Bible Class - James

this morning good morning welcome we are glad that you are here if you were wanting a cup that was um we talked about last week i can tell you this i you can facebook instant message me or you can email me my email is clay c-l-a-y k mcconnell m-c-c-o-n-n-e-l-l gmail.com if it does not come to me it's because my spam filter is really good and so then you might have to email or call the church office i'm sure they can get one mailed out to you um we ain't making any money off of it just cover the shipping and it can be yours uh and then you can remember what the lesson from last week was do you all remember the last one from last week we need to consider it sheer joy consider it sheer joy when you go through trials and you know why because everyone is going to go through a trial like everybody it's the craziest thing it's one of those things that is consistent with human nature and so as we begin this morning i would encourage you to do this would you pray with me and invite god into this place and to open up our eyes and our minds and our hearts so that whenever god's here we don't miss it let's pray god we come before you and we give you thanks because you were god and we are not sometimes we reverse that role and we think that we are god and we think that we're god of our own life so right now in the next 30 45 minutes lord open up our minds open up our ears open up our hearts and lord speak through my mouth not my words but your words let them flow forth so that as our eyes and our minds and our hearts are open we can hear what you have to say to us especially through this book of james we pray all this in christ's name amen all right so i just realized that i do that i've known i do again praying praying praying for him as he is trying to lead this nation whether you agree with him or not i'm not trying to say that i'm saying i am called we are called to pray and so as as that was happening in my life i realized oh no i meant to tell him something last week and i didn't one of the things i wanted to share with you all is this i believe that all of our teachers in this church that all of our preachers in this church and not just this church the church y'all we need to be praying for them because when you decide or when you're asked to teach guess who really wants to attack amen the enemy satan and if he can get the teachers and he can get people to not believe in the teachers because they see how they fall and so guess who's going to be under attack the next seven weeks and i was like ah and so this morning uh justin was like praying for me and i know some other people pray for me and so i just want y'all to know be praying not just for clay but i'm going to be co-teaching this class i didn't have a chance to mention that last week i was supposed to co-teach this week but um the the car got hung up in utah and so grant didn't make it back in time so but grant taylor and i are going to be teaching together some of this and so be be praying for grant and his family be praying for clay me and our family because i don't want to succumb to those trials and temptations and that's truly what james 1 is about because we're about to get into it last week we said this and i'm going to say it again consider it sheer joy when you go through trials that's around james 1 2. all right and so then we talked about all james 1 2 james 1 3 and james 1 4. and now we're going to get into the next phase temptation because there's kind of a difference between a trial something that's maybe outside something that maybe you didn't plan and a temptation because the temptation is right here right between my two ears is what really tempts me okay and here's how i know that to be true because i'm human because i've lived 46 years and because i'm talking to other humans who have faced temptations i don't have to sugarcoat it i don't have to say this might happen to you it's never happened to me and do you know whenever temptations really hit hard and another reason i'm telling you to pray for my family temptations really hit hard once you come up out of that water once you come up out of baptism is when the enemy is going to just be hammering on you and going for you but again i'm saying these things kind of as a precursor let's jump into james and check it out now before we jump straight into it i want you to know this james 9 through 11. super important he's going to be talking about rich and poor stuff like that also in chapter 2 he really gets into rich and poor so i don't want you to think i'm glossing over something in james because i think it's extremely important so important i'm saying hey get ready we're going to talk about it in the future fair but for right now let's just look at james um let's read through the beginning of it and then let's jump over to chapter 12. here we go james 1 let's let's not forget james who is he probably the brother of jesus there's a lot of james because his name is like a form of jacob so james a servant of god and of the lord jesus christ to the 12 tribes and the dispersions greetings my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but joy because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete lacking in nothing if if any of you is lacking in wisdom ask god who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly and it will be given you but ask in faith never doubting for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind for the doubter being double minded and unstable in every way must not expect to receive anything from the lord so that's the beginning of james that's kind of what we went over last week and what i didn't get to really just the cl the crescendo is that little boy of mine but he did it this morning and it's really awkward when i say this he did two things this morning and i looked at rana and i went monkey see monkey do so i i got out of the shower this morning and i dried off and and i