Introduction to Book of James

All right, so we're studying the book of James. Like I said, all we're going to do is the one verse tonight and it has just the most, it's going to go ahead and give us some of the basic details of the letters such as the author, the recipients. So we're going to do some introductory matters as we just look at the first verse. So I want to even go back a little further and do some more background and introduction of the book. What does the word canon mean? In Christianity, we use the word canon. What is the canon? The official books of the Bible. The word canon isn't the big bazooka-like gun, right? So, it's not what you shoot people with. Canon is another word for rule. It's the measure. And so, the early Christians, they asked which books should be part of the canon. what books should be included as our scripture. And they had certain questions they asked. Did anybody know what the requirements were for a book to be canonized? Okay. Universally accepted by local churches. So there had to be a large amount of acceptance throughout Christianity. the African churches, the European churches, the Middle Eastern churches, all those churches had to have some acceptance of a book for it to be canonized. It couldn't be a local. Okay? That's one. Very good. Others? Yes, it needed to be connected to an apostle. For a book to be canonized, it needed to be connected to an apostle. We confess we're a one holy Catholic apostolic church. I confess that. Does anybody else confess that? Alright, Paul and I. When Roman Catholics say apostolic, they mean apostolic in the sense that Peter is in the line of the apostles. And the Pope, I'm sorry, the Pope is in the line of the apostles. They have an apostolic succession of authority. When I say it, I mean we have the Apostles' writings. We have what Jude says, the faith once and for all handed down. The measure, the truth, the doctrine, and the prescriptions that have been handed down by the Apostles. So some books were not quickly recognized as canon. Can anybody guess which books those would be? James. James and Hebrews, especially concerning the author, one, because it just says James. And we'll get into, well, which James it might or might not be. The book of Hebrews, because it's authorless. So, it either needed to be written by an apostle, such as Paul or Peter, or connected to an apostle, such as Mark, or it was a book that Well, the author isn't clear, and so it was kind of held for a while in suspense. Does that make sense? So, we're dealing with those books because, well, we think we know who James is, but we're not definite. It needs to agree with all the other truths in the canon. And so, some books were very easily recognized as canon. Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, Romans. These books were accepted quickly. and very clearly authoritative as canon. And so, once they kind of figured out the clearest authoritative books, the other books that were in question, they just needed to make sure that they agreed with them. Does that make sense? Because if God inspired it, it's consistent. And so, James has another little problem here, doesn't it? In terms of consistency. James says that you are saved by your faith that works. How do you reconcile that with Paul who says you're justified by faith alone? And this obviously is going to come up a little bit more with Luther and we'll discuss that. I think there's a... I think it's completely consistent. I believe what James says actually goes along perfectly well with what Paul says, but as a... just kind of a first reading, you might think, well, how do these two go together? And then the other one would be self-authenticating divine nature. Either the writer himself clearly believes he's writing God's Word, or it is attested clearly by it affirming what other books have said according to God's inspiration. James' question won because the author was unclear, but also some have accused James of lacking theology. And I think that's, well, that would be proven very silly. James actually has a very rich, robust theology, which I'll do a little bit of summary of here in a moment. Still regarding the canonization, Luther is famous for saying that it's a straw epistle, primarily because of what James says regarding faith and its relationship to works. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. That's James 2 verse 24. When James says you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone, Martin Luther had a very difficult time with this because he said that justification by faith alone was, and quote, the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. So the doctrine of justification by faith alone is the most central doctrine for Luther. And he saw James somewhat maybe confusing that. Now I don't think he thinks James himself confused it, but I think he sees that James could cause others to be confused by it. Because Luther did not remove James out of his Bible. He said it belongs in the back. There's central books. Paul. Mark, John, Luke, and James belongs kind of in the back. Calvin, the other great reformer, he actually thought it was a fantastic book. He harmonized it more, as we will when we get to that