Midtown Presbyterian Church
The Great Con | Spirituality Is Individual - James 2:14-26 - Clint Leavitt
(upbeat music) - You're listening to a sermon from Midtown Presbyterian Church in Phoenix, Arizona. If you'd like to learn more about Midtown and its ministry, please visit us at midtownprez.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook. - We believe that God has gifted you all in unique and special ways, and that church is a wonderful place where we get to gather on Sundays and be together and hear a message and get edified and learn a little bit more, what it looks like to follow Jesus. But the rest of your weeks are spent doing very important work. And we think that your work matters a lot because it matters to God. So we want to hear from people in our community about how they're using their gifts in the world and some of the unique things that God has put them into and how we can support you as a community in that. We never want Sunday gatherings to be the most important thing that we talk about at Midtown, but how you embody Jesus to the world and how you tangibly live out your faith in all of the spaces that you inhabit. So we get a chance to do another interview today with someone from Midtown. He is on our elder board. He's the treasurer that makes all the fun numbers happen behind the scenes. So if you ever see the Midtown financial reports at our annual gathering, things that get emailed out, this guy is the one who makes it all happen. All the moving and shaking behind the scenes. So let's bring up Andrew Meeks and get to hear from him. (audience clapping) - A lot of fans, Andrew, a lot of fans. Well, thanks for joining us and sharing today. So tell the people they're dying to know, what will you be doing this time tomorrow? - Yeah, so this time tomorrow, I'll be in the office probably working on an Excel spreadsheet. So I am a M&A analyst at Charles Schwab. So essentially what we do is there are a lot of investment advisory firms that custody their money through Schwab. So whenever those firms go through any type of mergers or acquisitions, we essentially help make that happen. So I know a lot of that's probably really confusing and weird, but yeah, just a lot of analysts, a lot of running reports, a lot of just day-to-day work, not too much like client communication, but yeah, just a lot of reporting and things like that. So I told you, he's getting things done behind the scenes is what he does. - In what ways do you see God in your work? What are some of the ways that you get to love and serve your neighbors? And this is a very important question for something like this, because I think our society would often be quick to say, well, you look at a screen and runs a financial report. So there's probably not much more to it, but we believe there's a lot more to it. So we'd love for you to share some of that. - Absolutely, yeah, I had that same question to think about it. Like how does this connect with, yeah, just imaging God and just being someone who can serve well. But yeah, one thing I thought of was how to message, I want to say a couple months ago, and it was a quote from Martin Luther King about, like if you are a street sweeper to do it well, to do it like Michelangelo painted or as Shakespeare wrote. And by being the best street sweeper you could be, like the angels of heaven will look down and say, here was a great street sweeper. So that came to mind just thinking of like, like when I'm running reports, when I'm delivering things to a firm, am I doing this to the best capability? And I think one way to image God well is to serve people really well. So a lot of the firms that we handle, just by doing good work and me doing my job well, it makes their experience well. And I think just doing that and working hard, yeah, just images God in a very practical way. Eugene Peterson, there was a book or eat this book he had. And one thing that's always stuck to me is like in our culture, spirituality is seen as like a very esoteric, far out thing. But he talked about spirituality as like a day-by-day practical practice. So that always reminds me when I'm talking to people, if I'm frustrated, if I need to get something done, just always have that in my mind of like, I can embody the spirit or the fruits of the spirit and just my day-to-day work. - Thanks for sharing that. It's really great and so important to remember that, yeah, everything that we do, we can do it really well. And that's a wonderful way to serve God in that. Even the most mundane of tasks have value. What are some of the challenges that you deal with in your office or just in your day-to-day work? What are some of the big problems or hardships? - Yeah, great question. I think one of the hardest transitions, was I worked at GCU for about two and a half years and just had like an awesome, very tight-knit team culture. So me and Clint were actually office mates, that's how we got to know each other. So had a great time. But yeah, I think the difficult thing for me is pretty much all of my team is remote across the country. So within regards to like going into the office every day, I don't really have like an immediate team. And for me, who's an introvert, it's hard for me to like reach out in my comfort zone. So sometimes at work, it can feel challenging of not really feeling like the closest like work relationships. It feels a lot like just coming in, you know, doing my work and then leaving. So yeah, I would say that's probably the biggest challenge today, for sure. - Thanks for sharing that. And in light of that and just the rest of your work things, how can we pray for you today as a church family? What are some of the biggest prayer needs? - Yeah, I think some of the biggest needs, if a lot of you talk to me, you'll probably heard just about my knee issues, my chronic knee issues. But yeah, I've had, since 2013, I've had like four knee surgeries, just a lot of different treatments and just really haven't found healing. So yeah, I would just say, yeah, just continuing healing there. So I think that's affected my mental health quite a bit with limiting the things I like to do. So yeah, I would just say prayers for my knee, I would say for my mom too, she's had MS for about, I wanna say about 12 years now and just really hasn't gotten better, but thankfully hasn't gotten worse. So yeah, I would just say for, yeah, just prayers for my family, just for healing and just continue faith and God. - Well, let's take a minute and pray for Andrew here. So reach out a hand if you want and bow your heads with