was in the bathroom and that little boy came in there and he was walking around and he went to where the shower was and whenever you get out of the shower there's water on the floor and when there's water on the floor you can slip and so he kind of slipped but he caught himself and i went uh-oh and he went uh-oh you know and so i got a towel and i put the towel on the floor and instead of bending over this 46 year old body i put my foot on that towel and i just went in circles and i wiped up the water and then that 22 month little boy came right behind me threw a rag on the ground and started wiping up circles scary huh don't ever forget they're watching and not only that then he did something that most 22 months old don't do and so i i don't know where rhonda is she's probably wrangling him right now i know she's on the way and i have permission to share this story okay very important that you all know those things i asked permission so i could have shared a story about abby last week because i asked permission before i share stories but so um my little boy this morning at 22 months old he still thinks that breast milk is spectacular he's not yet weaned and y'all when i tell you this know this last year we went on a anniversary trip i love to go on an anniversary trip and so he was like 18 months old so this is in april we're in like what september now so in april we go on this this anniversary trip and we're kind of like okay now's the time we're going to be gone for four or five days we're going to leave them with my parents and her parents they will have to suffer the consequences of no breast milk thank you and so we're like he's finally going to be weaned because what is part of the maturing process i told rhonda this i said if he goes to kindergarten and he's still breastfeeding i'm going to have an issue i did that's exactly how i said it i said if he's if he's breastfeeding in kindergarten know this i'm going to be uncomfortable but until then he's hopefully our last one you never know what god has in store and so i'm just letting the punches go okay but so at 22 months he he goes he gets a little breast milk this morning he comes off the breast milk and he goes this he goes and i was like oh my goodness be careful but you know what also we need to be we need to be mature weaning is a very difficult part of growing up because it means we don't have to have mom anymore at least not that aspect of it hey mom and so know that as long as that child what's my cut-off time do you remember rhonda gayle do you remember what did i say i'd be uncomfortable when's the cut-off time for kindergarten see we we've had this conversation so when it says in james verse 4 let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete lacking in nothing trials are coming your way that to your that 22 month old he's y'all we were shocked after four days of being gone whenever he came up to her and the first thing he did was try to pull that shirt up and and do it it's just crazy right but could you imagine a christian at 22 years old instead of 22 months old not knowing the word of god think about the trials that are going to come your way and if you don't know what the word of god says think about what our reactions would be we're going to get blown around and tossed like waves in the wind and so if you're not sure what you need ask and what should you ask for ask for wisdom so a lot of times people come up to me and they say hey i just want you to know i'm praying for you and i've heard somebody say before well what are you praying for but i'll tell you the one that really gets to me hey i just want you know i'm thinking about you and i'm sitting here going i don't care if you're thinking about me i care if you're praying for me and then i need you to be praying specific things for me so what did i ask y'all to pray for this morning hey pray that we don't go through any trials or temptations that we can't handle all right and pray that we have the wisdom that when we're in the midst of the storm to know how to get to the other side that's what becoming a mature christian is about and so let's continue i'm going to jump over 9 through 11 like i said and we're going to get to um blessed verse 12 blessed is anyone who endures temptation such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the lord has promised to those who love him if you remember last week we said this we said it's it feels like it's probably obvious that james spent time with jesus because he says things that are so similar to the beatitudes to the teachings of christ so when jesus would teach and he would go from town to town odds are he's he's taught the same things over and over so if you turn over to matthew chapter 5 you will see some of the beatitudes that jesus would have taught and in matthew chapter 5 verse 1 it says when jesus saw the crowds he sat down his disciples came to him then he began to speak and taught them saying now by the way that's pretty interesting because here i am standing up in front of you and the day of jesus teachers would actually sit and the people would crowd in so it's kind of opposite now you all sit and i stand it's just it's one of those things that changes over time they would obviously not have microphones and other things like that but this is what jesus says in um if you look about um in verse 10 blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven james remember that remember back in james what does it say james 1 blessed is anyone who endures temptation such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the lord has promised to those who love him blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you pretty similar sayings so james would be echoing the things that jesus has said before and we have to think about where where are these people gathering remember they're the the jews who are believing in jesus they're in the dispersion so they're in