Bible Story: James

1. Pure Religion

The book of James is truly the most practical book in the New Testament. I would label it daily Christian living. Five chapters that tell us how to live the Christian life every minute of every day. Pure religion is the theme of the first chapter. And it tells us that pure religion involves even a proper view of persecution. You know, 2 Timothy 3.12 said, All that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. And in John chapter 15, our Lord said, If the world has hated me, the world will hate you. The servant is not greater than his Lord. We need to understand, then, that persecution and Christianity go together. As Ananias told Saul of Tarsus, you will suffer many things for the cause of Christ. Acts 9 16.

We’re not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake. The Bible is very clear on that, Philippians 1 29. And the book of James says, Count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into manifold trials, knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience. Pure religion involves even a proper attitude toward persecution. And when men think they’re doing God’s service when they put us to death, John 16, verse 2, we’re to rejoice because we’re in good company. So persecuted they the prophets before you, Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:12. And also pure religion involves a proper attitude toward prayer. We’re to ask in faith, never doubting. If any lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it should be given him.

But let him ask in faith. He goes on to say, you don’t want to be like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. You want to be steadfast. This book was written to Christians, and it tells us we can pray for wisdom that we might apply the things we have learned and gleaned from God’s holy word. And then pure religion involves the proper attitude toward riches. We’re not to be consumed with a passion for earthly wealth. We’re to understand vividly that the riches of life eternal far transcend the things of earth. Also, pure religion, according to James chapter 1, involves a proper attitude toward temptation and sin and lust. God doesn’t tempt us to do evil. It isn’t God’s fault when we sin.

We can’t say, look what you made me do. You made me this way and gave me these propensities, and I can’t help if I’m a sinner. The Bible said every man sins when he’s drawn away of his own lust and then tasked. We’re tempted, and temptation is not a sin because Jesus was tempted. But it becomes a sin when we yield to temptation. When lust boils up within us and we commit sin and that brings forth death. So lust, sin, death are all kin folks, all related. But he says God doesn’t tempt us to do evil, he gives us every good and perfect gift. Don’t be mistaken, brethren. God’s not the source of evil, he’s the source of our blessings. In him we live and move and have our being, Paul said in Acts 17 on Mars Hill in Athens.

We need to understand that every good and perfect gift comes from God. And of his own will he begat us by the word of truth. And he tells us we’re to receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save our souls. Be doers of the word and not hearers only, lest you deceive your own selves. The book of James tells us that the word of God is the mirror of the soul, the perfect law of liberty that reveals us as we really are in God’s sight, that we might make improvements and adjustments, lest we claim to be religious and bridle not our tongue and our religion be in vain. But pure religion is keeping ourselves unspotted from the world and taking care of the needs of the widows and the orphans.

2. Faith and Works

Christianity is a very practical individual relationship with God. In chapter 2, he talks about faith and works. This was the famous chapter that gave Martin Luther fits. He had taught that we were saved by faith alone in Romans 3 and in Romans 5. And when he came to James 2 24, we read, we’re not justified by faith only. You know what Luther did? Instead of acknowledging he had been wrong, he called the book of James an epistle of straw, a letter of little worth, fit only to be burned. And he wouldn’t even put it in his first translations of the German Bible in 1521. He put it over in the back like an appendix or a table of contents. And a lot of people today have the same attitude toward James because it teaches the necessity of works in God’s sight if we would avail anything.

3. The Proper Use of the Tongue

Faith that works by love, Galatians 5 6. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Philippians 2 12. For it is God which worketh in you, both the will and the do of his good pleasure. The person who teaches salvation apart from works teaches a doctrine that contradicts the Bible. And then in James 3, we learn of the value of the proper use of the tongue, of our speech. We need to be careful to use our lips to glorify God, to speak the truth, to rebuke error, and not to gossip and slander and back back, lest we be consumed one of another. Galatians 5.15. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Proverbs 18 21. Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, keep the door of my lips.

4. Lusts, Friendship With the World, and the Lord’s Will

Psalm 141 3. Every word that man shall speak, he’ll give account of in the day of judgment, Matthew 12. Thus we need to be careful that we do not cause discord among brethren, Proverbs 6. But use our speech. As Proverbs says, a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold and framework of silver. James chapter 3 tells us that we’re not to be teachers unless we’re prepared to use our speech properly. And we’re to ask for the wisdom from above that is first pure, peaceable, easy to be treated, without partiality, full of good fruits. But the wisdom of this world is earthly, sensual, devilish. In James chapter 4, he said, I’ll tell you the source of wars. They come from lusts which rage within your own members.