particular section. I want to say also that Luther quotes James regularly. He's constantly quoting James when it comes to practical matters. So he valued the book. He just, I think, was afraid of how it might cause confusion for the central message that needed to be preached. The dates for the book, probably in the 40s. The two possible authors are James, one of the three in the inner circle of Jesus, right? Peter, James, and John, those are the three inner circle disciples. That James, he died in 44 AD. We know that from Acts 12. Herod killed him. And so he's the most, he's the more unlikely author because it would have to be a very early date. The other likely author is who? James the brother of Jesus who died in the 60s. James, the brother of Jesus, was one of the elders in Jerusalem. He was part of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. And that will come into play very important in terms of when this letter was written and how it relates to the faith and works issue because Paul and James had a joint session and a joint declaration on faith and works. The genre of James. the literary form of James. It is unique in the New Testament. It would be rightly called the wisdom of the New Testament. It's more like wisdom literature than anything else. It uses lots of metaphors and illustrations. It's pithy, right? That's why I like the Proverbs. They're pithy. They're short and simple. They don't elaborate. They just give you a truth declaration and they let you wrestle with it. James is very much like that. He doesn't develop a lot of points there on the spot. But we'll see that he goes, he'll talk about suffering here, and suffering here, and suffering here, and suffering here. He'll talk about faith, and faith, and faith. He's somewhat pithy. It's the most practical New Testament book, and I say that only because there are more imperatives in James than any other book in the New Testament. What's an imperative? command. So we have the truth statements, and then we have the commands that follow them. We have the indicative, those are the truth statements, and we have the imperatives. He alludes to many of Jesus' sayings. I preached through 1 John, that was the first book I preached through here. James is actually very similar. It's very circular. He comes back to themes. He comes back to ideas regularly. So, it's very much like 1 John. It's not a true epistle. It's what we call a Catholic or a general epistle. There's not a particular setting. You know, when Paul writes, he says, hey, make sure you tell Jim I said hello, and Ben sends his greetings, and tell Lisa that all the saints rejoice over her new baby being born. Paul is very specific about the people and the place he's writing to. whereas the general officials, they're being sent out more generally. Hence the name. Any questions up to this point? That's kind of your general background. All right. The theology of James. He has a very rich doctrine of God. Just when we talk about theology proper, the doctrine of God, He's very clear that God is one. He has actually one of the clearest, some of the clearest confessions that God is good. God cannot tempt you. Whenever you're tempted, it's not from God, because God is good and He cannot be tempted. That's one of the most reassuring statements from Scripture. When temptation's coming, it's not from God. What's it from? your own desires. God is the giver of every good and perfect gift. The father of life. You've probably heard me quote that a lot because I think it's one of the most fantastic declarations. Everything good comes from God. Temptation does not come from God. He's good. It's a very strong doctrine of God. We also see God is jealous. God is going to judge. We also see that God is rich in mercy. One of the reasons it was said to have lacked theology is that Jesus is only mentioned twice. We see it here, verse 1, when he refers to the Lord Jesus Christ. We see it in chapter 2, verse 1, when he also refers to Jesus as Lord. And then he also then calls him the Lord of Glory. There's an eschatology in that he constantly brings up judgment. That's in chapter 2, verse 12. Chapter 3, verse 1. Chapter 5, verse 8. He talks about the law a lot, which we would expect to be a practical book that has lots of imperatives. But he talks about it in a new way. He talks about how the law is united. If you break the law in one point, you break it in all the points. Who was it that was saved through Ray Comfort's ministry? Was that Banning? Remember when we had the testimonies? There was 13 of them. I believe it was Chadwick Banning that was saved through the way of the Master. Well, that's the way of the Master. If you break one command, you've broken them all. So he's very clear on the law. He calls the law perfect. He calls it the law of liberty. He calls it the royal law. So we'll have a good, rich doctrine of law as we should as Christians. He talks about money a lot. That's going to be uncomfortable. Chapter 1, verses 9 and 11. He talks about the low, recognizing they have a high place. He commands the church not to be partial to the rich in Chapter 2. And he has a warning for the rich in Chapter 5. Talks about faith. Ask without doubting. Have faith when you ask. Ask without doubting. Your faith must work. Faith without works is dead. Chapter 5. Faith prays. Faith seeks God. He has a rich doctrine of sin. Sin comes from our own desires. He likes to talk about the sins of the tongue. I want to read chapter 4, verses 7 and 8. This is a very challenging verse. