087: Jim Styles - Be Doers of the Word

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

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   Welcome to the Good Christadelphian Talks podcast. I'm Levi. And I'm Chris. Thank you so much for joining us this week. On this podcast, we select one talk a week to help each one of us get the Bible in our daily news feed. We post at the start of each week for you to listen with a short intro beforehand to kind of set the stage for the talk you're about to hear. And now let's hear more about this week's talk. This class is the fifth class by Brother Jim Stiles presented at the Busselton Bible School in Western Australia in 2011. I think this is a really great class. It's on James chapter four. And this class left me kind of both challenged and encouraged on how to apply grace in our lives, like how we should be more gracious with our brothers and sisters. I think Jim has, this is him in his classic style, very personable, very Bible-based, but using practical examples in his own family and in his own ecclesia. And I was thankful to listen to this class, and I hope that you enjoy it. I did want to give a special shout out, I guess, commendation to the organizers of the Busselton Bible School. Something I'm sensitive to as being a father of a young child is, you know, if you're too concerned about keeping your children quiet, you may not get an opportunity to listen to the class. And that does not occur here. In the Busselton School, you'll hear some background noises of young children, which brought a smile to me, but may not to others. I just wanted to kind

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   of use that disclaimer before we get into this class. But here it is, Jim Stiles, Be Doers of the Word, which is class five. All right, the game plan for today is hopefully to have a look at finishing up James chapter three and then move into chapter four. Hopefully get far enough along at four that we can finish it off tomorrow morning. But I do know that some of you are heading off to a wedding, so I just want to make sure that we get an opportunity to thank you before you leave.

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   Really appreciate the opportunity of being here at the Busselton Bible School. It also worked out really nice for Sue and I because we got to come over here to Australia and visit Steve and Fliss while we were here. That was really nice of you all. And we really had a great time here. This place has turned out to be really much better, I think, than we had even expected because you really don't know when you're going to another area what you're in for. Jeremy tried to give me some warnings ahead of time about some of the things that alleviate some of my fears that I had that I would have to come in in a suit and tie every day. And he did explain a little bit about it, but until you actually get here, you really don't know. And it's been a lot of fun meeting up with all of you, getting to know you, your families, and little bits of your ecclesial life that's here on this side of Western Australia.

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   So thanks very much for that opportunity. We ended up yesterday having a look at James chapter 3. We got about as far as our tongues. And remember, what James is doing here, he's trying to set out really practical things to help us understand how we're doing, like the mirror test, or like the idea of showing favoritism. And then he went into the issue of, well, how are you doing then at actually showing your faith through your works? When you see needs in your ecclesia, and you see a brother or sister or their family come along, they move into your area, and they're in a lower class, and they don't really have a lot, and they come to you and they need something, is your faith so powerful that it will now compel you to help them out? Or do we have a faith that's just a bunch of doctrines that even demoniacs could have? And yet it doesn't translate into any kind of works of faith. And he gave the examples of David and Abraham and Rahab yesterday of looking at people who were compelled by their faith to go outside the box and help other people, even if it was going to cost like Rahab her life, she was still willing to do it. Or in the case of Abraham, that he was willing to kill his own son, fully convinced that God was going to resurrect him from the dead.

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   And then James ended up in chapter 3 with the example of the tongue, because he probably figures that's a great one, because that fits into ecclesial life really well, our family life, because we give ourselves away by what we say. And so don't be deceived, brethren. When we can't control our tongues, that's a warning to us that the implanted word is not yet having the impact that God had intended.

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   There's still some rough edges on those stones that he's trying to shape and fit into his temple, and he's got to do some more work. And that's an area that we then have to work on. So chapter 3, you know, that was pretty practical of looking at that whole concept about the tongue.

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   And we ended up somewhere around, we were probably around verse 11 or 12, somewhere in that area right there. So now James gives us some really practical nature examples. This is the kind of writer that he is. He doesn't just try to give you academics. He refers back out to, well, what about outside there? What do you know? In the natural world, is it possible that you could go out one of those rivers around here in Western Australia, and the river would be pouring down, you know, waters from some of the hills. And does a spring, like a river like this, send forth fresh water and salt water from the same opening? Have you ever seen that? You ever see a river coming down from the mountains, you know, and it's coming out one day, it's coming out fresh water, the next day it's coming out salt water. That doesn't happen. Now it might happen right at the ocean, where you have a mixing of the fresh and the salt water, and you get the brackish area, but you're not going to find that from a spring, or you're not going to find that from a running water. That just doesn't happen. And he's just trying to illustrate the idea that it's either one or it's the other, and the tongue gives it away. Our mouth just, when it runs, it reveals where our heart really is. Or is it possible, when you're in verse 12 right there, that you could have, like in this case, figs, will a fig tree actually yield great, or yield olives? Is that what it will do?

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   When you go to a fig tree, you don't expect olives, you expect figs, because it's got all the control mechanisms inside, it's got all the programming for producing figs, not for producing olives. Or can you go over to a grapevine, and would you expect to get figs? And it's just little simple practical things, because whatever has been in there, whatever is in that plant that's programmed in that plant, that's the fruit that you expect to get. So you know the plant based upon its fruit. And in the same way you know a plant based on its fruit, you can tell somebody's heart based upon what they say.

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   And that's just a warning to all of us, that our mouth plainly gives us away. And so James's point is that just listen to your tongue. Listen to what you're saying. Do the mirror test on yourself. You know, when you go through the end of a day, you get all done at the end of a day, just think about what did I say today? Did I say things that helped other people? Was I critical of other people a lot?

