Yes Father, we are available. We are here with open hands, take us all. Have all of us. We just want to see you move in our lives like the Israelites saw you scatter the nations before them so that the world would know that you are our God and that we are your people. That your will on earth is unfolding as it is in heaven. God we want to share your work in our life time, the miracles you give us, the love and mercy you bestow on us with our kids, and our grandchildren. Your legacy written on the fabric of our lives. Yes, we follow you as your Spirit leads. In Jesus name. Amen.

You may all be seated.

Today, we’re concluding this series with this idea that

Big Idea: Genuine faith is revealed through actions.

Let’s read James 2:14.

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? (James 2:14 ESV)

Through the first two chapters, James has been laying out for his readers examples of what mature faith looks like and is now concluding that faith is not just something that is talked about, but faith is something that can be seen and felt through the way people of faith live. I think we’d all agree with that. Saying we believe in something and actually living like we believe are two completely different things.

“What good is it”? he asks. More precisely, what good is the kind of faith that has all the right answers, words and thoughts if it isn’t exercised? What James is asking his readers compels us to reflect on what Jesus taught in his sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7.

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven….

24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:21, 24-27 ESV)

Jesus understood that people who hear the good news would fall into two categories: people who received the gospel and lived the gospel, and people who received the gospel and acted as if it didn’t apply in life. Be honest, how many of us sometimes go through the motions of faith but don’t apply it to every facet of life? Like we know we ought to do, but we don’t do it. It’s one thing to know who God is and the lengths he went to save you. It’s totally another thing to live like you believe it. That’s what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount.

When I was studying this week, I found an interesting connection between the ministry of Jesus where he heals or teaches, and his challenge for the people receiving the healing or teaching – they have to follow up by living different than they did. Their faith healed them, their faith set them free, but now go and show the world how your life has changed.

We ask God to give us faith to move mountains or to heal our broken bodies but then we don’t live like he’s given us faith to move the impossible or to heal us in. In fact, by the time we’re leave our homes to move mountains in faith, we’re cursing out everyone and everything while mouthing the words bless the Lord o my soul. What good is your faith?

That’s where James wants us to pay attention in our lives because genuine faith is revealed through actions.

Let’s read verses 15-17.

15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:15-17 ESV)

This is a hypothetical, but real, situation James is describing amongst first century believers. There is somebody you and I are very familiar with in our community. In fact, we’re so familiar with that person, he or she can be called a brother or sister, maybe even an old friend if the language of brother and sister is weird to you.

This is not a stranger, it’s not somebody we’ve seen while driving. This is somebody we used to do or are still doing life with. We see them in a bad place and in bad condition, are we the type of people who spew empty words and move on? More specifically, are we the type of person that prays out loud for them and wishes them well and doesn’t nothing at all to help? Is that us?

Perhaps we can’t imagine a situation where see an old friend or acquaintance be inappropriately dressed for the weather and hungry where we do absolutely nothing. But a situation I’m sure we can relate to the motions of pleasantries of saying hi and bye that pretends care and affection, but are just really empty words we’re taught to say as Christians or just plain good members of society. We have no intention of following up. Better yet, no intention of actually listening or caring. That’s the point James is making.

Faith without actions is dead (vv. 14 – 17)

So when I first got married Michelle noticed that I said a lot of empty words to a lot of people. I’d strike up actual conversations with people and ask things like, “how are you doing? How’s the family?” meanwhile, people are talking and I’m not listening. Why in the world did I bother striking up a conversation if I’m not genuinely interested?

Here’s one I used often whenever I felt like people were just pressing on with their sad sob story, “Oh man, that sucks, let’s catch up later.” I had no intention of catching up with anybody later. Come on now, I wasn’t even going to remember the interaction.

Some of these people, they could go on a 10 minute diatribe about how their lives are in complete ruins, and I’ll respond by saying something like, “well, looks like the Knicks lost again, did you catch that game?” I don’t know why some of these people still talk to me? And Michelle would watch me do this. Meanwhile, Michelle, she is hanging off every word that is being shared, and coming up with ways to help that person, like digging through her purse for money or food, water and checking her calendar to see when she can help you.

So Michelle hated that said, “if you don’t care, nor are willing to help, stop asking.” And so I stopped asking. I know, this story is making me sound more and more like a jerk, but this is the point James is making here.

Faith, for some of us, is just knowledge with the right words and just sometimes, we’ll go through the motions. But if that’s where it ends, then that’s incredibly sad, like what was the point of all that knowledge, the right vocabulary, and meaningless gestures. That’s incredibly sad because faith like that is dead.

