00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:19 A Heart-Wrenching Data Loss

01:48 The Importance of Backups

04:18 Transition to the Letter of James

04:26 James' Background and Audience

06:02 Practical Teachings of James

10:39 Faith and Works Debate

11:12 Faith and Works: A Harmonious Relationship

12:19 The Role of Works in Salvation

13:24 Spiritual Growth and Maturity

14:07 The Power of Words

15:27 Worldliness vs. Godliness

17:23 The Christian's Relationship with Money

17:56 The Imminent Return of Christ

18:31 The Power of Prayer and Confession

24:36 Concluding Thoughts and Prayer

Find out more about Compass Bible Church.

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Questions or Comments? Email us podcast@compassntx.org

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Introduction and Welcome

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Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Man. I want to see you at Men's Bible study this morning. Yes, we're looking at the gospel, not the gospel. No, no, no. You are looking at the gospel of Mark. I was thinking of John the Baptist who doesn't have his own gospel.

J-T-B-J-T-B, dude, this week. Did I tell you? I did tell you. Yes, you did.

A Heart-Wrenching Data Loss

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I suffered a data loss that was heart wrenching. Yes, I still don't know what happened. I almost watch it real time. Even wreck you even more, dude. I was just about to lose it. Yeah. But on Wednesday I do about three hours worth of, in the morning at least.

I do about three hours worth of sermon preps. I had some good content that was developed. I felt good about it. And that's not always the case. Sometimes I feel awful about what I'm writing and I'm just like, I just have to keep on pressing on keep going. So I put about three hours worth of content.

Well, whatever happened. Okay. I lost all of that information that I produced on that day, all that content that I produced on that day. What kind of heresy did you have in there? I guess the Lord really just wanted to spare us all from what I wrote and I don't know, man. I still am flabbergasted about how it even happened in the first place.

I rewrote lots of the stuff, but I can't recall all the things that I wrote down. So I don't know. It's not where, it's not where it was, it's not what it used to be. But hopefully it's good. I think it'll be okay. Show up to date. You can let me know. But anyway, that was a tragic day for me.

Yeah. Really sad mean. That's another way to pray for your pastors as they're doing this preparation.

The Importance of Backups

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We can go study in a coffee shop, we can study at home just like we can study in the office. That's unique to our time in history. Yeah. But man, yeah if something goes haywire, if the cloud goes down, if backups go down we're preaching old school. We're grabbing the candle, we're grabbing our paper bibles.

We're going up there and being like, thus says the Lord, dude. Revenge of analog. I've considered after doing that. I thought, you know what, maybe I need to use paper. Maybe I just need to go back to the quill pin. Yeah. And my notebook. Get a mulkin. Wait until after your doctoral project though.

'cause that'd be a lot of hand cramping. No, thank you. Yeah. I can't do that. I thought I lost my, the first part of my dissertation. Yeah. I begun working on it. 'cause I have stuff that's due every week now that has to relate to my first chapter. And I thought I lost it this afternoon. Yep. And I was so glad I found it.

Praise God. Yep. I was just about ready to write Dropbox, a very strongly worded email and I don't think that one is them. That was me. I put it in the wrong folder, but this other one, I have no idea what happened to it. That's crazy. So crazy because you checked that folder and it wasn't there either.

At that point I was wasting so much time trying to recover it that I'm like, I just need to rewrite it. Yeah. I just gotta stop man. Quits. Start over again. It's rough. It was, I was so sad. I had at least written a whole point. Yeah, so with the three point sermon, I had the whole point ready.

I started on the next point. It was making Pro, I had this alliteration that I was like, oh, that was cool. I liked that. Yeah. I had the alliteration going and then the next day it was gone and I couldn't remember. The alliteration shows it wasn't that good in the first place. You know when there's, you hear those stories of something that happens to somebody else's kids and you're like, man, I just go home.

Good. So when you show up today, guys, you should know where it came from. You'll be ready. I did it twice. Yeah. And that first point is gonna be doubly good. It was the second. It was the second point actually. Okay. Second. Second point into the point. Be doubly good. I don't know at this point. I feel. I'm less confident than it was at the first draft.

Yeah, we'll see how it goes.

Transition to the Letter of James

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Well, hey, let's get into the letter of James. All of it, all of it, all five chapters. Here we go. It opens up with an interesting introduction here.

James' Background and Audience

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So, James, again, like I mentioned in yesterday's episode, this is the half brother of Jesus. We should probably speak to that just because it's been somewhat in the news and the Catholic church seems to always been in the news.

There is a view in Catholicism that Mary was a perpetual version that is that. Jesus never had any siblings, and yet the teaching of the Bible is that that's not actually true. That he did have brothers and sisters. In fact, in the gospels you've read about the fact that people come and try to interrupt his teaching and say, Hey, your brothers and sisters are outside waiting for you.