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    Did I lose my temper and yell at somebody? What's actually happening? Because what ends up occurring during the day is that our tongue gives us away as to where our treasure really is, because that's where our heart will be also. So what we want to do is just look at that as a very practical way.

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    It's like a thermometer. You can measure how your spiritual growth is going by how you're doing at controlling your tongue. And that's not the only thing. Let's face it. Some of us are better than others at controlling our tongues just by nature. But everybody has to work on controlling their tongues. It really should have an impact upon our life. So then in verse 13 he goes on, and he looked at that section yesterday when he talks about, well, who's wise in understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom.

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    So this is what should be generating these good works from us. It's the idea of like, everything okay? Oh, thank you. You would have got a bang out of there, right?

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    Just doing some maintenance here. Yes, thank you. That's good. See, that's good preventive maintenance because you saw there that if I just went back there and leaned on it, that would have been the end of it. So thanks. That's good. That's the kind of thing that we all have to do in family life and ecclesial life. We need people like watchmen that are like looking around at what could go wrong. And then they try to like stop it before it actually happens rather than deal with the damage control later on. That's good. I'd like you as a member of my ecclesia. That would be good.

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    So in verse 13, though, it's just a very practical thing. It's almost like James had said earlier in chapter 2, when you were back there looking at that section about that someone will say, and he says, well, look at in verse 18, he said, someone will say, you have faith and I have works.

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    Show me your faith by your works and I'll show you my faith by my works. Well, now he's saying the same thing about good conduct. That good conduct is an indication of how our faith is growing. Whether we really have a faith that's active and we're really a doer of the word and let it be done in the meekness of wisdom, because this is going to be a key here. He's going to look at humility and meekness. Now he's leading into a section about the way you control your tongue and the way you control anger, the anger management is by humbling yourselves in the sight of God. This is going to be a strategy. If you ever, you know, you start wondering, well, how do I do it? How do I control my tongue? How do I stop from being so angry? Well, James's suggestion, as we move on, moving to chapter four is going to be, the first thing you do is look in the mirror and realize, I've got the problem. I see myself up there too far and I've got to lower myself. I've got to humble myself in the eyes of God. I've got to be more like Moses and be a meek person in ecclesial life and family life instead of coming in with all this boldness and pride. Because he says in verse 14 there that if you have this bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom is, doesn't come from above, but it's earthly and sensual and demonic and where evil and, or envy and self-seeking exists, confusion and envy and every evil thing will be there.

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    But the wisdom that's from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisy. And that's, that's the way James ends chapter three right here, that the fruit of righteousness then is sown in peace by those who make peace. So his concept is that then if our mouth is giving us away that this is the kind of person we are, that we're full of pride and we see ourselves as better than other people and we're constantly like putting other people down, then we're full of this envy and self-seeking and we boast and we lie against the truth. This is all derived from the flesh. This is sensual, it's earthly and it's demonic.

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    But on the other hand, we can have the wisdom that's from above. And the wisdom that's from above is first pure, then it's peaceable, it's gentle. I always found this was interesting that you look at the wisdom from above, the wisdom from above doesn't come in and dominate other people. It doesn't come in with a position of power and authority and try to dominate and intimidate other brethren and sisters or our children. Or children, we don't do that with our parents. But instead it comes in pure, it's peaceable, it's gentle, willing to yield. I mean that's very interesting that we can be willing to yield because we're using the wisdom that's full above, full of mercy and good fruits. Single-minded people, this is what they do. They let the wisdom of God influence their life. They treat other people like this and they trust God to keep the ecclesia pure. It's not up to me to go through there and hammer everybody into a certain peg and make sure they fit into these openings. God is going to bring these people into the ecclesia. All my job is and my responsibility is just to learn to reflect the character of God and treat people the way God would treat me, the way I hope God would treat me.

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    And that's through peaceable and gentle and willing to yield and full of mercy. And those kind of people will bear all those good fruits. And so that's really what we want to do is practice the speaking the fruit of the Spirit and actually doing the fruits of the Spirit. But you can actually see that when people look at James and Paul and they wonder if they're going at conflicting things and one of them is against the other one. When you start to see where they end up, they end up in the same place.

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    Whether you're looking in Galatians or where you're looking here in James's letter, they both end up with the fruit of the Spirit and we have to practice those fruits of the Spirit of love and joy and peace. Now, chapter 4 was one that was always interesting to me because now he moves on into an area where he's going to direct, he's going to come right after the things that were happening in this ecclesia where people were misbehaving. And you'll see that as you go along that there were wars and fighting amongst them. Their conduct, because of their tongues, I think he's really leading logically into a position here where he starts out with the partiality problem, then leads into the fact, well, because this is what you really think, now your tongue gives you away and you start saying these things that we really shouldn't say. And then in chapter 4, he starts leading into the fact, well, what this does then in family life and ecclesial life, when your tongue starts rolling like this, you stir things up and then you cause wars and fighting. This is what happens in ecclesial life. The second class this morning is all about problem solving in ecclesial life.

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    You know, just Bible examples of how do we solve ecclesial life problems or family life problems. And you can see James is really attacking that exact issue. He's trying to go after this progression of what occurs in our lives where we end up having trouble in the ecclesia. And so he comes at it from the perspective of we've got to become friends of God. We've got to have a relationship with God that puts us in a position where a friend of God and not a friend of the world. And that's where he's headed at right now in chapter 4. So where do these wars and fights come from among you?