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Is he talking to Christians or non-Christians there? Who's the letter written to? He's exhorting Christians. He's exhorting Christians there. Draw near to God. Purify yourselves. He talks much of suffering. The next week we do this will be one of the more challenging weeks where he says, cannot know joy when you meet trials of various kinds. He says, have joy in suffering. He'll end the book by saying, be patient in suffering. And it's a very pastoral epistle. If you read it, I encourage you all, read it in one sitting, underline every time he addresses the folks as, my brothers. It's very caring, it's very pastoral. Verse 2, count it all joy, my brothers. Verse 9, let the lowly brother boast. Verse 16, do not be deceived my beloved brothers. Verse 19, know this my beloved brothers. Chapter 2, verse 1, my brothers show no partiality. Verse 5, listen my beloved brothers. And so on and so on. He's constantly having to address them as his beloved brothers because I think he loves them. Alright, any questions about the background or the general kind of... I just wanted to give you a taste of the... Well, whenever the accusation is it lacks theology, I wanted to make sure that you see it as a very robust, rich doctrine of God, doctrine of sin. And it's so rich and it's imperative because the truth is so rich. Any questions up to this point about the epistle in general? Alright. Well, I hope you all enjoyed that. I did. Alright. There's our verse tonight. Let's all say it together. Can we do that? James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. To the twelve tribes in the dispersion. Greetings. Alright. So, who is the author? James. As we already said, you really have two options. James, the disciple of Christ, the brother of John, he dies in Acts 12.2 in 44 BC. The other option is the brother of Jesus, who did not come to faith until after the resurrection. We see him not named specifically, but in John 7-5 it says his brothers do not believe him, and then 1 Corinthians 15-7 talks about the brothers now believing. He's a leader of the church in Jerusalem. We see this in Acts 12-17 and in Acts 15. We believe he died a martyr's death in AD 62, so the latest date of this book would be 61. The reason we think it must be one of these two Jameses is because he just says James. We're arguing from silence, but I think there's a good argument here that it's thoughtful. He has the authority to just say this is James. If a soccer player wrote you and said Pele, you know who's writing you. If you're a Chicago Bull and it says Jordan to so-and-so, You know who's writing you. So, the fact that he just uses his name, I think, signifies that people know who this James is. He's writing with authority. His name already has a reputation, so he doesn't have to go in detail about who he is. The reason folks doubt that it's the disciple of Christ is that it would have to be a very early writing. It's not impossible. It's just as likely it must be the brother of Jesus. Any questions on that? Does it really change the content? It's helpful in the fact that he quotes Jesus so much. So that's also two reasons why either one of them would be helpful. James the disciple obviously would have heard Jesus teaching. There's so many allusions to Jesus teaching here. John the James the brother must have also heard The recipients to the twelve tribes in the dispersion what is interesting about this The subscription what is interesting about this description of your recipients It sounds Jewish it does Which also lends itself to somewhat of an earlier date? probably before the council, maybe before the real big Gentile increase in the church that's taking place right after James, the disciple, passes away. He writes to the 12 tribes in the dispersion. Now, the dispersion may be that when the persecution came, described in Acts 11-19, that many of the Jewish Christians, they began to disperse. They were going throughout Persia and other areas because of the persecution. So that may explain why he's writing to the 12 tribes in the dispersion. There's not enough to go on here, but it does raise that tricky question. How does the church relate to Israel? Why is he using a description for the nation Israel to describe the church? Which is no longer the tribes of Israel. And I think I don't want to go into it in depth because there's really not enough to go on from this particular verse That would be a whole nother lesson in itself, but I think it shows that this relation between Israel and church is a lot tighter than Some from what would be called dispensationalists have prescribed in the past So yeah, there's not a whole lot to explain there other than the fact that There's a Jewish, well it's kind of like Paul when he calls the church Israel, or true Israel. There's a Jewish description for the church. Alright, what I really want