me. God, we're grateful for Andrew and for his faithful commitment to our community, all of the things that he does behind the scenes to ensure that Midtown functions and runs well. We're grateful for that, God. Grateful for the work that you have put him in and ways in which he is able to image you through something as simple as doing a spreadsheet, God. We're grateful that you have placed him in that area with his co-workers and with the people that he is around God. I pray that as people experience Andrew and his hard work and wanting to do his job well that they would experience you in that God. We pray for Andrew's knee, that he would just experience more healing in that God. I know it's been a hard journey, a lot of difficult days and pray just as time goes on, he would be able to do more and more of the things that he enjoys, that he'd get back to things that give him life and be able to do them at 100% capacity. We pray healing over his knee, God. And for his mom who's been dealing with MS, God, we pray for healing in her life. And we pray that it hasn't gotten worse, but we pray that it would get better and pray that she would be able to experience more of the fullness of health. God, we're so grateful for Andrew, for his family, for Brittany, and that they're a part of our community. Yeah, just pray, continued blessing over Andrew as he tries to embody you well to the world. Pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Let's give it up for Andrew, thank you. (audience applauds) Thanks for leading us in that space. Kids, good to see ya. Glad you're in here. Thanks for joining us. It's good to hang with you guys. Emily and I, last night, got to hang with the Hoyts. We had an all-star team at Parents Night Out last night. If you haven't heard about Parents Night Out, it's a party that happens in this room. I got a couple photos that I want to share with you guys. Three things I learned from Parents Night Out. One, if you want to make Cameron Itriod your best friend, trucks and popsicles, those two things. And Cameron was sitting on my lap by the end of the day. It was great. The second thing, Emerson Keck, is the king of Candy Land. If you didn't already know that he is the king of Candy Land, and you can tell because he put his hands up as soon as I said it, he knows he is the king. But third thing I learned, friends, we as adults have so much to learn from our kiddos. So much to learn about the kingdom of God, so much to learn about the joy that comes with seeing the world with eyes of wonder, that we oftentimes have grown too old to see. We think we're mature, we think we're grown up, and what we actually need to learn is the beauty and the wonder of our kiddos again, because they can teach us who God is and what God is up to. And so one, as an invitation, volunteer for Parents Night Out in the future, but also hang out with our kiddos. You can sign up online to serve our kiddos. In Kidtown on Sunday mornings, we'd love for you to be a part of that. It is a deep, abundant joy to get to do it. So yeah, we love to have them fun. Parents Night Out last night. Welcome, you guys. Welcome to Midtown. Thanks for joining us today. Back in the middle of the 20th century, there was a Jesuit priest. His name was Daniel Berrigan. And his work in life captivated much of the US at the time. He was radically committed to nonviolence in a really divisive era. He co-chaired organizations alongside names like Martin Luther King Jr. and Ryan Hold Meber and Thomas Merton. He also consulted and played a role in the Oscar winning film The Mission. Anybody seen The Mission? Yeah, I thought so. Just the film nerds. Go see The Mission. It's a really, really good movie. And the film nerds like me really love it. But this guy, Daniel Berrigan, incredibly accomplished, but beyond his accomplishments. He was also known for being really unrestrained in his speech. He was really direct and really provocative, which meant he was always a great interview, because you'd always get a good quote out of Berrigan. So one day, he was being interviewed about the nature of faith. And at one point, the interviewer asked him, where does faith live? Is it more in the head or in the heart? And Berrigan paused briefly before answering. And then he replied with this, faith is rarely where your head is at, nor is it where your heart is at. Faith is where your butt is at. [INAUDIBLE] And for the adults in the room, he may or may not have used a more provocative word than but in that sentence, but you get the point either way. When Berrigan said that, he didn't just mean faith is where you choose to sit your butt on a Sunday morning, though we're glad you're all here. He meant that faith is where you sit in your deepest commitments and how those commitments get your butt into the world, which means that faith always shows itself in the way you answer certain questions, questions like, what commitments are you sitting in? Within what reality do you anchor yourself? And how do your decisions and your allegiances and your life choices communicate your answers to those questions? Faith is where your butt is at. Amen? Berrigan's words, I think, couldn't be more prophetic in our culture, because we are people who have slowly, over the last few centuries, especially, turned faith into a very private matter. We've individualized it, and then we've segmented it from our behavior in the world in a bunch of different ways. For example, we tend to talk about faith only as personal, not as a public thing. And so in our time, you can be religious. If you're into that sort of thing, by all means, you just have to keep it to yourself and keep it to your little subculture. That may be true for you. It may give you meaning and purpose, and I'm so happy for you. That's so great for you. It is, it is a condescending statement. But as soon as you try to bring that faith into the public world, it's dangerous. It's just between you and God, or you and Krishna, or you and your spirit animal, or whatever else. But it's not the only way that we've privatized faith. We've also privatized it by making it into an intellectual exercise. This has been a Christian specialty for many years. Do you believe the right ideas in your head? Do you pray the prayer and say the right words in the right order? If so, great, you have faith. Faith is just about the ideas in our heads and the way we affirm those ideas to others and how we live, where our butts are at. That's less important. And maybe the most prominent picture of privatizing faith in our culture today