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    They come from your desires for pleasure that war on your members. That's where they're coming from. You lust and you don't have. You murder and you covet and you cannot obtain. And you fight and you war. And you don't have because you don't ask. And then when you ask, you don't receive because you ask amiss that you will spend it on your own pleasures. You've got all the wrong attitudes here, all the wrong motives involved. You're not really doing it for the good of the ecclesia.

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    You're doing it for the good of yourself. So that's where he comes after. That's where he's heading right now. You can see it's a follow-up on the idea of if you're motivated by the wisdom from above, that single-mindedness of trusting God, then you'll be exhibiting the fruit of righteousness. You'll be showing love and joy and peace and kindness and patience. And you'll have that spirit that is willing to yield and mercy and those kind of things instead of all these negative things that happen in life. So what occurs in ecclesial life or in families, you can see this. It's not just the ecclesias. It sometimes happens within families that mom and dad end up in this predicament of who's in charge. And a little war goes on at home and the kids have to watch the bickering that goes on between a mom and a dad. And I hope that doesn't happen in your family. I grew up with a mom and a dad that I'd never seen have an argument in my life. I just assumed as a child, I thought, well, isn't that what everybody has? And then I found out by going to other people's homes that it wasn't always like that. And especially when I went over to the friends that were in the neighborhood, they just, they had different parents than I was used to. It was a really surprise to me as a young child.

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    I just assumed every mom and dad just got along as two people that just worked together. And that's the kind of spirit that we want to have in our families and in our ecclesias. And James's point is that what gets in the way of this is our pride and our desire. We have pride because we want to prove who's right. And this can happen between a mom and a dad. It can happen between brethren and ecclesial life that because of our pride where, you know, I said this verse means this thing and you think it means that thing. We end up having wars over that or over ecclesial positions on things that really shouldn't have become so important. We end up having mistakes and wars get in the way and we end up having ecclesial debates and arguments. And I've seen brethren get so upset at arranging board meetings where they'll throw a Bible on the table and walk out of the ecclesia and they've let pride and anger get the most of them. It should not be so, as James would say. This isn't the way it's supposed to work. The actual words that are used there in the Greek when James uses about the wars and the fighting among you, it actually, it could be verbal wars, but they're the same words that are used of actual physical fights. That it could have gotten to the point where brethren in the first century ecclesia actually busted out. You know, Jews are sometimes, they're really demonstrative people. They get real excitable and I used to see that in my school district where I had a lot of Arabs where I was

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    teaching and the Muslim people are very much like the Jewish people. When I look at them, I can hardly tell them apart. And they would get really excitable too and something would happen and another boy would get all excited and their natural reaction was like, you know, they want to get up and have a little wrestling match and they want to have a bit of a fight in order to solve the problem. But that's not what we want to do, brothers and sisters. That's not what we want. That's not the strategy that we want to use. So James says that, look, you lust because you don't have, you murder and you covet.

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    See those words that he uses? You murder and you covet. I mean, that's basically what he had just looked at back in chapter three that caused all those problems about, you know, in the law that, you know, if you're a murderer, you've broken the law. If you commit adultery because you covet somebody else's spouse, he goes back to these same issues and says, basically, you might think you're doing okay because you don't physically commit adultery. You don't physically murder somebody else.

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    But when you treat each other like this, you're as bad as people that murder and covet. This is the kind of spirit that causes those same problems. So you fight then and you war because you don't have or you didn't ask for the sake of other people and you ask and you don't receive. So what James does then is he calls them, I don't know what version you were using, Jeff. What were you reading out of over there? The SV? So they put in there adulteresses. In the Greek, that's actually what it is. They actually had it right in there. It's only one word. He just calls them a bunch of adulteresses.

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    And a lot of the versions put in adulterers and adulteresses so they realize it's actually referring to both men and women. But what James does is he takes the ecclesia and he looks at the ecclesia like you're all the bride of Christ. And what he says, when you act like that, you're like a bunch of adulteresses. That you've left your husband and you've gone out and taken on characteristics and made a partnership with another man. That's really what you're doing. You're as bad as somebody that's committed adultery. That's how he sees them. Because you're behaving like people of the world and you've committed spiritual adultery with your husband, with the Lord Jesus Christ.

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    So that's why he uses that phrase. And then he throws in there that don't you get it, that friendship with the world is enmity with God. And that was the passage I threw in as one of the bloopers as a possibility. Because as a younger person, I used to go to a lot of CYC classes and we'd have people talk to us and they'd tell us that you can't have friends of the world, you can't have any friends in the world. Because if you have friends of the world, friendship with the world is enmity with God. And they used to think the passage all applied to like young people having friends in the world. Not that we want to, we don't want to have all of our friends in the world, that's true. But there are some people around us, the way we help preach and the way we let people know is by having some friendships with people so that they can see what kind of person we are.

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    We don't just have to seclude ourselves into isolation. But what it took me years to figure out is that the passage isn't about young people. The passage is about adults. It's about adults and family life and ecclesial life who act like the world. And James's point is, he already dealt with Abraham as being a friend of God back in chapter 2. And now he says, if you're not like Abraham, you're not single-minded and you don't trust God, then what you're going to do is get off on your own lusts, your own desires, and you're going to get into situations where your tongue will just roll, you'll get into wars with other people, and you'll end up having verbal or physical fights with people.

