James (part 9)

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University: James (part 9) John Lasken May 28, 2017

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Lord willing, we will finish today. He's always willing.
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Well, you know, he's always willing. The trick is, what is he willing? We don't always know what he's willing.
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We do know that he is. James chapter 5.
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He always has an answer better than he does. Stan, I'm going to ask you.
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We're not going to be doing a whole lot of extra James reading today. There's a lot of things to talk about.
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Stan, I want you to start out in verse 7. I'm going to very rudely interrupt you. Okay. Patience in suffering.
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Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord... He's got the word then.
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Other interpretations will use the word therefore. It's the same word there.
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And we all know that when you see the word therefore, you go to see what it's there for.
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We're going to need to go back and look at the themes for basically the middle section, major section of the book to find out what is it he's saying, therefore, in Stan's case, then.
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He's exhorting us to be patient. So we're going to do that, and we're going to see how that really fits into this transition to the last part of this book.
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But before we do that, Stan, would you open us? Yes, sir. Heavenly Father, what a beautiful morning you gave us.
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Nice and sunny and crisp out there this morning. And even this church, your church, we have an opportunity to come and worship you and look into your word and grow into your word, to be drawn closer to you.
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This morning we just ask that you would speak to our hearts through your word. May your spirit be very evident through your word this morning as John leads us.
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May the Holy Spirit just be upon him, Lord, as he brings forth the word of James.
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And we pray this in your name, amen. So, Stan, you're going to be the
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James 5 person for now. But, Rick, if you would give us James 1, 2 through 4.
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Let's go back and recapture one of the opening themes. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials at various times, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
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And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
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So right from the very beginning, he introduces the concept that we are going to experience what?
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Trials. Trials. In fact, he says various trials. Okay, Bob, you've got 3, 2, 3, 14, and 15.
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Rich, 4, 1. Jen, 4, 11. Nate, 4, 13.
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Garrett, good to see you. Welcome. 4, 13. And 5, 5. So, 3, 2.
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We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault and what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.
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Each of these 6, by fill in the blanks, are going to start out with the phrase, the temptation of.
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Fill in the blanks for me. The temptation of the tongue. We spend a lot of time with that.
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How great a storm is created. Look at the rudder of a ship.
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It's so small yet it steers. The temptation of the tongue. We feel the ability to say things that, if we just had engaged the brain before the tongue, often would be the temptation of the tongue.
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The second one, 14 and 15. Rich? You gave me 4,
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Jen's 4, 1. Okay. I can do 13.
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14 and 13, go ahead. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.
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Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. Temptation of.
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Fill in the blanks. Huh? Boasting? Yeah, this section went a little bit deeper than boasting and bending.
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It's the root for us doing this boasting and stuff like that. Selfish ambition? Envy? False wisdom.
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This was the section of what I know and I understand. And because of that,
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I'm in a position to be able to create understandings and stuff like that.
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This was the temptation of false wisdom. I've got knowledge and I think knowledge equals wisdom.
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The third one, 4, 1. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?
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Is it not this, that your passions are war within you? The temptation of.
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Personal passion, desire. Yeah, our passions. Our passions get the best of us. Our passions move us into doing directions, into doing things that we know that God wouldn't want us to do, but we succumb to them and we go forward.
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The temptation of passions. 4, 11. Brothers do not slander against one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges him.
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When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. The temptation of.
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There's a couple of them you could put in here. Slander, false judgment, and jealousy. You got both of them.
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Absolutely, you nailed it. The temptation of slander or the temptation of false judgment.
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And I'd say pride. You think you're so much better than everybody else, you can judge them. Put that in there too. Absolutely.
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These are things that. And again, remember what we're talking about here is the book of James. It's a letter written to Jewish believers.
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Now, I do recognize as we go into the book, as we're in the second chapter, show me your faith.
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I'll show you my faith by my works. Faith without works is dead. I understand that dialogue.
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But the book of James is written to believers. The book of James isn't like Hebrews, where there are so many passages, where the perception of faith is challenged to be not really faith.
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Perception of faith is challenged to be something less than a relationship with Christ.
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We're talking to believers. These are temptations that are common.
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These are temptations that are there. 413. Now listen, you who say, today or tomorrow, we will go to this or that city, spending a year there, carrying on a business.
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The temptation of? Ten or more years. We talked about self -reliance.
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We talked about self -reliance. By the way, Rick, you had mentioned when we did that chapter about the convocational speech at the
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University of Houston. So those of you who weren't here, we were talking about the risk of having an attitude of self -reliance.
