James: A Primer

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroth, and a couple quick announcements before we get into the topic today.

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I just heard from American Gospel Television that they maybe want to play some of the

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NoCo videos on their station. I think it's because of Mario's production value.

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We'll see how much they will pay me per episode. So that's yet to be determined, but stay tuned for that in all seriousness.

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Secondly, even though this is the promo copy, this is the book King, how the sovereignty of God changes everything.

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And this little banner right here won't be there. It says not for resale, but they are for sale now on Amazon, if you want to pick it up.

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I wanted to try to explain to people that if you get an understanding that God is

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King, it'll help you in lots of different areas. And here's one, do Kings choose? And of course, in the scriptures and in the

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Near East, Kings chose their wives, they chose the right -hand men, they chose everything.

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And so Kings choose. And if you understand that, it helps you a little bit with the difficult doctrine of election, or what we call unconditional election.

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So King is out. If you want to order 10 or more, you can email me, mike at nocompromisedradio .com.

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And we can get you a 40 % discount. So that's 10 or more. If you want to mix and match other books on Amazon, we can do the same thing.

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And also I just was turning around, sitting in my glasses back here, and I found this

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Mario. So we've come a long way. This says, we are family,

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Ephesians 2, Pastor Mike Ebendroth, September 8th, 2002.

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It was probably all law. I was probably scolding people, probably never smiled.

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As John Gerstner said, R .C. Sproul's mentor, there's always room for deprovement. This episode is a jet tour of James.

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Now let's strike that. This is an intro to James. Let's strike that too. How do you read the book of James?

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And so that's the topic today because lots of Christians come to the book of James and they don't really know what to do with it.

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They're not exactly sure how to deal with over 50 imperatives in just about 100 verses.

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If memory serves 52 commands in 104 verses, that's like a command every other verse.

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And so how do we process the book of James? And I think if you watch the show today or listen on podcast vehicles, you'll say, oh, that makes me want to go read

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James. And that also makes me understand James better. One of the things about sermons and Bible instruction and things like that, when

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I'm watching someone or listening to someone and I say to myself, oh, they were walking through that passage,

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Psalm 139. I can't wait to get home to read it myself. I can't wait to get home and later in the evening, open up my

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Bible and see the riches now that I've had someone help me frame it and help me understand it, help me interpret it hermeneutically correct.

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So today, the book of James. I've preached James lots of different times for the first, back to the 2002 deal on VHS.

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Like, oh, I mean, I'm so prideful that I would think to myself when someone at the church would say, oh,

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I'm sorry, pastor. We forgot to hit record during your sermon in 1998.

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And so we can't have it in a cassette form. I think I spent 30 hours working on that message and you couldn't push record.

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And then now I think to myself, praise God that they didn't hit record because it was probably an awful message.

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Now, here's the big thing about James, that if you get this, I think you'll understand it better.

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And I've talked about this on No Compromise Radio before, but we've never done a video on it and I think it's important, so we'll do that now.

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James is written around 44, 45, 46 AD. And you can argue about the exact time, but it's early on when it comes to the

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New Testament canon, to the New Testament writings. If I were to ask you the question, which book in the

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New Testament was written first, not what events occurred first, but which book occurred first, you'd probably say

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Galatians or James. And you would be correct. I think it's

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James. I think James is the first book that's written. So how does that all work?

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Well, let's think through a few things. Roughly, Jesus is born on 0

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AD. I mean, we can argue, is it 3 BC, 4 BC? What's the date and timing? But for sake of argument, zero, right?

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So He's born and He lives, He enters gospel ministry at age 30, and then

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He dies at 33. So whatever the time is, 0, 30, and 33 AD.

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But the point is, even if it was 30 AD when He died or 36 AD when He died, it's a lot earlier than 44

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AD. But when I say a lot, I should probably correct myself. That's only 10 years.

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So 10 years later, 15 years later, right in that area,

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James is written. So when James is written, the life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension of Jesus has already happened.

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This has already occurred. And so the Old Testament, Moses and the prophets pointing to who

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Jesus was, prophecies have been fulfilled, at least with His first coming. More prophecies will be fulfilled with the second coming, but the life of Jesus has happened.

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And now you've got people that are suffering, they're scattered, they're dispersed.

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So how do we live in light of the resurrected Savior? That's it.

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You can just turn off the show for now. Brandon Kimber doesn't need this on American Gospel. Mario can turn off the show.