As Machiavelli said years ago in the famous work The Prince, evil men who foment strife. Warmongers ought to just draw a circle in the ground and step in it and fight to the death and leave innocent people out of it. Wars come from lust that rage within human hearts and minds. And just a few ungodly people in the history of the world like Hitler and Mussolini can cause strife around the globe, and also in our own homes and our own lives, and even in congregations. Trouble and war comes, spiritual war even, when men have lust that they will not control, when they’re so self-centered. We could take care of the 900,000 divorces in America every year, about 85% of them if we could get people to control their own lustful thoughts inside their bodies.

And then in James 4, he says, one reason you don’t receive anything is you never ask. And another is when you do ask, you ask selfishly. In James 4, 4 he says, You spiritual adulteresses. Don’t you know the friendship with the world is enmity with God? He that be a friend of the world is yet making himself an enemy of God. In James 4, he says, Therefore, to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not to him, it’s sin. And in one of the most resplendent passages in this little five chapter book, he says, What is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little while, then vanisheth away. Resist the devil and he’ll flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he’ll draw nigh to you.

Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. And he said, You’re not to say, Here’s what I’m going to do. Today and tomorrow I’ll go into such a city, and there I’ll buy and sell and get gain. You ought to say, if the Lord wills, we’ll do thus and so. That’s what Jesus said. In Matthew 26, 42, not my will but thine be done. In John 6 38, he said, I’ve come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me. And in John 17 4, he prayed, I’ve glorified thee upon the earth. I’ve finished the work which thou gavest me to do. We’re on earth not to do our own will, but to do the Lord’s will.

5. Restore the Erring and the Prayer of Faith

Too many epicureans still live today who say, Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. But God still calls reasoning like that foolish. Luke chapter 12. And in James chapter 5, he warns rich men who gain their riches by withholding proper hire from their laborers. He said, You think you have it made, but you’re like the cattle out there on those hills who are eating, grazing contentedly today, but their necks are going to be chopped off tomorrow. And then in James 5, he says, You need to remember that the judge stands before the door. The Lord is always there. And thus you’re not to swear by heaven or earth. You’re just to do his will. Let your yea be yea and your nay nay, to quote Matthew 5 37 and the Sermon on the Mount.

Also in James chapter 5, he tells us that we’re to restore the erring. Brethren, if any of you do earth from the truth and one convert him, let him know that he that converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and shall hide a multitude of sins. He gives some practical exhortations. Is any Mary among you? Let him sing Psalms. We need to know how to sing praises unto God. And then we have the passage that some count very difficult about calling for the elders of the church if a man is sick and having them anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the Lord shall raise him up. I cannot believe that men are so simple as to say that the oil in that passage had to do with just a medicinal remedy, that it was a medicine that he was asking to be put upon the people.

If so, we better find where that medicine is and buy a barrel of it. Because whenever it was applied in the appointed way here, there never was a failure. And I’ll guarantee if a doctor had some of that medicine, there’d only be one doctor in the world, and everybody’d go to him. He’d never have a failure. It says you do this, you anoint him with oil, and the Lord shall raise him up. Didn’t say might, didn’t say he would a lot of the times, it said he shall raise him up. There’s only one thing that passage could possibly apply to, and that’s the miraculous age of the New Testament church, when men had miraculous power by the laying on of their hands to heal people. And he was saying, as long as that existed, you call the elders of the church, they will anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.

Now notice, and the prayer of faith shall heal him. Faith was a supernatural gift in the miraculous age. First Corinthians chapter 12 says so. And while that miraculous gift existed, and men followed this pattern, and the purpose of miracles was to confirm the word, there never was a lost case. But that power ceased when the word of God was fully revealed. And so, in a practical way, that passage does not pertain directly to us today. The principle, though, of relying upon the Lord and saying the Lord’s will be done still exists. The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. James 5 16. Let me give you one passage or two that forever prove the spiritual application of anointing with oil that it had to do with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

In Mark 6, as the apostles were sent out to miraculously heal, they were to precede that miraculous healing by anointing with oil. And Hebrews chapter 1 speaks of the anointing of oil as having an attachment to the power of the Holy Spirit. The book of James is a very practical book, and may we remember pure religion, faith in works, the proper use of our speech, the positive nature of doing right, therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it’s sin, and the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. These are great points from the rich little book of James.