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    And when you have these arguments, when you're going at each other, you're behaving like the world. It's about behavior. It's not about who our friends are. And when you behave like the world, you've committed spiritual adultery and you're no longer a friend of God. Now you become a friend of the world. That's pretty serious there about our behavior. This is why when you read James, you can't go away from any kind of classes on James without realizing how much it applies in our own lives. So this is an area we all have to work on. We've got to be careful that we don't behave like the people of the world that just do their behaviors just based upon their own lusts and their own desires. But instead, we want to be a friend of God. We want to have an awareness of God in our life.

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    So when a conflict develops within a family or within ecclesia, we don't respond as a result of pride and about anger and all of that. We start thinking about the fact, well, what can we do to help resolve this in a peaceful and a nice way so that God is glorified in all of this? Not so that I'm proven right, but so that God will be the one who's glorified and that the group will then come together in unity and find a solution then where we can all work together and move together.

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    So that's a choice we have to make. You're either a friend of the world or you're a friend of God. You really can't be friends of both. And our behavior is what gives us away or our tongue gives us away. When we talk like the people of the world and we respond in anger like the people of the world and we verbally lash out at one another, we are acting as friends of the world and we are at enmity with God. But on the other hand, when we trust God and what he says, we obey his commandments and we do what he says, believing that his way is right and he will take care of the situation, single-minded people can become friends of God. And that's really where we want to end up. And you know, brothers and sisters, I've seen so much in ecclesial life myself of people having discussions.

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    And it's not about who uses the Bible and who doesn't. Let's face it. When you have ecclesial differences and disagreements or even within families sometimes, everybody gets out of Bible. Let's face it, as Christadelphians, that's what we do. We all pick up our Bibles and then we try to defend our position from our Bible. So it's not like one group is biblical and the other group isn't.

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    We're all using Bibles. And so that doesn't necessarily solve the problem. We claim to use Bibles all the time and everybody thinks that God is on their side. So that doesn't do any good either when you come into an argument like that or you come into a disagreement to use those kind of things.

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    The difference is that some people feel compelled to force everybody else to their viewpoint. And on some of these things that may not be necessary. When James talked about being willing to yield and extending mercy, there may be some cases where we can have a position on something and we can really hold it strongly, but we don't necessarily have to force that on everybody else in the ecclesia.

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    That's part of how you get a spirit of Christ that operates in your group or how a mom and a dad can work in a family. Because anytime you have a marriage, like when Sue and I got married, we had different backgrounds. Our parents brought us up differently. We had the Bible in common, but we have different cultural backgrounds. And so you can come together in a family and you're raising your children and you have to have a lot of discussions about, well, do you want to do it like mom did, like your mom and dad did, or like my mom and dad did, or maybe both of them weren't right. Maybe we should be looking at what's the biblical way of doing this thing. And you have a lot of discussions like that.

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    And in the end, what we have to all do is humble ourselves to realize I may not have the right answer here. You may have the right answer, or somebody else in the ecclesia may have the right answer. And if we all admit that from the beginning, that I'm not really sure whether I've got it right or not, let's lay it all on the table and look at the issue, then everybody has a chance to grow.

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    I've seen a lot of times in ecclesial discussions that we've had back home with CYC kids or with our own ecclesias, that when you have discussions with a bunch of adults, we come into a discussion having a certain position. And then after everybody's had their say, I usually go away with my view a little bit modified, because I've learned things from other people. And that's good. I like those kind of sessions, those good old brainstorming sessions where you get together a bunch of people that are trying to solve an issue. And in the end, my way doesn't have to prevail, or her way doesn't have to prevail. But we all come together, we talk it out, and we look for a solution that's best for our kids, or it's best for our ecclesia. And many times it isn't about me. And it just seems like what James is hitting at right here is that what causes a lot of the wars and the fighting is when we get on our soapbox, and we come in with pride, and we think that we have to convince everybody else that I'm right, and we got to win them all over to my side. In fact, when Paul wrote to the Galatians, he actually covered that exact issue. And he says, don't you realize that those people that are on those soapboxes, those Judaizers, they don't really care about you. All they care about is that you join their side, so they look better. And that's in Galatians 6, when he gets to the end of the letter. And he said to those Galatians, look at those people don't really care about you. All they care about is

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    whether they can win you over to their side, so they look better. And we don't want to be those kind of people in a collegial life. And that's just a warning. You can see James and Paul were both having the same problem of folks getting up on the soapbox, trying to win people over to their side, not because it was God's side. Everybody says it's God's side, but it was really because they wanted more people on their side, so they felt better, and their pride was being fed in this case.

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    So he warns us that when you're going through this, one of the things is that you don't ask. The other problem is that you ask and don't receive, because either it's because of your pride, because of your ecclesial status, or you're trying to put other people down, or within marriages. It could be for marital status, that, you know, mom wants to show dad that I know more about the Bible than you do, or dad wants to show mom that I'm a higher position than you. And this kind of thing can happen in marriages. It doesn't bring unity in the family, though. It doesn't help. So James just throws all this out on the table and says, look, this is the wrong spirit to have. You don't want to be like that Pharisee that sat there and said, you know, I'm so glad I'm not like those other guys that are extortioners and unjust and adulterers. You know, this tax collector over there, you know, look at all the things I do for you. And we don't want to have that kind of spirit. And James is, he's got the simplest solution to all this trouble. I guess the solution is just so simple, we tend to not believe that it would really work, but it does. So what we want to do then, when these kind of problems develop in our families and ecclesias, is we want to pray for God's help and his wisdom. This is one of those areas where we would ask for wisdom to understand. So we go back to Bible stories like this. We look at people like James, who were covering issues of trouble in ecclesial life and family life, and you

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    try to look at, well, what is the solution? What does the Bible tell us and guide us as to help those things out? We want to have a few people, like when you start looking at solving this in ecclesial situations. I've really discovered, at least for myself, I've watched this happen. It's a lot better to just have a few people in ecclesia quietly meet together and try to work this thing out and come up with a solution that we can then present to the group and say, oh, here's something we think will actually work, rather than trying to have everybody out there all trying to solve it at one time.