is the way we've turned it into a therapeutic tool. This is my generation's favorite. You know, I'm not religious. I'm just a spiritual person. Which really means I use the headspace app when it's convenient for me. Or I read a couple of spiritual self-help books every year, or I drink kombucha at the park while doing yoga. Like that's how I'm spiritual. And that therapeutic approach, it's all over the statements we say. We say things that sound really spiritually wise. They don't mean anything. The universe has a plan for me. That's so nice that the universe cares about you like that. Sending positive vibes. Manifest your desires. Those all make us feel good, but they don't really make a meaningful difference in our character or in the world. They make a spiritually self-focused tools to make us feel good. And as long as we feel good, then great. And this, by the way, the sort of therapeutic approach to faith has leaked into our Christian subculture all over the place. We've made, in our Christian churches oftentimes, the emotional experience, the positive feelings of church, the measure of faith. You guys, I've watched church staff meetings where teams of people have talked about the best way to maximize decibel levels in the church on Sundays so that people feel like something's happening in their chest. The guy who founded one of the most popular churches in Western history was quoted as saying that the purpose of every service was to quote, leave people feeling better about themselves when they left than when they arrived. There's a billboard I saw a few years ago for one of the most popular churches here in Phoenix. Their slogan was this, win at life. Win at life, which sounds really nice. Sounds very therapeutic. Doesn't sound a lot like take up your cross and follow me, but it sounds nice. Just a few years back, there were two sociologists, Christian Smith and Melinda Denton were their names. They were curious about this 'cause they were anecdotally noticing like it seems like faith has just become more and more private. What's going on here? And because they're scientists, they're like, "We need data behind that." So they did the most comprehensive study of religion in America for young people that's ever been done. And what they found was striking. They found that most people, even those who call themselves Christians, actually have a belief system that looks nothing like Christianity. And they had a catch-all term to describe what they found to be true. They called it moralistic therapeutic deism, which is a whole bunch of fancy gobbledygook for most of us. But there were three main pillars that they saw that most people in America believe, if you dig down, these are the three pillars. One, you will be rewarded for being a nice person. And what's interesting is that it was a really ambiguous nice. It wasn't really like this deep, robust understanding of goodness. It was more like, "Oh, I'm just a kind of a nice person in general." That's moralism. Second, the goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself. That's therapeutic. And third pillar. There is a God who created the world, but that God isn't really meaningfully involved in our lives or the world now. And prayer is only really necessary when things are going bad. That's deism. The idea that God is very distant, more realistic, therapeutic deism. And notice something, all of those pillars are self-focused. Every single one of them is about me. I am the center of my little universe. That's what faith has become in our time. And here's the problem, you guys. That sort of faith is a con. It's a lie because it's dead. It doesn't change us. It doesn't change the world. Is it any wonder that in the time where we have the most privatized picture of faith ever, we are more divided and dissatisfied and suspicious and anxious and depressed than ever? Our private and individual faith has not resulted in a culture of free, masterly humans who are changing the world. It's made us limp and brittle. We're subject to ways of emotion where disintegrated people who are ungrowing and unchanged. And the deep cry that I hear from so many of you, the deep longing of our culture is for something better than this. It's not for a better version of the Headspace app. It's not for new emotional and spiritual strategies or more robust horoscope results or whatever. It's for a fully integrated faith. We're a heart and our head and our hands are aligned in love and justice and mercy. It's for a robust set of habits that are rooted in community that shape us in things like humility and compassion and justice. We are all longing for a life that matters, a faith that matters, a spirituality that makes a difference. We're longing for a living faith, not a limp faith. We're continuing in a teaching series here at Midtown on the Book of James. We're calling this series the Great Con because each week we're looking at a different con, a different lie that our culture hands us about how to be human and who God is and what the world is like. And James responds to every one of these cons by saying, "Guys, no, you've missed it." That's not wisdom, that's not true. That's not what it means to be human. And this week, we're gonna see that our longing, this deep longing that we have for an integrated life and a living faith, that isn't new. It's been around for a long, long time. In our passage this morning, James is gonna expose what dead faith, what this privatized internal and personal dead faith looks like and then he's gonna point a way to what living faith looks like to show us that it really does have the power to transform us and the world. So friends, if you have a Bible, open it with me. We're gonna be in the Book of James. James is in the backs of your New Testaments. If you're flipping there, we're gonna be starting in James chapter two verse 14 and reading through verse 26. If you don't have a Bible, by the way, that's okay. The words are gonna be up here on the screen behind me, so you can follow along there. James chapter two, starting in verse 14. 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 a daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace. Keep warm and eat your fill, but you do not supply their bodily needs. What is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, well, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without works. And I, by my works, will show you my faith. