Did you see? Todd's Road Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Todd
Niver. We are located at 4137 Todd's
Road, two miles outside of Manowar Boulevard. Sunday services are
at 1030 a.m. and 6 p.m. Bible study is at
945 a.m. Wednesday services are at 7 p.m. Nursery is provided for all services.
For more information, visit our website at toddsroadgracechurch.com.
Now here's our pastor, Todd Nybert. I'm speaking this morning from
James chapter 2. I'd like to begin reading in
verse 14. And I've entitled this message,
A Deadly Separation. Beginning in verse 14, James
says, What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he
hath faith, and hath not works? Can faith save him? He gives us a scenario to illustrate
what he's talking about. Verse 15, if a brother or sister
be naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto
them, depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled. Notwithstanding, you give them
not those things which are needful to the body, what does it profit? If someone knocks on your door
and says, I'm cold and I'm hungry, And you send them away with a
smile saying, be warmed and be filled. And you don't give them
the coat to help them in their coldness. And if you don't give
them the food to relieve their hunger, your well wishes or my
well wishes are absolutely meaningless. James says, even so, faith, if
it hath not works, is dead. being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast
faith, and I have works. Now here we see a separation
taking place. One man says, I have faith. Another man says, well, I have
works. Is that possible? Can you have
faith without the works that prove that faith? Can you have
true works without faith, works that God is pleased with without
the faith of the gospel? This is a separation that cannot
be made. James says, yea, a man may say
thou hast faith and I have works Show me thy faith without thy
works. It can't be done. And then James
says, I will show thee my faith by my works. As I said, James is bringing
us a hypothetical situation of one person having faith and the
other person having works. And he lets us know that that
cannot be. These two things cannot be separated
and I'd like to illustrate this with an Old Testament story.
It's a very familiar Old Testament story. In the book of 1 Kings
chapter 3 Solomon is getting ready to take over as king in
the place of his father David. And we read in verse 5 of 1 Kings
chapter 3 in Gibeon The Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream
by night and God said, ask what I shall give thee. Ask me anything. And I will give it to you. And
Solomon said, Thou hast shown unto thy servant David, my father,
great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth,
and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with thee.
And thou hast kept for him this great kindness, that thou hast
given him a son to sit on his throne as it is this day. Solomon
is acknowledging that the Lord is making him king now in the
place of his father David. And here's what he asks for.
And now, O LORD my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead
of David my father, and I am but a little child. I know not how to go out or come
in, and thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou
hast chosen, a great people that cannot be numbered nor counted
for multitude. Give therefore thy servant an
understanding heart. He asks for understanding and
wisdom. He doesn't ask for riches or
military might. He asks for understanding. Give thy servant an understanding
heart to judge thy people that I may discern between good and
bad. For who is able to judge this
thy so great a people?" And the speech pleased the Lord that
Solomon had asked this thing. And he goes on to say, I'm going
to give you military might, I'm going to give you riches, I'm
going to give you wealth, I'm going to give you protection,
because you've asked for this one thing, wisdom. Now, as we
go on reading in this chapter, we find out how this wisdom is
manifested, beginning in verse 16 of 1 Kings chapter 3. If you
have a Bible, it would be helpful to read along. Then came there
two women, that were harlots unto the king, and stood before
him. And the one woman said, O my
Lord, I and this woman dwell in one house. I was delivered
of a child with her in the house. And it came to pass the third
day that after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered
also. They had babies two days apart. And we were together. There was no stranger with us
in the house, save we two in the house. And this woman's child
died in the night. because she overlaid it. She
rolled over on it and smothered it, and it died. And she arose
at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid
slept, and laid it in her bosom. This woman whose child died got
up and took the living child, and laid it in her bosom, and
laid her dead child in my bosom. And when I arose in the morning
to give my child suck, behold, it was dead. But when I had considered
it in the morning, behold, it was not my son, which I did bear. And the other woman said, Nay,
but the living child is my son, and the dead is thy son. And
they said, No, but the dead is thy son, and the living is my
son. Thus they spake with the king,"
bringing this problem. Now, how is he going to find
out the truth regarding whose child this really was? Listen
carefully, verse 23. Then said the king, The one saith,
This is my son that liveth, and thy son is dead. And the other
saith, Nay, but thy son is dead, and my son is the living. And
the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before
the king, and the king said, Divide the living child in two,
and give half to the one, and half to the other. Separate the
child, divide the child in two, and both women will be satisfied.
