We're in James chapter two and reading from verse 21. Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works when she had received the messengers and had sent them out another way. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this reading from his word. Every religious lie contains within it some small measure of truth. Every demonic deception is sufficiently disguised as to seem plausible, at least at first. It has always been the devil's desire to rob God of glory and claim it for himself. And his own fault was pride. And he knows the power of pride to deceive the heart of man. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sinned against God and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they were told not to eat of. And the Bible tells us in Genesis chapter three, the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. These aprons that Adam and Eve made for themselves were man's first attempt to cover his shame and deny the presence of sin. And ever since, man has been sewing together a patchwork of homespun remedies to try to hide our crimes and curry favour with God, to try to recover the paradise that we lost. Ultimately, all our efforts come down to trying our best to work our way back to God. Though truly, no one has ever really tried their best. And if they had, they'd still find it inadequate. All that human concocted religion does is to lead men in dark circles. And Satan is happy to allow this. Satan is happy to encourage and maintain that man-made religion that seems to fill the world in so many ways these days. Satan is happy to encourage it and maintain it and extend it. because he knows that he will fill men's minds with that kind of religion and it can do them no good. He knows that there is no salvation in human merit, in human works, and we have nothing in ourselves with which to placate God in his righteous anger or to please him for our good. From the very beginning, from the very beginning of the world, God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Genesis 6 verse 5, after the fall. Paul could truthfully say, bearing testimony to his own experience in his own life, I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. Everything in us by nature is tainted and spoiled by sin. Our depravity is so extensive as to be total. Sin corrupts every aspect of our nature. So no part is without sin. People hear that little phrase, total depravity, and they think that we're suggesting that every single person is as evil and as wicked as they possibly can be. That isn't exactly what that says. What it means is that there is not a part of man that isn't fallen, and therefore, nothing within us can recommend us to God in any way. There is nothing in us to please God, nothing to recommend us to him. Having broken our relationship with God, it is not in our power to recover what has been lost. If we are ever again to know God as a friend, ever again to find peace with God, It must be at His instigation and it must be by His strength and power, for that strength and power is not within us. It must be by God's grace and at His doing.

The message of the gospel and the reason why we have something to say today to this world and to men and women and boys and girls of this world is that God has sovereignly, unilaterally and successfully provided a way of salvation. That despite man's inability God has opened a way in the person of his son, Jesus Christ. He has found a way of cleansing us from sin and making us righteous in his sight. That's righteous in his sight is what the Bible calls justification. He has found a way to a just way of bringing men to himself. And he has done it upon the merits of the substitutionary death of his own dear son.

God has provided a means of reconciliation, a way to reunite men to himself and to restore that fellowship that was lost in the garden. and it is all his own work. It is entirely God's work. The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, in the book of Jonah, salvation is of the Lord and that means what it says. There is a way back to God by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I wish every man, woman and child would give attention to this fact that there is a way back to God.

But let me add this important rider. Not only can man do nothing to obtain salvation for himself, he can neither make himself eligible for it, He cannot in any way recommend himself to God. Such is the nature of sin. In our nature, in the natural man, we are not neutral towards God. We are not passive observers of what's going on in the world. The Bible teaches us we are active, rebellious enemies of God. It is our carnal nature to be enmity towards God. We are disposed against him. We can do nothing to save ourselves. We contribute nothing to recommend ourselves to God for salvation.

Let me put it rather frankly like this. A clean living, highly moral church goer is no more eligible for salvation, for all his religion, than a lying, idolatrous prostitute. And I choose my words carefully. Rahab the harlot was, it seems, just such a person. And yet James tells us here that she found grace in the sight of God.

James's choice of examples in this little passage on the work of faith are revealing. Both Abraham and Rahab were idol worshippers until the grace of God called them out of sin and darkness. Their good works were the fruit of their conversion, not the means. And as we shall see, they acted as they did because they trusted the Lord. The Spirit of God within them motivated their actions and their works.

The great emphasis of God's word is that salvation is freely granted to men and women as sinners. It is not given to righteous people. Salvation is freely granted to men and women as sinners. as sinners still in their sin. The Lord Jesus explicitly tells us in Matthew 9, 12, they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Paul tells us, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. 1 Timothy 1, verse 15. And what makes this saying faithful is its consistency with the whole of Scripture. It agrees with all of God's revelation for the redemption and recovery of fallen corrupt creatures. It is sinners Christ came to save, not men and women good in their own eyes, not proud self-righteous people trying to get to heaven on their own. It is sinners Christ came to save, men and women whose eyes have been opened to see the true nature of their soul and their own inability to save themselves. Your only eligibility for salvation is your felt need of a saviour. It is while we were without strength, yet sinners and enemies to God, that God's love was set upon us and Christ died for the ungodly.

I want to take just a couple of headings and then make a quick application and we'll be done today. The first thing I want to draw your attention to is this repetition by James of the phrase justified by works. James uses the phrase justified by works twice in today's passage. And we need not be intimidated in any way by Bible phrases. We stress repeatedly that Men are justified by grace without works. And yet, in the way in which James is speaking to us here, there is a sense in which a man is justified by works. but not before God, as Paul tells us in Romans chapter four, verse two. We must rightly divide the word of truth and find what these words mean in their context.

