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And now, as you're aware, we are currently studying the epistle by James under the general title, James's Vision of the Perfect Man and Woman. Yesterday, we thought a while together on the fact that one of the marks of the mature believer is this, that he or she is not double-minded in face of trial, but constantly and perseveringly seeks the wisdom of God, so to interpret life's events as to accept from the Lord the trials he allows, in the belief that thus he works all things together for good, with the eventual aim of bringing us to glory, conformed to the image of his son. This morning's lesson is rather different. That feature of maturity to which James will call us this morning is this. The mark of a mature believer is that he or she does not allow themselves to be religiously self-deceived. So let us forthwith begin our reading, and once more this morning we start in the book of Genesis and chapter forty nine. Yesterday we read how Jacob characterized his son Reuben as an unstable man, unstable as water. And we found that characteristic of Reuben repeated among the twelve tribes to whom James wrote, as he warned us that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Now we have to listen first to what Jacob had to say to his sons Simeon and Levi. Verse 5 of Genesis 49. Simeon and Levi are brethren. Weapons of violence are their swords. O my soul, come not thou into their council, unto their assembly, my glory, be not thou united, for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they hocked an ox. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel. Once more, we shall find those warnings reverberating in our ears, as now we turn to the epistle by James and begin to read in chapter one. James chapter one, let us begin at verse sixteen. Be not deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creature. You know this, my beloved brethren, but 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, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. Now be you, be you doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding your own selves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror, for he beholdeth himself and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. He that looketh into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and so continueth, being not a hearer that forgetteth, but a doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his heart, this man's religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. Now, chapter two and verse fourteen: What does it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith but have not works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked and in lack of daily food, and one of you say unto them, go in peace, be warmed and filled, and yet you give them not the things needful to the body, what doth it profit? Even so, faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself. Yea, someone is going to say, thou hast faith and I have works, show me thy faith apart from thy works, and I by my works will show thee my faith. Thou believest that God is one, thou doest well. The demons also believe and shudder. But wouldst thou be given to know, O vain men, that faith without works is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? Now see us that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect. And the scripture was fulfilled, which says, and Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. You will see that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith. And in like manner, was not also Rahab the harlot justified by works, in that she received the messengers and sent them out another way. For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead. And may the Lord draw near and teach us his word. This morning we have to take our courage in both hands, and with the help of the Lord, brace ourselves to listen to a very somber, if not alarming, message. James, you see, is talking to us about the mature Christian and the pathways that we must each follow if we would develop our Christianity and become daily more mature, more perfect, in that sense, more like the Lord Jesus. This morning he comes to us and gently and lovingly warns us of one of the difficulties that we inevitably will find sooner or later in our path. It is a difficulty that the prophet Jeremiah discovered and complained about centuries ago. Said Jeremiah about our old sinful hearts. The heart, said he, is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can know it? And in all the intervening centuries, the human heart has not really changed. James, this morning, will remind us of the very same thing. Our wicked old human hearts, even since we have found the Savior, can still be deceitful and exceedingly wicked. It is not merely that they are wicked, it is that they are deceitful. And James warns us that such is the deceit of the human heart that it can take our very religion, our very spiritual, s- spirituality as we count it, and use it to deceive ourselves with. To use our very godliness, or what goes for being godliness, as a means not of eradicating our evil desires or crucifying the flesh and all its lusts, but of excusing our sinfulness and disguising our sinfulness. And in the end, we may use our spirituality to express not the lovely virtues of the Lord Jesus, but