James: Practical Faith (Part 3)
James 5:13-20
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
02-16–2025
Say Something
After I became a Christian, I was paired up with a guy name Seth who started me on my discipleship journey.
He said, “Satan is not happy that you have committed your life to Christ. He’s going to throw the kitchen sink at you. I know that females are a temptation to you. You need to stay single and be aware of satan’s schemes.”
I nodded but I didn’t really listen. That weekend I met a girl, (she was impressed I had on pink socks). She said she was a Christian and soon I was in a relationship with her.
She wasn’t interested in going to church with me and she quickly turned my heart away from Christ. I discovered, too late, that she was not who she said she was and she actually stole money from me.
After it was all over, I went to my friend Aaron and asked him if he knew that she was trouble.
His reply shocked me, “Oh yeah! We saw that right away. We knew that she would lead you away from your commitment to purity and hurt your Christian witness.”
I just stared at him. I asked him if he was my friend. He said, “Of course I’m your friend.”
Then I let him have it and said, “If you were really my friend, you would have said something. You would have intervened. You would have tied me up in a room and done an intervention. You wouldn’t have just stood by and watched a train wreck happen!”
He hung his head and said, “You’re right. I was afraid that you would get mad at me.”
I told him that I might have gotten angry but who cares? I needed rescuing!
Have you been there? Have you ever watched someone wander away from the faith and wondered what you should do?
Well, this morning, as he ends his letter, James is going to have some strong words to say about this kind of situation.
Review
Last week, James, “Old Camel Knees” encouraged us to
“…confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”
First, we learned that we confess first to God and then delight in the freedom that forgiveness brings.
Garrett Kell writes:
“Confessing to God brings us face to face with the One that knows us fully yet forgives us completely.”
Second, you need to confess to someone you trust, a mature Christian.
Third, you don’t have to share all the lurid details.
As we confess to another trusted friend, we are set free from the isolation that sin brings. This can bring healing, both physically and spiritually.
We can encourage, hold accountable, and pray for each other.
Ray Pritchard writes:
“We need to pray for one another. As we pray together, we find strength in shared sorrows and joys. As we pray for each other, God sends his angels to help those for whom we pray. Our words uttered in secret move the heart of God, and friends in the battle are made strong once again.”
James then writes some of the most famous words in the Bible:
The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
As we are covered in the righteousness of Christ, as we pray in confidence in God’s Will, energized by the Holy Spirit, our prayers will be effective and powerful.
James, a good preacher, ends the section with an illustration.
Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.
The point of the story is that Elijah was not a super saint, he was human just like us. And we can pray to the same God he did and expect powerful results.
We will finish the book of James this morning. But before we look at the last two verses, let me ask you a few questions. I’m grateful to Pastor John Miller for these questions.
The whole point of James is a faith that works. We can’t just talk the talk, James said we have to walk the walk.
Do you have a faith that works?
How do you respond to trials?
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” (James 1:2-5)
A faith that works grows stronger through suffering and trials. When trials come, we have a choice to get bitter or better, to complain or worship. James calls us not to waste our trials.
2. Do you resist temptations?
“When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:13-15)
A faith that works knows that temptations can be resisted. We know that temptation is not from God and that He will provide a way out (I Cor 10:13). We have a new nature, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and we can say no to temptation.
3. Am I a doer of the Word?
“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it say.” (James 5:22)
A faith that works is quick to hear, receive, and obey the word of God.
4. Do I show partiality/respect of persons?
“My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.” (James 2:1)
A faith that works doesn’t show favoritism toward brothers and sisters that have more money or power than us because this is inconsistent with faith in Christ, breaks God’s royal law, and brings God’s judgement.
5. Am I able to tame my tongue?
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?” (James 3:9-11)
A faith that works is able to tame the tongue, including gossip, backbiting, and lying to each other.
6. Do I follow heavenly wisdom or earthly wisdom?
“But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” (James 3:17)
A faith that works realizes that earthly wisdom will ultimately let us down and that wisdom, sanctified common sense, can really only be found in relationship with God.
7. Do I humbly submit to God’s purposes, plans, and will?
“Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.” (James 4:15-16)
A faith that works says God have your way. I will do whatever, go wherever, and be whatever You want me to be.
8. Do I patiently await the Lord’s return?
"Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming.” (James 5:7)
A faith that works waits like a farmer, witnesses like the prophets, and waits like Job for God to set everything right.
9. Am I prayerful until the Lord’s return?
“The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16)
A faith that works prays - when in trouble, when happy, when sick, and when in sin.
That brings us to the last two verses in James.
Turn with me there.
Prayer
Wanderers
My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
These verses are also controversial. Who is James talking about?
He begins this section with “my brothers and sisters.” That seems to indicate that this is a backslidden Christian.
But others see that word “sinner,” a word that is rarely used for Christians, and make the case that James is writing about a non-Christian.
Does it matter? It really doesn’t. In either case, they need us to intervene in their lives and help them find their way back to the path of life.
J.C. Ryle wrote:
“The highest form of selfishness is a man content to go to heaven alone.”