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you wanna be shown? You sense this person that faith without works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. And he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road. For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead. This is the word Lord, thanks be to God. Verse 17, so faith by itself, if it has no works is dead. Verse 20, faith apart from works is dead. Verse 26, faith without works is dead. Any idea what James could be getting at in this passage? It's really ambiguous and confusing, right? No, like any good teacher, James makes his purpose really obvious throughout this whole passage. Living faith, true faith is a faith that works. It's a faith that gets its hands dirty. It's where your butt is at. I'm getting a giggle out of the front row every time, by the way, I'm not, that's why I keep coming back. But for as clear as that purpose is, it can also be a little confusing to those of us who know our Bibles. See in verse 24, James gives a summary of his argument here. He says, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And that sounds familiar, but a little off, if we know our Bibles. Remember in Romans chapter three, verse 28, Paul says this, for we hold that a person is justified by faith, apart from works prescribed by the law. That seems contradictory, doesn't it? And for the person who wants to criticize the Bible, or the person who has questions about the Bible, they think, aha, this is it. I found it, it's the contradiction, right? In black and white, the Bible contradicts itself. Clearly this thing isn't trustworthy. Its own authors can't agree. And so there you have it, friends, the church is over. It's done, we found the one contradiction. After 2,000 years, we have found the end of Christianity in this passage. We can all go home, none of this matters. Thank God for us. We are enlightened people so much smarter than these primitive people who put this ancient text together, right? I don't think that's the right posture, friends. When we see something like this that appears contradictory to us, we should start to wonder what's really going on there. It might be that we're missing something. And I think in this case, it is. See, James and Paul actually aren't disagreeing. They're in full agreement. And you see this as you look at church history and the rest of the scriptures. So for instance, James and Paul, they knew each other in the ancient world. We know that they both affirmed the other's ministry. So James affirmed Paul's ministry to the non-Jewish Christians, the non-Jewish world, the Gentiles. And Paul affirmed James's ministry to the early Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. James was the pastor of the first church in Jerusalem. And not only that, they were actually both present at an early church council called the Council of Jerusalem. It was an early meeting about 15 years after Jesus resurrected. And that council was all about defining what the gospel is and what the gospel isn't, what the good news of Jesus really is and isn't. And at that council, it was determined that none of us are given access to eternal life or joy or peace by our own effort, by works. We are given access to that completely and purely by the acts and works of Jesus Christ in his life, death and resurrection. That is the good news of Christianity, grace. It's different than every other world religion. In every other world religion, you have to meditate a certain way. You have to behave a certain way. You have to perform certain religious things. And then you earn full life and unity with one or unity with God. That's how every other faith works, but not Christianity. It says that the only thing that you need to have is trust in who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. That has been the message of Christianity from the beginning. That's what James and Paul both affirmed. And even beyond their relationship, the early church, when they put their first Bibles together, they mashed James and Romans right next to each other. So what's more likely that these first century Jewish believers, who were meticulous in keeping records for centuries, that they had an obvious contradiction that they missed? Or that we, reading someone else's mail from 2000 years later, might be missing something? I think I'm going to go with the latter. See what James is actually doing in this passage is actually looking at the same thing as Paul, a life of faith in Jesus, but he's looking at it from a different perspective. James and Paul are like two different eyes looking at the same thing. You know when you like close an eye and you look at something or you like are wearing an eye patch because it's Halloween or whatever you're doing? You, I don't know, I don't know what you guys do. What you dress up for a Halloween is your business. But say, yeah, that's Tuesdays, that's Tuesdays. Pirate Tuesdays, interesting, I want to hear more about that. Anyway, if you close your eye and look at something, right? You lose depth perception. You lose the ability to fully understand and see that thing well. But as soon as you open your second eye, you can see with more depth and you can see because it's at a slightly different angle than your other eye. Two eyes are necessary to see things in 3D. That's what James is doing. He's looking at faith from a different angle and you can see he's doing this in verse 24 when he uses the word justify. He's using that word to grab people's attention because he knows that that's a word that Paul used and just like almost every word, that word can have different meanings and different contexts. That's how words work. I take the word bank. What comes to mind? Shout it out when you hear the word bank immediately comes to mind. Cold cash monies, Tobin Kec says. That is true. If you get a big paycheck on a Friday, what do you say? I'm making bank, baby. I'm making bank. But not only that, a bank also means bank of America. Wells Fargo, a financial institution, yes, that's another sermon. Bank, depending on where you live, can also remind you of rivers. That's not something here in Phoenix because I don't know if you've been outside. But banks of a river are also a way that we use the word bank. Bank means different things in different contexts. Same thing is true for the word justify. In one sense, the word justify can mean to make something right. So say you have a debt, and you pay that debt back. You have been justified. You have been made right, made equal in the terms that you need to be made equal in. That's how Paul actually uses the word in Romans. He's speaking to people who are burdened by legalism, who