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    Sometimes big groups are difficult to move in a direction, and you just end up with more people that are really not following James's rules here, or James's guidance. And we leave out the people that are just too emotionally involved to work together for a peaceful resolution, because let's face it, sometimes some of us get so emotionally charged in an issue, we really aren't effective at solving the problem. Honestly, we just got to admit it. We can get into it too much. It's too much.

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    What's happened is it's become too much me. That's what we've done. We put me into it too much, and this now has become my issue, and I want to make sure it gets resolved the way I think is the right way. And instead, it would be better then, at that point, to step out of it and let some other folks handle it who aren't quite as emotionally involved. Now, there's an interesting passage right here that James throws in, and it'd be interesting to find out what you all think about this, but look at verse 5.

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    Now, after talking about being a friend of the world, making themselves an enemy with God, or do you think the scripture says in vain, the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously, or whatever you've got. That's the New King James right there. The NASB says, or do you think the scripture speaks to no purpose? He jealously desires the spirit which he has made to dwell in us.

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    Now, where would that be coming from in James's letter? So that's back in chapter 1, when he talked about receiving with meekness the implanted word, which I really think he's building on right here in this case. If you go back and search your Bible, though, all the way, you know, many people have done this and use computer programs, they've even searched the Septuagint, nobody can find where this phrase is actually coming from. It doesn't seem to be a direct quote. It's not like James is quoting a specific passage. Instead, what he seems to be doing, when he says that the scripture speaks to no purpose, it's like, didn't you get it? Like, all the way through the Bible, the scripture's been saying something about God. It's not a specific passage, but it's more like a big overriding concept that when God puts his spirit in us, and he gives us an opportunity to be one of his children, when he does that, and he lets you understand, and he puts his spirit in you through an understanding of his word and his purpose in his family, then what happens is God becomes very jealous about you. He wants you as one of his children, and this is the spirit of our God, and you see this running all the way through the Old Testament. You see this with Israel and the kings. You see it in the judges. You see God constantly going after his bride. He doesn't want to write them off. He wants to bring them back. That's his spirit. He's constantly jealous over Israel, and you could go back in the Old Testament, you could find a

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    bunch of places where it talks about God being zealous or jealous for his community. This was the general overriding principle of how he felt about his bride. He was jealous for his bride and wanted to be able to unite them to him and bring us into his family forever. So that's the suggestion, at least, as to what most people have come to. It's not really a direct quote. Now, when you look at the jealously, he desires the spirit which he has made to dwell in us, I would have linked that back with James chapter 1, and also in verse 18 right there, that he's brought us forth by the word of truth, that we could be a kind of first fruits of his creature, and also the idea of the implanted word which is able to save your souls. I really think that's what he's building on when he talks about this spirit which he has made to dwell in us, and by doing that, he's now given us a seed in our brain that can now work against the mind of the flesh. And Paul would call this in Romans 8, this is the mind of the spirit versus the mind of the flesh. In fact, Paul actually says in Romans 8 that those people who live by the mind of the spirit and follow the mind of the spirit, those are the sons of God, and that's really what God is after. And he does that through the implanted word and all the different ways that the Bible gets into us. Now, it's just possible that what James is doing here when he brings up

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    this issue about God jealously wanting you, that he's actually in these Jewish people's minds, he's taking them back to the law of jealousy. Now, remember how that worked, the law of jealousy? If a situation arose where I decided that I'm not really sure that Sue has been faithful to me, then what you could do under the law is I could bring her up before the community, and I could publicly put her out there in front of everybody and say that I think maybe she's been unfaithful.

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    And they'd go through this whole process where they'd unravel the hair and let it hang down, they'd make you drink this water that they had mixed with the earth, and you'd have to drink this stuff down, and then if you're fine for the next few days, then we'd know I was wrong. And if all of a sudden this thing grew up in her and it became something like an infection in the abdominal area, it could actually kill her at that point, and then we'd know that she was wrong, that she really had committed some kind of an adultery. So this is, it's possible that this is where James is going.

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    What happened under the law, though, is that me, Jella's husband, what I should do, really, I should do, is I should talk to Sue, we should really try to work it out, and hopefully you'd never get to a point where you bring your spouse up in front of the whole ecclesia and you make them go through this whole process. But God put this in there because he's wanting us to realize in the law that really we are the bride of Christ, and really this is a process he could put us through.

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    It really is an interesting concept about the law. When God gave the law, and you read through the things that are in the law, all of those things that are there about, well, if you do this, this is what you should get. If you do that, this is what you should deserve. Those things were all put in there so that we would know what I deserve for having made mistakes before God. But then when it came time to implement the law, when it came time to implement the law, now suppose Sue got caught in adultery, and there were three witnesses, three witnesses, and they all saw her in adultery. What could happen at that point is that the law made it very clear, you're guilty of death, and we could bring her up in front of the community, and we could all stone her to death. But what would you do as a husband if your spouse came to you and said, look it, I blew it, I made a mistake, I'm sorry, that really, it was a mistake, I just goofed, and before God, I admit it, and you know, they appealed to you for mercy.