to focus on tonight is this, obviously, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. If this is the brother of James, you're really missing, it really seems like he missed the opportunity to say, hey, I'm also the brother of Jesus. Or, if it's James the disciple, the brother of John, the disciple of Jesus Christ. If it's the brother of Jesus, it's interesting, he does not in any way give any hint that he was physically related to Jesus. And again, a bit of an argument from silence here, but if it is the brother, it's showing that his physical relationship to Jesus was of no significance. It's only his faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior and as the Messiah that really makes him of any significance whatsoever. This is all the authority claim he needs. He's a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Him being a physical brother means nothing. He denied his brother until he was risen from the grave. So if it is the brother, that physical relationship has no significance. It's just the spiritual relationship. So, let's get back to the theology of James. What does the greeting, servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, what does this tell us about his doctrine of God? What do we learn about God in this passage? Okay. He's the master? Why do you say that? Okay, so we're already going to go ahead and interpret the God to be the master of the servant. He's putting himself under God as a servant. Okay? Yes, it's not... He's clear there's one God. But here... Remember when we were doing our study of the Trinity? We went to 1 Corinthians 8.6? And Paul separates the Shema. He says there is one Father who is God and there is one Lord Jesus Christ. Lord could be the way of actually writing out Yahweh for Greek. Lord would be the replacement word. There's about five steps as to how you get there. Well, let's do that. We don't have the word Yahweh in our Bible. Why? Well, I don't have Yahweh in my Bible. Why? Okay. You don't have the English equivalent of Yahweh in your Bible. Why? But they could write out Yahweh. They could write it out. Or Jehovah if we're German. Well, there's a superstition about Yahweh. Yeah, you're afraid of saying it. And so, we put the equivalent of Adonai. Right? So, whenever the Jews see Yahweh, they never say it. Even though He told them their name, so they could call on Him. They're afraid of it, because of a little too much superstition. So, they have Adonai. Well, the Greek word kurios, which is Lord, is how you would translate in the Septuagint, Adonai. And so whenever it declares Lord, you really could read the equivalent marker for Yahweh. We see the significance of this word in Acts 2, when Paul says, by His resurrection He has been declared Lord. It's an authoritative title equivalent to Yahweh. As Anne pointed out, I believe what we see here is the same thing Paul does in 1 Corinthians 8. You actually have two words that are used to describe the one God being separated for the two different, what we call, persons. Here you see Father. Here you see Son. And later on he'll actually say all good things come down from the Father of Lights. So I believe we already see somewhat of a beginning of the doctrine of the Trinity. What does this greeting say about Jesus? What does this greeting say about Jesus? He's the Messiah. Where do you get that? Christ. So, He's the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those three words are all complementing one another. So, He's the Messiah. He is the Christ. That's what His mission is. Jesus came with a mission of saving sinners. He's the Messiah. What does the Lord say about Him? If this is His mission, what does this say about Him? His position. He's God. It's a divine title. Again, I think pointing us back to a very robust doctrine of the Trinity, but not in its full form as we will see later. So, it's His mission. It's His position. That's like a sermon outline. Yes, so we see Jesus Christ, he is a servant of God, and he is a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. What does James communicate by calling himself a servant? Okay, so here is this elder in Jerusalem, and by calling himself a servant, he's actually putting himself in a very lowly estate, he's not elevating his authority, he's actually elevating his calling, I would say. Okay? Has there ever been a culture anywhere that thought being a servant was a good thing? Has anyone ever aspired to be a servant? Okay, okay, we got the real spiritual interpretation of that, but in terms of vocation, Yeah, this is a huge transvaluation. This culture would see servants as a second-class citizen, if not below human in some way. They have a lesser dignity. And it's amazing about the New Testament authors. They claim this with such, ironically, pride. They boast of being servants to God and the Lord Jesus Christ. What we see here is a transvaluation. The culture at large would not have valued in any way being a servant, but here, James, and as we all, I assume, know Paul, valued the idea and the identity of being a servant. Now, Brian pointed out that what he says about God here is master. Let's just flesh out here something that I think is fairly obvious. If he is a servant, then