the ugly evils of our carnal nature. It is a cruel deception. It is as though a man would take medicine and use it not to cure his disease, but to perpetuate his disease. Sometimes it is, of course, James tells us, that we can be deceived by unconsciously imbibing the false attitudes of the world around us. We are to, so to speak, passive in the process, process. Be not deceived, my beloved brothers, says James, as he talks to us about the possibility that we might be deceived in regarding temptation as being a god of some sort that we should not resist. But on other times, it is altogether possible that we are not passive, but active in the matter. Now be you doers of the word and not hearers only, says James in verse twenty two of chapter one, deluding your own selves. James envisages the possibility that we are actively involved in this matter of using religion to deceive ourselves with. They all say our hearts are indeed deceitful. Our base passions, our pride, our jealousies, our envies, our narrow-mindedness, our desire to dominate. These things sometimes have a way of disguising themselves by dressing themselves up and tricking themselves out with all the clothing of good godly spirituality. And then we let ourselves be deceived by them, and we stand, as we imagine, for the truth of God, when all the while it is not a godly loyalty to the Lord Jesus driving us to stand for the truth of God. It's our own ugly bad tempers, our desire to dominate other people, our narrow-mindedness, our anger, our revenge, or whatever, that is masquerading as godliness. Being deceived, instead of humbly and shamefacedly repenting of these nasty attitudes, we glory in them, as though they were exhibitions of godliness. My beloved brethren, says James, don't be deceived. Go this way and be a hearer only and not a doer of the word, and you're running into this snare, you are deluding. If anybody thinks he's religious when he doesn't bridle his tongue, he is, says James, deceiving his own very heart. It's a cruel deception. I don't know how you would feel if one of these days you found your dear Aunt Matilda had been conned by a stocks and shares man who persuaded her to give up her whole life savings and invest it in some scheme that was going to give her five hundred percent profit the first year, and she fell for it, only to find that he was a trickster and her life savings had gone into the man's unnamed account in Geneva. How would you feel? I fancy you would feel a whole flood of conflicting emotions. You would say, Aunt Matilda, my dear, I can't think, I can't imagine what you were thinking about, Aunt Matilda, to let yourself be conned like that. Hm. You'll feel annoyed, wouldn't you, and indignant. But then, as you noticed Aunt Matilda's lip begin to falter and the tear glisten in her eye, then you'll be moved with compassion and say, well, I didn't mean it's not you I should be blaming, it's the old crook I should be blaming. And you'll be filled with compassion and want to know what you could do to help her. So I think it is with James here, isn't it? He's going to say to us some very severe things this morning. But he loves us. Listen to the man's warm-hearted affection come out as he warns us not to be deceived. My beloved brethren, he says. And he means every word of it. He loves us. And he can't stand by and see us deceived in the matter of religion and spirituality. But there's no denying, is there, that eventually he shows a certain holy irritation with some of us. He comes in chapter two to talk to the man who's got it into his head that the glorious doctrine of justification by faith and not by works means that you don't have to bother to do any Christian works, and that after all, it doesn't really matter if you carry on sinning, because after all, salvation is by grace. When John, uh, James contemplates such a man, such superficial thinking, the holy irritation creeps down into his pen nib and spills out onto the page. Must I bring you, says he, an Old Testament example to show you? Oh, you shallow-minded man, says he. You vain, empty-headed man. Empty-headed to think that there could be so much as one comma in the whole of Holy Scripture that would encourage anybody to think that sin does not matter. However do people, however do we get it into our head that because salvation is by grace and not by works, and the quality of our living, the quality of our works, doesn't in the end really matter. Of course, it's easy to see, isn't it, as we survey scripture, that unregenerate people can be thus deceived by religion. In our Lord's time, he warned his apostles that the time will come when he that murders you will think that he does God service. As we survey the history of the Great Reformation days. It is all too plainly obvious, isn't it, that Christendom was guilty of this very thing. And religious authorities murdered and executed, tortured and burnt alive thousands of our dear brothers and sisters in Christ, imagining as they did it, they were doing God's service. We should remember, shouldn't we? It was not only Roman Catholics who executed Protestants. Some of the magisterial reformers themselves burnt, tortured, drowned their fellow believers. Fellow Fellow believers believers. who refused to accept baptismal regeneration and demanded the right to observe believers' baptism according to the New Testament. And some