Good evening. If you would, open
your Bibles to James chapter 1. James chapter 1. James, a
servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes
which are scattered abroad, greeting. My brethren, count it all joy
when you fall into diverse temptations, knowing this, that the trying
of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect
work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to
all liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing
wavering. For he that wavereth is like
a sea of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For let
not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.
A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Let the brother
of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted, but the rich in
that he is made low, because as the flower of the grass he
shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen
with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof
falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth. So also
shall the rich man fade away in his ways. Blessed is the man
that endureth temptation, for when he is tried, he shall receive
the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that
love him. Let no man say when he is tempted,
I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil. neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted when
he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then, when lust
hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished,
bringeth forth death. Do not err, my beloved brethren."
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh
down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning. Of His own will beget He us with
the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His
creatures. Wherefore, my beloved brethren,
let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. For the wrath of man worketh
not the righteousness of God. Wherefore, lay apart all filthiness,
and superfluity of knottedness, and receive with meekness the
engrafted Word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye
doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the
word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural
face in a glass. For he beholdeth himself, and
goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man
he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect
law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful
hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in
his deed. If any man among you seem to
be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his
own heart, this man's religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless
and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted
from the world. Let's bow together and pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father,
Lord, we come tonight thankful first and foremost that you've
given us a place in which to gather together, that we might
hear, speak, and thank on our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus.
Lord, we know that we are sinful people, undeserving of any good
from you, and yet you've given us your word. You've revealed
to us that Christ Jesus, the Lord of glory, is our salvation. Lord, thank you for your grace
and your mercy towards us. Lord, as we meet tonight, oh,
send forth your spirit Anoint us in this congregation that
we will hear Christ in Him crucified and magnified. Glorify Him in
our presence. Anoint Brad as he speaks. Anoint
us as we listen, that we hear not just the words of a man,
but your word, the effectual word, the living word. May it
pierce our hearts. and cause us once more to bow
and behold Christ lifted up on high. Father, make us not forgetful
of your word. Make us doers of it as well.
Have mercy on us. Forgive us of our sins. And Lord,
we pray for all your pastors. Oh, anoint them, Lord. Give them
hearts to study, to seek Christ. Teach them that they might teach
us. Bless us for your son's sake,
not for anything we've done. We deserve nothing but he who
came, dwelt among sinful men and died in our place and rose
again. Lord, bless us for his sake.
For it's in his name we pray. Amen. Thank you, Kim. The Christ honoring
song. Thank you so much. Thank Obi for reading my text
tonight, James chapter one. Let's turn back there together. As he read that chapter, it just
kind of took my breath away. All the things that is mentioned
in this chapter and the things that could be dealt with worthy
of our attention. But I want to deal with a portion
of this chapter tonight, a small portion of it. There's a verse
there, verse 16. It's a very short verse, but
it says, James writes, he says, do not err, my beloved brethren. Well, that tells me, first of
all, that we're prone to error. We're not prone to judge rightly. We're prone to be wrong. We're
prone to get it wrong. Even as believers, we must be
guided. Our thoughts and our actions
need to be guided by the word of God, and we need to attend
to it faithfully. Look to it and read it, asking
God to guide us, to keep us, to teach us, to continue to teach
us. We may have been in the way a
long time, but we sang that song, I Need Thee Every Hour. We need
Him more now than we've ever needed Him, if that's possible.
I don't know that that's possible. But we feel our need of Him more
as we get older, don't we? I want to say two things here
at the outset before we get into the study of the message. Larry
asked me this morning what I was going to preach on, and I said
I want to talk about bad news and good news. I've got some
bad news, and I've got some good news. I've got some bad news,
and as a matter of fact, it's so bad it could not be any worse. The bad news, of our depraved
nature. We cannot overstate it. We cannot
make it worse than it is. We are strangers from God. We are haters of God. Our nature is at enmity against
God. The natural man, the natural
mind, is at enmity against God. And I would go so far as to say
this, that we are, our nature, is the same nature that the worst
man that ever lived and that we can think of is probably Adolf
Hitler. And just think of the horrors
and the murders that that man committed, the hate in his heart
and the innocent men, women, and children that he murdered
and killed. The only difference, if there's
a difference, and thank God there's no Adolf Hitler's among us, God's
made that difference. The only difference is what God
has restrained you and me from. You say, well, that's going a
little too far. Well, consider this. Look at
Golgotha, Calvary, where our Lord was crucified. God removed
all restraint from man. And we hung, we killed God. Thank
goodness we weren't there in person. But had we been there,
we'd have drove the nails. We not only hung Him on a tree
out of a hatred in our heart for God, we not only hung Him
on a tree and just walked away and let Him die, but we spit
in His face. We plucked out his beard. We
smote him. We pierced his side. We mocked
him. That's what we are capable of.