Hear me, some of you though, you’ve been actively and courageously applying your faith. That encourages a no good sinner like me. And every time you apply your faith, even though it may feel like a disaster, and like you’ve lost all control, that application of faith, you going out on a limb, believing in Jesus, God has been working out your faith through your actions. Keep it up.

• Keep interceding for miracles in the lives of your neighbors and family because God still does miracles.
• Keep reading the Bible because the word of God will change and challenge you.
• Keep giving generously in faith because God loves a cheerful giver.
• Keep sharing the gospel with people, because God will manifest himself to those men and women.
• Keep leading others in discipleship and in community because the loneliness and anxiety pervading everyone’s life, will flea in the power of Jesus.

This is my second point:

Faith with action is alive (vv. 18 – 26)

When we stop faking pleasantries, saying empty words not backed up with any actions because it’s what people of faith do, then we gain the freedom to actually do in faith. When I stopped saying empty words for the sake of saying empty words because it was the “right” thing to say or do; I was given the freedom to be real with my words and my actions. When I ask “how are you” and you tell me, I listen and do things, and I mean them.

Try it. Stop pretending like you care because it’s what we’re taught to do, and actually stop to care. It will change your life. It was change how you relate to people in love. It will change how you react to circumstances and situations that are dire. It will change how serve, who you serve.

Let’s go to verse 18.

¹⁸ But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. ¹⁹ You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! (James 2:18-19 ESV)

This hypothetical “someone” is arguing that works and faith are not connected or related to each other. What James is saying, however, is that you can’t have the works of God without faith in God. At the same time, it’s not enough to believe that God loves us and that he would send his one and only begotten son to die for us on the cross to save us in faith and then live like none of that matters.

Belief has to translate into tangible actions that signify you actually believe what you say you believe.

Let’s read verses 20-25.

²⁰ Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? ²¹ Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? ²² You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; ²³ and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. ²⁴ You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. ²⁵ And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? (James 2:18-25 ESV)

He uses two examples, Abraham and Rahab. Before I go there, I want to address verse 24 because this verse is the source of a major debate between Catholics and Protestants, and in fact, Christians and every other religion out there—that there is a way to obtain salvation outside of grace alone through faith alone.

When we read this verse in context to everything James is saying in this passage, you can’t ever get to the interpretation that we can earn salvation outside of faith in Jesus Christ as the source of our salvation through his life, death, and resurrection.

James, just like Paul in Romans, roots a person’s justification before a holy, sinless God, in their faith in the person and work of Christ on the cross. In fact, the whole point of this passage is that genuine faith is visible in your actions. And so your actions verify what you believe. How do you know that you are living as a child of God, saved by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross, resurrected on the third day, by the way you live your life. If you’re not doing faith, what do you actually believe about your faith. That’s how you know your faith in Jesus securing your eternity is the real deal instead of some counterfeit.

This takes us to Genesis 17 where we’re going to pick Abraham’s story in verse 15 to understand how genuine faith is revealed by works or actions.  

¹⁵ And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶ I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” ¹⁷ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” (Genesis 17:15-17 ESV)

So Abraham is 99 years old when God tells him this. In fact, Abraham laughed because well, he was in disbelief. He had no faith for what God was promising. Then in Genesis 21:

¹The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. ² And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. ³ Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac.” (Genesis 21:1-3 ESV)

Abraham did nothing and yet God was faithful to his promises. This was all God. You see that? But now the stakes are raised. Abraham at 100 years old, had a miracle child and is told in Genesis 22 to act in faith that what God promised in chapter 17 can still happen even though the command of faith seems to contradict the promise. Genesis 22:2

² [God] said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

⁹ When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. ¹⁰ Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. ¹¹ But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” ¹² He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” ¹³ And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. ¹⁴ So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” (Genesis 22:2, 9-14 ESV)

That’s what acting in faith is: believing that God will provide and do as he says because he is faithful.

Do you all see the elements of your own salvation story in the story of Abraham here? While we were still weak and unable, at the right time Christ died for us, the ungodly. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us in love. God did all the work of securing our eternity. We simply believed. Now, how are we responding to God’s faithfulness to us?

When we act in faith, because we know what God has promised us, to bless us, to love us, to never forsake us, the way we live presently in light of a secured eternity must be visibly present. That is the marker of genuine faith in God’s love for us.