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And how it sets us up. It sets us up in a danger point. And Rick says, yeah, actually, there was a speaker at the
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University of Houston, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I'm thinking to myself, okay, he's giving a counterposition to somebody who has lived his life as a self -reliant person.
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And Rick says, no, no, no, you've got to listen to the speech. I did. That was Eric. Oh, that was
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Eric? Alright, Eric. It was a great, that guy's a terrible public speaker.
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But everything about his speech was, I did it because other people helped me along the way.
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He's not a self -proclaimed self -reliant man. But we did talk about the issue, the temptation of self -reliance.
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Five -five. Or do you think
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Scripture says without reason that the spirit, oh, I'm sorry, wrong one here. You have lived on earth in luxury and self -indulgence.
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You have bedded yourselves in the day of slaughter. And we talked about the temptation of greed.
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We talked at that time about Nelson D. Rockefeller. At the height of his, at the height of his power was worth 2 .4
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% of the annual, of the national GDP. And he was asked, how much is enough?
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And his answer was, So now we move into verse 7.
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I'm going to let you read 7 through 11 without interruptions. Shucks.
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Go ahead. Be patient then, brothers, until the
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Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crops.
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And how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too be patient and stand firm, because the
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Lord's coming is near. Don't grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged.
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The judge is standing at the door. Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take prophets who spoke in the name of the
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Lord. As you know, we consider blessed those who have preserved. You have heard of perseverance and have seen what the
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Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy above all, my brothers.
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Okay, that's good. So he's going to give us this therefore, and we've looked at it, because you go back into the book of James, and there's a significant amount of teaching and exhortations.
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We are susceptible to temptation. We are susceptible to temptation.
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And he listed them. He talked about the temptation of the tongue. He talked about the temptation of false wisdom. Temptation of our passions, our tendency to slander, self -reliance, greed.
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We can feel pride and we can feel these other things, judgmentalism. We can feel them. He says, therefore, be patient until.
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. . He's going to give us three examples of patience.
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The first one is the farmer. What was the farmer's need for patience?
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Harvest. Rain. Rain. Sun. Wind. Wind. Which he did not have any control over.
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He was just that impatient. He had needs. Same as today. He had needs.
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Real needs. Real, tangible needs. And you're absolutely right, Bob. He had no control over them.
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And the description of patience in time of need, you have no control over it.
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He needed to be patient. He says, be patient, therefore, until the coming of the Lord. The second example is the prophets.
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When and how did they need patience? Many of them prophesied about things they never got to see happen.
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They came later. Their reward wasn't in this life. True. Give me verse 10 again,
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Stan. Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the
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Lord. What did they need patience? Suffering.
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Tribulation. Why were they suffering? They were just proclaiming God's truth. People didn't want to hear it.
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A message. Didn't like the message. It's like today. Didn't want to hear the message. They rejected the prophets.
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Yeah. Which means they rejected God's word. So there was a perception of suffering of personal, and it would have been.
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They were personally persecuted. But they were persecuted. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness sake.
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For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Being persecuted because you are a obnoxious
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Christian is not what's being talked about here. It's being persecuted because of truth.
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And they were patient. The third one is Job. When did
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Job need patience? When didn't he? I put down the tough times.
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It's an amazing category. You think about what God allowed Satan to do in his life.
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You think about the criticism he received from his wife. You think about these three great friends.
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Cursed God denied. Thanks. So we do this from at least chapter 2 until 4.
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tough times.
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In the context of James, what does it mean to be patient? Remember, we're talking in James.
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We read the first couple of verses. We did read this part about show me your faith by your works.
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Show me your faith. I'll show you by my works. Then we have this amazing, amazing.
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By the way, inside there it says Satan believes and he trumps. He talks about what belief is, but he talks about all of these areas in our life that come down bombarding and bombarding on us.
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Nate, we discovered a few weeks ago that yours was the 79th tribe of Satan being to you. He will continually go after us until he finds that one.
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In the context of James, what does patience mean? Wait and trust.
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Wait and trust. Wait on the Lord. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And we don't have that in us.
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The DNA in most of us is like go, go, go, go. He also talks about works, though. So you want to keep plugging away, keep doing what you know is right, even though you may not experience right away a reward for that.
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You may not even experience it in this lifetime. The opposite of patience would be what? Impatience, okay.
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The opposite of patience. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. That was quick.
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That was easy. Softball. Softball. The opposite of patience would be what?