are burdened by the notion that they need to earn God's love in some way or another, or that God only loves certain types of people in certain ways. Paul is speaking to them and saying that is not true. God's love has come in the person of Christ and is freely available to anyone independent of what they've done or failed to do. That is grace. That is the gospel. That is the way that Paul uses the word justify. And James, by the way, has already agreed with that in this letter in ways we often overlook. In fact, he's agreed with it in this chapter. Chapter 2, verse 5, he says this, "Has God not chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom?" Ears. Notice that metaphor. He's saying that Christians become heirs. What's the difference between wages and heirs? Wages come to you because of what you've done. An inheritance, being an heir, means that you receive something independent of what you've done simply because you're in relationship with someone. Wages only ever come as a result of the work that you have put in. Wages are a reward for earning, but an inheritance, being an heir, means that money is already in the bank. With cash money, as Tobin would say, it's guaranteed, and it's guaranteed based on your relationship with someone. That's how inheritance works. James has already said, unequivocally, we don't earn salvation by our works. He said that we are heirs by virtue of our relationship with Jesus. We are Christians because we have entrusted ourselves to this Jesus, and now everything that is true of Jesus becomes true of us. We are part of God's eternal family co-heirs with Christ. Paul says in Romans, "Everything that is in Christ we receive, we receive belovedness. The Father looks upon us with joy and love never with shame. We become unified with the spirit of God that brings love and joy and peace and the rest. We receive the power to change into people that look and sound and act like Jesus, and we receive resurrection life." So when James is using the word justify here, he's not meaning it in the same way. To justify can mean to make right, but it can also mean to show that something is right. There's a subtle difference there, it can mean to prove that something is right. For instance, if someone asks you to justify a statement you've made, are they asking you to make that thing true? No, they know that you cannot make anything true, it's either true or it's not, right? What they're asking you, when they say justify that statement, they're asking you for evidence. Can you show it to be true? Can you prove it to be true? Can you with data tell me and show me that that's true? That's what James is saying, works is. The idea of faith for James is that it's something that follows up with works. After that initial claim of what we believe, does it show itself to be true? Does it justify itself through our lives? What he's saying is that we are not saved by deeds, but we are saved for deeds. Friends, the way you know your faith is alive and not dead is by looking at the way that it shows up in your day-to-day life. There's a great story from the ministry of Jesus that I think illustrates this well. In Mark chapter 2, so early on in Jesus' ministry, we hear that Jesus is teaching in a small home and he's increasing in popularity, everyone's pressing in on the home, they want healing, they want teaching, and there's no way to get into the home to Jesus. All the windows, all the doors are blocked. And then a couple of friends come with their paralyzed friend. They know that he needs healing, they know that Jesus can bring that healing, they have great faith, but they can't get in. And so being the shrewd people that they are, they said, "Hey, what if we got up on the roof, clawed our way through the fast roof and dropped our friend down?" Remarkable ingenuity in their faith. And so they climb up, they drop their friend down, Jesus sees them, and then this is what the text says in Jesus' response, it says, "When Jesus saw their faith," he said to the paralyzed man, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Jesus saw their faith, how? Because faith is not a tangible thing you can put on your microscope. How do you see it through their actions? You see faith through actions. You're devoted love to their friend in need, faith is shown where our butts are. Is that true of you? If someone was putting you on trial for being a Christian, and they were examining all of your behaviors, your schedule, your bank account, would they look at you and say, "Man, the evidence is overwhelming, they have faith." And I'm not just talking about being nice. Sometimes we think that's what Christianity is. I'm nice to people. I know my barista's name, and I tip pretty well, I'm a nice person. You guys, I know lots of non-Christians that are the nicest people. I'm not talking about being nice. I'm talking about actions that show that Jesus is at work in us. I'm talking loving our enemies and those we disagree with. I'm talking elevating the poor and the overlook. I'm talking radical forgiveness. I'm talking shocking generosity to the point where it costs us comfort so that others can be comfortable. I'm talking loving the poor, the outcast as much as you love yourself. That's the kind of action that makes faith visible. Jesus never put it more simply and convictingly than this. If you love me, you will keep my commandments because that's how love works. Receiving love is not something we hoard for ourselves. When we've received true love, it leaks out, it springs out, it flings itself towards others in love. There's a minister in Massachusetts. He's a Presbyterian. That doesn't really matter. I just have that in my notes. It's there. Yeah. Foot note. Thomas Hawkins is his name, but he wrote about this dynamic in his book, "The Potter and the Clay." He said this, "The closer we draw to others, the closer we draw to God. The farther away we move from God, the farther we move from others. And we are willing to abandon ourselves and fling ourselves outward in compassion and in service. We find that we have made room not just for others in our lives, but for God in our hearts. The energy that we have masked in our own little center is spent on others and it leaves an open space where God may enter." So this passage, friends, it's not contrasting faith and works. It's contrasting dead faith and living faith. According to James, there is a version of faith that is useless, dead, and damaging because it is personal and private. But there is a type of faith that is living that brings us life and