The word “wander” is where we get our English word “planet.” The ancients looked at the sky and noticed that there were “stars” that seemed to move, wander around.
This person has wandered from the truth. This can be done in their belief.
There is an epidemic in our culture of people “deconstructing” their faith, claiming to not be Christians anymore. The term they use is “exvangelical.”
Joshua Harris was a best selling Christian author by 16 years old with his first book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.” He wrote five more books, and became a mega-church pastor.
In 2019, he left his church, divorced his wife, and “left the faith.” (His wife left the faith as well)
He wrote,
“I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is deconstruction, the biblical phrase is falling away. By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there is a different way to practice faith and I want to remain open to this, but I’m not there now.”
Sometimes it’s belief. Sometimes people wander away in their behavior.
Mike Cooper
I received a call from a wife who told me that her husband was committing adultery. This guy had served on my team and I knew him well.
I went to the house and we sat down to talk. I asked him point blank, “Are you committing adultery on your wife and kids?”
He looked at me for a long time and finally said, “Yes” without any emotion.
I said, “Get your phone out and call her. You will tell her that you can not have any more contact with her because you are not going to destroy your family.”
He stared at me and said, “Nope.”
I begged and pleaded. No response. I finally burst into tears. At that, my friend hugged me and held me as I cried.
He did leave his family and wounded his children deeply. I didn’t see him again for a couple of years. In that time, he had married the other woman and then divorced her.
I was at a visitation and he came over and hugged me. He whispered in my ear, “You were so right. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.”
It does say that if we are successful in turning them back they will be saved from death. If we are born twice, we only have to die once.
James also says that this turning back will cover over a multitude of sins. Only in the Gospel, can our sins be covered. Only salvation through faith alone, in grace alone, in Christ alone can cover your sins.
Our job is to reach out and warn others.
Leading up to January 26, 1986, Bob Ebeling, an engineer who worked for the company that produced the booster, had warned that the extremely cold weather would prevent the O-rings from sealing properly and would cause an explosion.
He and another engineer then requested that the shuttle’s launch be delayed until the weather was favorable. The delay was initially granted but was later dismissed by executives, who were under pressure to get the shuttle into space, as the launch had already been delayed six days.
When Bob became upset and tried to warn a NASA executive one last time, he was told, “The Challenger is not your burden to bear.”
He told his daughter the morning of the launch, “The Challenger is going to blow up. Everyone is going to die.” She said he was frantic, pounding his fist on the dashboard of the car.
Bob was watching with the rest of the world when, 73 seconds into the flight, the Challenger exploded, killing all seven astronauts aboard. He began to tremble and then began to sob loudly.
He had tried to warn them but they wouldn’t listen.
Facebook Reel: “Let me go to hell!”
We called to warn and rescue.
When the boys were little, we loved going to the Chatworth pool. One day, the lady who ran the pool asked me to help them with a lifeguard test. She asked me to drown, or at least pretend to drown.
I jumped off the high dive and then began to flounder and call for help. Help came in the form of a teenage lifeguard who couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds!
I went limp and she put her hands under my armpits and began trying to drag me to shore. She was struggling and finally whispered in my ear, “Would you please kick your feet under the water to help me?” Which I did, and she received a huge ovation when she got to the edge of the pool to safety.
She didn’t have to swim out to me. She could have just thrown a rescue ring and encouraged me to grab it.
Paul, in Galatians, tells us how we should go about this process.
Restore Gently
“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.” (Gal 6:1)
Before we answer four questions concerning this verse, let me make some observations.
* We are not called to do this with non Christians. I’m always amazed at Christ Followers that want to badger non Christians about their sin. We need to always remember that cows don’t lay eggs. We are not called to be the sin police in non Christians lives.
* we need to make sure that we keep Jesus’ words in the forefront of our minds:
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)
Jared Wilson writes:
“We are well acquainted with the danger of drift; we seem less acquainted with our own susceptibility to it. And while we are accustomed to noticing the drift of others, we are woefully blind about noticing it among ourselves.”
What’s the problem?
Someone we know is “caught in a sin.” This doesn’t mean a pattern of sinfulness. This is the idea of being “overtaken” by a sin. It literally means to “step aside.” The Galatians were running well but now one of them has been tripped up by sin.
James, the half brother of Jesus wrote that “we all stumble in many ways.” (James 3:2)
The Apostle John wrote:
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (I John 1:8)
What’s the process?
In many churches, when someone is caught in a sin, the first
inclination is to ignore it. Most people don’t want to make waves and are afraid of confrontation, so they simply sweep it under the rug.
Unfortunately, the second response is even worse than ignoring it. This is where the sin is known but is gossiped about behind the person’s back. Of course, we couch this gossip in the form of prayer requests.
Neither of these options fulfill the law of Christ.
The goal is restoration. That Greek word can mean setting a fractured bone or mending a torn net. We want to restore them to usefulness in the body of Christ.
Who is to do this?