And now he's the leader of the Jerusalem church, leader of the Jerusalem Church, who at this point in time was probably still working through what it looks like for the gospel to be spread, not just to the Jewish people, but also to the Gentiles. And I think we see some of that in his greetings when he says to the 12 tribes in the dispersion in Acts chapter 15, which we're gonna get to.

Maybe tomorrow. I can't remember exactly when we find the Jerusalem Council, and that's going to be Paul and Barb is going back to Jerusalem to James and the church there to deal with what to do with the gospel going to the Gentiles and what we should require to the Gen Gentiles. So I, it, I think James is primarily writing to Jewish believers here.

Practical Teachings of James

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And so what I love about James is actually one of the things that Martin Luther hated about James is that he's just so practical.

It comes across heavily if you're sensitive to the law. 'cause certainly there are some. Law esque commands here. In fact, let's just call it what it is. It is the law. There's law here, and this is an application of the gospel, is what he's looking to do. So James is what? Martin Luther. Martin Luther called an epistle of straw.

And he thought that because James was so heavy on the law and so little on the gospel conversation, but it's also called the. Proverbs of the New Testament. Mm-hmm. So James is highly practical. It's one of the books that is so easy to read because it doesn't take a ton to, to really understand what he's trying to say.

And that's exceptionally unique for a lot of what we read in the scripture because you have to really do a lot of work to get yourself in the sandals of the first century listeners. So James is not as difficult. There's still things in there though that I would wager require you to put some effort into understanding, like James chapter two.

I like the way I said it better. Yeah, straw is a hard word to say. We're not gonna be able to cover this as in depth as we normally do, because again it's five chapters here. But I do think it's, there's some points in James, you mentioned chapter two that, that I think we should land on and let's discuss a few things.

So the, but the first one, chapter one he. Talks about the progress of sin. That sin moves from temptation to temptation. Giving birth to sin and sin when it's fully conceived or when it's fully grown, brings forth death. So this whole process there, he says, let no one say when he's being tempted.

I'm being tempted by God. So. What do we do with that? And then Jesus teaching his disciples to pray, lead us not into temptation. How can James say God never tempts anyone? And Jesus also instruct us to pray. God lead us not into temptation. Oh, you want me to answer that? I would love you to answer that question.

Yep. Everything that God does is what causes everything else to happen. Now, there is an, there's an asymmetry to his involvements in humanity in that he is directly involved in the righteous and goodies. So he is indirectly involved in the evil and sinful dets, but he's still involved. Again, they're asymmetrical.

They're not equal in the way that they occur, and they're not equal in the terms of the way that they impact God's nature. In other words, God is not sinful for having allowed or caused, however you wanna think about this the. The things that happen in the world that are not in keeping with his righteousness.

When James says God cannot be tempted. I think there's also a different word here behind this. God doesn't tempt us because he himself cannot be tempted with evil. I think what he's saying is slightly different than what Jesus is saying in that James would acknowledge that Jesus, or rather the Father.

Does not tempt us again directly toward evil. But he does test, I think he does test us, and those words are similar, but have, I think, a slightly different flavor of meaning. That would be my initial response. Please contribute. Make it better. No I agree with you. I think Psalm 1 39 came to mind in David.

The great Psalm of God's omniscience, that he knows all things and is intimately involved with all facets of our lives. And in Psalm 1 39, he says, Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down, when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways, even before a word is on my tongue.

And so I think that that's a little bit of that same concept of what you're talking about there. God is intimately acquainted with everything about our lives. He's not responsible for our sin. I agree with you on that. But he is the one who's ordaining all things. And I think that's where both of these concepts can.

Come into play there but we are responsible for our sin. And that's what James is teaching us here. You can't say, God made me do it. You can't say The devil made me do it. It happens because we ourselves are the ones that are sinful.

Faith and Works Debate

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James chapter two the big controversy here, controversy is maybe a heavy word, but the big.

And this was one of the reasons why Luther struggled so much with the book of James. James makes some pretty amazing statements here. He says in verse 21, was not Abraham. Our father justified by works.

Faith and Works: A Harmonious Relationship

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When he offered up his son Isaac on the altar. And then he's gonna go on and give the some other examples too.

But Paul said, justified by faith. James said, justified by works. Which one is it? Yes it's both because of what James gets to, which is his conclusion, that is that saving faith works. The faith that saves. Evidences itself, it shows up. And if it doesn't, then James is gonna say, your faith is dead. And so it's not that James is arguing for a works based salvation, but rather he's saying, if you have been saved by faith, your faith is going to show up in your life.