Some have tried to suggest from this passage that James is teaching that faith and good works must join together and cooperate for a sinner to be truly righteous in God's sight. And under that construction, God provides faith as a gift and man adds his good works, his moral obedience. And then by a process of cooperation, a merging of divine faith and human works, God is pleased and the man earns justification and enjoys acceptance with God. Well that is a perverse theory and we utterly reject it. It is not at all what James is saying. And were it not that proud men wish to heighten their own self-worth, There would be no question as to what is meant.

James isn't speaking of the causes of a man's justification before God. He is showing, rather, the effects of that justification. The practical, lively effects of implanted righteousness in the heart of a converted sinner. Righteousness is imputed in justification and acceptance with God is assured thereby. That work of justifying is God's own work and he applies, he imputes, he regards, he considers those whom he chooses, those whom he chose in eternity to be righteous in his sight in Christ, having placed them in Christ in the eternal councils, in the eternal purposes of God, he regards his elect people as justified in his sight, righteous in Christ. Thereafter, when faith is gifted, the desire to live as befits God's glory and Christ's praise is imparted into the heart of the new man at conversion.

Christ makes all things new. The Lord Jesus Christ doesn't come into a man's heart and make all things the same as ever they were. New hope, new joys, new ambitions, new relationships, are occasioned, arise because of the transformation that the Spirit of God makes in the heart of God's chosen people.

James is teaching us, he is teaching the church that justifying righteousness isn't a dormant declaration on God's part only. really shouldn't have put only in there, it isn't at all, it isn't a mere declaration on God's part. It is an activating impulse for God's glory. Believers have Christ in them and it shows. Justification is an eternal work. Faith occurs in time. And the implication of both of these things together revolutionize and transform and convert and change the nature of the old man.

Right, I've said that wrong. It doesn't change the nature of the old man. It creates a new man.

The second thing I want to draw your attention to is the power of faith and the transforming work that it does. God's gift of faith is given in this time state. So justification is an eternal work in which God counts as righteous, those whom he has chosen in Christ. But he gives faith in this time state. He sends at that time of love, he sends at that time of conversion, the Holy Spirit into the life of a man or a woman through the preaching of the gospel and brings them to a knowledge of the truth. His gift of faith is given in this time state to all those justified and sanctified in Christ in the eternal covenant of peace.

We trace, believers, trace all our spiritual blessings back before time began to the eternal purpose of God and his counsel of grace and truth. Faith lays hold of God's everlasting promises. Faith is laying hold upon what God has said and revealed to us in his word. Faith discovers life and forgiveness in Christ. It understands the meaning of the cross, the power of the blood of Christ shed at Calvary. It realises that it was done for the remission of sins and has accomplished effectually what it was paid to accomplish, shed to accomplish. And faith confirms to us our righteousness and justification before God.

Faith does not gain righteousness, it experiences it. Faith brings with it personal knowledge of divine grace and life-changing conversion. We are what we are. We are believers in Christ because of God's gift of faith to us. And that gift of faith changes who we are. A new man is a new creation and transformation of life follows. Faith is a free unconditional gift bestowed to God's elect people whom he has loved everlastingly and secured eternally in Christ Jesus. Salvation is entirely by God's grace. It is founded in covenant promises, rests wholly on the merits of Christ's sacrifice, and its blessings and its benefits are enjoyed by faith in a believer.

So faith in itself is in no way meritorious. Believing and trusting does not gain God's pleasure or bring his admiration. When James says, faith wrought with his, that is Abraham's works, and by works was faith made perfect, he isn't speaking of faith that earns righteousness. The Bible never uses that kind of language. We're not saved because of our faith. Rather, faith is the means by which justification and salvation, which God has accomplished, are experienced in our lives. It's the vehicle by which forgiveness is conveyed and delivered to us. It's the channel by which Christ's righteousness is applied to a sinner's conscience and brings a felt sense of peace with God.

Faith is not simply an intellectual, cerebral thing in our minds. It isn't just doctrine. It touches our emotions. It touches our feelings. It alters our hopes and it diminishes our fears. It influences our conduct. It changes our ambitions. It moves us to worship and serve the Lord. We live by faith in all senses of the word live.

James gives two examples in proof of what he is telling us. Christ's faith, the faith of Jesus Christ, the faith of which Christ is both author and finisher, having once been imparted in a man's soul, carries with it spiritual life and practical liveliness. It enables engagement with God and with men. Faith is manifested in our Christian worship, When we come together to worship God, it is faith that helps us to understand that God is hearing our worship. God is participating in our worship. He is receiving and is well-pleased with our worship. It is faith that enables that. Faith is evidenced in our service. It is revealed in a believer's desire to be obedient, to God and for God. And by that practical outworking, it is confirmed that our faith is true and genuine.