You give one half to one and one half to the other. That's
the only fair thing to do. Verse 26, Then spake the woman
whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned
upon her son. And she said, O my Lord, give
her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other
said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. It's
OK. Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child,
and I know I slay it. She is the mother thereof. Now,
the one who loved the child was not willing for it to be divided
or separated. She would lose it from herself
before she would let that child be killed. Now, if this child
was separated, what would you have? you would have a dead child. Now, with regard to works and
faith, one man says, I have works, another man says, I have faith.
If you have works without faith, you have what the writer to the
Hebrews calls two times in the book of Hebrews, dead works,
lifeless works. And if you have faith without
works, what does James call that faith? Dead faith, a faith that
will not save. Now James says, show me your
faith without your works. It cannot be done any more than
saying be warmed and filled can make someone warm and fill their
stomach with food if you don't give them the coat and give them
the food. He says show me your faith without
your works. I'll show me the my faith by
my works. Now let me say faith is not merely
giving assent to some facts and propositions from the scripture. And let me repeat that. Faith
is not merely giving assent to some facts and propositions from
the scriptures, saying, well, I see the Bible does teach that,
and I agree with that. That's what I believe. Look what
James says in verse 19. Thou believest that there's one
God? Thou doest well. The devils also believe and tremble
They give assent to that true proposition from the Scripture
that there is but one God. They believe that, but it is
not faith because faith is not merely giving assent to
truth from the Scripture. You see, faith is a living and
a powerful thing. Did you know it's the gift of
God? If you have faith, it's a supernatural gift of God. By grace, you save through faith.
And that not of yourselves, it's the gift of God. Not of works,
lest any man should boast. Faith is a part of the fruit
of God the Holy Spirit. It comes from God the Holy Spirit.
When Paul spoke in 1 Corinthians 13 of the three things that abide
and remain, he said, now abideth, remaineth faith, hope, and charity,
these three. These three are always together. Faith is not merely giving assent
to something. It's always accompanied with
love and hope. As a matter of fact, Paul said
in Galatians 5, verse 6, faith worketh by love. He said we walk by faith. We stand by faith. Faith is the
evidence of things not seen. What is the evidence that God's
done something for me? Faith is the evidence that God
has given me a new heart and a new birth and regenerated my
soul and given me a new nature. The evidence is faith. The Lord
said, according to your faith be it unto you. He said to his
disciples, if you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, You'll
say to this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it
shall remove. You know, there were some men
who brought a man to the Lord while he was preaching, four
men bearing this man, and they couldn't get into him, and they
climbed up on the top of the roof, and they knocked a hole
in the roof, and they let this man down before the Lord. They
never said anything, and the Lord, Scripture says, when he
saw their faith, Now, they didn't say anything, but what was it
he saw? He saw that these men knew that
the only one who could do anything for their friend was the Lord
Jesus Christ, and they were going to do whatever it took to get
into His presence. You see, faith does something.
Faith is not a mere assent to some propositions and facts.
We read in Romans 3.25 of faith in his blood. Now take Cain and
Abel. Which one proved he had faith in his blood? Abel. He's
the one who brought the blood sacrifice. Cain heard the same
thing Abel did, but he saw no need to do that. He simply brought
the fruit of the ground. We read in 2 Corinthians 4.13
of the spirit of faith. I believe, therefore, have I
spoken. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Four times we read
the just shall live by faith. Ephesians 3.17 speaks of Christ
dwelling in the heart by faith. And we read of the shield of
faith which will quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. We
read of the joy of faith, the service of faith, the work of
faith, the boldness of the faith. Fight the good fight of faith,
keeping the faith. We read that we understand by
faith. You're not going to understand
anything until you first believe. And until you believe, you will
not understand anything. Now, this tells us something
about the power of faith. Now, this faith cannot have the
works that flow from it separated from it. It can't happen. You can't have one without the
other. Faith worketh by love. Now let me tell you, first of
all, what this is not saying. When James says, yea, a man may
say thou hast faith and I have works. Show me thy faith without
thy works and I'll show thee my faith by my works. Let me
tell you, first of all, what James is not saying. So please
listen carefully. James is not saying You can only
have assurance that your faith is real by the works that flow
from it. What am I saying? Well, somebody
says, well, I must have real faith because of how good I'm
enabled to be. I mean, I read the scripture,
I pray, I witness. I seem to get more and more victory
over sin. I seem to get better and better.