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    Would you as a husband then go and say, well, law says, got three witnesses, we have to stone you. Is that what we do to somebody that we love? Would you do that to your children who had committed mistakes under the law? And see, what happened with the law is that God gave them all these rules and said, if you mistake these rules and you sin in these rules, here is what you deserve. But then when it came time to implement the law, I'll bet that a lot of times what ended up happening is that mercy triumphed over judgment to the people who appealed to mercy. And why wouldn't it? Because what do we all expect when we make a mistake before God? What do we do when we come before God and we've blown it this week? And we go before God again and we sit there and we take the bread and the wine on Sunday morning and we look back over a week and we realize, I goofed here, I messed up here, I messed up there. What we all do is we appeal for mercy. And we're all learning through this process that if we don't get mercy, we're dead. And then when it came time to implement the law, that's what we should have done. Mercy should have triumphed over judgment, which David learned. I mean, Bible characters finally figured this out when they were going through the process and realized there was no sacrifice you could offer. All you could do is throw yourself on the mercy of God. I think you can see that also in the woman in John 8 that got caught in adultery and they came to Jesus who followed the

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    law perfectly, had witnesses galore, knew the woman was guilty of adultery. And he looked at her and he said, go your way and sin no more. Hey, he didn't throw a stone at her. No way. Because you'd only do that to people who were totally blaspheming God, had no interest in the truth, and that's how God cleaned out the community at that point of people that were totally rebellious. But for the folks who were following along, who cared, who were serious, and who had made honest mistakes, this is what they would do. So I really think that may be happening here is that he's referring back to the law of jealousy and saying, look it, this is what people did who didn't follow mercy. You take your spouse, you bring them up and for the group, and if they've made a mistake, that would be it. You could kill the spouse in this case and you could have the end of it. But look at verse 6. Look at what God does. See, this is the spirit of man. The spirit of man gets very jealous like that, and right away when somebody's made a mistake, we want them punished.

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    You know, we might be going home today and we're going over the speed limit. On the way back home, what is it up there? Is it 80k? I don't know what the road was going up to Perth. Was it about 80k? Was it 100? 110. Okay, so we're doing 110, right? We're doing fine. Somebody whips by us though, and they're doing 130. And a lot of us, the natural tendency is, well, I sure hope a cop down the way gets him. Hope that speed camera gets him, you know, and then all of a sudden we realize we're late getting home. We're supposed to be there to pick somebody up, or we've got some responsibility, and we're not going to make it. And we're so, we're so, a little faster, a little faster. We do our 120, 125, and we're all hoping that, hope he does me. I mean, isn't that amazing? And we laugh at that, and it is funny a bit, but do you realize how serious that is about each other? This is how we treat each other.

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    Somebody else makes a mistake. We want God's judgment on them. But when we make the mistake, oh wow, I sure hope he's got a lot of mercy and plenty left over for me. So he comes in here at verse 6 now with, but this isn't how God reacts. This isn't how God treats his children. Even though we go at it with the spirit of jealousy, and we want somebody brought up, we want somebody who's judged for the mistakes that they've made. Look at what God does to his children. He gives more grace.

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    Now, this isn't talking about people who are just rebellious, and they're running away from the truth, and they don't like, they don't, they're not trying to follow God at all. This is talking about people who are living in his family who make mistakes, and they admit it. They've made a mistake. And what God does is he just rains down more grace. More grace. It's not a case of, shall we sin that grace may abound? It's the fact that we make mistakes. He resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble, and he quotes Proverbs 3. So here's the solution then to solving these conflicts in ecclesial life. When we have pride, and we have all this stuff that comes into play, and we end up having these family and ecclesial wars, the solution is we all need the grace of God.

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    Not just that other guy out there. I need it too. And what we do is we lower ourselves down to the fact that we all commit a lot of sins. We all make many mistakes. That's what Paul had said at the beginning, or James had said at the beginning of chapter 3. You know, don't let many of you become teachers because we all make many mistakes. Let's face it, the teachers are going to make mistakes too.

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    You know, just because we teach a class that we can expound on the word doesn't mean all of a sudden that we're somehow, it's easier for us to live the truth. We all make many mistakes, myself included. That's life. But once we realize that about ourselves, that we all make many mistakes, and we're all down there together in this together, then we humble ourselves before God.

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    And when we make mistakes, God doesn't look at us and say, oh, I want to get them. They messed up on that. And oh, you did that. I can't wait to punish you for that one. And that isn't the spirit God has. Instead, what he does is just pours out more grace. Because you're one of his children, he loves you, and he wants to give you an opportunity to grow. And if that's the way God is, if that's the way God is, and we're single-minded and we really believe that, why can't we treat other people the same way? It's such a simple solution in life. We cut other people a lot of slack, the same kind of slack we want cut for ourselves. We give them some space. We give them some tolerance of the fact that, yeah, let's go home and realize everybody in your ecclesia is going to make mistakes next week.

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    So what? We're all in this together, and we're trying to get to the kingdom. We're trying to learn about the character of God, and the ecclesia is where we can practice doing that. And hopefully we can practice it in families and ecclesias, where people realize we make mistakes, and they're there to help us through our mistakes, not to just condemn us and to shoot us down and destroy us. So let's be a little bit more like God. He gives grace to the humble. He pours out more grace. And that really is the solution, brethren and sisters. It's not my solution. It's James' solution. The solution to this problem is humility. If we all really saw ourselves in the single-minded way of what we really are, and how much we all individually need the grace of God, we wouldn't be condemning the other person.

