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Hi, this is Pastor Tom Holliday and I want to welcome you to our drive time
devotion study of the Epistle of James, an incredible book in the Bible that
tells us, well, if I had to tell you the book of James in two words, it would be
"faith works. " James tells us how faith works in daily life. I used to have a
long time ago a can opener that didn't work.

I still remember it. It barely cut, halfway through the can would drop off,
you'd have to stick it back on, and at the end you'd have to whack the thing in
the side to get it to stop running. I got used to it not working.

I just sort of automatically would catch the can, put it back on, whack it in
the side, not even think about it after a while. Sometimes we just put up with
things that don't work like they should. Here's the encouragement of this letter
from the brother of Jesus Christ, James.

We should never put up with a faith that doesn't work. We should never put up
with a faith that doesn't work. Here's what James says at the very beginning of
this letter.

"James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes
scattered among the nations, greetings. " These words in the first verse help us
to begin to introduce all that we're going to study these next few weeks
together as we look through James. Who was James?

This is not James the apostle. You might remember one of the apostles, the
twelve that followed Jesus was named James. He was killed for his faith at the
beginning of the book of Acts.

This was a different James. This was James, the brother of Jesus Christ, or more
theologically accurately, the half-brother of Jesus Christ. Jesus' father was
God and mother was Mary.

James, his father was Joseph and his mother was Mary. He grew up in the family
of Jesus. I don't know if you know much about the family of Jesus.

Matthew chapter 13 verse 55 and into verse 56 tells us about the earthly family
of Jesus. Here's what it says. Some people were talking about Jesus and they
said, "Isn't this the carpenter's son?

" "And isn't his mother's name Mary? " "And aren't his brothers James, Joseph,
Simon, and Judas? " They list four brothers.

"And aren't all his sisters with us? " The fact that they talk about two
sisters, they don't name Jesus' sisters, but the fact that they talk about
sisters means he had at least two. And here they're listed four half-brothers,
James and Joseph and Simon and Judas.

And God used Jesus' family. His brother Judas wrote a book, a book in the New
Testament. It's named Jude.

His brother James wrote a book, a book in the New Testament. It's named,
obviously, James. And it's the book that we're beginning to study together
today.

And as you and I read through the New Testament, there's some things that we
learn about James, the earthly brother of Jesus Christ. We learn that he
struggled with doubt. He struggled with belief.

In John chapter 7, he and the other family members of Jesus struggled with
believing in Jesus because, well, they'd grown up in his family and they
expected Jesus to do certain things in certain ways. And when he didn't, they
struggled with believing. We learn also that James was present on the day of
Pentecost in Acts chapter 1.

When the first church started, James was there. So something had happened.
Something had happened between that time of doubt when James was watching Jesus
in his earthly ministry and this time when the church started.

What had happened was the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And obviously,
based on that, James had begun to believe. In fact, 1 Corinthians 15, 7 tells us
that James was one of those who had a personal meeting with the resurrected
Lord.

Can you imagine that? He'd grown up in his family and now he's meeting with
Jesus and they're talking about what it means for Jesus to be the Lord of the
universe. I can't imagine all that they said, but it changed James life.

In fact, it changed his life to the extent that James became, we read about this
throughout the book of Acts, he became the leader of the Jerusalem church. The
first church that started, the church in Jerusalem that had mostly Jewish
believers in it because there were mostly Jews in Jerusalem, James became the
leader of that church. You can read about that in Acts chapter 12, Acts chapter
15.

He was one of the strongest leaders in the early church. God used him in
incredible ways. And yet, in spite of all of that, we've just said, here's what
James says about himself in James chapter 1 verse 1.

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is amazing. I don't
know about you, but if I grew up in Jesus's family, first thing I'd put in my
resume is James, the brother of Jesus Christ.

But that's not what he says. He says James, a servant of God. He calls himself a
bond servant rather than a half brother.

That says a lot about his heart. That says a lot about his humility. That says a
lot about James.

James writes as a servant of God. And he writes too, it says in these first
verses, to the 12 tribes scattered among the nations. Greetings, he says.

Now who are these 12 tribes? Well, if you've done some study of the Old
Testament, you know that these are the 12 tribes of the Jewish nation, descended
from the sons of Jacob. The tribes of Simeon and Gad and Asher and Naphtali and
Benjamin.

All those tribes were named after those sons became the Jewish nation. And so
when he talks about the 12 tribes, he's talking about Israel, the nation of
Israel. And when James says to those who are scattered, it's an indication of
where the letter's being written from and who it's being written to.

Jerusalem was the center of Jewish life. And the tribes that were scattered were
the people that were outside of Jerusalem, outside of Israel. So he's writing to
what's called the diaspora, the people that were scattered throughout all the
Roman Empire, the Jews who were seeking to follow Jesus Christ.

They'd come to Jesus Christ. They were seeking to follow him. Their heritage was
a Jewish heritage.