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Again, in context of James. There you go.
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There you go. There you go. It's finding all of these things that we, this list of temptation areas and saying it's, the
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Lord isn't getting me out of this one, so. I keep thinking it's like you're trying to rush the process.
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Yes. So if you go back to chapter 1, verse 2, where he says to, that your testing is, it's counted all joy when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
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And he goes on to talk about how you're being refined, like taking that, the pure gold, getting all the impurities out, and that's a process that God works you through through the different trials and things like that.
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And when we want to get out of it or do our own thing, we're messing it up.
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Stay out of it. Yes. James chooses to take three examples that they would have been familiar with.
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The farmer. The prophets. Job. He uses these as examples.
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And how would these examples bolster the ability for these
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Jews to strive towards patience? Well, a farmer can't yell to the tree and say, grow the fruit now.
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You know, he's got to wait for the truth to grow in God's time. It's God's creation.
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I think it's trust. That your reward is coming. Not maybe right now, but trust.
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Yeah, I get that. And then if you think about the prophets, just because things are going hard, doesn't mean it's you.
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There may be something bigger going on. Okay? Get yourself out of the limelight, if you would.
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And if you think about Job, he didn't understand all the circumstances that were going on around him.
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Don't think that you have the wisdom. Don't think that you have the luck. Because it isn't being fixed on your agenda and on your timetable.
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Be patient. Be patient. How does patience, and I struggle with this next word, how do the examples of patience, and I finally chose the word embolden,
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I had other words in there like enable or stuff like that. I had a hard time with the right word.
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How does patience embolden us, that shouldn't be his, embolden us towards patience?
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How should patience, I'm sorry, it's the next one, how should, does patience engage God's power?
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In all these situations, God is supreme. How does patience engage
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God's power? Well, we submit.
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That's a big word. You submit yourself to the power of God, and God is, and you will get that patience.
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But if you don't submit, you're really not going to have the patience. Because you're not going to rely on Him.
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You're not going to submit it. You're more self -reliant on yourself. God's power is there, regardless of our patience level or not.
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God's power is there. Be patient therefore until the coming of the
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Lord. How does our patience engage the power that is already there from God?
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It's because we make ourselves weak so that He can become stronger right away. Sure.
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We go back to this major theme of James. It's a life of the believer that exhibits because of our faith.
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Our life, the work of our life is different because of our faith. If we're not patient, if we're actively doing things, our patience isn't there.
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How much of God's power are we allowing to be engaged? Good answer.
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None. And again, how long are we required to be patient?
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I think the example of Joseph in the Old Testament is a good one. I don't know at what point he humbled himself by going through being in slavery and in prison.
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That was a long time before God exalted him and God was in control all along.
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Do you understand? There is no limit to how long we're supposed to be patient.
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The paralytic at the coolest level was 38 years before he was healed? The woman with the issue.
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There is no limit to how long we're supposed to be patient. And at the end of Job, which one of you two guys said, out of the 40 chapters, 38 of them, well, actually, you get to the very end and God says, where were you when
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I created the world? And I love that section because God never chastises.
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In fact, he blesses Job. He just reminds him who Job is as opposed to who
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God is. Be patient. There's going to be some, as we go through the rest of this, there's some interesting things that James adds into this letter now as we go on.
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So Stan, give me James 5, 12, and then Matthew 5, if you would have that ready.
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Okay, go ahead, James 5, 12. Above all, my brothers, do not swear, not by heaven or by earth or by anything else, let your yes be yes and your no, no, or you will be condemned.
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He just throws this one in there. But, fill in the blank, do not what? Swear. Do not swear or take an oath by anything.
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Give me Matthew 5. This is Jesus teaching. Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the
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Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.
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And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply yes or no, anything more than this comes from evil.
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Sermon on the Mount. Sermon on the Mount. Jesus in that section is taking things like, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not murder.
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And anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.
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It goes in there, it says, you have heard that it was said, thou shalt not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
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There's like seven of these things. And in this section, the major part of chapter 5,
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Jesus takes what the Jews would have known as teaching, and turns it from legalistic teaching to what?
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To an issue of the heart. He takes it down deeper than, these are the things that have been specifically written, follow these things.
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And he says, no, no, no. What you've got here is in your heart. And so he takes that section on, don't, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not break your oath.
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But he says, don't even take an oath. How common is the expression,
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I swear to God? Unfortunately, too.
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And it's done very casually. He takes the teaching of, the issue isn't being true to your oath or not true to your oath.