of the magisterial reformers had those dear believers trussed up and thrown into the rivers, their tongues cut out or their bodies burned. And they did it imagining that they did God's service. We shouldn't confine the warning to distant ages, should we? To come from great things to small. Have you never known a Bible reading that started out as a quest to discover God's truth, that ended with brethren getting very hot and losing their tempers and going home defiled by old unregenerate passions that had come to the fore and disturbed the Christian harmony, even as they were supposedly engaged on studying scripture. And who could read the history of even recent centuries and not be struck dumb and shame-faced by the story of endless divisions amongst God's people? The thing with sorrow of men that stood up and split the Lord's people from stem to stern, made their endless little parties. Had you asked them what they were doing, they would have told you they were standing for God's truth. As we look back, we can see that the things they disputed about were not fundamental things by any means, but more, as we watch and read of the cruelty, the narrow-mindedness, the tyranny with which they pursued their little causes, it becomes apparent, doesn't it? It wasn't just concern for God's truth that moved them. Mixed in with that a good deal of self-seeking and envy one of another and jealousy of the other man and pride in one's little interpretation of some small matter and all such ugly things that contributed so painfully to the distress of God's people, and to this present day is a scandal upon the testimony. Oh, my dear brethren, says James, with tears in his voice, don't let yourself be deceived. Deceive by carnality masquerading in the clothes of supposed godliness and spirituality. There are then, let's trace them now, some areas in particular where we could be deceived by bogus spirituality. Verse seventeen is said in the context of temptation. We are not to be deceived, says James. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil and himself tempteth no man. It is exceedingly important, when we are tempted, to recognize what the source of temptation is. Among the ancient Greeks, you will meet the idea that if a man felt the strong passions of sexual desire within him, that was a goddess. They gave her the name of Aphrodite. If a man felt the strong urgings of aggression in his heart, they said that was a god, the god of war. And the result was this very often. Now, when a man felt these powers of aggression swelling up within his breast, he felt perfectly justified in giving vent to them and bashing you on the nose or otherwise destroying you, your houses, and your family, and your children, and thousands of others in cruel wars, because he said, you see, it was the gods that were moving him to war. And we've still not got beyond that completely, have we, even in this present day. Here's a bright young thing. And she's just seduced her boss, to whom she's secretary, and ruined his marriage, broken up his family. And you ask her why she did it. Oh, she said, I couldn't help it. Love made me do it. Oh, I see. So now love has become a goddess, has it? And you have to obey her every prompting. And it's enough excuse to say, oh, well, it was love made me do it. In that respect, our modern world is becoming ever increasingly like the old ancient world. We need, us younger people need especially, don't we? Not to be deceived by the notion that our passions are God's. You'll say a true Christian would never take that view, would they? I hope not. What would you say to a man who let it slip that he was thinking to join the Freemasons with all their old idolatry? And he said to you, well, you see, I was out of work and desperately in need of a job, and I do believe the Lord opened the way for me to enter this firm. It was of the Lord, you see. He opened the way. And, uh, then, uh, uh, when I saw how wonderful it is, the, the, the principles of the firm said, but you'll have to join the Freemasons, won't you? And I knew it's, well, it's not for the best, but if the Lord opened the way, it must be right, surely. What would you say to him? We should need to say, shouldn't we, firmly and lovingly. Don't be deceived, my brother. God never leads anybody or lures somebody into sin. Joseph believed with all his heart that God it was who had overruled that he should be put down in the pit and then should find himself in Potiphar's house as his chief steward. That was the Lord's leading. But when Potiphar's wife made her advances, Joseph didn't say, well, you know, it's the Lord that's put me in this situation, and he must have known, and, uh, well, perhaps it's okay because the Lord has led me. We are deceived, my brethren. God doesn't tempt us. We mustn't blame the devil too much either, may we? He's a common scapegoat, surely, and he does certainly enough damage. Sometimes we're inclined to blame him when we should be really blaming ourselves. That wasn't me, says somebody, that's the devil that moved me, really. Somebody else says, no, it wasn't me, it was my ugly temper. Well, who is your ugly temper if it isn't part of you. Ah, nowadays, say somebody, you know, I've got a demon of pride. No, you haven't. That's just you, not a demon. You see, when I get the flu, I say that's not me, that's an old bug that's got hold of me. And