Faith: Make It Worky
Discussion & Practice
- Read James 5:19-20. What part are we called to play in bringing someone back who has wandered from the faith? Have you had any particular experiences you can share about bringing someone back or about someone bringing you back when you've wandered?
- Does your testimony only include where Jesus has saved you in the past or can you share where you're looking to him for salvation in this season of your life?
- At what times in your life have you related to any of the descriptions in James of struggling with faith? Tossed by the waves (1:6-8), withering plants (1:9-11), breathless corpse (2:26), bitter springs (3:11)?
- What is an area of your life where you need to incorporate your faith that maybe you haven't in the past or haven't very often? In other words, in what arenas might you have (intentionally or unintentionally) separated your life with God from your everyday life?
- What is an area of your life where your faith is being tested and you might be living with uncertainty right now?
- What would you say is the condition of your faith right now?
Practice: Have you thought of an area where you've felt convicted by the Spirit to start to putting your faith into practice or to focus it more consistently on Jesus? What is an area you need to stop doing something that is pulling your focus from him or a new rhythm you want to start? Write down a few that come to mind and ask God for help in being faithful in these areas where he's calling you to partner with him.
Notes
We are starting a new series in the book of James and I want to read to you the last two verses. We’re going to look at the end of the book. It’s only five chapters.
James 5:19–20 (ESV):
“My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”
James is pretty close to the people he’s writing to. He has a real heart and connection to them. He doesn’t close the book with a sweet benediction. The theme of the book runs to the end of the pages. He never lets up. And in those last two verses you get a feel for why he’s writing. It’s a weighty call to action. The whole letter is, whatever you do, stay on track. Don’t go astray. Don’t wander. Your very life is at stake. And you will keep a lot of bad things from happening. That’s the spirit of this book.
When my firstborn, Anthony, was old enough to ride a bike I wanted to get him a good bike. As the kids got older, it got passed down to the other kids, and there was a time and space when riding a bike wasn’t the cool thing. Roller blading came in and they liked street hockey. So that bike got put in a garage. It was there for quite a while until Mike, our fourth son, came along and I tried to push it onto him.
When I took it out, it needed work. I took it to Kyle’s bike shop. I loved this guy and got to know him. He walked out and I told him what I wanted done, it’s got two flat tires, one of them needs to be replaced, etc. He said, “You just want me to just make it worky?”
Just make it worky. That’s James. James looks at faith the way Kyle looks at the bike. Make it worky. It’s tempting because James talks so much about works. There are 54 commands and a whole bunch of prohibitions. He has more commands per word than any other book. It’s very practical. It’s not highly developed theology. He’s a brilliant Greek, but he’s no Paul in terms of his theology, because it’s not doctrinally driven. Most of his exhortations aren’t derived from doctrine. He’s do, do, do. Even with all that said, the book is not about works. Every commentator agrees. The book is all about faith. And not just faith, but genuine faith. He’s talking about a genuine faith as opposed to a false faith.
James says you can be deceived into thinking you have a genuine faith. Just in the first chapter, James will use three different words for deception.
It’s the worst possible thing that you can be deceived about the faith you think you have. He will show you the capacity for self-deception by using the image of a mirror.
You are not even what you appear to yourself in a mirror. That’s scary. You’re a reflection of the real thing but not the real thing here.
To convey the seriousness of this, he employs a wide repertoire of rhetorical devices. He’ll use question and answer, censure, harsh statements. At one point he’ll say, you idiot. He’ll use maxims and quotations. He describes plainly what false faith is like.
How can any kind of faith be dead? Think about it in these terms James uses. You’ll feel tossed around by waves or any of these:
You can start to see in your life when you feel like you’re drowning. Or you feel like you’re withering and your faith isn’t growing. Or the life is going out of you and you don’t feel lively. Or you’re bitter. Those are really good signs that your faith is struggling and something might be wrong.
Faith here is different than how we’re naturally inclined to think of faith.
James will talk about implanted word in your heart is able to save your soul. But James also focuses on the end in these 5 chapters. Like most of the New Testament writers, he draws a straight line from the beginning to the end. When James says “save” he’s not just talking about a point in time, but a journey to the end. Saving is not just a point in time but a process. Faith is required along the entire journey. You don’t just need faith to get on track. You need faith to stay on it and get to the finish line. It’s not something you tuck away from the past.
It’s not a given that you will make it to the end. Faith is complex. One commentator said it this way. But it’s not that it’s complex as much as it is multi-dimensional. It’s not just doing one thing, it’s doing a lot.
Faith is not just about getting you to the end. It’s not just about a destination and hoping you make it. It’s a transforming thing.
Salvation isn’t about hoping you go from this place to another place. It’s the process of becoming something that can live in this eternal reality.
It’s very easy to say that I had faith at one time in my life and you just tuck it away because you hope that it gets you somewhere. That’s a wrong understanding of faith.
Faith can grow. It’s not just a one-time kind of thing.
There are three things I want you to know about faith.
First, faith can be tested. This immediately throws a wrench in our understanding of faith. It can be tested, it will be tested, and it must be tested.
It has to be tested so you don’t deceive yourself. Usually we think of faith as some acceptance of data or truth. We can make a one-time claim to believe in God or that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. If someone asked if you have faith, you may say, yes, I have believed.