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He takes it from that, and he doesn't dispute that. But he says it's deeper than that.
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It's you trying to create an oath that you have no business creating. What makes taking, swearing an oath so dangerous?
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When you say, it says here, your yes is my yes and my no is my no. If I'm a
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Christian, and I'm talking to a non -Christian world out there, okay, it's like saying you're swearing an oath, that I will not falsely say anything against God or whatever.
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But if I slip, then what's happening is all my yeses and all my no's to the non -Christian person means nothing.
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My testimony has slipped tremendously. So God's saying, don't swear that you will not do this, this.
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Don't say anything. You set your yeses be yes and your noes be no, and the truth will show in your heart to the non -Christian that you are a
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Christian. And on a more practical level, you can do irreparable harm to your credibility if you can't keep that truth.
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True. That's very true. There's another depth to it.
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Do we have any control over the things that we swear by? No. They're in God's control.
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Don't swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black, what we do today. Do not swear by Jerusalem, the city of the great king.
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We have no business swearing by things we have no control over because they're not ours to give away.
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And they're not ours to affirm, for God's to affirm. Don't put yourself taking control of the thing that you've got no business claiming you have control over as if you were the one who made the gaga pit out there.
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It's a silly example, but... No. Let your yes be yes, let your no be no, be what it is, and you're right.
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But don't be wrong about it. Don't destroy sully
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God's reputation. But above all, don't try to create an impression that you have control over something that you've got no control over.
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Just be straightforward with it. The next section, 13 to 18, stands.
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Is anyone of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise.
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Is anyone of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the
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Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise him up.
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If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
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The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us.
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He prayed honestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.
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Again, he prayed, and the heaven gave him rain, and the earth produced crops.
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Turn to God. After all of these things he's been teaching, he's telling us, turn to God.
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And again, he's got several good examples. He's got several plays.
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This is not an all -exhaustive list. At the beginning of 13, what's the occasion for us to turn to God?
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Trouble or suffering. What's our solution? Pray.
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Why is prayer the appropriate solution to trouble or suffering?
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God wants us to pray, but He sees our heart now. So now you're getting down on your knees, and you're dealing with God from your heart, because you are in trouble.
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And He wants to hear from your heart, and He's going to hear that prayer. How He's going to answer it, we don't know, but He hears your prayer.
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Like what you said, we don't know how He's going to answer it. But sometimes when we're in trouble, it's we brought trouble on ourselves.
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And the suffering is going to come our way. You didn't come to me, and you waited and waited, and you didn't have patience, and you went ahead and poured all the stop signs, red lights, when
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I told you not to. And now you're going to come to me when you're in trouble. But He still wants to hear my heart.
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Right, because a loving Father, if a child's in trouble, that loving Father wants that child to come to Him for help.
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Your Father loves us so much more. Our Father wants us to come to Him when we're in trouble.
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Because He's the only one that can really help. So what's the opposite position of going in prayer at the time of trouble?
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Trying to do it yourself. That's one. That's definitely one.
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Trying to get out of it yourself. Or going to another person for your trouble. Blaming God for your trouble, that's another.
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Or going to somebody else and asking them for help and saying you avoided
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God, you went to somebody else. Yes. How about just letting it overwhelm you?
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That leads to what? Depression. I like the variety of your observations.
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The opposite of going in prayer. There's so many places we go. Go to ourselves, go to others, blame
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God. Perhaps just let it go to depression. That's not God's design. Last week, was it?
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Was it the week before that Pastor Jeff spoke about the prodigal? Yes. Two weeks ago?
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Yes. What did the prodigal do to the
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Father? I mean, he should have been killed for what he did by the tradition.
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He really thumbed his nose at him. Disrespected him. Disrespected him. And when the prodigal finally acknowledged that he was in the depth of trouble, where did he turn?
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Turn back to his Father's love. And what did the Father do? Remember him. The picture there.
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Time of trouble. Time of trouble. Your first and best solution is to do what?
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Pray and bind. And by the way, we go back. Be patient until the day of the Lord. Don't have some sort of self -defined mandate on God.
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The second example of turning to God is in the middle of chapter, the middle of verse 13. Cheerful.
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If you're cheerful, praise Him. Why is it necessary to praise
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God when you're cheerful? Isn't it enough to just bathe in the blessings that God has given you?
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So let's play this one the same way. What's the opposite of praising
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God when you're cheerful? Complaining. Yeah, but when you're cheerful.