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If you get how do I live in light of a resurrected Savior, you get it all.

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I mean, sometimes we go to the book of James and we say, well, it's just these random proverbs. And maybe

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Luther didn't like it so much. I'll talk about that in just a moment. And so what do we do?

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It seems like it's just heavy on law. Did you know in the book of James, no death of Jesus, no life of Jesus, no resurrection of Jesus, no gospel of Jesus.

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The only thing I can see in the five chapters of James is chapter two. It does talk about Jesus, the

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Lord of glory. It does talk about Jesus being the glorious one.

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And we shouldn't compare ourselves to others because if you stood in light of the glorious resurrected Savior, you'd say to yourself, who am

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I? I'm not gonna compare myself to someone else who looks differently or has got a different heritage or background or ethnicity or anything else compared to the glory of Jesus.

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So when we look at the book of James, we need to put it in the right timing, in the right sequence, in the right calendar year, if you would.

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So today on No Compromise Radio, trying to help you with the book of James. I could come at it at another angle before I look at the text.

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What does holy living look like for the Christian? Now you might say, what's holy living look like for an

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Old Testament saint? And in many ways, it's the same because we have the immutable

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God, he doesn't change. And we have his law and that doesn't change.

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And if you wanna summarize law, you could say love God, love neighbor. You could say here are the 10 commandments,

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God's law, those words should always go together. Law isn't out there floating around somewhere.

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No, it's connected because the law of God reflects God's nature. And if you look at 1

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Timothy 1 or Romans 7, you realize as God is righteous, his law is righteous.

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As God is holy, his law is holy. As God is unchangeable, his law is unchangeable.

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And so how do Christians live? How do Christians live in light of the resurrected savior?

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How do persecuted Christians live? How do scattered Christians live? That's what the book of James is.

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One last thing to help you as we're moving into the book of James. When you think of God's law, you ought to think about your relationship to the law giver.

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This goes back to law gospel, a primer. This goes back to many shows we've done about gospel and law and how it all works.

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But remember, the law of God, if you're an unbeliever, it condemns you. It's a mirror that shows you your need of a savior.

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You see how you've fallen short. You see your sin. You see your transgressions. You see that it's against a holy

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God. And you should say, if you're an unbeliever in light of God's law, I have no hope on my own.

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I can't save myself. I stand condemned under God's law and there's hell to pay, but I've heard that God is merciful.

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And so I can cry out to God for mercy. That's what the law does for the unbeliever.

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God is a judge and He judges them. But remember, once God saves you by grace and by grace alone through the perfect work of the

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Lord Jesus and His perfect life and His perfect atonement sealed and secured by the resurrection, now your relationship to the law giver is no longer judge.

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So Christians don't have a judge anymore because judgment happened at Calvary. Don't let anybody tell you with this final justification, our future judgment, that there's a judgment for the

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Christian. Judgment happened at Calvary, no judgment at all. You're not going to be judged according to your deeds, dear

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Christian, because Jesus was judged according to your deeds. Your name is in the book of life. And when you look at Revelation, you'll see that very thing.

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So now our relationship to God is son, daughter, adopted, we have

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God as a loving father. Instead of judge, He's a father. And so we call that the third use of the law.

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And that simply means the law, instead of condemning us, first use, the law guides us, it directs us, it tells us how to live.

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We don't do the law as the third use to get salvation, to keep salvation, to remain saved.

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We do it because it honors the father and he is worthy of honor. And we say, oh, how

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I love thy law. And we also do it because we know it's good for other people.

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It's good for us, right? I could say to my son, Luke, or my daughters, Haley, Maddie, and Gracie, here's what

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I want you to do. I'm your father, I've provided for you. I love you, I protect you, I've taken care of you.

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I get you the right doctor's care, the right spiritual care. We have fun, we have vacations. And in light of who

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I am and what I've done for you, I want you to obey me because it will honor me and it's good for you.

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And so we come to the book of James and I want you to think, when was it written? It was written 10 to 15 years after the resurrection of Jesus.

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And number two, what kind of law are all these commands? And it's third use to guide, to direct, to instruct, to help so God might be glorified and that we might have it well with our soul.

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So today on No Compromise Radio, we're asking the question, in light of a resurrected savior, how do we live?

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In light of Jesus, the great promise keeper who died for our sins and paid for all that and for live for us, for our righteousness, how do we live?

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What do we do? And how should we behave?

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What kind of behavior praises the Lord or gives him praise rather?