And James is writing to encourage their faith. Remember, as I said earlier, this
church in Jerusalem that James led and was leading, it was mostly Jewish
believers, because again, mostly Jews in Jerusalem. And so James was the leader
of the Jewish community, even as Paul was the leader of the Gentile Christians.

And he's writing to encourage their faith. I want to just give you the next few
minutes before we jump into the next verses of James tomorrow, a brief outline
of what we see and an understanding of the kind of book that James is. If I was
going to describe James as a book, I would call it Working Instructions for the
Christian Life.

It really is about how faith works to make a difference, a daily difference in
our lives. Just a quick outline. Here's where we're going to go in the days to
come.

James 1, 1-12 talks about how faith works when you have problems and when you
have doubts. James 1-13-18 talks about how faith works when you're tempted. You
need faith to work when you're tempted.

James 1-19-27 talks about how faith works to change your actions. James 2-1-13
talks about how faith works in your relationships. And then in James 2 verses
14-26, we get this long description of faith and works that you may have heard a
lot about in the book of James.

Faith without works is dead. And James describes why faith, real faith, is
something that truly works, that makes a difference in our lives. And then he
goes on to show some other ways that faith makes a difference.

James 3 verses 1-12 talks about how faith works to tame your tongue. Who doesn't
need that one? James 3-13-18, faith works when you have envy.

James 4, first 12 verses, faith works when you have quarrels. James 4, the last
verses 13-17, faith works when you're hit by pride. James 5, 1-6, faith works to
handle greed.

James 5, 7-12, faith works when you need patience. This is real stuff. Envy,
quarrels, pride, greed, I need patience.

These are the things you and I face in everyday life and faith works at those
points of life. And James ends, James 5-13-20, by talking about how faith works
when you pray. If I had to pick out a key verse in this letter of James, I'd say
it would be James 1-22.

Do not fool yourselves by just listening to the word. Instead, put it into
practice. The key word is practice.

James is a how-to book on Christian living. It teaches you how to be a doer of
the word. Many people have called the book of James the Proverbs of the New
Testament.

You know that Proverbs in the Old Testament is a wisdom book. It's filled with
short statements of God's wisdom for our daily lives. And you're going to find a
lot of that as we walk through the book of James, the letter of James.

A lot of wisdom, short statements about how God wants to work his wisdom into
our daily lives. It's called the book of Proverbs of the New Testament. But when
I look at James, you know what I see?

I see the teaching of Jesus Christ. James had listened to his brother. He
listened to Jesus, his Lord.

And that teaching is reflected in James. In fact, just as one picture of this,
it's interesting to compare what's said in James to what's said in the Sermon on
the Mount, Jesus' teaching there. Let me just give you a few quick comparisons.

James 1, 4 talks about these things being written so that we may be mature and
complete. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "He is saying these things so
that we can be perfect and mature as our Heavenly Father is perfect. " In James
1, 12, we get a beatitude, "Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial.

" Jesus' beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5, "Blessed are those who are persecuted.
" In James 1, 22, we just talked about, James says, "Be a doer of the word. " In
the Sermon on the Mount, towards the end of the sermon, Jesus said, "Anyone who
hears these words of mine and puts them into practice, that's the person who's
like the man who built his house on a rock.

" In James chapter 2, verse 5, James says, "God has chosen the poor to be rich
in faith and inherit the kingdom. " And in the beatitudes, Jesus says, "Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom. " In James 2, 8, "Whoever
keeps the whole law yet stumbles at one point," James talks about.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Whoever breaks one of the least of
these commandments. " In James 2, "Judgment without mercy will be shown to
anyone who's not been merciful. " In Matthew 7, "In the same way you judge
others, you'll be judged.

You need to have mercy," Jesus said. In fact, in Matthew chapter 5, verse 37,
Jesus said, "Simply let your yes be yes and your no no. Anything beyond this
comes from the evil one.

" And James, in chapter 5, verse 12, says, "Above all my brothers, don't swear
either by heaven or earth or anything else. Let your yes be yes and your no no
or you'll be condemned. " James is just sharing the teaching of Jesus Christ and
showing how it can work in our everyday lives.

James is all about how to put into practice the teaching of Jesus in your life.
That's what I want. That's what I believe you want.

So as we start this study of James together, let's pray that that is exactly
what Jesus would do in our lives. Jesus, thank you for faith. It is real and it
changes.

It changes everything. It changes eternity. For we want our faith to make a
difference in our life today, a difference in the way that we handle our
problems and our temptations and our relationships and the things that are
happening around us and the things that are happening inside of us.

We want our faith to work to make a difference. So I pray, we pray together,
that this book of James would show us how to live out the life that you have for
us, Jesus. Not on our own strength or power, but how to live it out, trusting in
you, putting our faith in you.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, join us tomorrow.

We're going to talk about how faith works when you have problems.