that excuses me. It's not my fault for having the flu, is it? And I need to be careful. If I say, you know, I've got an old demon of jealousy, that kind of excuses me. That's a bug that's got hold of me, and I need it exorcised or something. No, it isn't. It's you! And part of our growing up into maturity is to face the reality of ourselves and not keep blaming our faults on other things and other forces, but to face the fact that it's me. I'm the one who's guilty of the pride and the jealousy, and I must repent and seek deliverance, and I must learn to stand against it and put to death the deeds of the flesh. It's not only in the question of temptation that I could be deceived, but also in the question of anger, wrath. God's wrath, of course, is holy and indeed beautiful. But our wrath can so readily and easily become tinged with unworthy elements, can it not? There is no sadder spectacle when our human bad temper gets the better of us and expresses itself in religious connections. There is a lurid example of it in the Old Testament. The story, put as briefly as I can, is this. When Jacob and his twelve sons returned from Padam Aram to Palestine, to Canaan, Jacob's daughter, sister to the twelve boys, went out for an evening stroll one night near a city called Shechem. The prince of Shechem, being a handsome young man, saw her, fell madly in love with her, and ravished her. The twelve men that were her brothers were naturally incensed and went and made their protests at the highest level in Shechem. The men of Shechem, granted they had right to be indignant, but the prince said that his purposes were true and he wished to marry the girl and would make her his example of it in the Old Testament. The story, put as briefly as I can, is this. When Jacob and his twelve sons returned from Padam Aram to Palestine, to Canaan, Jacob's daughter, sister to the twelve boys, went out for an evening stroll one night near a city called Shechem. The prince of Shechem, being a handsome young man, saw her, fell madly in love with her, and ravished her. The twelve men that were her brothers were naturally incensed and went and made their protests at the highest level in Shechem. The men of Shechem, granted they had right to be indignant, but the prince said that his purposes were true, and he wished to marry the girl and would make her his veritable princess. Her brother said, we cannot do it. We have a commandment from God that we should be circumcised, and you men of Shechem are not circumcised, and it's against our religion that we should give our sister to a race of uncircumcised people. On that they spoke truly, didn't they? The men of Shechem said, all right, if that, uh, pleases your religious feelings, we'll have make a decree that all the men of Shechem will be circumcised. And that they did. And if matters has ended there, all would have been well. Uh, two of the brothers, Simeon and Levi, waited till the men of Shechem were s- still not recovered from their operation. They took their swords, they went through Shechem and slaughtered every single man as they lay in their beds. Oh, at the end, when Jacob protested, they made out that they were standing for morality. Said they, should they treat our sister as though she was a common woman of the streets? But even Jacob, who had himself been guilty of various dodges in his life, saw through it. This was no stand for morality. This was raw, injured pride, revenge, cruelty, sadism, made all the worse by dressing itself up in the name of religion and morality. Cursed be your wrath, for it was cruel, says Jacob. You imagine what the Canaanites felt about the, the Hebrew religion after that, can't you? They say, that's religion for you. Look at it, sadism, the cruelty, the viciousness, the treachery. And if that's religion, we want nothing to do with it. Oh, my dear brethren, we do need to heed the exhortation, don't we? The wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. Another area James indicates, and it comes immediately to my heart, for this is one of my many weak points. It is possible to delude yourself, he says, by simply hearing the word of God and not doing it. I don't know how you find it. I find the word of God so interesting, so intellectually stimulating, such marvelous literature. I get carried away in my study and prance around the place as I read it, you know, that marvelous God this is. My danger is that when I come out of the study, I forget about it and forget to do it. Not enough to read about holiness, is it? You don't become holy by reading about it. You become holy by doing holiness. You don't become courageous by reading about. You become courageous by facing life's circumstances and daring to stand for God in whatever they are, and making decisions according to his word, be the price what it is. You don't become truthful by reading about it in the Bible. We become truthful in our school examination, in our courses, in our trade work, or whatever it is. As we learn in practice not to cut corners, not to cheat, but to do a proper job. How easy it would be to deceive oneself, after a lovely meeting studying God's word and savoring its delights, to go out and think we had become holy, whereas holiness waits for our doing what we have heard. And still another area, says James, where deceitfulness lurks, and one could easily be deceived. Verse twenty six of