synagogues scattered throughout and imagined them being church goers imagine them going to church and then some people saying hey you're not supposed to be here because you believe in jesus and so they're getting persecuted because they believe in jesus and they believe that he is the messiah and yet these other people don't believe he's the messiah so there's this huge church schism that's happening and james is trying to encourage him blessed blessed is anyone who endures temptation for such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life and i love verse 13. no one when tempted should say i am being tempted by god for god cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one amen we need to hear that again don't we i mean it's just scripture amen god tempts no one god wants the best for us remember what jesus said in matthew chapter 7 and james i mean it's going to be similar to james again i'm just going back and forth from matthew to james when you don't know what to do matthew chapter 7 verse 7 ask and it will be given you search and you will find knock in the door will be open for everyone who asks receives and everyone who searches fines for everyone who knocks the door will be open so again your i hope you can see that the repetition of the asking the receiving the blessed the back and forth so trials are what everybody goes through and and that's what the first four or five verses are after that we get into the temptation so earlier i said when we go through temptations is it god who tempts us no we tempt ourselves it's right up here also the enemy contemptus but when one is tempted it's by one's own desires being lured and enticed by it that's chapter 14 and then when that desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and that sin when it's fully grown gives birth to death do not be deceived my beloved every generous act of giving with every perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change in fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creations of his creatures so that is james the 1 12 through 18 that i would really love us to look at today um how and why and when we're tempted what should we do to be mature and to get out of it and last week if you recall i said something along the lines of because weirsby says it and i just love wiersby whenever he says this he says oftentimes our outlook determines the outcome so if we have an outlook of joy it doesn't matter we're going to be joyous and the outcome is going to be okay because we're following in the footsteps of christ so when um when jesus was baptized do you all remember that story luke chapter four let's go there real quick because i think that i think it would be good for us to to look at when jesus himself was tempted when jesus was tempted and we know he was tempted and we know he was tempted in every way so in luke chapter 4 it says this jesus full of the holy spirit returned from the jordan and was led by the spirit in the wilderness so why was jesus in the jordan does anybody know anybody want to take a guess he was being baptized you can look at verse chapter 3 verse 21 now when all the people were baptized and when jesus also had been baptized and was praying the heaven was opened and the holy spirit descended upon him and bodily formed like a dove and a voice came from heaven you were my son the beloved with you i am well pleased and so then then he talks about the ancestry of jesus and i love when how luke says it he says jesus was about 30 years old when he began his work he was the son as was thought of joseph because we know he was the son of of god and so then you get into chapter four jesus full of the holy spirit returned from the jordan and was led by the spirit into the wilderness did it say the spirit tempted him did it say the spirit led him to be tempted no it said the spirit led him into the wilderness and just to be clear it says this where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil who did the tempting devil does god allow us to go through trials absolutely because when we go through trials we can have perseverance when we go through trials that endurance develops and we become the men and women god knows we us to be i mean think about abraham right hey for abraham to truly get the full blessing he he was tested he was tested but the temptation is not from god the temptation is from the devil or from our fallen human nature so and and so we just had a very wise elder say and we can receive empathy when that happens i want you to know that is a prophetic statement because i stand here before you i don't think that i could have taught james without having going through the trials of life and last week like i mentioned whenever i was going through those trials in life i found myself in not one not two but three different studies on the book of james because when we go through those trials and we experience that brokenness and that hurt when other people go through it we can hold their hands and we can walk them through it with us and at the very end of chapter one you're going to see in the end of chapter one in james and again this is what i was saying uh before class a little bit we're going to get into it in the next few weeks because you you had taken a cup and you had mailed it to your sister donna up in colorado so donna i appreciate you being up in colorado and and seeing and your brother being down here so um he had mailed a cup and what i had said there was you don't want to just be hearers of the word but you want to be doers and so when you have that empathy and you can walk alongside a brother or sister and specifically in james it says when you when you take care of the orphans and the widows at the end of chapter one that's when you know that's when you know you were being the people of god that's when you know you have the character that god wants you to be and so jesus back to luke real quick jesus full