SNBS Faith with works part II

Good evening and welcome to Sunday Night Bible Study with Pastor Joe Sias Shipley of Witten Baptist Church. Today we continue our study in the book of James. We are in chapter 2. We left off in verse 19.

Faith That Is Never Left Alone

And I just want to remind you that this is one of those sections where you've got to read it in context. So many people in the past have simply read one portion of this. For example, verse 24. And I've taken that to mean that what James is saying is that we are saved, that salvation happens by our works, not by simply believing.

Well, if you're reading context, no one would ever believe that if you read it from start to finish. What we understand James to be saying is that faith is never left alone. That you're not saved by your works, but your works demonstrate the faith that's true.

So you're saved by them in the sense that they prove your faith was true, not that they were ever the source of that faith. Well, we know that God is the source of that faith. Salvation is by grace. It was by your works and Christ died for nothing.

James taught this, Paul taught this, Ephesians 2, 8 through 10, Jesus taught this, so on and so forth. And we left off in verse 19, which says, You believe that God is one. You do well. A little bit of sarcasm there.

Even the demons believe and they shudder. Believing in God, even the one true God, is not the same as believing God. Believing in God is not the same as believing God. Look at what the scripture quotes in verse 23, when it quotes Genesis 15, 6.

Maybe one of the most important verses in the whole Bible, which says, Abraham believed God and it was credited, accounted, imputed to him as righteousness. You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe, and they fear and tremble.

The demons believe in God, but they don't submit to God. Believing God means you trust what he says and submit to it in faith. We'll get more to that when we get down to verse 23. This is a reference to Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5, which is often called a Shema, which means to hear or to listen.

We know this passage, hear our Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. So James says, you believe God's one? Congratulations! Even the demons believe and they fear and tremble. Guys, remember, Satan believes in the trinity nature of God.

He believes in the deity of Jesus, the virgin birth, that Jesus will be coming back to judge the living and the dead, that he was raised up three days and being crucified on the cross. But he didn't submit to him as God.

Trust him, O Lord, with all your heart, lean not on your understanding, in all your ways, acknowledge him as Lord, and then he will direct your path. So, you know, having a head knowledge of God is not the same thing as honoring or submitting to him as God.

James's point here, again, is saying that you believing in God when your actions show different exposes your fake, dead, non-saving faith. It's not a real faith because a real faith would produce good works.

You can call yourself an orange tree all you want, but if apples are growing on your branches, then you are a liar, or at least deceived. Okay, in verse 21 through 26, and this is why faith, apart from works, is useless.

It's dead. It's not real. 21 through 26, James gives us two Old Testament examples to show people who were saved by faith, and yet their works demonstrated their faith was real. The first example is Abraham.

The second example is Rahab. So this is from Abraham and his original calling. So if you remember back in chapter 12, God said all the nations will be blessed through you. Chapter 15, God makes a covenant with him, and it says Abraham believed God, that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of heaven.

It said Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteous. That's the doctrine of imputation. We spoke of that before. But chapter 15 tells us he believed. Now, we believe that because the Bible is true and accurate, but if the Bible is just a regular book, we would not know that Abraham really believed until chapter 22.

Chapter 22 is the proof, the evidence, the recording of Abraham's belief in chapter 15 being genuine. Because in chapter 22, God tells him to go sacrifice Isaac, the same one to which he said, would produce offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven.

And that through Isaac, his lineage would be traced. Chapter 22 of Genesis is proof that Abraham really did believe in chapter 15, and it's not that he didn't doubt. The Bible teaches us in Hebrews that he did doubt, but he didn't allow his doubt to cause him to forsake what God said.

He rebelled against it in chapter 16 with Ishmael and paid the price for it in chapter 21 of Genesis. But even in moments when we are faithless, God is still faithful, amen? Okay, now, so Abraham there believed God in chapter 15.

It was demonstrated in chapter 22. Our faith will always be tested, but it's the testing of faith that produces endurance and shows that faith was real all along. You see that faith was active, synergistic, active along with his works, and faith was completed, fulfilled by his works.

Doesn't that make sense? Faith was completed, was fulfilled. It was shown to be true by his works. And thus, the scripture was fulfilled. So you see, the scripture was fulfilled right here when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar.

The scripture of him believing God was fulfilled in chapter 22 because we saw evidence of it. And he was called a friend of God. You see, a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And there it is.

If you just read that, you would think that the Bible teaches a works-based salvation. But it doesn't. All that James is saying in this sentence right here, which, remember, these little verses weren't original.

We added those to help find things. It was read in a paragraph. A person is justified by works and not by faith alone, meaning, meaning, not by faith that is left alone, that is just a said faith. Someone says they're Christian, but there's no fruit.

That type of faith is dead, useless, not real. All right, verse 25, now we're talking about Rahab. And Rahab's same way. Was not Rahab justified by works? In other words, her faith was proven by her works when she received the messengers and sent them another way.

For just as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. Now we spent a whole long time, a whole class, I think, talking about is lying always a sin because we have Rahab here.

And the question that I'll pose to you is, all right, we know that Rahab was saved by her faith. Her faith was demonstrating that she believed Yahweh as the real God in Joshua chapter 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

She believed Yahweh was the real God, not the fake gods of the Canaanites, Jericho. When they asked her where the spies were, she lied and said that they had already left when they hadn't. That wasn't true.

The question is, should she have said, No, I'm hiding them, but God is so powerful. He won't, you won't be able to thwart him. Or should she have lied like she did? Is lying always a sin? I won't go over the full study because it was an hour long, we don't have time for that, and that was a good in-person one so we can sharpen back and forth, but the simple answer is this.

Of course it's a sin to lie. Satan's called the father of lies. Ephesians 4, 25 and Colossians 39 seem to indicate we shouldn't lie to one another as we did when we were unbelievers. One of the most honorable characteristics of the 144 ,000 in Revelation 14 is that they don't lie.

In Acts 5, two Christians are killed by God for lying about how much money they gave. In Revelation 21, 8, the liar is one of the groups of people that are sentenced to hell. However, the Bible also commands us to obey the rules and authorities over us, but there is an exception to that rule, which would be if the rulers and governing authorities over us introduce laws that contradict what God has already revealed elsewhere in his book.

In that case, we must obey God rather than man. So, just keep that in the back of your mind. An argument could be laying for lying as well. Lying is a sin, unless God, for example, tells you to protect people in your home, so on and so forth.

An argument could be made there, but we're not going into that today. Remember, the government is supposed to punish evildoers and reward those who do right. Rahab's governing authorities, the king, was doing the opposite of that, but just to be clear, lying to get your friend a promotion, even if he's a good God, does not meet the qualifications for any possible exception to this rule.

Neither does lying to get out of a ticket, make a friend, or have a better testimony. Verse 26, uses a comparison and contrast to put the nail in the proverbial coffin of the said faith we've been talking about since verse 14.

So, remember back to verse 14. It says, What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but then does not have work? Can that faith save him? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.

A said faith only, without any evidence to back it up, is useless, dead, unhelpful, unbeneficial, not real. That is the teaching that James tells us in James chapter 2. All right, next week, James chapter 3, Taming the Tongue.

Go ahead and read the first few verses of James chapter 3, and get ready to get stung with conviction, because it does not play. Love you guys very much, and I'll talk to y 'all later.