I must have saving faith. Now, if you really think something
like that, you prove you don't have saving faith. You have faith
in yourself. Your assurance is based upon
how good you think you are. And let me assure you, that's
a false assurance. You're blind if you have that
high an opinion of yourself. Well, look how holy I'm becoming.
You're as unholy as you could possibly be even thinking something
like that. You prove by that you have no
idea what holiness is or what righteousness is if you have
that high opinion of yourself. Now James is not saying you have
to be really good and you have to see how holy and righteous
you are before you can be assured you have faith. That any assurance
you have that's not Christ only is a false assurance and the
sooner you get rid of it the better. James is not saying we
gain assurance by how good we are and we can't really have
assurance that we have faith until we see how good we personally
are. James is not saying we prove to others our faith by our works. James is not saying we prove
to others our faith by our works. You've heard that saying, I'd
rather see a sermon than hear one? That's foolishness. No one has ever been saved by
seeing the good conduct of someone else. Faith cometh by hearing. and hearing by the Word of God.
I want to hear the Gospel. Now, I want to see someone whose
life is consistent with the Gospel, and I want my life to be consistent
with the Gospel. I'm not discounting that, but
this idea of, I want people to see Christ in me. They didn't
see Christ in Christ. They didn't believe on Christ
because of his good works. They didn't persecute him because
of his good works. He said, many good works have
I shown you of my Father. For which of these do you stone
me? And they said, for a good work shall we not, because thou
being a man makest thyself God. They were upset with him about
what he said about himself and about what he said about men
and what he said about his salvation. I need to hear the gospel, not
just see a good example. I need to hear the gospel. What is the Lord saying, or what
is James saying, and it's the Lord saying it through James,
when James says, show me your faith without your works, and
I'll show you my faith by my works. Well, what it means is
where there's true faith, it's always accompanied with works
that demonstrate you really believe what you say you do. Where there's
true faith, It will always be accompanied with works that prove
you really believe what you say you do. Now, I can go in so many
different directions with this. First, it will cause our methods
in church, in preaching the gospel, in a worship service, It will
cause our methods to line up with our message. The songs we
sing, if we really believe grace, are going to exalt the grace
of God. They're not going to begin with an I. I'm going to
do this. I'm going to do that. I will worship. I will praise.
I hate these modern praise songs. They glorify the flesh. They're
praising me and not God. And if I really believe grace,
the songs we sing in our worship services will reflect what we
really believe. If I really believe salvation's
of the Lord, I'm not going to have an altar call. I'm not going
to try to put pressure on people and try to get them to make some
kind of decision before everybody. I'm looking to God to take care
of the results. I know salvation's not coming
down to the front of the church or responding to an altar call.
Salvation's coming to Christ. If I really believe salvation's
by grace, I'm sure not going to be baptizing infants. You
know, I see people in so many churches who baptize infants
that don't believe and they'll say, well, we don't think it
has anything to do with their salvation. Why do you do it then?
The only reason you do something like that is you believe it helps
that infant out in some way, and that's a denial of salvation
by grace. If we really believe that the
gospel is the power of God to salvation, what are we going
to do? We're going to preach the gospel. and leave it alone,
leave it in God's hands. It's the gospel that's the power
of God to salvation, not my ability to talk somebody into something.
