challenged me whether I had ever given my life to Jesus and I had to say to them I'm not sure that I did.
I remember kneeling by my bed one night saying to the Lord Lord I think I've done this before but just in case I haven't this is too important to neglect.
I want to give you my heart I want to give you my life I want Jesus to be my savior on Jesus to be my Lord.
The bells didn't ring Thunderbolts didn't strike as a matter of fact I felt absolutely nothing.
And yet I knew next morning when I get up that my life was forever changed because there was something settled and sealed about my relationship with God.
That has never varied from that day to this though it has been sorely tried and sorely tested on more than one occasion.
And if there's any question in your heart about whether you're truly joined to Jesus.
Does any question about your faith bearing good fruit by the actions of your life then as we sing this morning the hymn of response say Lord I need you.
I want you to transform me and change me I want you to take whatever intellectual historical faith that I have I want you to drive it into the depths of my heart.
Because I want my faith to make a difference before you and before the world.
Come to the Saviour now, each heavenly call and theme. Get your repentance back before him and the need.
He waited to be still, salvation, peace and love.
To joy on earth below the home we're never far. Come to the Saviour now, each who have water far.
Leave you your soul and back for his thy right you are.
Come like for one which he free turn into his form.
His love will save me with love will never fall.
Come to the Saviour now, he offers all to leave. And in his parents the person unveiling thee.
The obeyed exudes his friend for feelings do not stay.
Now who do Jesus came, wherever sent away?
Come to the Saviour now, all air your burdens be.
Here now is love and thought first on your care on peace.
Come and for every dream in Jesus you will find.
I shall reassure thee while loving friend and I.