It's gonna, and that's what he means by saying, show me your faith without your works. I will show you my. By my works. I'm gonna evidence the fact that I have this faith in the transformation that's taken place. I heard someone say recently, justifying faith is justified by works. What do you do with that?

It's proven right. It's proven valid, it's proven legitimate. I can get behind that.

The Role of Works in Salvation

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Can somebody then rightly say, is it possible for someone to say, well then clearly works are necessary for salvation. I don't think you have salvation without works. Okay. Yeah. So I would be comfortable saying that for salvation.

The pause I have is the entrance into salvation, I don't believe works are necessary for the point of entrance into salvation. So the moment that we're saved is not based on works, and that's Paul's point, that it's all by faith alone in Christ alone, and that is all by grace alone. That's a gift of God.

I don't think there's anything there that they should have any confidence in their standing before the Lord. Paul also says there's gonna be people that are going to be before the BMA seat of Christ, and they're only gonna get through as by fire. Yeah. Basically, everything in their life is gonna be burned up.

So it's hard for us to make the judgment call there, but I think a passage like James is a good warning passage for Christians to say, do I see my faith? Showing up. Yeah.

Spiritual Growth and Maturity

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A simple analogy would be if you have a baby, you expect that baby to grow, right? That baby, by ordinary case, ordinary situation would grow.

They would invest rather ingest milk and meat and start to grow bigger and bigger. And that's the way things are supposed to work. And the same thing is true in our Christian lives. As we are born, again, we start off as infants, but. Our goal should be to grow. And as we invest in ingest the word of God, and as we take in good teaching, we begin to grow up in our good deeds, we mature into salvation.

The Power of Words

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James chapter three. One of the areas here that's probably worth our attention is how much of this text that he gives over to the use of our words in our tongues and how powerful he speaks that the tongue can be. And I think the reason is what Jesus talks about, and that is the mouth speaks outta the abundance of the heart.

We've been going through with my family, the Book of Proverbs in the morning together, just going through one each day before our kids go to school. And we're talking through how this applies to our lives. And I've been struck by how many times the. King Solomon and the writer of Proverbs, speaking of the Book of Proverbs talks about the use of our words in the way that our words are either used for good or for evil.

And I think the emphasis is so much on there because we speak from the abundance of our heart. What our heart is filled with is what's gonna inform the things coming out of our mouth. And James says very plainly, he says from the mouth, come blessings and cursings from the same mouth, come, blessings and cursings.

But this often does happen in our hearts. Yeah. Which is why you have to guard your heart. This is why Jesus says, outta the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. So it starts in the heart guard. The heart and the mouth will take care of itself. Yeah.

Worldliness vs. Godliness

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Chapter four, he gets into the relationship between worldliness and godliness and basically calls us to a.

To the line of saying you have to choose you. You can't have one foot in one world and one foot in the world of the church. You've got to be all in with the Lord. And that's where he says this. He says, you adulterous people do not know that friendship with the world is enmity or hostility with God.

Rooted out of our lives more and more and more. But maybe it helps to define worldliness there because that's a word that can be rather broad in its meaning. Pastoral, do you have any thoughts on how somebody could understand this is what worldliness looks like? I think it would be to be characterized by the way the world.

Operate. So values, norms, ideas, understandings. It really is a worldview approach. Worldliness is a worldview that consists or is connected to the way the world and its system. Flesh itself fleshes itself out. So wordiness would be to imbibe on the way the world thinks. To enjoy the world's movies, to enjoy the world's songs, and to enjoy the world's values.

Those things characterizing our lives would be world in is for sure. End of chapter four is where we get that whole concept of we should say, if the Lord wills or Lord willing, we will do this. So I don't know if you've been around somebody and you've said, Hey, I'll see you tomorrow, and they'll respond and be like, Lord, yeah, Lord willing, I'll see you tomorrow.

The Christian's Relationship with Money

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You know, and this is where that comes from because of what James even identifies as a boastfulness assuming something will be the case when maybe it won't, depending on what God's will is for us in that chapter five deals with the relationship with the Christian to money. And again, the problem is not so much whether or not you have money, but whether or not that money has you, has your heart.

If you've given yourself over to that if you've given yourself over to the idols of materialism and loving money, then you've got a problem and James is going to encourage you to put that off into, to flee from that chapter five.

The Imminent Return of Christ

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We talk about that sometimes the imminent return of Christ. That is, that it could happen at any time. James is gonna say, establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand. That's what that at hand means. It's nearby. In fact, he goes on to say in verse nine, the judge is standing at the door.

The Power of Prayer and Confession

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The chapter then ends with speaking about the power of prayer.