chapter one: if any man thinketh himself to be religious while he bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his heart, this man's religion is empty. Now, James, yours is an interesting word for religion here. It's a comparatively rare word in the Greek New Testament. It is a word that you would use specially in context of religious ceremonies and ritual, religious worship, divine service, as some people would call it nowadays. And you'll say this would involve, among anything, among other things, wouldn't it? Singing God's praise and offering him the devotion of our heart, singing the lovely psalms and hymns of Zion. But if any man thinketh himself to be devoted to God in his religious activities and rituals, but bridles not his tongue, says James, then he deceives his heart. We need not stay long on it. Another morning will have us considering the evil that the tongue can do. But it is so possible, isn't it, having sung the holy words of God's praise in church, to go home and in the next week let our words be cantankerous words of lost temper and impatience, jealousy. Pure religion, says James, thereby implying that there is an impure kind of religion. Pure religion before God and the Father is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and keep oneself unspotted from the world. Perhaps it will help us at this juncture to recall the delightful parable our Lord Jesus told of the Good Samaritan. You will remember how it went, won't you? There was this poor fellow had been attacked and belabored by brigands, left half dead on the road. There came by two exceedingly religious gentlemen, a Levite and then a priest. Men whose task in life was specially religion. Religion in that strict sense, these were the men whose task in life was to lead the praise of Israel, to lead the psalm singing and the worship and the reading of scripture. And they saw this fellow by the roadside. One came and looked and passed on, and the other didn't even bother to look. He passed on regardless. I suspect he had it in his head that his task of singing hymns and songs of praise was so important that he needn't bother his head with lending a practical hand to the down and out. How about us? James says nothing here against our hymn singing and our devoted worship of the Lord. What a lovely thing it is, a veritable harbinger and anticipation of the glory. Oh, what singing shall be there. We rightly make time thus to worship the Lord, and rightly we enjoy it ourselves. Let's not deceive ourselves. Pure religion is to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction. And if our hymn singing merely makes our own hearts to glow, leaves them as hardened as ever against the poor and afflicted, then God doesn't like our hymn singing. There is one area, especially perhaps above all others, where we evangelicals need to be very careful not to deceive ourselves with religion. That is the area that in itself is glorious. The glorious doctrine of justification by faith without works. It is true, my brothers. So we conclude, let nobody here be in any doubt as to what I personally believe, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law. Thank God for its glory. Let it be said again, by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Here is the glorious doctrine that broke the tyranny of religion in the Middle Ages, that set free the ancient world by the preaching of the gospel, and to set our hearts free too. God give us the grace in these modern days never to let it go, and not to consent to seeing the doctrines of free grace compromised by mere reli- religiosity of any kind. That said, however, there could lurk a danger here, couldn't there? As James now proceeds to warn us, we could deceive ourselves by our very theology and argue, if we were like the shallow-minded man of chapter 2, that because after all salvation is by grace and is not of works, then it doesn't really matter whether we behave like Christians or not. Doesn't really matter whether we have works to back up our profession or not. Reading what James here says in his epistle, multitudes of people have, of course, thought James was contradicting Paul and denying the gospel that, uh, we are justified by faith without works. But that isn't true, of course. James says the same as Paul, and Paul says the same as James. Take one little test, if you will. In chapter two and verse 22, James observes, talking of Abraham, thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect. Faith wrought with his works. If you question Paul about that, Paul would say, yes, amen, that is the truth of the matter. Galatians, for instance, chapter five, verse six: For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love. Paul says exactly the same thing as James. Justified by faith, but if that faith is genuine, the mark of faith is that it leads to works. So let's pause a minute to make sure we have got this straight and are not deceiving ourselves in any way. Salvation is a gift. You cannot pay for it. You cannot contribute a farthing or a ha'penny or a cent or a dime to it. Try to make salvation depend on one little good work or one religious ceremony, and you have ruined the whole scheme. You have transformed a gift into something that you have earned. Ah, but that being so, then I have to confess that sometimes I get a little nervous. I'm not a very good gospel preacher. Well, I'm