he wants us to be able to know how to tell the difference. This passage is about identifying whether we have living faith or whether we have dead faith. And so I want to look at both of those real quick. I think he gives us three signs of dead faith and three signs of living faith that we want to be able to apply to ourselves and allow to speak to us today. So first, three signs of dead faith. Number one, sympathy without action. If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, eat your fill, and yet you do not supply the bodily needs," what is the good of that? Couple subtle things to notice there. First, the condition of the person in need. The word naked there can describe someone who is literally without clothing, but it also can describe someone who has very little clothing, like underwear or insufficient clothing. That's how it's used in the Gospel of John as well. So somebody who is in rags and somebody who does not have access to daily food to sustain themselves. That's the person we're talking about here. And second, look at the believer, the second person here. They're so well-intentioned, so well-intentioned, they have sympathy. They're sending all the positive vibes. They even use religious language to show how much they care. They say, "Go in peace," which was a common first-century way of saying, "God's blessed Here's the truth, you guys, good intentions don't fill hungry bellies. Sympathetic feelings don't put clothes on someone's back and sending positive vibes is not advocacy for the oppressed. And all of our religious language and ideological posturing is empty if it's not accompanied by tangible acts of love. Only without action is dead faith, parable to illustrate this. Imagine, up and down the West Coast, there's been a series of cataclysmic earthquakes, and there's one guy who got got by one of these massive pits that have opened up in the ground. So he falls in, and now he's shouting out to people who might walk by. "Hey, help me get out. Get out of this pit." There's a variety of people who walk by him. The first person who walks by is an optimist. And the pawns seeing the man in the pit, they say, "You know, things could be worse." Then they keep walking, feeling great about how encouraging their positive vibes were. Second person is a pessimist. They see the man in there, "Oof, big yikes, man. Things are only going to get worse from here. Look, the world, it's a bitter and terrible place. I felt it myself. Sorry you're feeling that, but man, it's just kind of how it is." And then he keeps on walking, thinking, "You know what? At least I've told them the truth about reality." Third person who walks by, a wealthy businessman. And the pawns seeing the man in the pit, they say, "Well, I mean, you've brought this upon yourself, haven't you? You got yourself in it. I mean, you fell into the pit. Somehow you weren't paying enough attention. That means you need to get yourself out." But here's the thing, you can. Because in our country, as long as you work hard, you can do anything you set your mind to. And then he keeps walking to his 14-hour workday, thinking he'd done something really good and inspired, someone. Fourth person who walks by is a Buddhist. They see the man in the pit. And they say, "Well, based on my study and research of this situation, this is how the pit forms." And in reality, you didn't have much of a chance to avoid the pit anyway. It's just such a shame this has happened to you. And then he goes to lecture on pits and their causes and how important it is to help people who are in pits at the university. Six-person is a political activist. They see the man in the pit, they say, "How tragic this happened to you." You know what? Elections are coming up soon. I'll be sure to put a sign in my front yard that advocates for the folks like you who are in the pit. And then change my profile picture on social media for the next month before we get a new puppy and I have something else on my mind. And then they keep walking, thinking they've done something really good to their job at a coffee shop or something. And the seventh person to walk by is a religious philanthropist. They see him in the pit and they say, "I'll pray for you." And then they drop a few dollars into the pit and they keep walking to their religious service to sing songs and pray. You guys, the best intentions, the deepest sympathy, the sweetest sounding religious language is even more offensive than outright ignorance because it's all a cover-up for a failure to act. It's all the way to make us feel better about not helping. And if our faith is marked by those tendencies, James is clear, that's a dead faith, not a living one. How you doing? All right? That's just sign number one of the dead faith. We got two more. Sign number two, the dead faith. This one hits. Y'all. Empty doctrine, even if it's correct. At this point in the passage, James imagined someone who might object to his case. They're saying, "Well, I mean, I have faith. You have works. You have faith. I have works." It's all part of our personalities. We're all kind of coming together. I don't need to have works to follow up faith is fine on its own. And James says that mentality puts us exactly on par with one category of being, demons. Demons is not holding back. Verse 19, "You believe that God is one. You do well." Even the demons believe and shudder and statement there. God is one. It was likely a reference back to the shema, which was and still is a central prayer of the Jewish people. It comes from Deuteronomy, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength. It's a prayer that's been memorized and recited for millennia. And it was something that people knew really well. And it was great doctrine. It was a reminder to them that God is one, that God is not a multitude. God is one. And because God is one, he is unified. God is not someone you have to question his character as character is consistent across all places and all times. That was the statement. And that's great, James says. It's just that that alone only puts you on par with demons. Because here's the truth, demons have all gone to the best seminary in the universe. It's true. They've gotten a better theological education than any of us in this room because they've been in the heaven of heavens. They've seen God. They know God more than the best saint. There's nothing wrong with head information friends. There's nothing wrong with knowledge or learning. I'm all about learning. But sometimes it can be a trap. You have to realize that head knowledge