If I really believe what the Bible says, it pleased God by
the foolishness of preaching to save them to believe. What's
the focal point of what we're doing? It'll be preaching, preaching
the gospel. If we really believe what Romans
6.14 says, you're not under law but under grace, We're not going
to use law to motivate and manipulate and to scare people. We preach
the grace of God. If we really believe what Jonah
said, salvation is of the Lord, what will we do? We'll preach
salvation is of the Lord. Election by the Father, redemption
by the Son, regeneration by the Holy Spirit. You can't separate
the truth. You know that James talks about
this separation. You can't separate any aspect
of God's truth. It's all one. It's a bunch of
different doctrines. There's no doubt about that,
but they're all one. And if you leave out one, you've
taken away the truth. You've separated it and you've
left it dead. It's a whole gospel, one Lord,
one faith, one baptism. What is it that proves we really
believe in the forgiveness of sins through Christ? We'll forgive. What is it that proves we've
obtained mercy? We'll be merciful. You can't
be forgiven and obtain mercy and not forgive and not be merciful. It is impossible. What proves
we believe God answers prayer? We'll pray. What proves we believe
Christ's righteousness is the only righteousness there is and
we wouldn't dare look to anything or anyone else but his righteousness
only as our only grounds of acceptance? Well, that's what we'll preach.
We'll say with David in Psalm 71, 16, I've made mention of
thy righteousness, even thine only. What proves I really believe
I'm a sinner? I look to Christ only as everything
in my acceptance before God, and I don't look anywhere else.
I don't look to myself in any way. I look to him alone. My acceptance is only in the
Beloved. What proves I love God? I love
his people. I love the brethren. What proves I really believe?
I rest. I rest in Christ. I don't try
to earn God's favor. I rest in Christ. They which
have entered into his rest have ceased from their own works as
God did from his. They that believe do enter into
rest. Now the faith that is alone is
never alone. Now the only faith there is is
the faith that's alone and it is never alone. Now what do I
mean by that? If you look to Christ alone,
you'll have peace. Now, if you look somewhere else,
you won't have peace. But if you're looking to Christ only
as all that God requires of you, He looks to Christ for, you'll
have peace. You'll have joy. You'll have
assurance. If you look to Christ alone,
you'll repent. of all that is contrary to that. If I really believe what Abraham
said when he said in Genesis 22, 8 to his son, my son, God
will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. I'll look to
God to provide all things for me. Everything that God requires
of me, God provides for me. Does he require a righteousness? He provides a righteousness. Does He require a new heart?
He provides a new heart. Does He require faith and repentance? He gives faith and repentance. I look to Him as Jehovah Jireh,
the Lord will provide. You know, if I really believe
the only place of safety was in The house with the blood over
the door when the Lord passed through Egypt that night. You
know what would have proved I really believe that? I'd get in the
house with the blood over the door and I wouldn't come out. Now if you really believe that
salvation is only in Christ, you'll want to simply be found
in Him and nowhere else. That's what proves you really
believe what you say you do. I love what Paul said in Philippians
3, verses 8 and 9. Oh, that I may win Christ and
be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of
the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness
which is of God by faith. Now, my works will prove whether
I really believe what I say I do. Now, I believe, there are some
people who would say, well, I believe what you're saying. I really
believe salvation is all of grace. I really believe that. But yet
they go to religious institutions. I will not call a place like
that a church, but religious institutions where grace is not
preached, where man shares in the glory. where salvation by
free will, man's free will rather than God's sovereign will is
promoted, where all kinds of methodology is used that is contrary
to the gospel of God's grace, where gimmicks are used and Plays
are used, and they try to appeal to people's flesh and emotions
rather than simply preaching the gospel. And they say, well,
I believe the gospel. No, you don't. Your works prove
that you don't. If you did, you would not be
participating in something like that. Your works will prove whether
you really believe what you say you do, and my works will prove
whether I really believe what I say I do. Now this is a separation
that cannot be made. You can't separate faith and
works. If you have faith Without works,
what do you have? You have a dead faith, a faith
that will not save, a faith that's merely intellectual assent, but
not that gift which comes from God. Every good gift and perfect
gift, like faith, is from above and cometh down from the Father
of light, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of
his own will begat he us through the word of truth. If you think
you have works, Well, those works are dead works if they don't
flow from a true faith in Christ only as everything in your salvation. Oh, may God deliver us from this
deadly separation, trying to separate faith and works. Now,
that faith which is alone, and faith is alone, it looks to Christ
only, is never, ever alone. This is Todd Niver praying that
God will be pleased to make Himself known to you. That's our prayer.
Amen. To request a copy of the sermon
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