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James 1 .1, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes in the dispersion.

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Dispersion just means we get from the word to disperse and when there's persecution, you run.

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Persecution, you scatter. I heard one man say, it's like, if you got a bunch of grapes and you just take your hand, your fist and you slam down the grapes and it just squirts out everywhere.

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And that's what happened when the hammer of persecution comes down, the church just scatters and runs.

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Now, sometimes people wanna say with James, you know what? Too many commands, no resurrection.

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Luther called it a strawy epistle and he didn't like it and therefore either

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James is bad or Luther's bad. Listen to this.

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He did talk about it as an epistle of straw but what people don't usually talk about is what he said in the same preface.

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I praise it, James, and hold it a good book because it sets up no doctrine of men and lays great stress upon God's law.

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So I praise it. I wish there would, he didn't say this, but in my mind,

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I think he said, and I wish it had more to do with Jesus but it does give us God's law.

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And the thing about James, when you read it, just to kind of give you an exhortation, when you read it again, it's direct, it's fast paced, it's blunt.

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You know what it is? It's New England style. We don't stab you in the back, we stab you in the front, right in the chest.

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It's direct. I've said many times that my style is fairly blunt and sometimes maybe

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I don't have a filter that I should. I don't know, maybe I'm on some spectrum, who knows?

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But the Lord placed me here in New England for a reason. Mario's laughing because it's a laugh of affirmation.

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And it's, you know, why didn't the Lord put me in the South? I probably would have got kicked out after one year.

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Why didn't the Lord keep me in California? Same thing. But here in New England, you know, Boston, even down into New York and the city, direct, straight on.

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That's the style of James. Just please tell me the truth. I don't need sugarcoating.

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I don't need you to beat around the bush. I don't need you to do all these things. So I say, aha,

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I think he means that. No, right out of the gate, count it all joy. Right out of the gate, be doers of the word.

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Don't be partial. What about the tongue? He is just direct. And so when you read the book of James, you sense and you feel and you understand this is not

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James writing the half brother of Jesus, although it is, this is God talking to me.

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This is God directing me. Son, daughter, this is what's good for you.

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And when it comes to counting it joy or being a doer of God's word or showing partiality, this isn't good for you.

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This isn't good for others. This doesn't honor me. And it's just straight to the point. Don't you like that?

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I hope when you hear preachers, you don't say to yourself, I don't really know what he was talking about today.

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I learned a little bit about the Bible, but I don't really understand. I don't get the clarity. I don't get the oomph and the directness.

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James, completely different. 54 imperatives and 108 verses.

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I misspoke. I thought I said 52 and 104. It's 54 and 108 verses, fast paced, direct.

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I mean, I wonder if you listen to James preach, you'd say, boring. You'd kind of say, well, this is a real snoozer.

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I think if you listen to James, you would be caught up in the fact that this man is a wonderful preacher.

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His background, the gifting of the Holy Spirit, and certainly here, God revealing through James, his word.

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Divine inspiration. We've learned about the timing of James right after the resurrection.

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First book, how do I live? And now I want to add to that. I want to add to that thought as we talk about the book of James on No Compromise Radio.

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In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and of course, you know how I like to talk about them, the gospel of Jesus according to Luke, because sometimes if you say the gospel of Luke, it's like good news according to Luke.

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No, this is the good news, that's what gospel means, of Jesus according to Luke. So we have

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, different perspectives, different camera angles. I have one camera there, one camera there.

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This is different camera angles of the life of Jesus, stressing certain things. Matthew, Jesus is king, among other things.

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Mark, he's a servant. Luke, he's the God -man and he saves Gentiles too.

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There's all kinds of different streams of thought. We ask ourselves the question, in the gospels, is there mostly law or they're mostly gospel?

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Is it mostly telling me what to do? Or is it mostly telling me what Jesus did? Is it mostly telling me commands or mostly telling me about the life of Christ, which we would call the gospel, the gospel of God.

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We see it in the person of Christ. To be certain, there are laws in the gospels, right?

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Gospel can be this genre that explains who Jesus is, of course, and it's kind of like a theological biography.

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There are laws. Can you name me a few laws in the gospels? Of course, Matthew 28, right?

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Go therefore and make disciples. That's a law. If we have categories of law and gospel, that's a law.

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Hey, you men, third use of the law, go evangelize, go make disciples by going, teaching, baptizing.

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What about the Sermon on the Mount? What about when Jesus talks about in Matthew 6, don't be anxious for anything?