This is what Hebrews 11 is all about. Hebrews 11, you'll remember, is that passage, that long passage where the writer to the Hebrews speaks about all those heroes of the faith, that great congregation. and it is living and acting upon the promises of God that motivated all of those people to live for and serve the Lord. The two examples quoted by James here, Abraham and Rahab, they are quoted in Hebrews 11 as well. Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and Rahab's preservation of the spies strengthen and reinforce James's argument.

Abraham, or he was at that time called Abram, was simply a man living in Ur of the Chaldees. He was an idolater. He had no knowledge of God. He had no love for God. He had no desire to follow God. Rahab was a Canaanitish innkeeper. She's called in scripture a harlot. Now some people have suggested that that word doesn't have the connotations that we have for it today, and yet it appears that it has exactly that meaning in the way in which the New Testament writers often employ the things that characterized her life. But neither of them, Abraham nor Rahab, had good works to recommend them to God or to work with their faith to secure God's blessing. On the contrary, their works flowed from their faith as the work of faith. God gave them faith, then tested that faith in these concrete ways. And he does that with all of his people. That is what he is doing with you and with me today. He tests our faith in the way in which we live and the challenges that we face and the difficulties that we encounter. And he calls us to exercise our trust in him despite the challenges that we face and the inconsistencies that appear in our lives.

Abraham was a worshipper of God long before the Lord showed him how all the nations of the world would be blessed in him. And how was that to happen? How were all the nations of the world to be blessed in Abraham? Insofar as he would be the father of the faithful and in the line and be a father in that line from whom the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, would come. It is through Christ that all of the world is blessed. But of course, a child to Abraham and Sarah was integral to this purpose. And for a long time, Abraham wrestled with the barrenness that afflicted himself and Sarah. And then when Isaac finally was born in old age, Abraham rejoiced in God's faithfulness. Here was the evidence. Isaac was the child of promise. What then could the Lord mean by asking Abraham to sacrifice the boy on an altar? That didn't make sense. That didn't compute with what the Lord had promised, with what the Lord had said. And yet Abraham obeyed. He gathered wood. He built the altar. He secured his son to it. He brandished the knife to slay the boy. and that declared the reality of his faith. His actions showed his faith was genuine. He trusted beyond understanding that God is faithful. The Lord would have to raise Isaac from the dead. I'm sure that that, well, that's what Hebrews teaches us. That's what Abraham understood. That's what he believed. And it was an extraordinary testimony to the genuineness, the reality of Abraham's faith.

We know how the account ended. The Lord withheld Abraham's hand. The Lord provided himself a ram caught in a thicket and bequeathed to the church a beautiful preview, a type of Christ's own sacrifice.

And what of Rahab, a Canaanite inhabitant of Jericho whose faith is also spoken of in Hebrews 11. She believed the God of the Hebrews was the true God. How did she know that? How had she heard that? Was it a traveler? Had she picked that story up about the way in which the Lord had delivered these people out of Egypt and all of the miracles that had happened there? And she heard that and she believed. And through the 40 years that the children of Israel were in the wilderness, in some way, that woman came to a knowledge of the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and she believed in that God. I don't know how that occurred. I don't know how that message was conveyed, how that lesson was taught, but she trusted. and she believed that God planned to give the land of Canaan to the children of Israel. When Joshua sent two spies to Jericho, the men were in danger in the city, but they were delivered by the efforts of Rahab into whose house they'd gone for protection. And when the city of Jericho fell in Joshua chapter 6 verse 17, Rahab and her family were saved unhurt according to the promise of the spies. And again, there is no suggestion here that Rahab's works improved or added to her faith for justification. Rather, the authenticity of her faith, the reality of her faith was manifested by her hiding the spies. And it was witnessed before all Israel when she and her family were brought out of the city and their lives preserved. In a lovely rider to this account, we find that she later married a man called Salmon who is called a prince in Israel and was in the line of David and ultimately herself in the line of Christ. Let us just think in closing about the little phrase that we encounter here at the end concerning Abraham, the friend of God. Abraham was called the friend of God because Abraham and God were reconciled and at peace. The one with the other. God sovereignly befriended Abraham. and then made him to love him who first loved him. No less was Rahab the friend of God, and every redeemed believer is a friend of God. We all are friends of God who are in Christ Jesus and reconciled by Christ's atoning blood. Paul says in Romans 5 verse 10, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. And when Christ lives in a believer's heart, that sanctified soul aspires to Christ-likeness. That soul exhibits brotherly love and produces fruitful service. There is a work of righteousness in a believer's heart and an effect of righteousness in the way in which we live. Isaiah 32 verse 17 alludes to that and it's a beautiful little picture. There is a work of righteousness in a believer's heart and an effect of righteousness in the way that we live. Jesus says, by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another. Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you. And James agrees with that. And Paul and James agree. James asks rhetorically, what profit is there if a man claimed to have faith but shows no love for his brethren? And Paul instructs Titus, he says in Titus 3 verse 8, these things I will that thou affirm constantly that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men. Profitability as believers emanates from our worship and our service towards God and that which we can do to the help and the assistance of our brothers and sisters in the Lord and the men and women of this world. May the Lord enable us to be faithful towards Him And may he enable us to be profitable towards men, for Christ's sake. Amen.