You believe that about yourself? I told you it can't be overstated.
It's so bad. The news about us as natural
men is so bad, it can't be any worse. Now tell me which is worse,
that we in our hearts kill God, would kill God, if we had the
opportunity prior to conversion. Which is worse, that or what
Adolf Hitler did? I say there's no difference.
God is no respecter of persons. We're all Adam's children, and
that's what lies within the heart of each one of us if God does
not restrain us. Who maketh he to differ from
another? You see a lowly man or woman
in the awfulest things and live a life of a harlot, we have no
standing to stick up our nose as we view those folks. Because
we're no better. We're no better. We like to think
that we would never go that low or be that evil. but in our heart
of hearts, without God's restraint. That's us. So, oh, how we need
Him. Oh, how we need Him. Now, the
good news. We sure don't want to stay there. That's a dark
place. You look inside, consider what you are. That is a deep,
dark, dark, depressing place. And if it were not for the good
news of the Gospel in Christ, We should just go home and shut
the door and weep and wail and just wait for judgment. But the
good news far exceeds the bad news. And the good news cannot
be overstated. And the good news is so good,
It cannot be any better. I was going to say gooder, but
that's not... It can't be any better. Don't you often say,
this is too good to be true. I have no sin. I'm nothing but
sin. Yet in God's eyes, where it matters,
according to His eternal word, He sees me in Christ perfect.
and has never have had sin. And if you've ever been in this
dark place and you find out, Scott used to say all the time,
you'll never get any good news until you hear the bad news.
And he took it one step further and he said, once you get the
good news, you'll never have any more bad news. Isn't that
the way it is? So, we read this in our text,
if you look in verse 15, These things that I have said
thus far, they're not just doctrinal truths based on Scripture. In
actuality, that's what we are. This is real. This is what we
are as revealed in Scripture. It's not what men are teaching.
It's not, a lot of times, the way I think. I think I'm better
than I actually am. We get puffed up. We get to thinking
we're better than somebody else. But that's not what the word
says. The word says we are, total depravity is real. We are totally
depraved. It's a doctrinal truth. but it's
where we live, it's what we are. We actually are. And when God
shines the light of His dear Son and we see ourselves in the
light of Him, we come to know that. We come to realize that
and bow to it and agree with God against ourselves. And we put down our pride and
our self-righteousness because we have none. We have none. But
you look in verse 15, It talks about our sin. It said, in sin,
when it's finished, bringeth forth death. And it's not just
talking about natural death. It's talking about spiritual
death. And I heard a preacher say here a few days ago, the
thing about death, it's unlike anything else. It's final. When a man dies, it's final.
Everything's done. And where the tree falls, that's
where it lays for all eternity. the finality of death, and not
only physical death, but when you talk about eternal spiritual
death, eternal separation from God, and the finality of that,
it just overwhelms you. It just brings terror to your
heart to think that a man will end up separated from all that's
good, eternal punishment. Death, sin when it's finished,
brings forth death. And then down in verse 21, the
latter part of the chapter, here's some of the good news. It talks
about, and receive with meekness the engrafted Word which is able
to save your souls, to rescue your souls from this eternal
damnation that sin brings about. So we want to consider these
two things, weighty, weighty, heavy matters, sin and its ultimate
end, and then the Word, which brings salvation. First of all,
notice this. Do not err. Do not err, my beloved
brethren. Sin is entirely of man, and we
must own it as our own. We like to blame our circumstances
on how we react. We may act in a sinful manner
It's because of this or it's because of that. And that's natural
for man to do that, to blame his circumstances or blame other
people, even blame God. Adam blamed God for his sin,
didn't he? He said, the woman that you gave
me, she made me eat. Adam blamed God, so that's natural
to us. But we must own sin as our own,
conceived and brought forth from our own wicked heart, making
us alone as sinners, guilty of transgression and deserving of
sin's finished work, death. Look there in verse 14. First
of all, let no man say when he's tempted, I'm tempted of God.
Don't blame God if you've sinned. God cannot be tempted with evil,
neither tempted He any man. But in verse 14, but every man
is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. His own. The only thing that's
your own is your sin. You own that. It's your own.