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Praising ourselves. Look what I did. Look what I did. Look what
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I have. The nine lepers in Jordan. They didn't come back to freedom.
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By the way, just as an observation, I'm sure that if there's 12 of us in this room, whatever,
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I don't think I'm the only one that has ever experienced a time of cheer and comfort and peace of heart.
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Follow shortly thereafter by a time of trouble. Taking that time of cheer and making that define who you are can be a great letdown when that time of cheer is over.
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Taking that time of cheer and turning it into a time of praise just puts it right where it belongs.
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There's no letdown. There's no disappointment because he's God. I always think of Elijah when he took on the 400 prophets of Baal and he was just laughing and poking fun at them and said, look what
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God's going to do. And then right after that, the queen says, I want to kill that guy. And then he becomes the first marathon runner by running so far away that he's terrified.
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I don't know how much time transpired, but it's like he just took on 400 people who were ready to kill you and you waited on God and let him show who he was.
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But in the same situation, you would think he would have done the same thing, but yet he was very fearful and ran.
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And that's how typical. Where's Baal? Perhaps he's relieving himself. Okay.
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When you have praise, I think of all of us in this room. How many times are we going to God in prayer and asking for help?
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Could be a sick one, could be you, maybe something at work. And God answers that prayer.
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We should be so cheerful and we go back to him and we praise him and we praise him and praise him for the answer of prayer that he has given us.
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When I look at that, it's a very strong message from God himself. He heard our prayers, but where's our faith?
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Faith itself, prayer itself does not answer the prayer. It's up to God.
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God is in control and it's up to him to say, I heard your prayer, but there's going to be maybe some more suffering going on.
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But he sees our faith, he sees our hearts. And when he sees that, he's going,
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Stan, I'm going to answer that prayer for you. This is how I'm going to answer it. And it's to me to go back to him and thank him and praise him.
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I've read this, I can't remember the number. How many times does it take to perform the wrong act for it to become a bad habit?
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Not very many. No, no, a bad habit. A bad habit, it doesn't take much for you to get into a bad habit.
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How long does it take for you to get into a good habit? It has something to do with our sinful nature.
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I'm sure if you see God's hand in an event or in an experience that brings cheer and joy to your heart, and you just let it go by, okay, it was an experience and joy.
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But if you get into the practice of seeing God's hand and stopping and praising
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God for it, and you do it over and over again so it becomes a habit, you'll start to see God's hand more often. The more practice you get at seeing
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God, the more you'll see God. The next one is in verse 14. The next opportunity to turn to God is in what?
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And in this particular case, we're encouraged to do what? Why? It says to him that he may anoint you with oil in the name of the
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Lord. I guess for prayer. Yeah, we're going to the church, we're going to the elders, okay, but anointing with oil could also be spiritual.
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It might not just be the spiritual aspect, it could be that someone has fallen away from God and has committed to him years ago but has fallen away.
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So now they're coming back to the church, and now they're coming before the church, the body of Christ, the elders, the pastor, and they're being anointed.
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And it's really God seeing the faith. It's not that the oil is going to do its job, but it's seeing the practice of what we're doing and the faith that we have in him that he is going to bless us and his faith is going to heal us.
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We're getting close to the end. I'm going to touch on this. There's a lot of things going on in this verse, and one of them is a clear teaching that the support of prayer of others is important.
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There's a clear indication that the individuals are under elders.
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So that's kind of a clear indication that there are no solitary soldiers in Christ, that there is a reason for us to be.
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Go ahead, Richard. This takes me back to Matthew 18, 19 and 20, where it says, truly, again,
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I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything, if they ask, it will be done for them by my
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Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there
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I am among them. So my feeling is that if two elders, trusting in the Lord, trusting in his power to heal, agree and pray for that person's healing,
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God, through faith and prayer, will grant that request. I'm going to be very careful on saying will.
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The teaching here is to do this, to engage the power of God.
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We're not creating the power of God. We're not amplifying the power of God. We're just engaging the power of God.
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But I'm of the believer that the miracle gifts did not cease.
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I'm of the opinion, and I believe our church is of the opinion, that the miracle gifts have not ceased. This is something
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God still can do. God still may do. And God's seen today, yesterday, forever. But healing that person is dependent on God's will.
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Yes. And that may not be his will. Okay, we're down to the end, and there's a couple of points
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I want to hit on here. Let me just say this. Verse 15, it says,
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The ultimate outcome of prayer is that the Lord will do what? It's in the end of verse 15. Restore and heal.
