Sermons:
-
Being
Angry Is Okay,
James 1:17- 27,
by Dr. David Rogne
Seeking the Guidance of God's Spirit,
Mark 7:1-23,
by Rev. Frank Schaefer
The Invitation,
Song of Solomon 2:8-13,
by Rev. Thomas N. Hall
Wordsmiths,
James 1: 17-27,
annonymous
"You Hypocrite!"
Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23 and James 1: 17-27,
Jim from B.C.
Power to
Share, Deut 4:1-2, 6-9, James 1:17-27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15,
21-23,
by Philip Van Dam
______________________________________________________________
Sitting in Someone Else’s Pew
James 2:1-10, 14-17
Rev. Randy Quinn
This month we are reading from the Epistle of James. James is a
lot like a “how to” book for those who are looking for specific guidelines for
living out our faith. And since we’ll be reading several short passages from
James over the course of the next few weeks, I encourage you to read the entire
book in order to get a better grasp of the ideas it sets before us. If you
haven’t done that yet, it’s not too late!
Today’s text comes from the second chapter.
My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism
really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold
rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in
dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the
fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is
poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," have you not made
distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen,
my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to
be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to
those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who
oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who
blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you
really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love
your neighbor as yourself." But if you show partiality, you commit sin and
are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law
but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you
have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister
is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace;
keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs,
what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
Jas. 2:1-10, 14-17
While his letter doesn’t easily lend itself to an outline, I am
making an attempt to provide one for my sermons. You can see the basic outline
for today printed in the bulletin.
- Defining Faith.
- It is a verb
- Defining Works.
- Actions that can be seen
- Defining Christianity
- Faith in action
Listen again to the last line we read from James: “So faith by
itself, if it has no works, is dead” (Jas. 2:17). In other words, faith without
works is dead. That might be a good summary of the entire letter.
But if faith without works is dead, then what makes faith,
faith?
I don’t want to go so deep into the woods with this that we get
lost, but I think we need to explore what we mean when we speak of faith,
because we tend to think of faith as a noun, when in reality it is a verb.
Many of us, if not most of us, use the words faith and belief
interchangeably. We might say we have faith in Jesus or we might say we believe
in God, as if we are saying the same thing. We might even say the core of our
faith is captured in a particular verse such as John 3:16:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so
that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Or we may turn to Paul’s summary in Romans 10:9 as the essence
of faith:
“If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and
believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
The problem is that verses like these imply that faith is
something you can have – as if the “what” of our belief provides the
essence of our faith. It’s hard not to because [continue]
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