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Is that a law? Don't be anxious for anything. Mario, don't be anxious for anything. That's a law. So there are laws in the

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New Testament, of course, but the majority, if we were just gonna count nickels and noses, if we were gonna count verses, it's about who

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Jesus is, right? It's about his virgin birth. It's about Jesus healing lepers, touching lepers, giving the dead son back to his mother.

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It's about Jesus forgiving sins. It's about Jesus demonstrating his lordship over nature, walking on the water, stilling the storms, over the supernatural, casting out demons, over anything and everything,

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Jesus is Lord. He's prophet. He proclaims God's word. That's good news. We know what God thinks.

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He's priest. He intercedes for his people and dies on behalf of his people. That's good news. That's gospel.

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And also he's king. He's Lord of lords and king of kings. He is prophet, priest, and king.

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That's all about him. I mean, we should respond with thankfulness and gratitude and other things, but that's in the category of gospel.

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So let's just say for argument's sake, that if you take Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, add them all together.

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Last time I checked, 89 chapters. And you add the, put those all together.

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Would there be more law in those? Don't be anxious. Go make disciples.

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Or would there be more gospel truth about the person and work of Jesus, the one the father sent?

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And you know the answer. I don't know the percentages, but I'm gonna say 10%, 90%.

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5%, 95%. Something like that with the categories of law and gospel, because the gospels are about Jesus.

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And of course, Jesus, the prophet, tells us certain things to do and not to do. So here's my point.

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For the sake of argument, grant me 90, 95 % of the gospels are about Jesus.

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Not too many laws. The New Testament, first book of the Bible that's written in light of the resurrection should probably be full of all kinds of laws so I know how to live in light of a resurrected savior, that I know how to live as I'm getting scattered and persecuted and dispersed.

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I'd like to live and honor you because you've saved me, Father, and I need direction and guidance, third use.

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So to summarize once again, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the events have occurred, but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John haven't been written yet.

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10 years later, the people know about Jesus. Some of them have probably seen Jesus as an eyewitness with the 500, 1

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Corinthians chapter 15. We know about Jesus. We understand he's a fulfillment of the

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Old Testament. We have the Old Testament. That's all we have. And the first book now that God gives to his church is the book of James.

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I think that's awesome. I think that's wonderful to encourage believers, to put faith into practice, to say, do you know what?

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While I don't have a lot of death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus in James, there's gonna be a lot of death, burial, and resurrection, not just in the

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Old Testament, not just in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but in Romans and Galatians and all these other books.

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So today on No Compromise Radio, I'm trying to wet your proverbial theological whistle.

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By the way, who came up with that, to wet your whistle? I guess to whistle, it has to be wet.

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I just felt myself licking my lips to get that thing going. One might be left with the impression that James is a book of imperatives after seeing a command in virtually one out of every two verses.

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When you first read it, you're like, what's going on? There's a man named

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Walter Marshall, and he wrote probably the most famous book on sanctification. And here's what he says, that you need to live a godly life.

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So how do I live out James? Here's what he said, four qualifications that you receive from God in order to live out a godly life.

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And to obey James, count it all joy, don't blame God when you're tempted, be doers of God's word.

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Number one, your heart has to be freely willing to live a godly life. You want to do that.

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By the way, remember when you were an unbeliever, what you thought about and what you did. Sometimes if I think to myself, am

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I really a Christian? Is this, I have saving faith, all these other things. Is my faith real? I often think,

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Mario, about what my life used to be like. I wish there was a greater change in my behavior, but there is a change.

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I wish that I was more godly than I am, but even that desire is a good thing. And I have a heart that's willing to live for God.

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That's a sign of the spirit's work in us. Number two, you have to be assured that you're forgiven and reconciled to God.

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How can you live a godly life if you're not sure you're reconciled to God? Because if you don't think you're reconciled to God, all your energy and time and thinking is spent, am

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I saved? Am I right with God? Seeking after my assurance, seeking after my salvation.

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Walter Marshall said, number three, I almost said Walter Martin. Walter Martin used to be the

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Bible Answer Man years ago before Hank Hanegraaff. It tells you how old I am. Walter Martin wrote that book,

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Kingdom of the Cults. Is the Bible Answer Man still on? Do we know? I think, well, I think

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Hank Hanegraaff went Greek Orthodox. I'm not sure. When I was in Rome for the conference, there was a lot of Greek Orthodox there.