His own lust. Not brought in from the outside,
but coming out of that wicked heart. Temptations flow from
where? From the corruption of our nature,
not a victim of circumstances or surroundings. You all remember
a verse over in Genesis chapter 6 and verse 5 where the Lord
made an absolute declaration of man's total depravity and
wickedness. And it says that God saw that
the wickedness of man was very great and that every imagination,
not some of them, every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil and further continually. You talk about an absolute statement
of fact. The whole imagination, his purposes,
his desires, is only evil continually. And his sinful acts, man's sinful
acts, is only a manifestation of what he is. He doesn't have
good days and bad days. Every breath he draws is sin. Every second of every day. Absolutely,
utterly, totally ruined. With no hope. Has no thought
of God, no desire after God. does not seek God, but seeks
his own, loves himself, and loves his sin. In Matthew 15, verse
19, our Lord says, precedes evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Out of your heart,
out of my heart, we're sitting here all dressed up in a church
service. Not talking about me, it's talking
about you and me, isn't it? That's the truth, it can't be
any worse. We cannot be any worse by nature. Scripture says it's
not what goes into a man, not by what he eats, or what he sees,
or what he hears, what he tastes, what he touches. It's not what
comes into a man, but what comes out of a man that defileth. Oh, what we have within us is
a wicked, corrupt, evil heart that hates God. I remember another
occasion, somebody was doing something for our pastor, Scott
Richardson, talking about another fellow. Oh, he's a good man,
good family man. Scott says, well, that may be,
but his only problem is he hates God. And that's the heart of
man. He's telling the truth. Men hated
preachers that tell you the truth. My, we ought to love men that
tells us the truth. We do, though, don't we? God's
people do. Tell me the truth. How can anything
good come forth from that which is wholly evil? Wholly evil. Scripture says this. This ought
to settle the matter. There's none good. No, not one. None righteous. No wonder Paul
said, Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall come and deliver me
from the body of this death? And he said, I know that in me
that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. So if there's
no good thing there, what is there? It's all evil. It's all
evil. There is in our own heart the
root of our own destruction. Our chiefest enemy is us and
what we are. And sin is not dormant. It's
active and it's working. And when its work is finished,
death is the result. Finality. Death is the natural
result of all sin. And we can be dead while we live.
Death or dying does not mean ceasing to exist. We're spiritually
dead while we're physically alive. We read in 1 John 3 and verse
14, He that loveth not his brother abideth in death, lives in death. Now how can that be? You know,
a grain of wheat, it falls into the ground and dies. But it doesn't
cease to be. but it brings forth much fruit.
And Adam, he died in the day that he ate of the forbidden
fruit, as God had said, but his nature was wrecked and ruined
by separation from God and by a fall from the condition which
constitutes the true life of man. Death is the separation
of the soul from God. That spiritual life is non-existent
until God gives us the very life of God that can commune with
God. And without that life of God, we are dead while we live,
dead in trespasses and in sins. And if God doesn't intervene,
He'll bring us to final, complete, eternal ruin in this life and
the life to come as well. This death passed upon all men,
for in Adam all died. And sin, I said it's not dormant,
it's working, it's active. The farther a man goes into sin
and lust and iniquity, the more dead he becomes to purity and
holiness. He loses the power to appreciate
the beauties of virtue or to be disgusted with the abomination
of sin. We can send ourselves into an
utter deadness of conscience. It's not to be trifled with.
Boy, this is serious. It's frightening. Sin is an awful
thing. We have no idea. No idea. We say, my sin is private. No one knows. It's not affecting
anyone. It's affecting you. It's hardening
you, isn't it? It's not dormant. It's not idle.
And it's eternal. Once sin Appears it can never
be put away, but by the sacrifice of God our Savior. That's the
only way that sin can be put away. It's going to have to be
dealt with. Either He's going to deal with
it, or you and I are going to deal with it. Serious business. Sin is working, it's active.
It's not a thing to be toyed with and put away. It's in the
past and it's gone. It's not. Hebrews 3.13, it says,
As believers, exhort one another daily, lest any of you be hardened
through the deceitfulness of sin. Sin is deceitful. It promises
things it can't deliver. It promises happiness. and all
these things that are flesh desires, but it will deceive you. It will
ruin your soul. Sin has a blinding effect, a
hardening effect, and the heart running after sin can have no
interaction with the holy God. It doesn't even have the desire
for God. His sin has killed him toward
all desire for God. It's not a small thing. It's
an awful thing. I can't overstate it. So we see
that sin not only ends in death, it's working even now. And we're
dead while we live if we're outside of Christ. We are void of the
true life of God. True life is in Him and in Him
alone. Eternal life. You know, I like
what Tim James said one time. I've always remembered this.