God and the Lord are master. What is he saying about the relationship? Let's flesh out what that means. If he is a servant and God is the master, then what? What does that mean in terms of the relationship? Below, okay. There's a positional, beneath, okay. He has obligations and responsibilities. Okay. In some way, there might be some ambassador role here. He's speaking on behalf of his master. Okay. Oh, He's equally the servant to God and the Son. When you say co-equal, it's like, I don't think so. Master-servant. The word Lord here, it means owner and master. To be the servant of God means He owns you and He's your master. Let's think of another place. Where does it talk about us being owned? Maybe a place where we were purchased by God. How are we purchased by God? By the precious blood of the Lamb. He owns us. So, there's a one sense we could say God owns us and is master of us as the Creator and we're his creatures, but in this sense I think we're speaking a much more intimate relationship in that we have been purchased by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's also speaking of a master. What kind of rights would a servant have? If you're a servant, what kind of rights do you have? Yeah. Do you think we can get that as Americans? I mean, like, the one thing that identifies us as a people is that we have rights. Inalienable rights. Yeah, I mean, they're rights that no one can ever possibly question. We have rights. That's the most essential identity marker of an American. Now, I'm glad we're in America. I'm very thankful to be an American. But there's that culture identity making aspect of it You know, I demand my rights, whereas if I'm going to be a good servant, I have to realize I have no rights when it comes to God. He has the right. Have you ever wrestled with that in terms of how I think about my rights and my relationship to God? I wrestle regularly because it brings up repentance regularly. Does that make sense? If we're servants, we're owned We've been purchased. We have a master. When it comes to God, we have no rights. There's no bill of rights for us. There's no inalienable rights for us. We get what He gives us. And thankfully, what He gives us is good because He's the Father of life from whom every good gift comes. In Scripture, we saw here that the idea of servant has a transvaluation. That's a big, fancy word. I'm going to keep using it so you think I'm smart. The idea of servant is elevated. Where else in Scripture do we see a servant elevated as a hero? Okay? Jesus comes as a servant. He comes not to be served, but to serve, and so he washes his feet. Where can we go back a little even further than that? Brian, I know you're just chomping at the bit to say it. Where? Where can we see servant elevated in... Okay. You're the Isaiah man. Every answer you're supposed to give me is supposed to come from Isaiah. So we have the suffering servant songs. We read one recently. when we were covering the path of her lamb with Isaiah 53, that's the most popular suffering servant. The servant comes and he dies and he's glorified. Here we see a servant, in Isaiah we see a servant who will be known as Jesus Christ elevated. I think when Paul and James call themselves servants, they actually are in the back of their minds probably thinking of those suffering servant declarations. Because Christ came to be a servant, and there to be little Christ. That's what it means to be a Christian. That's what the word Christian means. You're little Christians. And so, if you're going to be identified with Christ, you're going to be identified with His suffering. What it means to be a Christian is to suffer. When the early church, I believe, talked about identifying and participating in Christ, I think they knew that the beginning of that always had to do with suffering. Let me just read two passages that I think draw this out very clearly. I'm in Romans 8, verse 17. I'll begin in verse 16. I'll read it. You don't need to turn there. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children, then heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ Provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. We're heirs of Christ provided we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified in Him. We go to 1 Peter chapter 4, I believe verse 13. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed. What both those pastors have in common, one from Paul, one from Peter, is that when you're called to Christ, you're called to participate in His suffering, waiting to participate in His glory. I think we typically hear and believe a gospel that skips that first step. We want Jesus and the glory, whereas if you're a Christian, a little Christ, you know that you participate in Christ and you first participate in His suffering, knowing that the glory is to come. You're called to suffer. As Christians, we're called to be servants and we're called to follow Christ who is a suffering servant, the one who came to serve. If we think we're called to be anything other than suffering servants now, we've missed the gospel. We've missed what it really means to follow Christ. We want the glory, whereas what we're called to today is a suffering. We wait for