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And I just showed up the first day. It was like 95 degrees Fahrenheit and I had shorts on and I had a collared shirt on.

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I think maybe I had this collared shirt on. I got this at H &M for 9 .99. How about that?

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Being a good steward. I'm wearing H &M and shorts and they're wearing some kind of,

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I don't know, get up, some kind of black cowls and I didn't know what to expect. They shunned me, by the way.

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Number three, Walter Marshall. How do you live a godly life? You have to be sure of a happy, eternal future with the

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Lord. Oh yeah, Jesus paid for my sins and he earned salvation for me.

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And the glory that's to be revealed at the Lord Jesus when I see him face -to -face and then I get in on that glory as it were.

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Then lastly, number four, you have to have sufficient strength both to will and to do what

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God calls you to do. Ah, we're onto something. Come to the book of James. Like I'm in a trial and I'm grumbling and I'm bitter.

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And here the text says, "'Count it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.'"

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And you're like, how could I ever do that? Well, remember on No Compromise Radio, duplex gratia,

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Christ for pardon, we're justified, sins are forgiven. Our sins imputed to Jesus, his righteousness imputed to us, confirmed by the resurrection.

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And Christ for power, you are given the spirit of God so you can do that. When you come to the book of James, I want you to say to yourself, by the grace of God, by the spirit dwelling in me,

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I can actually obey these. I'm not gonna say these are too far out of reach.

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Count it all joy when I'm in a trial. I mean, okay, you get the cancer diagnosis, you get the information that your mother just died, something's, you know, your child's sick, and you're like, these aren't very joyful things.

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And in and of themselves, they aren't joyful, but you still can count things joyful knowing that God is working and God is sovereign.

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And if I use Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and James, and timing, the events of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have happened,

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Jesus is the resurrected savior. I can trust him. He's gonna resurrect me one day, and he's working all these things together for his glory and for my good.

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I can actually say to myself, you know what? To use the old song, because he lives,

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I can face tomorrow. Because Jesus is alive, I can do this. He is resurrected.

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He kept his promises, and I can count it joy. If Jesus can, for the joy set before him, run that race all the way to Calvary, I can count it joy.

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And so, Lord, help me. I need help to do this. I don't really wanna count it joy, but I know

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I can. And so we are able to obey the New Testament commands. Yes, any law of God that applies to us, because the spirit of God dwells in us.

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So your heart's freely willing to live a godly life, as F. Marshall said, assured that you're forgiven and reconciled to God, sure of a happy, eternal future with the

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Lord, and that you have strength to will and to do what God calls you to do. So the book of James, I want you to read it.

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Not right now, if you're in a car or something like that. Or if you're in a car, click on James the audio and just listen to those 108 verses,

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James 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and say, you know what? Instead of a strawy epistle, instead of an epistle that I don't really like, this is an epistle that God helps me and guides me.

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And it's good for me, it's good for others. And whether it's a chapter four, where, do you know what?

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We ought not to boast about tomorrow, because we don't know what tomorrow brings. Instead, we should say, if God wills, if the

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Lord wills, we'll do this or that, or go here or there. And so I read that and I think, you know, you got your five -year plan, your 10 -year plan, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this with our business and everything else.

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And now we need to say, well, you know what? In light of a resurrected Savior, God knows what's best for me. I think

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I ought to lay everything at the feet of the Lord, saying, I've got my plans, I'm like an ant, and ants do the right thing in terms of planning, but I will lay all the plans at your feet.

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And if you wanna change them, you change them. That's how we come to the book of James. So my name is Mike Abendroth, talking about James today.

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And the whole show is essentially, how can you be helped in reading the book of James? So maybe tomorrow we call it,

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James a Primer. For those of you that don't know English, a primer. How many years did

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I say primer? I don't know. Here's the book, King, How the Sovereignty of God Changes Everything.

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In full disclosure, a lot of this material, I put in a book 15 years ago, 10 years ago, called

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The Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus. It was published by Day One Publishing, and they aren't publishing it anymore.

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So I asked for the rights for it and I took it and I made it a little less

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Lordshipy. I made it a little more grace oriented. I make it a little more law gospel stuff.

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And so condensed it and tuned it up a little bit. And I think it will help you.

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I try to make it small and handy. So you could just buy 10 of these and just hand them out. You could buy a hundred of them.

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Did you know my friend bought 999 copies of Jesus and Cancer, just to hand out.

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Why 999? Because that's as many as Amazon will let you order at a time through their shopping.