alone doesn't qualify us to be anything more than a demon. If it doesn't work us into the world in some way, it is useless. As Leonard Ravenhill put it, your doctrine can be straight as a gun barrel and your life just as empty. A few years back, I was learning about this strange thing called Presbyterianism. I was really new to it, was not raised near to it. And I was traveling around, seeing and meeting other Presbyterian ministers, just trying to learn about this weird new thing, the presby's, that's what I call them. I'm one of them now, so that's what I call myself, I guess. The presby's. And one thing about the presby's that I've learned, every presby that I've ever met loves the same thing, a pipe organ. They love their pipe organs. And I also learned that there's a difficulty that comes with pipe organs. They get old. And they're really expensive to fix. And one time I was in a church and I was talking with a pastor and I saw their pipe organ is beautiful. This pipe organ, right across the wall of their sanctuary, I was like, man, that's a beautiful pipe organ. And the pastor leaned over to me and he said, hey, it actually doesn't work. It's not connected to anything. It's not connected to keys. We just like it because it looks nice. Friends, sometimes the best theology in the world is just empty pipes. Sometimes our religion is all for show. We like how it looks. We like the aesthetic. We like the vibes. And it's empty because it doesn't have works. That's why James says what he does at the end of this passage, "For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead." Faith without works is like a pipe organ that can't play music. It's useless. You guys, I'm going to let you in on a secret. It's really, really like important secret that you need to keep. There's only one reason we do anything church related. There's only one reason we study the scriptures and learn and sing and play guitar and affirm our beliefs. It's to give ourselves more to Jesus and become more like him. That's it. It's actually not complicated. It is to transform, to be transformed into Christ's likeness. There is no point in doing anything else we do. Reading the Bible, going to small groups, there's no point in any of it if it's not shaping us in the image of Jesus. I see Leslie Mitten put in this way in his commentary on James. He said, "It is a good thing to possess an accurate theology, but it is unsatisfactory unless that theology also possesses us." Second sign of dead faith, empty doctrine, even if it's correct. Third sign of dead faith here, shuddering. It's a really interesting word. James goes further about the demons. He said, "The dead faith of the demons causes them to shudder." Here's what he's saying. "It's not just that the demons have the right theological education. It's actually the demons respect God. They fear God. They are terrified of God. They shudder. Their entire existence is rooted in that fear of what God can do to them. We see this in Mark 5. Jesus encounters a man who's been possessed by demons. The demon comes out and says that his name is Legion, which is a word that's used to describe a unit of 5,000 Roman soldiers. We're talking maybe 5,000 demons in this dude. Jesus is still far off. These demons force this man to run at Jesus. He falls on his knees and he says this, "What do you want with me, Jesus? Son of the Most High God. In God's name, don't torture me." That's what the demons know about Jesus. That's the power that they know he has. Do you see what's happening? They have the right doctrine. They know that Jesus is the Son of God. The demons in Mark are the first people to rightly proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God. They know before anyone else does, but what does that lead them to? Shuttering, utter fear, they are terrified of punishment, and sometimes we have to be aware we might do the same sorts of things. It is totally possible to become someone who knows God is great and powerful and becomes scared of punishment, and we can, like the demons, go through our lives shuddering, and we can alter our behavior. We can become super moral people, we can become super religious people, and all of our religion is really just eternal life insurance for us. We think, well, there's probably a God, and that God is probably powerful, and so I should probably hedge my bets just in case. I should get my life together. I need to prove my righteousness before God. I need to make sure that I prove that I am worth keeping around forever. That's not living faith. That is dead faith. That is the faith of the demons, because it's rooted in selfishness. Self-preservation, it's not rooted in love. Now, to be clear, there's nothing wrong with having pangs in our conscience about our behavior. There's nothing wrong with wanting to change our behavior and knowing that something needs to change, but we also need to be careful, because all that recognition in and of itself does not mean we have living faith. It might actually mean we become legalists. It might actually mean that we become people who have misunderstood the gospel, that God already loves us and already welcomes us back. We've misunderstood love. Those are three signs of dead faith, friends, but James doesn't leave us with dead faith. He also shows us three signs of living faith. We're going to go through these quickly. First, living faith is alive towards others. James wants us to see that living faith shows up in how we respond to the poor or the hurting or people different than us or our enemies. When we are in their midst, how do we show up? Do we radiate charity and graciousness and respect and hospitality and concern for their well-being? Are we primarily concerned about their well-being or our own? This is a big thing right now. We are in the middle of an election year. Do you guys know that? Yeah. Just a small thing. Middle of an election year. Yeah. Lots of deep size. But this is actually a great time for us to evaluate whether we have living faith or not. It's a great time for us to look at our ballots and say, "Am I primarily concerned with voting for my own economic and economic well-being and safety? Or am I primarily concerned about the economic well-being and safety of my neighbor, especially my neighbor who's marginalized, especially my neighbor who's oppressed?" Living faith never asks, "How can I help myself?" Living faith asks, "How can I help them?" Now, keeping that in mind, we have to be careful because I know that in myself, I can often feel shame and fear when I realize I haven't