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    We wouldn't be putting ourself up on a soapbox all the time and wanting my way to prevail. Instead, we would accept God's will and his decisions in our life, and we wouldn't fight it like that. And we would, as James says, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. So our aim would be to be single-minded and believe that God is really in this. So he goes on and he says, look at in verse 8, cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. There's a change that has to take place, a change in attitude about how we treat each other. We cleanse our hands so we don't get involved in evil pursuits. We don't go after people and try to, like, wring their necks with our hands. Instead, what we do is let God take care of it, and we help folks. We provide an ecclesial framework where we can help people to grow. I know when we moved to C.D. Valley, we looked at all the different ecclesias in California, and people thought, you know, why would we ever join the ecclesia that we did? But what we were really impressed at is that there were a number of members in the ecclesia who saw themselves, when you ask them, oh, what do you think your ecclesia is doing for the community? They said, well, we're like a hospital. We take care of sick people. It was an interesting spirit. As opposed to thinking of themselves as like a fortress where we're holding out all the evil, they saw themselves as a hospital that was there to help the sick. And they were all sick. We all need

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    help. We all need the mercy of God. And it was a really good spirit those people had. And they do, they keep the truth alive. It's not like they just somehow like subvert the truth, and we just like pretend that we don't have our doctrinal beliefs, or that we somehow don't present God the right way.

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    It's simply a case that we realize that, well, everybody's going to make mistakes. And so when they do, instead of trying to shoot them and step on them and wish they were out of the ecclesia, if they have a spirit of humility, and they come to us, and they say they're sorry, or whatever it is, if that's the attitude of the people, then we provide a framework for them to like try to get better.

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    We'll do what we can to help you heal. And it's a really good spirit to have about folks in ecclesial life. So what James wants them to do is to clean their hearts of the evil intentions that they had had right there about each other. If you can knock that stuff out and get rid of your feelings of wanting to take vengeance, wanting to judge other people for their mistakes, then we can be in a situation where we can help out, and God is more willing to help us out as well. So the solution then is to humble yourself before God. He says, lament, mourn, weep now, so that God can turn it into joy.

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    And if you humble yourself before God and you show kindness to other people, those are the folks that God will extend mercy to. Because he said that earlier in chapter 2, how are you going to get any mercy from God if you haven't learned to show mercy to others? So God will grant us grace in verse 6, and God will lift us up when we go through our problems. Because eventually, brothers and sisters, even though right now the other people in the family or the ecclesia may be going through problems, eventually it will happen to us. And at that point in time, we're going to be glad that we belong to an ecclesia that views us as a hospital that's there to help, and not an ecclesia that just has walls up that wants to boot everybody out because you've made some mistakes. So James' solution then is to draw near to God. This is where it starts. We talk to God in prayer, we come to him, we explain the situation, we take the problems to God, and we ask for God's wisdom to understand how can we deal with this? How can we find an effective way to uphold the righteousness of God, and yet at the same time deal with the fact that we're all sinners that make many mistakes? And so that's what arranging boards do.

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    This is what moms and dads do with kids that have mistakes and have made errors. They get together and they talk and they pray to God and try to figure out how can we make it very clear to people the right standard, the righteousness of God, but at the same time help folks that have failed to attain to God's standard.

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    And we try to do that in a very kind and a gentle and a peaceful way so that those folks can heal. That's what we're really after. Now, James gives us then two ways. Here's how practical, James is. He's going to give us two ways, because some of us will be sitting here thinking right now, I've been talking about humility for 15 minutes, and some of you are sitting there thinking, well, I've got a lot of humility. I'm doing really well on humility. What's the problem? I do really good at this. And so James is so practical, the next thing he goes into, he's a bit like Paul, the way he logically puts this together. He says, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking you're really humble, and yeah, you've got it all worked out, and you're good. So I'll give you two ways to find out whether or not you really are humble. Do you really have humility, the kind of humility that James is talking about right here, after he talked about humbling yourselves in the sight of God, and he will lift you up. So what he does then, in verses 11 and 12 then, he goes on and he says, do not speak evil of one another, brethren. Well, that's interesting. This is going to be a technique to find out, are you really humble? If you're humble, the kind of humility James is talking about, you won't look around in the ecclesia and talk evil about the other people. You won't do that, because you'll realize we're all down here together. This is what real biblical humility is about.

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    Because he who speaks evil of a brother judges his brother and speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you're not a doer of the law, but a judge. There's only one lawgiver who's able to save and to destroy, and who are you to judge one another? That isn't our job, to go around and judge people in their lives. Look at all the specifics that they're doing.

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    You know, what kind of car that they drive, what kind of clothes that they wear, what they do in their spare time. We're not going to go around and judge all those people. That isn't really what our responsibility is. God and the angels will take care of that. We provide a hospital, a framework to help people that are healing. So you might think you have humility, but if the mind that you have when you walk into the ecclesia is such, you look around, and you're looking at like thinking about what everybody else did during the week, instead of how far I failed during the week, then we really haven't got the kind of humility that James is talking about. We don't want to be like that.

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    And then he goes on about in verses 13 to 17, he talks about boasting in your economic situation. So that's where he goes. So first of all, he deals with the idea of speaking evil of one another and judging one another. And you can see that this is not something that's foreign from the Old Testament.

