Sermon Tone Analysis

The truth beneath the costume

We are about to enter the Halloween season.

Kids will dress up in costumes to pretend to be something they are not.

When Elias dresses up as Spider Man, I know he is pretending to be Spider Man.

My neighbors know he is pretending to be Spider man.

For a small amount of time, a matter of a few hours, he will put on a “false face.”

And because he is a child, everyone will indulge his fantasy of being something he is not.

As his daddy, however, I will love him enough to have him put the costume away.

I say love him enough to put the costume away because it would be unloving to have him continue in his belief that he is Spider man.

What matters to this life and the life to come is the truth beneath the costume.

In a similar way, James through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, may confront you like a good daddy who is telling his son to take of the costume, and he will do it by exposing the truth beneath the costume of your Christianity, namely your faith.

James has been hammering the notion of genuine faith.

He opened the discussion in

Doers are those who remember God’s commands and do them.

That is, they express their love for Jesus through their obedience.

The James says true religion is physically caring for orphans and widows and living a holy life.

With the distinctions he makes between hearers only and those who hear and do, James is developing the truth that genuine faith in Jesus will always manifest itself with works.

By the time you reach chapter 2, Jesus is heavy into his argument that faith without works is a useless and dead faith.

And in doing so, he sets the tone of warning to his readers.

There is a danger for the Church goer who believes their faith is genuine but they have no works in their life that show their religion is true.

They are hearers of the word, but they are not doers of the word.

You catch this warning in our text this morning in three verses.

James warns

James’ warning feels like the same warning Jesus gives in Matthew 7:21

They called him Lord.

Jesus is speaking to religious people who thought they knew him.

Something, however, was deficient in their understanding of Him.

Something was deficient of their faith.

Notice, in Matthew 7:21, who enters the kingdom of heaven.

Only those who “do” the will of my father in heaven,” says Jesus, will enter the kingdom of God.

You believe.

That is well and good.

But are you doing?

There is a warning that must be heeded this morning in our discussion on faith.

James warns you and I,

Deceptive faith is a dead faith that does not express love in action and will send you to hell.

Deceptive Faith (James 2:14)

James opens this section with an earth shaking question.

What good is your faith if your faith does not have works?

Then has asks an even bolder question, “can that faith save him?

What James reveals hers it here is a faith that can send you straight to hell.

It’s a dead faith that deceives you, or a deceptive faith.

Think about the trap of easy believism.

For fifty years, maybe more, the told people they just needed to say a prayer to be saved.

Then we baptized them and gave them little expectation of being doers of the word, living unstained by the world.

So they lived worldly lives, even stopped coming to church, reading their bible, doing the work of ministry.

They have “faith” but do not have any works to show they have genuine faith.

That describes seventy percent of Americans.

To add injury to insult, the church has the audacity to say, those people who said a prayer and live pagan lives are saved.

James says to you and I this morning, that is deadly nonsense.

What about the church goer who comes to church on Sunday.

But seem to pay little attention to the gospel or have cold affections toward Jesus.

They come.

They sit.

They listen.

Then they leave, and leave they will if they hear the pastor speak of doctrine, sin, and expectations.

They will find a church that tells them what they want to hear will little expectations.

They have “faith” but no works that verify their faith.

Years ago, John Newton seemed to put his finger on the pulse of the problem, why so many in the church fall into deception.

Newton says,

“in church at the summons of the bell, to repeat words because other[s] … do the same, to hear what is delivered from the pulpit with little attention or affection, unless something occurs that is suited to exalt self, or to soothe conscience, and then to run with eagerness [back out the door and] into the world again.”(John

Newton, “Of a Living and a Dead Faith,” John Newton The Works of the Rev. John Newton (London, 1808), 2:559.)

Alister Beg sums Newtons words up well when he says,

“It’s amazingly up to date, isn’t it?

Here he is hundreds of years before, saying, “The thing that I’m facing in my congregation is this: that I have a vast crowd of people who come.

Many of them listen with very little attention and very little affection.

The only way you can get them to listen,” he says, “is if you will exalt their self-esteem or if you will seek to soothe their conscience”—in other words, in twenty-first-century terms, if you will tell them that they’re great and if you will tell them that they’re okay.”

Alister Begg

So many people in the church fall into the deception of thinking they are right with God because the “profess faith” in Jesus but have no works in their life, no bearing of good fruit from love driven obedience to back it up.

Why?

Because they have little to no affections for or give little to no attention to Jesus.

They only want the sermon to tell them how great they are and to soothe their self-esteem.

Sadly, too many preachers in the Western church are eager to give them the self-help gospel they want.

Alister Begg goes on to say,

“Why are there arenas this morning in the continental United States with thirty thousand people in them listening to preaching?

I’ll tell you why: because the preaching says two things over and over again: “You are great, and you are okay!”

And James says, “No you’re not, and if somebody tells you that you are, you’d better beware of that individual.

Take the test,” he says.

“What good is it if a man claims to have faith and there is no evidence in his life?

Can that faith save him from hell?” It’s a rhetorical question, and the answer is categorically no, it can’t, and no, it won’t!”

Alister Begg

James says, “What good is that kind of faith?

It is a deceptive faith that leads to eternal hell.

So Paul says to you and I this morning,

Take a moment this morning to check your faith.

How are your affections for Jesus?

Red hot? Luke warm?

Cold?

What kind of attention have you given to Jesus this week?

This morning?

The next several verses will reveal more of your heart.

James is going to elaborate on living through an illustration first, and then showing you that faith can only be revealed by your works, and that your justification requires your faith to have works.

He will show this through the faith of Abraham and Rehab.

But first, James gives you and illustration to help you see the difference between living faith and deceptive dead faith.

Living Faith Expresses Love in Action (James 2:15-17)

James moves his argument forward by using an illustration of a desperate member of the church community.

He describe the person as a “brother or sister” in verse 15.

This brother or sister has fallen on hard times.

You see them without clothes and and food.

Its not that they are naked, but they are poorly dressed .