done this as well as I could, right? And I can start to think that I just need to rush around my life and start doing more and more stuff for God to approve of me. Stop. That's not the gospel. I need to be careful because that's rooted in fear. That's all shuddering. Living faith is not about self-justification, it's not about proving that I am good enough, it's about self-giving love. That's the opposite of fear, friends, love. Which means living faith always comes from an organic connection to love. Not fear. And that's where the gospel comes in. We find that sort of love present in us when we realize we are the poor ourselves. We are people who are just as much in need of God's healing and God's forgiveness in God's life as anyone else. And we are people who have encountered the good news that Christ came to heal us, and not just us, but the whole world. The Christ came to mend us, the Christ came to forgive us, that God so loved the world. May it with me that He gave His only Son so that anyone who believes in Him would not perish and have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, to shame the world. God sent His Son into the world so the world might be saved, so they might know God's love. That kind of love is the thing we need to get ahold of us, friends. And when that grabs our hearts, we start to live out of true love for others, not for our own sakes, but for their sakes, because we recognize in them our own poor condition. And we see that Christ made Himself poor so that they might be rich. So living faith, it's alive towards others. Second thing about living faith, it takes risks. We see this in James' usage of Rahab's example here. Some of you may know the story of Rahab back in Joshua. She was a prostitute, an outsider by every measure. She was not part of the nation of Israel, but she was someone whose heart had been captured by God. And so when she had the chance to protect Israelites who came in to spy and seek out the land, she said, "Yep, I will save them from certain death and certain persecution." She hides them, she lies about them being hidden to the authorities, and then she lets them free. She risked everything. She put her life on the line for the sake of others. She said that their well-being is more important than mine. So living faith says my comfort, my security, my convenience, my safety, my wealth, my career, my pleasure, those things are no longer the things that animate me. Those things are no longer the things that make me decide to do what I do. As Paul put it, those things are crucified to me. And it's not that we don't care about them at all, it's just that they no longer control us. They no longer are the reason we make choices, because the reason we make choices is Christ's love in us and at work in the world. We know that that is the ultimate and final say for everything. That's what Rahab shows us. And what's fascinating is Rahab becomes an ancestor of King David, who becomes an ancestor of Jesus. We don't get Jesus without Rahab. This risk that she takes has profound implications for everyone in this room. So what's the Rahab risk that you might need to take? What's the thing in your life right now? Is it releasing control of more of your money, maybe? Is it letting go of some material comfort so that others can be comfortable, maybe? Is it reorganizing your time during the week so that you can truly love those who are in need? Where is living faith calling you to risk? And finally, friends, the third sign of living faith here, it's a faith that's alive towards God. That's the example of Abraham. James says that Abraham in his giving of his son is giving of this thing, taking a huge risk. He says that he's called the friend of God. That's the bottom line. Living faith obeys God simply out of relationship with God. A dead faith might obey God for what we get out of it or what we avoid. But true faith longs for God because of who God is. Not because of what we get out of it, not because of what we avoid. True living faith longs for the beauty, the loveliness, the goodness of God and longs to be near to that wherever it might take us. That's what friendship is. That's what it means to be a friend of God. Just longing to be with God regardless of the situation. Tim Keller gives a great example of this. He talks about when he was parenting his boys as teenagers and they were going out to hang with friends. He'd ask them questions. He's like, "Where are you going?" And they'd say, "Out." He'd say, "Okay, but where are you going?" They're like, "I don't know." And you're like, "Okay, don't you have goals in your life? Don't you have any reason that you're going out?" And he's like, "That, I'm going to be with my friends." It doesn't matter what we're doing, it doesn't matter what I'm going to be with my friends. If you have a friend, there's someone you admire and you just want to be with them. And if you're bringing friends along to do what you want to do and that's the only reason that you're getting together with people, that's not real friendship. Friendship says, "I'm going to show up, whatever they're in, I'm in." That is what Abraham has for God. That is what living faith looks like and wants to be friends with God. Living faith has encountered the beauty and the goodness and the wonder of God in Christ and says, "I need to be near that," because that is the thing that really matters. And when that happens, it will make all of us more and more compelled by living a certain way. Living faith says, when it hears Christ, say the words, "What you do for the least of these you do for me?" Living faith says, "I'm in." "I'm in." Living faith hears Christ say he came to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, and living faith says, "I'm in." Living faith hears Jesus say that God is near to those who are poor in spirit, to those who mourn, to those who are weak, and living faith says, "I'm in." Living faith is going to do whatever it can to be near to God, to be friends with God. That's what Abraham did. He did down everything to be near to God. And that's why every week we come to this table, at Midtown. This is the place where we can gaze upon the beauty of the Lord again what Christ has done for each and every one of us. We find here that we have a friend in God. So let God's friendship melt your heart again, friends. Let it bury the dead and private and individualistic and shame-filled faith and let it spark true living faith that reminds you the ultimate truth, faith is where our buts are at. Let's pray, friends. [BLANK_AUDIO]