James will say this:
This is the most radical way you can say, be very careful if you think faith is only something you believe. Even demons do that. It’s not one-dimensional. You don’t get it once, use it once, and seal it away. It can be tested.
James is saying it’s not something that can be used and left alone. It has to function. Make it worky.
Second, faith can be tested and it works. Faith works. It functions. If you believe, what do you do?
The bike in the garage. Nobody looks at a bike and thinks, that’s a great thing to store. Everyone looks at a bike and wonders, do you ride that? Does it work?
I go to Aspen once a year because my friend Oscar has a place there. It has a detached garage. He told me one year to come into the garage. Oscar has this beautiful Harley Davidson. It’s a little bigger than I’ve ever ridden. It looks brand new. My first question was where he got it. He had a great story about a client who lives in Florida and comes up to Aspen to work with him. He gave Oscar the bike.
Second question I had was, have you ridden it? Oscar didn’t even know what a clutch is. Since we were friends in high school, if it had a clutch, I drove it. I knew how to ride motorcycles. He didn’t. He hadn’t ridden it. So, I got it out and rode it. I never took it into the city or the mountains because it was such a big bike.
James is asking, do you realize what you have here? You can’t just tell the story of how you got it. You have to tell the story of how you ride it.
James is saying that you may not even be aware of all this thing can do. I promise you, we’re not.
James is going to show us that faith really can go anywhere, on-road and off-road. He’s going to talk about trials in your life and painful relationships in your life. You need faith.
Some of us just ride faith around our block if we take it out of the garage at all.
If you want to control your tongue? You need faith.
Your daily routine? You need faith.
Your economics? You need faith.
The thing you think about every 15 minutes of your life? You need faith.
Impatience and sin? You’re going to need faith.
Every area of your life is going to need it. James is saying you have that stuck in a garage and need to get it out of there.
You have to be able to see the other reality. Faith makes visible what is invisible. You’re going to have to see reality. You’re living in a bubble that is really small and not ultimate at all.
I think about the best commercial I’ve ever seen in my life where this girl throws a stick for her dog and it sticks in the sky. It says, it’s getting hard to tell what’s real.
That’s kind of the world James is worried about you living in. A world made of paper. He’ll talk about the vapor of life. This commercial has this high quality beach scene that gets ripped with a stick. Every once in a while, you’ll throw a stick at something, and it’ll tear through your reality. Faith gives you a firm grip on reality, on what’s on the other side.
Faith can be tested, will be tested, and must be tested. Your faith is not fully in tact. It has to work. And genuine faith will endure. It keeps moving.
A lot of people in our culture are bailing on the faith and they’re happy to tell everyone. Genuine faith makes it to the end. It grinds out.
In chapter 1 alone, you have 1:3-1:12 form an inclusio where he uses endurance 3x. The beginning and end of the chapter tells you that you have to make it to the end. In chapter 5, he brings it back with this idea of endurance.
If you wrap your arms around the whole book the theme is this: How do you know your faith is real? You make it to the end.
College football started off bad. Arrogant players would drop the ball before they cross the line to score. Don’t drop the ball before you get to the finish line.
James is going to say there are a lot of threats to your faith. It’s not safe and cozy. Pain will put it to the test. Hate, pride, confusion, impatience, selfishness––James will call it the world. He says it wants to be friends with you and cozy up to you, and you’ll live in this paper world. So be careful. The world will act really nice and cozy up to you. Don’t do it.
James will bring up the devil and evil and hell. James says to resist the devil and he will flee from you, which means he’s close by.
I don’t talk about the devil a whole lot, but he is real. And if you don’t resist him, he’ll cozy up to you too. Not just the impersonal world of things getting a hold of you. There’s a personal enemy out there and he has us in his crosshairs. He despises what you value. He hates the God you love. He wants you to drop the ball before you get to the end. He wants you to keep your faith dormant, inactive, and parked. He doesn’t want you to make it.
The writer of Hebrews says it succinctly and forcefully.
If he shrinks back, drops the ball before the goal line, my soul will have no pleasure in him. But we are not those who shrink back and are destroyed.
James does want us to look in the mirror, but not just a glance and hurrying off to other things we have to deal with. He says to gaze intently, look at at the truth, because it will transform your soul.
It may be that you’ve never given your life to Christ and activated that first dimension of faith. Maybe you’ve never taken it out of the garage. You can do that now and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
Maybe you’ve done that. You’ve gained the possession of faith at some point in your life. You can tell me a great story of how it got in your garage, but you don’t use it. You need to take it out.
Maybe you take it out, but only go around the neighborhood––you only do a few things with your faith. You have a sheltered faith. James would say, you need to get out of there and ride it further. It can do so much more than you know.
Don’t give up. You might be a person who is looking, I would say don’t give up that search. C. S. Lewis says you wouldn’t be seeking if he wasn’t seeking you.
If you have faith, but life has hit and you have a lot of uncertainty in your life, welcome to the club. James would say, trust him. Live with uncertainty. There are a whole host of worse things than living with uncertainty. One of them is to not have God to trust.
Some of you are unwilling to pay a price you know you need to pay to do something God wants you to do. It could be as simple as not taking my faith into an area of my life. James would say, you’ve got a price to pay? Pay it.
Don’t give up. Live with uncertainty. And pay up.