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The Lord will lift you up. It's the Lord that will lift you up. We're told in here to confess our sins how?
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One to another. One to another. This gets tough, and it's going to get tougher in a minute, because I mean, the last two curses.
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He brings in the concept of Elijah, and what Elijah did. But before that, give me the last, give me verse 16 again,
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Stan. Therefore confess your sins to each other, and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
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The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and accomplishes much.
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I want you to hold on to that one in this section. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and can accomplish much.
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Gets us to the last two verses. Stan, if you would read those.
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Verse 19? Yeah, and 20. My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth, and someone should bring it back, remember this.
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Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover a multitude of sins.
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Okay. James is a book written to who? Believers.
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To believers. Like I said, Hebrews, often we get into this concept of perceived faith, which isn't real faith.
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James is a book written to believers. If you get into, and if you do a syntactical diagramming of this, you have a brother who has wandered.
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You have a believer who has wandered. So this is not just somebody who has sinned.
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This is somebody who has gone into an unrepentant lifestyle of sin.
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And it says, what does it say about that person? What does it say about that person?
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I'm going to die. Ah, we've got to go into this one. It says, if one of you leads a brother who is in unrepentant sin and has wandered from the truth, and if you restore him.
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By the way, the word here is restore. It's not the words here for salvation.
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Restore him. You will save what? Save him from death.
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Save what from death? Soul. It says save your soul from death.
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That's what my passage. Does anybody have anything else other than that? There are some that say save him. Okay, I've got a word here.
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Psyche is the word in the Greek, and it typically means soul.
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Yes, typically it means soul. It also can just mean life.
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It can mean either one. In application, it can mean either soul, or it can mean life.
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The word death there is thanata. There's another word, nekron. He chose thanata.
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Thanata means what it sounds like, death. Take a believer who has wandered in unrepentant, wanton sin.
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Restore that person. Restore a believer so that you can save his psuche from thanata.
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It does not mean the unbeliever is spiritually dead.
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That's not what it means. It can sound like that. And quite frankly, if you take this verse completely by itself, you can create a theology of conditional salvation.
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That's not what this means. There are a couple of opportunities to understand what this means.
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One is that if you go to 1 Corinthians 11, we're not going to do it in time.
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That's the passage that talks about examine yourself before you take the elements.
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There are some of you who have taken the elements unworthily, and they become sick. There is this teaching at the time when this book was written that sin does lead to physical ailment.
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There was that teaching at the time. So that's one interpretation of this. The other interpretation of this is that the believer, although his soul is not lost in salvation, the believer is living a dead spiritual life.
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That's another interpretation of this. I'm not going to tell you what's the right interpretation, because quite frankly, it's not clear.
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But what I will tell you about this passage is it exhorts us to do what?
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It exhorts us to be so, so involved in the one and others of our brothers that we don't just let them go.
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There's a whole lot of passages that talk about how to do it. There's a whole lot of passages that talk about the need for love.
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There's a whole lot of passages that talk about getting the plank out of your own eye before you look at the speck in your brother's eye.
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There's a whole lot of passages. But at the end of this teaching, he says, it's going to happen.
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Somebody's going to fall, and somebody's going to wander. Step up to the bar and do it. I want to close with James 1, 2 through 4.
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Again, Rick, if you've got that, James 1, 2 through 4. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
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I'm just going to make a statement. Perseverance and temptation, it's evidence of a life that's been transformed by Christ.
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Perseverance and temptation happens. We went in there, we found out that we have Holy Spirit dwelling with us.
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It's in this book. If you found out that we have the power of God's grace with us, it's in this book.
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From the beginning of the thing, consider it all joy, brethren, when you encounter various trials, to the end of it, it says, when one of your brothers has lost his way and has fallen under these temptations, restore this one, restore this one.
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The ultimate goal is maturity, to become who you are to be in Christ.
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We've run out of time. We've actually run out of time. Next Sunday of being the
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Memorial Day weekend is an off week, and the following Sunday, Pastor Jeff's going to do a three -week session on the project.
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Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Eric, you want to close us in prayer? Dear Lord, we want to thank you for John, for teaching this class, for all the hard work that he's put in.
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I know it's been a blessing to him. It's been a blessing to us as well. Thank you for all that we've learned.
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I ask now that we would be wise and apply what we've learned to our lives, and not just let it pass.
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I pray for Pastor Jeff as he preaches, and thank you for the beautiful day you've given us. That's right.
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Thank you, John. Okay. These are fold -in chairs here. I guess they use them, so you just have to take them.