And there's some informative things here. I believe even as we think about our position as those that are cessationists there's instructions that James gives here about those that are sick in the church. He doesn't say Call for the person in the church with the gift of healing to come and say, Hey, flu.

I think I could speak for both of us in saying that the position that we would carry for verse 14 is that the anointing oil is medicinal. Yes. It's a medicinal approach here. This is not a specific spiritual consensus where they're saying, we're anointing you to go do A, B, C, or D, but that they're utilizing.

The medical technology of the time is say, we think this is helpful and we're going to not only pray for you, but we're also gonna use the means that God has afforded to us. So this would be a case of saying, I'm gonna go to the doctor and I'm going to ask him to take X-rays or do the MRI. And I'm also gonna pray.

The first being they were their spiritual authorities. There's probably a sense of comfort and care that comes with that, but the elders are also utilizing the latest. Opportunities of the day to say, Hey, we're gonna anoint you because this is maybe helpful for what's going on in your life. Yeah.

What you'll notice in verse 15, it's the prayer of faith that saves him though the oil doesn't ha have the salvific power, even though it could have been helpful. Medicinally speaking, it's the prayer that God honors. And in a similar sense as we go about our days, as we're trusting the Lord to do the things that we ask him to do in our lives, that doesn't exclude our ability to use the things that God has afforded us in so far as are not sinful.

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Confession. Oh. Therefore, confess your sins to one another. Oh, I thought you were gonna confess. No. Here we go guys. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. Churches do this differently. And there's a lot of different views on this.

In other words, should this be liturgical, pro programmatic or is this more by the nature of the course of the Christian life? You should be confessing sin when sin happens. Yeah, we could take all those and probably more. There's so the command is here. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, pray for one another.

That is the command. The application of that command I think, fits in a large variety of different contexts. And if you want to inter, if you want to inject it into your regular liturgy, praise God, do that. And doing it together corporately is great. I've done this at several churches and I've enjoyed it.

And while it's a great feature of a liturgical approach, it's also a great feature of church life and Christian life in general. You and I have had these kind of conversations where we can invest things and we're talking about things and I think it's great. Yep. I think this is just meant to be the regular spiritual, relational dynamic in the Christian Church and how it applies where you apply it really up to the church themselves.

So this is not the same, this is not grounds for us to point to Catholicism in the confessional booth and the priest being the one that grants absolution to somebody's sins. Well, I would ask you guys who are listening if you could find that in the text, man, I'd be happy to put our own. Booth up, let's do it.

If I can find that in, in scripture, if James tells me to do this, then I'd be happy to do that. We have a closet or we'll, we will set one up, but there's nothing here that says that. Yeah, there's nothing here that says it has to be a priest who offers some kind of consolation to a parishioner who's praying in a booth like there's nothing.

If of the one who is sick, if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. So he's even contextually here saying, some people may have been sick because of the sins that they had committed. Right? And and so that's one of the, additional reasons. And that's probably helpful for somebody too if you're dealing with sickness, if you're dealing with chronic sickness, if you can't get over something, maybe it is God tapping you on the shoulder and causing you to say, Hey, do I have unconfessed sin in my life? Could this be God's discipline on my body physically?

Trying to get my attention that I need to bring this to light and confess that's totally legitimate. And I think James five would speak to that, and that's such a great point. There's probably a lot of things that we might otherwise do. Taking the aspirin, using the sleep meds before we say, let me check my heart.

So that's a great question. We should all ask that question when we're going through sickness. Is this evidence of unconfessed into my life? And if so, Lord, help me see it so I can dispose of it. I'm just glad that you called everybody on the podcast. Psycho psycho sematic. No, I heard Psycho. You are psycho.

Suge soul. Soma body, soul body. You are a soul body whole. Yes. Yeah.

Concluding Thoughts and Prayer

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Alright, let's pray. Boy, thanks for James. It's so much and we didn't spend nearly enough time, even though a little bit of a longer episode today we still could have gone so much more in depth in a book like this. We pray that we would be able to digest.

We're grateful for Christ. We're grateful that salvation, the entry point is by faith alone and Christ alone, by grace alone. And we're also thankful, Lord, that faith does show up. In that we can have confidence, even as Peter says in Second Peter one, that we can confirm our calling in election if we see virtues, if we see our faith working itself out in our lives.

And so, God, I pray that that would be true of our church, that we would see our faith at work, that we would be able to have a great confidence in our standing with Christ and that we would, as a result of that, be a church full of zeal and passion for him and wanting others to come to know him as well.

Thanks for your word. Thanks for this time today, and Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Hey, keep your Bibles and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast and tomorrow's church. So maybe invite somebody to church today. That's right. We'll see you guys tomorrow. That's right. Good idea. See you guys.

Bye.

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PJ: Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said