Paul calls those “who live by the Spirit” to do this ministry of restoration. He is not pointing to a small group of super spiritual Christians in Galatia. These are people that are being led by the Spirit and would be described as spiritually mature.
The “you” here is plural and implies that it’s best to do this with at least one other person, or a group of people like during an intervention.
How is this to be done?
Paul writes this must be done with a spirit of gentleness and an attitude of self examination.
Dane Ortland, writing for the 9Marks journal, gives us four reasons to be gentle:
Gentleness surprises people
Gentleness woos people
Gentleness dignifies people
Gentleness gives people a living picture of Jesus Himself.
Let me add one more. We should be gentle because that’s how we want people to confront us when we are caught in a sin, right?
We have to make the choice - restoration or revenge, healing or hurting.
The opposite of love is not hate but apathy - not caring enough to reach out.
It’s been said that Christians are the only ones who shoot their wounded.
Paul also gives a warning to “watch yourself, or you may also be tempted.”
This could be understood two different ways and both are probably in view here.
The phrase “watch yourself” is where we get our English word “scope.” It means to scope something out, to fix our eyes on the bullseye.
Paul warned the Christians at Corinth:
“So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (I Cor 10:12)
We may be tempted by the same temptation that the person we are trying to help is but more likely we will be tempted to become conceited and feel superior to that person.
In his preface to Jared Wilson’s newest book, Paul David Trip writes about how easily our hearts drift away from Christ as the center of our life:
The battle in the [Christian life] to keep Jesus central is a battle for the heart.
You can’t give away what you don’t have. If Jesus isn’t the central focus and hope of your life, you won’t be effective in witnessing.
The enemy of our souls will gladly give us our theological knowledge, biblical literacy, worship gatherings, and ministry pursuits if he can woo away our hearts.
The writer of Hebrews warns us:
“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it.” (Hebrews 2:1)
What’s the answer?
* He writes, “There is nothing so beautiful, wise, healing, transformative, powerful, glorious, and captivating as the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Jesus, as always, is our example and leader. In John 8, the Pharisees bring a woman caught in the very act of adultery. I’ve always wondered exactly how they caught her and where was the man? None of that mattered. It was a set up to try to trap Jesus.
Warren Wiesrbe wrote:
“Nothing reveals the wickedness of legalists better than the way they treat others who have sinned.”
While the woman cowered in front of them all, Jesus did a very curious thing. He stooped down and started writing in the dirt.
Scripture doesn’t say what He was writing but some commentators believe that He was writing out the sins of the accusers that stood holding rocks waiting to stone her.
He finally straightened up and said, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7)
Knowing they had been checkmated, each man dropped his rock and left, beginning with the oldest to the youngest.
The woman is now alone with Jesus. She is totally guilty and deserves to be punished.
He asks her, “Where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
With a quivering voice she responds, “No one sir.”
Then, the only Person in the universe that could have actually thrown the stone at her, smiled and looked her in the eyes and restored her torn soul:
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:11)
A pastor I follow on Twitter, posted this recently about the “cancel culture” of social media:
“This is the church. We will rebuke you when you are wrong. We will forgive you when you repent. But we will not cancel you when you are down ...for Christ will not cancel us. “Cancel culture” is not kingdom culture. We don’t just applaud the righteous, we restore the fallen.”
When we restore others like this we are showing that we are being led by the Spirit.
Is there someone you know that needs this ministry from you? Approach it with a deep sense of humility and self-examination
An old story tells of a man who fell into a pit:
A very caring person looked into the pit and said, “I feel so bad for you. It looks lonely in that pit.”
A legalistic person looked into the pit and said, “Yep. That seems about right. Getting what you deserve, probably. I’m glad I’m not a pit person like you.”
A gossip looked into the pit and then ran away to tell everyone all about it.
A person prone to self pity looked into the pit and said, “What are you complaining about? You should see my pit!”
A counselor sat down next to the pit and said, “Tell me about your parents.”
A word of faith pastor looked down into the pit and proclaimed, “The pit is simply an illusion. You need to speak in faith your way out of the pit.”
Then Jesus came along and without a word, extended his hand, and lifted the man out of the pit.
And that man could probably sing the words of Psalm 40:
"I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.” (Psalm 40:1)
A couple of weekends ago, I met Geoff Trembly in Las Vegas for the weekend. He took me to Fremont Street, which was a really interesting experience. That’s where I met Robert. He was walking up and down Fremont, holding his sign, handing out tracts and sharing the Gospel with people.
I thanked him for his bravery. He laughed and said, “I wasn’t brave until two years ago. I just realized that I wan’t sharing the Gospel like the Scripture tells us to do. So, I told God I would do this if He helped me with the courage.”
By the way, he’s 80 years old. If you aren’t dead, you’re not done.
I want to end by singing a song that we learned last year called “I Set My Hope on Jesus” by The Gettys, Matt Boswell, and Matt Papa. The subtitle of the hymn is “For a Deconstructing Friend.”
Here’s Keith Getty explaining why they wrote it.
Video: Keith shares the story behind the song
Ending Song: I Set My Hope on Jesus