the glory. Does that make sense? Any questions about that? Again, those passages, I think, pour out this suffering and the glory clear of 1 Peter 4, 13 and Romans 8, 17. Again, we're just thinking about the fact that James is calling himself a servant to God. That means he is owned by God. He serves God. He has no rights with God. God gives him blessing. And as a servant, he is called to suffer. Well, here's where I think we've already kind of felt this. I hope you have. Should we consider ourselves servants? Is this just a special role for apostles? Or should we consider ourselves servants? Yes. Why? Chapter 2. So that's our model. He had all sorts of rights. He gave it all up. He gave it all up. Yeah, this is James calling and our calling is no different. He's a servant. He's called to suffer. We're servants. We're called to suffer. If they crucified our master, what should we expect for ourselves? Not the glory. Yet. So, what rights do we have? As servants before God? None. What He commands We obey. So as we finish out here, we're called to be servants. I believe being a servant means we're going to suffer. And this all really comes together very well for us as we are going to be continuing James as we've already seen. Chapter 1, verse 2. Count it all joy, my brothers. He's identifying with them. I love you. You are my brothers. We have a kinship. We have our joint heir in Christ. 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. As we think about our role as servants, whatever God commands, we believe. Whatever God commands, we should do. Obviously, some of these things are going to be harder to create as a spiritual habit, as a spiritual joy, because it is counterintuitive. We already see the counterintuitiveness. When there's trials, count it as joy. That should make no sense to anyone other than people who are identified with Jesus Christ who died on the cross. The world should look at this. If you're not a Christian, you should look at this and say, that makes no sense. The best advice you have is Nietzsche. Whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. No, this is so much more. Count it joy! Because God is working in you. God is working through you. God is going to bring about you, what is in you, which is perfect and complete. So, this little passage shows us a lot about ourselves. We are dependent upon God. We are servants to God. We are submissive to God. And I believe, as we'll see throughout this, we are called to suffer as children of God. James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the Twelve Tribes in this version, greetings. Any questions on that verse? Yes, Jason. Yeah. The strong argument for it being that James is that that James was a disciple, and you already hear teaching from the letter of James in that passage. If you're familiar with the book of James, there's already allusions to that exact teaching. I think it's the brother. I think there's more. The dating supports the brother of Jesus. not the brother of John but we don't know it's just it's helpful in the sense when it comes up to the canonization issue story I think you had a question yeah that'd be an interesting sibling rivalry Yeah, that's an interesting point. Well, there's kind of two things going there. One, you could look at Peter of all the disciples and you read his epistles with what he went through as a denier of Christ at the very moment of Christ's greatest trial. And then he is obviously converted and becomes the primary spokesperson of the early church, the primary preacher. And we see that have some fruit in his epistles. 1 Peter 4.13, what we saw there. That actually is one of the greater evidences for Christianity, for apologetics sake. You see such a dynamic change in these cowardly, weak, not-so-great men. Both of these James have martyrs' deaths. So these cowards end up being willing to go to death for the savior that they must have seen risen. Yes, Hannah. Yeah, if it's referring to the Acts 11, that may be the exact event. It's not capitalized in my Greek, so I'm not It's an interpretation there. Well that's what makes it somewhat even more interesting and that was the dispersion supposed to be of the twelve literal tribes or is this the believers being called twelve tribes. Again we didn't go into that in detail because there's not a lot of information here and Well, it can get even more thick than the whole servant theology. Yes, Steve? I actually wrestle with this because there's another identity marker that's extremely important and that were sons. What we're getting from James is the call to obey a servant. What you're going to get from Paul is the glory of being adopted into the family of God. That's why we read all of Scripture and we see how all of those identity markers really have to shape us as one. If we cling to the sonship, we're going to miss the call. Well, sonship also implies obedience, but you've got sonship, friendship. All this is by faith in Christ. New identities. Thank you for that. That wraps up a lot right there. well he alludes to the loving your brother throughout this is a very much a an epistle talking about how we relate to one another well next next week we have a church conference uh... where