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    It was right there in Leviticus 19. In fact, that whole section in Leviticus 19 has a whole bunch of things in there that are related to the idea of taking care of other people, service in a collegial life, and not letting us get to the point where we're so proud that we think of ourselves as better than others. But you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And Christ picked that up and said, you know, upon that and loving God, those were like the two things that the whole law depended on.

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    It all hung on those two things. So we want to watch this week. What do we do when we talk about the ecclesia? Are we saying positive things? Are we saying things that help each other? Or are we looking at other people and judging them and speaking evil of one another? If we're doing this, then that shows us we don't have the humility James is talking about. We're not the kind of person that God will then look at and be willing to extend more grace. And we don't want to put ourselves in that position. And the trick to understanding this, brethren and sisters, is that you have that single-mindedness that he talked about in chapter one. I'm not the judge.

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    God is. Christ is the judge. They will make the decision at the judgment seat. And right now, what we do is provide an opportunity for people to grow and to work together and to hopefully learn more about the character of God. And when we make mistakes, we're like the dad who welcomed back the prodigal son. We welcome people back into the fold and we're so glad because there's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 who need no repentance. And you can see Paul dealt with the same thing in Romans 14 if you ever go back and look at that. And as James says that really all this boasting stuff that we do, that's arrogant before God. So here's the other way you find out if you have humility. When you make your plans, you're sitting here thinking about what you're going to do over the next few weeks. I'm going to go here. I'm going to go there. I'm going to go there. In your mind, is it just about I'm making these plans? Or in your mind, are you really thinking, well, you know, if God is willing and lets me do this, this is what I'll do. It's a very practical kind of thing. This is how James is. He says, if we're the kind of person that just thinks we've got all this, we've got money now that we've made, I have all my stuff and in my health, and I'm making all these plans about what I'm going to do. And we go and we tell everybody, oh, I'm going here. I'm going on a cruise over there. I'm going to go over here and I'm going

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    to do this. And we talk about our life that way. Then we don't have the kind of humility James is talking about, about humbling ourselves before the mighty hand of God. It's based on this idea that he had hit back in chapter one, that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.

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    We have to remember that. Single-minded people acknowledge that. We don't make plans and say, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I made all this money and now I'm going to go do these things. We're aware of the fact that God let me do this. God blessed me with this job.

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    God's given me the health. He's given me the wisdom to do this job. He's provided me with all of this. And now we look at it and say, well, how can we help others? What can we do to help out in the ecclesia? And we don't just look at our lives as what I'm going to do next. So there are two really practical things about how do we spend our time and our money? What's our attitude about that?

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    And how do we look at each other in terms of judging? There are two really practical ways of trying to illustrate the idea that we don't want to be full of pride. This is what pride leads to. We want to humble ourselves before God, lower ourselves before him and our brothers and sisters, realize we're all on the same playing field, and look at what we can do to help out in ecclesial life.

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    And that's what we'll bring about peace and unity and joy and happiness in the ecclesia, and get rid of these wars and fightings that you have among you in James chapter 4. Because honestly, single-minded people realize very clearly that God's given me the money, God's given me the health. If I have a family relationship where Sue and I get along and we don't have problems, we don't have situations where we're having conflict that would lead to divorce or whatever, I look at that. It's not because of me. It's because God has provided that framework. Or it's the influence of the implanted word. It's all coming from him.

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    And it's not because I did it. If my children come into the truth and they're baptized, and God willing, we hope that is the case. It's not because of me. It's because God was merciful and gracious. We're down here, and it's all about him and what he's done and blessing us because he loves us. And if you had that kind of spirit, then you'll realize that your life really is just a vapor. And it appears for a little while, and then it vanishes away. And so humble people, that's what they do. They always say, well, God willing, we're going to do this. And God willing, I will do that. And James is just very practical that way. It's a simple little test, like the mirror test, like the tongue test. Is your spirit such that you always, in your brain, you're always thinking, God willing, I'm going to do this. God willing, I'm going to do that. Or are we the kind of person that just figures, I'm self-sufficient. I've got all this stuff, and now I'm going to make my plans. And if we are, then it's a warning that we're up here, and we should be down there. And we need to humble ourselves before the mighty hand of God, and he will exalt us in due time.

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    And once we do that, brethren and sisters, you'll find out that your families and your ecclesias function a lot better together. And it will eliminate those wars and those fightings that are happening sometimes in family and ecclesial life, because everybody's down on the same level, and we're all trying to help each other learn about God and the character of God, and become members of his family forever. So we'll leave it at that. I think we're pretty much caught up. Chapter 5 is for tomorrow. Thanks.

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    Thank you for listening to the Good Christ Adelphine Talks podcast. Please subscribe for new episodes and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or whichever service you are listening from to help people find the show when they search for it. If you enjoyed this talk, share it on social media so other people can find it too. For show notes and links to the talk that you just listened to, visit our show page at anchor.fm slash gct. We want to encourage everyone to share their thoughts from the talk this week on Facebook or Instagram, where we are at Good Christ Adelphine Talks, or on Twitter, where we are at gct underscore podcast. If you know of a great talk, we want to know about it too. Send a suggestion to goodchristadelphiantalks at gmail.com or message us on any of our social media platforms. Thank you for listening. God bless and talk to you next week.

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    God bless and talk to you next week. God bless and talk to you next week. God bless and talk to you next week.