Introduction– We’re going to be spending the summer months in the book of James…I’ve wanted to preach on James for some time now. Now appears to be the right time…
James is an amazing book…so full of practical, down to earth teaching on the Christian life…We learn about dealing with trials and tribulations, about wisdom, what it is and how to obtain it, about what true religion looks like, about handling temptation, how to control our tongue…(which in our day and age is more about controlling our hands, eg. the kind of emails and texts we send…)
… We’re warned about favoritism in the church . We learn the proper relationship between faith and works…about discerning God’s will…we learn a lot about prayer…and so much more…
If you don’t love the book of James already, I’m certain you will by the end of this series…not that this is going to be easy and comfortable teaching…James can be hard-hitting and direct…so it will be a stretch for those who only want a comfortable, feel-good version of Christianity…
But for today, I simply want to introduce you to the author of James, to James himself…because as we get to know a little bit about him, the things he has to say gain a whole new perspective…
So let’s open our Bibles to James 1:1…
Prayer…read…
So, who was James? We learn with a great degree of certainty from the NT that He was not one of the twelve disciples, even though there are two “James’s” on that list…
He was the half-brother of Jesus.
You don’t often think about Jesus having brothers and sisters, but He did. There is a list of His brother’s names in Mt. 13…half-brothers and sisters that is: James, Joseph, Simon and Judas…if this is written in typical Jewish chronological order, then James was the next oldest to Jesus, probably just a few years younger…the first son born to both Mary and Joseph…
Doesn’t take much to imagine the challenges of growing up with a big brother like Jesus Who is perfect in every way, Who never sins and Who starts talking about God as His Father and that He is called to “be in His Father’s house” (Luke 2:49)…
Not easy to have God as your big brother! Maybe some of you grew up with a brother who thought he was god…but in James’ case this was the real deal…
Which leads to the first part of James’ life:
I Conflicted Years
Scripture tells us that James, along with his other brothers, grew up not believing that Jesus was Who He claimed to be…John 7:5 For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
As a matter of fact, in the early days of Jesus’ ministry, His family tried to bring Him back home because they thought He was crazy…Mark 3:21 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
If this was happening today the family would be trying to get Him institutionalized…that’s how much they doubted Him…
So you can see that James’ first few decades with Jesus were conflicted, to say the least…
But then we come to the turning point in James’ life:
II Conversion Experience
The turning point for James in his relationship to Jesus, in his spiritual life, was likely an event that happened after Jesus death and resurrection…
In the resurrection chapter, 1 Cor. 15, Paul gives us the turning point in James’ spiritual life:
…that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters… Then he appeared to James…1 Cor. 15:4-7
Now we have no record of what transpired between Jesus and James in this post-resurrection appearance, but you can only imagine how powerful that would have been to have your half-brother, who had been executed and was dead for three days, come back to life and appear to you and talk to you…
-it was nothing short of a life-transforming encounter with the true and living God…and that’s where everything changed for James…
-and this is where everything changes for you and I today…when Jesus reveals Himself to us personally…when we have a genuine encounter with God that transforms us from spiritual deadness, even from lifeless religion to a living, life-giving relationship with God…
You see it’s possible to be Jesus’ relative and still not have a saving relationship with Him…until He reveals Himself to us personally as Lord and Savior…it’s possible for you to be a church attender and not have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ…it’s possible for you to come from a Christian family and not have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ…
But through the power of Jesus’ resurrection…He is still revealing Himself to people today and changing them forever with His new life and saving grace…
Which brings us to the final chapter in James’ life:
III Church Leadership
Sometime after this life-changing encounter with his half-brother, James became a church leader…he becomes the leader of the church in Jerusalem.
In Acts 15 we have one account of James’ leadership when the whole issue of whether or not Gentiles should be circumcised in order to be considered true Christians was being discussed at what’s called “The Council of Jerusalem.”
After much discussion on both sides of this issue, James gets up and says in v19: “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Acts 15:19
And that’s exactly what they all did. I mean, who gets to say this stuff, other than someone who is a real leader, who has some spiritual authority…
And it’s so encouraging to see how James supported the inclusion of the Gentiles into the church and how he promoted grace over legalism and grace over keeping the OT law…I mean this was a big paradigm shift for these people…
-we already begin to see the godly wisdom in James…something he will write about in his book…we begin to see his courage to go against popular opinion and stand up against factions in the church and not be swayed by the rich and powerful…again something he will address…
Not only did James become the leader of the church in Jerusalem, he was considered a highly esteemed pillar of the church by none other than the apostle Paul himself:
Gal. 2:9 James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars…
Which brings us to the book that James wrote…considered by many to be one of the first books of the NT ever written, somewhere in the 40’s, perhaps the late 40’s…
-v. 1 says it was written to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations…meaning this is a book not just for Jewish people, but for all the early Christians, most of whom had come from a Jewish background, who had been scattered far and wide after the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 7…which resulted in a full scale persecution of Christians led at the beginning by Saul who became Paul…
But even now, in the 40’s when James is writing, the conditions are hostile against the Christian church…Roman dominance is at its peak…and on top of that there is intense persecution by the Jewish leaders against the church…it is an incredibly tough time to be a Christian in Jerusalem…tough time to be a Christian anywhere in the ancient world…
So when James says in v.2 “consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters, whenever you face trails of many kinds…” he knows exactly what he’s talking about…he isn’t writing this from the comfort of his lazy boy…he and his fellow Christians were facing trials and testings and tribulations that were dangerous and deadly…
As a matter of fact, things were so deadly for Christians at that time that James himself was murdered around 62 ad. Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century, records that the son of the High Priest Annas arranged for the execution of James.
Bond-Servant
So, when you think about the whole life of James, v. 1 takes on a whole new significance…”a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ…”
James doesn’t introduce himself as the half-brother of Jesus or the leader of the Jerusalem church…or an esteemed pillar of the church…He simply calls Himself a servant…a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
How many of us would be able to call ourselves that? How many others would call us that? I know that most of us listening to this message would like this to be true of us…but for how many of us is this really true?
The word for servant can also be translated as slave…some versions translate the word as “bond-servant…”
-the word describes a person deprived of all personal freedom and totally under the control of their master. Absolute surrender, obedience and loyalty was required.
In Exodus 21 we learn that Hebrew slaves were to be set free after six years of service…but if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life. Ex. 21:5-6
So at some point in James’ life, he said, I have come to know and believe in and love and trust my Lord Jesus Christ so much, that I want to spend the rest of my life serving Him…surrendering myself to Him…saying yes to whatever He asks me to do for Him…and became a slave, a bond-servant of Jesus…
What would it take for you and I to do the same thing?
Jesus the Bond-Servant
Maybe it would take us taking a good, long look again at the ultimate Bond-Servant, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who according to Phil. 2:7-8, took “the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” Phil 2:7-8
Jesus surrendered Himself as a bond-servant of His Master and received the ultimate piercing …His hands and His feet were pierced by the nails on the cross…the ultimate act of a loving bond-servant of God…
Would you be willing to ask the Lord to pierce your ear as an act of surrender in becoming His bond-servant at the communion table today?…
Prayer…Song…Communion…