When God gives a man life, He not only restores what he lost,
but He gave him a righteousness which he can never lose. He said
Adam didn't have eternal life because he lost it. But we're
given eternal life that we can never lose. We can never fall
in Him. And that's the good news part.
It can't get any better. It can't get any better. But
God has justly appointed that if a man will not be conformed
to God, he shall never know happiness, true happiness and joy. And if
a man will follow after that which is evil, that evil shall
of necessity, the consequences of sin shall of necessity bring
with it sorrow and unrest. Look with me for a minute over
in Romans 2. In verse 8. but unto them that are contentious,
and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation
and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth
evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile." Tribulation
and anguish. We read in another place, the
way of the transgressor is hard. It's a hard way. There's no happiness. and joy in a life of sin. No man knows true lasting happiness
in his pursuit of sin and worldly gain. Scripture says to be carnally
minded is death. No man knows true delight who
does not delight himself in the Almighty, in our dear blessed
Savior. Consider now with me too that
the death and the dying that we presently view in this world
which is a consequence, a result of sin that has entered in this
world. Death passed upon all men. I
believe it manifests and testifies to the truth of Scripture regarding
sin. We see this with our natural
eyes. We see a new baby, and we're delighted in its sweetness,
its beauty, and how we love to look at him or look at her, holding,
touching. Their skin is so new and it's
so soft. They smell so good, their hair's
shiny, their eyes are bright and wide open. In a sense, we
wish they could stay that way, but I sometimes cannot help but
see that our, that dear child soon gray-haired and wrinkled,
and bent over in weakness and frailty. And imagine that beautiful,
unblemished flesh soon rotting in a grave of corruption. I don't
like to think about those things, but we need to be mindful. The Scripture says, Lord, make
me to know my end, the measure of my days, what it is, how frail
I am. We don't want to live like we're
never going to die, like our children's never going to die.
But we need to come to grips with it. We need to pray for
our children if they're lost. My, oh my, they're in a fearful
place. We just talked about that. And
the only way I can live and have some peace is that there is yet
space to repent for my children and my grandchildren, and who
can tell that God in His time will bring them to Himself. But
to live as though these things were not real and exist is not
wise, because they will come upon us as a surprise. Let's
not be surprised when these things happen, if God will help us.
Not an easy thing to deal with and to think about. And I know
that. But we as believers, we trust
God and know He's going to do right. And whatever happens to
my children and your children, those that we love, it's God. Let Him do what seemeth good.
We see all around us death and decay. Our earth is a mass graveyard. Just think of the generations
that are planted in this earth. Every community throughout the
world has a graveyard, if not many graveyards, and they speak
to us as we view them of the end of all flesh. Can't help
but think of that when you drive by a cemetery, the end of all
flesh, and nothing remains new. Change and decay in all around
us see. O thou who changest not, abide
with me. Because the world is a world
of sin, it's a world of sorrow. You read about it this morning.
Our Lord Himself came to this earth and He was a man of sorrows.
This world is a world of sorrow because it's a world of sin.
Disease and tragedy surrounds us. Wars and fightings, stirrings
and contentions and murders, oppressions and all manner of
ungodliness abound and hatred. Sin brings all this upon us.
And rightfully so, deservedly so. It's only the mercy of God
that He hasn't cast us all into hell. Anything short of that
is the mercy of God. Sin deserves condemnation and
its bitter consequences. Sin is evil. And then before
we come to our next point, I want us to notice the writer giving
a warning against errors. He says, as I mentioned in verse
16, Do not err, my beloved brethren, lest we charge God with any part
in sin or the resulting consequences of it, as did Adam in the garden.
He said, the woman that thou gavest me, she gave me of the
tree and I did eat. God gave Eve to Adam to help
him. And Adam turned around, this
is your help meat. It's not good for a man to be
alone. I'm going to give you a wife. every good and perfect
gift cometh from above." We just read that, or Elbie just read
that. And Adam turned it around and used Eve to blame God for
his sin. Now, that's evil. That's hateful. Oh my. But God is untemptable
by evils, not being capable of being tempted by things wicked
or sinful. Therefore, He cannot tempt man
to what is sinful, We must confess our own guilt and wholly own
it. And when you wholly own your
sin, and it's me, and I'm responsible to God for what I've done, what
I've thought, what I am, wholly my own, you're a candidate for
mercy, aren't you? You're going to start crying
out for mercy. That's my only hope. Wholly own
your sin and never implicate God as though He compelled us
to sin. Or say, God could have kept me
from this, but He didn't. That's evil. As David confessed
his own sin, he said, against thee and thee only have I sinned
and done this evil in thy sight that you might be clear when
you judge, you might be justified when you speak. Sin. We must own our sin. And I've
touched on some things, but I'm sure we can't fully grasp the
far-reaching consequences of sin. They're far-reaching. Everything
it touches corrupts and defiles. And our understanding is darkened
by sin and by the limits of our flesh. And the faculties of our
mind and reason, they're incapable of discerning rightly. That's
why we need the Word of God. That's why we need to be paying
attention to the Word of God. But sin not only produces temporal
consequences, but most importantly, we've touched on this, eternal
death and damnation, punishment and separation from the God of
all grace. And I'm going to try to hurry
and wind this up pretty quick. As surely as rivers run into
the sea, so surely must sin run into death. Eternal death. And the scripture calls it everlasting
destruction. What must that be? Not for a
period of time, but for eternity. Everlasting destruction. Death
is a wage. We work for wages. Death is the
result of our sin that we've worked for. The wages of sin
is death. That's what the scripture says.