When we live in faith that way, God will provide just like he provided with Abraham. Abraham wouldn’t be “friend of God,” “father of faith” if he didn’t live his life as if God wouldn’t provide for the promises made in chapter 17. James says that Abraham’s faith was proven because he acted on what he believed.     

That brings us to Rahab the prostitute from Jericho. Her story is in Joshua 2.

¹And they [Joshua sent two spies to do some recon] went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there. ² And it was told to the king of Jericho, “Behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land.” ³ Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, “Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land.” ⁴ But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, “True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. ⁵ And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.”

⁸ Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof ⁹ and said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land …. please swear to me by the Lord that, as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father’s house, and give me a sure sign ¹³ that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.”…. ¹⁵ Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall, so that she lived in the wall. ¹⁶ And she said to them, “Go into the hills, or the pursuers will encounter you, and hide there three days until the pursuers have returned. Then afterward you may go your way.”

Rahab took action. Without Rahab believing God would provide for her and her family, the Israelite conquest of Canaan would be vastly different. Faith moved Rehab into action—to take a risk. She risked treason. When you read the story, that’s what’s happening, she’s giving up her country for God.

You know what’s interesting? Abraham was this rich guy who had the ears and favor of kings because God had been providing for him. He had the means to exercise faith. Rahab was a prostitute. She sold her body out to take care of her family. She was a pagan, she had no shared inheritance with God’s people when she made a decision in faith. She didn’t have history enough with God to exercise faith. But she to a risk in faith. That’s so beautiful isn’t it. Regardless of their means, status, history with God, people act in faith, regardless of where they’re coming from or what they’ve witnessed and encountered, God is equally faithful.

James concludes by saying in verse 26, “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” So my challenge to all of us is: what works of faith are present in your life now?

Do you need to receive Jesus Christ as your savior? To admit that you are a sinner, unworthy of God’s love and mercy. That you believe Jesus’ death on the cross was to pay the debt of your sins past, present, and future. Not because you deserve it or because you earned it, but because you believe God loves you. Then act in confession to his resurrection which secures our eternal salvation in Jesus Christ.

Perhaps, you already received Jesus as your savior in faith. But you are not living in a way that shows you believe or trust in God’s provision for you. Then your act of faith is to repent now. You know that to live faithfully, you have to pursue God and God’s kingdom in real tangible action.

• Perhaps it’s to take a chance and ask God to help you live with his vision, where the calling is so big that the risks are unbecoming. But in living that boldly in faith, people will know who you trust.
• Perhaps that means to pray. To pray, not empty words, or to pray in crisis. But to make and fill every part of your day with conversation with God.
• Perhaps that means you stop pretending to have it all together and actually start addressing the issue—whether its broken relationships or the anxiety that fills your worries of achievement. God will help you, in faith, seek God.
• Perhaps, that means you have to give generously and sacrificially even though you got bills to pay and are indebt to your eyeballs, that hurts, but God has already provided for what you give.
• Perhaps it’s to serve somebody you never dared to serve. If it’s any of these things, then I encourage you to do the work of faith and take the appropriate actions toward those work.

If you don’t know how to do these things, you start by inviting God into your life, and asking him to for the Holy Spirit to transform you from the inside out. Allow the Holy Spirit to lead you in the bold work of living in faith. When we do, I believe we will find God’s provision, power, mercy, and grace in our actions. Lets pray.

Father in heaven, give us faith. Give us the faith we need to believe you will provide as we act, full of your Holy Spirit. We know the Spirit is with us and in us because that’s what you promised your children here on earth, that the helper would come. That you would help us act and live in faith. It’s so easy to know that, but so difficult to actually live into. Please Father, help us live into that truth. We want our faith, our belief in you to be genuine. We want our actions not be devoid of meaning or empty motions, but full of your power.

Lord, show us where you are leading, how you are leading, and what you are doing. We ask because we want to experience your power, your faithfulness, just like you provided for Abraham and Rahab. No matter where we are in our faith journey, or experiences with you, we pray that you will do so mightily for us because you love us. We want to see your faithfulness and provision in our lives but also in our children, we want to see it in our neighbors, in our church. Let our faith be alive because you provide, you always did, you always will. We believe you are faithful to provide.

Those of us who are still doubting your ability to save us from our sins, from our depressions, from our loneliness, I believe you will change that today. This morning, give those individuals choice interactions that they may be able to take a leap of faith to believe you are our savior, our lord, our king. Thank you for loving us and rescuing us. We pray these things in king Jesus name. Amen.