not a gospel preacher at all, as you well know. Far be it from me to criticize my brethren whom God uses magnificently. Sometimes I get a little worried when I hear preachers say you don't have to do anything to get saved. I know what they mean. They mean you can't earn salvation. But it isn't quite true to say you don't have to do anything to get saved. Listen to the Lord Jesus. Come to me, he says. Come to me. Oh, friend, if you're not yet saved and you want to be saved, there is something you have to do. It won't just happen automatically. You have to come to the Savior. He who eateth me, says the Lord Jesus, shall live by me. If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. Strive to enter into the narrow gate, says Christ. You're going to be saved, you'll have to make it life's chief business, the thing that commands your attention and energy beyond everything else. Make sure, strain every nerve, and see to it that you enter into the narrow gate. You don't earn salvation by those activities. If I held out my pen to you this morning and said, now this is a glorious pen, look at that. Wouldn't you like it? If you like it, I give it to you. Now look, um, if you want it, you must come and get it. Would your coming earn it? Of course not. It remains a free gift. But if you want the free gift, you'll have to come and take it. Similarly, we want to be clear as believers, don't we? We cannot earn eternal life by our works, but works are the necessary evidence that we have eternal life. Let me pass completely out of my experience and take the case of a little babe. Little babes, I gather, are wont to cry and drive their fathers to distraction. Can't get them shut up, and they pace the bedroom floor every night till they look like ghosts and praise the institution of marriage. Now, what about this crying business on the part of babes? Is that how they get their life? No, indeed not. Babes don't get their life by crying. Life is given them as a gift. Ah, but the mark of baby life is, the mark of life is that if they're really alive, they'll start to cry. Oh, what a marvelous moment that is, isn't it? When the newborn baby's taken and the midwife hand- holds it up by its feet, and the thing gets out to yell. Ah, it's alive. It's alive. Ah, yes. Marvelous. You imagine a mother fearing what she's read about cop deaths, going up to the bedroom one day, and there's the babe, and the babe is as still as anything. And she says, come on, sweetie, and there's no reply, and the fear begins to grip her heart. Oh, has my baby died? And she pushes it, and it lets out a yell. Oh, thank God, cried. It's alive. Yes. The babe doesn't get life by crying, but if it's got life, it'll cry. If the mother came and the babe had suffered cot death and was actually dead, you would understand the distraught mother saying, come on, cry, baby, cry. No good. The babe will never cry. Only way it would ever cry is to be born again, wouldn't it? What? We don't get life by our works, but if we've got life, there should be works to show it. James has a number of arguments to press the point home. He's talking now to this shallow man, empty-headed skull he has, you'll say. He thinks that justification by faith without works means it doesn't matter, even though he has no works to show that he's a believer and just going on living as he always lived. Says James, what does it profit, my brothers, if a man say he have faith and have not, have not works? Can that kind of faith save him? Of course it can't. Why can't it? Because it isn't the real kind of faith, that's why. Take an ordinary analogy. Here is a very poor brother, and you come to him and you say, my dear poor brother, I see your coat is rather ragged and, uh, you look hungry. Well, uh, I have great faith, my brother, that the Lord will supply your need. Go in peace and go get a good meal and, uh, get a decent clothes. There's a good tailor down the high street. Go to him and he can fit you out with a good suit of clothes. Ah, the hypocrisy. What does it profit? It doesn't do the man any good. You say you have faith and God will supply his needs when you've got a spare suit or two in the wardrobe and could give him one. That's not godliness, that's hypocrisy. What does it profit if a man say he has faith and have not works? Can that faith save him? No. Why not? Because a faith that never issues in works isn't real faith at all. It is as dead as a dodo. A man will say, says James, what he simply means is this, there is no real difficulty, though the commentators say there is one. What James is observing is this, he says, my dear brother, you say you've got faith and it doesn't matter whether you have works or not. Someone one of these days is going to face you and is going to say, my dear good sir, you have faith, I have works. Now come on. You show me your faith, will you, if you can, without works. And I will show you my faith by my words. Someone is going to ask for evidence. They have a right to ask for evidence, haven't they? We don't expect people just to take our say so, surely. We say we are believers. One of these days, somebody's going to come alongside and gently demand to see the evidence. And the only evidence there can be is our works. If you want, and James almost gets cruel, doesn't he? He says your belief is impeccable, isn't it? You believe the foundational doctrines of the