Death is earned. Death is worked for. Sin brings
its natural consequences with it, but eternal life It's not
the purchase of human merit, but it's the free gift of the
love of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Death is a wage. Salvation is a gift. The wages
of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord. He gives it to us. Can't get
any better. I said that. And I've heard this
said, and you have too, that if I wind up in hell, it'll be
my own fault because of my sin. But if I wind up in God's eternal
glory, it'll be God's fault. It'll be all of Him. Oh, my. Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. I'm going to have
to skip over some things. I don't want to wear you out.
Oh, my. Down in verse 21, we read, Wherefore,
lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and
receive with meekness the engrafted Word, which is able to save your
souls. A couple of things here, I was
kind of struck, I don't know that I ever paused here before,
and it talks about, he's talking to believers here. Lay apart
all filthiness, I mean, these are believers. Lay apart all
filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with
meekness the engrafted Word, which is able to save your souls.
We're still dealing with this old man, and I think when we
come to hear the Word, what it's saying to us here is, Lay aside,
lay apart all pride, all anger and malice and wrath. It says
in another place to put off anger and wrath and malice and all
these things. And superfluity of naughtiness.
That means abundance of evil and sin. Put off those things. When you hear the Word preached,
when you read the Word, receive it as a little child, with meekness,
with humility, that I need. I'm not thinking about somebody
else and what they've done that's offended me, and that I had a
good week and I did better this week than I did last week. That's
evil. That's sin. Put that aside. Forget self. Concentrate on God's
Word. Receive His Word that you need
to keep you, to guide you, to instruct you, to keep you from
sin, to keep you from dishonoring your Master. Lay all this aside
and receive with meekness. Come empty, needing to be filled. An empty heart is the only heart
that can be filled with the fullness of God. I believe that's what
that's saying, because we live in this world and we still deal
with that old man, that old nature that's against God. and that
cannot believe God. That old man cannot believe God,
will not believe God. If it were not for the new man,
there would be no restraint and we would dishonor God. And we
don't want to come with preconceived notions and ideas and what we
think, but God teach me, help me to receive what you have to
say and bow to Your Word. And speak to me through Your
Word today what I need to hear. Because I don't know the way.
I don't have the power to keep myself from sin. I don't have
the power to live the way You would have me to live. Lord,
You must enable me. You must teach me. You must show
me the way. Be a light under my path, a lamp
under my feet. The Word of God. And we've got
to come the right way. And God will speak to us when
we come as a child in meekness and humility. And a little bit
about this engrafted word. Spurgeon commented, receive with
meekness the engrafted word. I thought this was good. Spurgeon
said that a graft needs two wounds. There's some cutting going on.
There's some wounding going on. You wound the tree and then you
wound that better tree. which is to be grafted in. And is it not a blessed grafting
when a wounded Savior comes into living contact with a wounded
heart, when a bleeding heart is engrafted with a bleeding
Savior, and the life of God comes into our souls? Oh, my. It can't get any better. It just
can't. Oh, boy. I could go on. I've
skipped over a lot of stuff. I hope that'll do us for tonight.
I'm gonna quit. Y'all been so attentive, and
I thank you. I hope you overlook me for my stumbling and fumbling,
but this has been on my heart. I tried to be honest with you
and deal with the Word of God honestly. Said some hard things,
but I believe it's the truth. That's why I've got the Word
of God open. And these notes are just to keep me on track.
I had my Bible open when I was making these notes. So I hope
we honor God and hope it was a help to you tonight and Christ
was made precious to us. Oh my, where would we be without
our Savior? We'd be lost, wouldn't we? Yeah,
there'd be no hope.