faith. You believe that God is one. All Jews did, all Christians should. Marvelous, he says, you do very well. Marvelous. But before you start patting yourself on the back, pray remember the demons believe that as well. And what is more, there's a touch of sarcasm, isn't there? The demons not only believe it, they do at least show some reaction, and they shut up. And if we say we hold the great doctrines of the faith that God is one, there should be some reaction, my brothers, my sisters. If the only reaction was that we fear the Lord. And fear his word. Would we have a biblical example? James quotes Abraham. Abraham, says he, you know, certainly was justified by faith, but then Abraham was justified by works too, wasn't he? And says James, the scripture which says Abram believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness, that scripture was fulfilled when on Mount Moriah Abram offered his son to God. What does it mean to be justified by works? Doesn't mean that you now contradict faith or dispense with faith. The situation with Abram was this, God had come to him and said, Abram, I'm going to give you a son. In spite of the fact that Sarah was barren, Abram believed God, and there and then the man was justified. His faith was totally in God. He saw clearly his body was as good as dead, and Sarah was decrepit, dear soul. His only hope was God. He put his faith in God, and there and then he was justified. As the years went on, from time to time, Abram's faith became a little bit wobbly, and God had to develop it, didn't he, and mature it. There came a day when God put it to the test. And he came to Abraham, and if I may paraphrase it, he said, Abraham, tell me, Abraham, in your early days, some years ago, you learned to trust me, and you were justified. Your faith was in me and in me only. Tell me, Abram, now you've got Isaac. Where is your faith now, Isaac, uh, Abel? Your faith for the future. Is it in me, Abram, still? And only me? Or would it by any chance, Abram, be in Isaac? And Abram said, no, Lord, it's in you. Very good, said the Lord. Now, Abram, I'll take Isaac. And you can show me, can't you, that your faith is in me. And in me only. Oh, what a bitter test it was. To have to demonstrate that his faith was solely in God. That his faith was genuine. And he showed it as he offered everything he had upon the altar to God. My dear brothers and sisters, there will come a time in our lives where God will call upon us to show by our work that our faith is genuine. He may bring us to a point where he will ask for everything we have and call us to offer all and be left standing with nothing, save God. Should we be ready for it? You say, Mr. Preacher, that's a high standard. I think in my heart I would if God called upon me to surrender all I had. At least in my heart is willing, but I don't know if when I took the knife I could, so to speak, bring it down upon the sacrifice. What if in the end I couldn't go the whole hog and faltered? Courage, my brother. God looks to see the heart, doesn't he? And you will remember that lovely story that said that when Abram took the knife and showed God in his heart that he was ready to justify his faith by his works, the angel interposed, and the sacrifice was stopped. But the sacrifice wasn't aborted, for in that moment, once Abraham had demonstrated what was in his heart, God removed Isaac, and in the place put the sacrifice of the ram. And Abraham came down the mountain, and he called the place Jehovah Jireh. He didn't call it the mountain of my tremendous sacrifice for God. Let everybody see it from now on. No, indeed not. The mountaintop of my devotion to the Lord. No, he didn't call it that. He said, in the mountain of the Lord it shall be seen. What shall be seen? This shall be seen that when I came to my test, and it was almost more than flesh and blood could stand. But I made to do it. Then God came in and provided the shortfall by a sacrifice of a ram. We may be assured that God will test us. Who would dare among us to say that we shall come through one hundred percent with flying colors. You say, what if any way I, I come short? My sacrifice isn't what it should be. Ah, my friend, precisely there God has a sacrifice of his glorious son, whose sacrifice more than makes up for the shortfalls of our devotion. But be assured, God will want to see the attitude of our heart and the action of our lives, that our faith is genuine. And finally, there's the dear soul Rahab. She showed her faith by standing with the people of God. She not only received the spies and with them the message of salvation and was saved. When the old king came knocking on her door and his officers, she had to make her choice. Would she stand with the king and with the people of Jericho, or would she stand with the spies and the people of God. And she was called upon to show the genuineness of her conversion by standing with the people of God and separating herself from the world. Oh, my dear young Christian, we are to go out into the world as evangelists, of course we are, not to hide ourselves away. But in the other sense, pray remember it, you cannot hunt, you cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hound. If we are the Lord, the Lord will challenge us to take our stand with him and his people and show the genuineness of our faith by the way we live. So may the Lord bless his wife.