of the holy spirit returned from the jordan and was led by the spirit into the wilderness where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil he ate nothing during those days and when they were over he was famished the devil said to him if you're the son of of god command this stone to become a loaf of bread jesus answered it is written one does not live by bread alone so jesus quoted scripture then he goes on and says then the devil let him up and showed him um in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and the devil said to him to you i will give their glory and all this authority for it has been given over to me and i give it if and i can give it to anyone i please if you then will worship me it will all be yours jesus answered your foot against the stone and jesus answered him it is said do not put the lord your god to the test when the devil had finished every test he departed from him until an opportune time so that's what i mean by man when you come out of the water if we're anything like jesus if we're following in the footsteps of jesus when you get baptized guard your heart be prepared get into scripture because jesus right after he got baptized that's when the will the spirit led him into the wilderness and then the enemy tempted him and did the enemy leave forever after he he made it through those three temptations listen to what it says when the devil had finished every test he departed from him until an opportune time what is it to be mature it's weird for me to say this but i'm going to say it this way i still consider myself very new to this church and i'm humbled that they would ask me and allow me to come up here and share some of james with you but this church if you want to talk about praying for this church this church lost an incredible leader and i know that because i hear the stories of my family and other people wanting to be here tomorrow to celebrate his life larry keane so be praying for his family i mean we mourn differently right we all know that death is not the end because jesus has paid the ultimate price there's another there's a how does james say it blessed is anyone who endures temptation such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the lord has promised to those who love him and we know that that man knew those things so we don't have to mourn like everybody else mourns but at the same time that doesn't mean that we're not going to miss him in the here and now because we can't go and ask him those elders that go before us we can't go and get their opinion on something anymore that's why we mourn we mourn differently fair so back to james if we can jump back into james it's pretty graphic the actual greek here it says no one when tempted should say i am tempted by god for god cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one then it says this but when but one is tempted by one's own desire being lured and enticed by it being lured and enticed by it being lured i don't know does any does anybody in here like to fish i want you to know i despise fishing uh there is the only thing good about fishing is that you get if you go out on a boat is that you get to go out on a boat and if it's sunny you get to catch sun okay that's that's my version of fishing the reason i cannot stand to fish is i didn't have this mentor growing up who taught me how to fish and so literally there was sometimes that the water was clear and i could throw like a bait right beside the fish and it would be white and it would go by the fish and it wouldn't work and then this other person would come and they would throw this other bait and it would be red and all of a sudden the fish would just bow hammer their bait and not ever get mine and they didn't tell me you had the wrong color they didn't because they wanted to catch the fish right and so i just want you to know no one ever taught me how to fish and so it was really weird yesterday what happened to me i did learn how to duck hunt and i will talk about duck hunting all the time because i just love it it's a part of who i am and it's just it's ah it's who it it started yesterday to let you all know all right and there might be some buddies of mine right now in the duck blind who are watching because when we were in the duck blind together yesterday they said hey clay what you teaching on tomorrow which kind of perked my interest i said why are you asking what you know they said well we watched you last week and it's so funny because i've gotten a lot of people say that they've said we watched you last week ryan uh yeah ryan's sitting right there he was so nice he i was down getting coffee this morning and ryan said hey i watched you last week and he goes you know i really liked when gary did ephesians that happened this morning right down there i said ryan i'm telling you right now i'm gonna i'm gonna go upstairs and i'm gonna use that i said cause that's funny he goes i like you too i said that's okay and so we were in the duck blind yesterday and um and we were hunting and we were having a lot of fun and they asked me what we were going to teach on and so i shared just a little bit about what i was going to be teaching on and and what was weird is we had shot a few teal and the shotgun shells had gone out in front of the boat and we had never hunted here before my buddy who was one of my buddies with us he was 51 years old and y'all we had we could not get to where we were going yesterday so we had i called this guy who has an airboat he got an airboat out there to pull this blind into place i mean it was just by the way the airboat can sustain hurricane-force winds because i was in the airboat whenever he took off and it was crazy so we get all set up we're out there we shoot some teal and the shotgun shells out in the water in front of us all of a sudden these catfish start coming up and like trying to hit the brass on the shotgun shells and my buddy my buddy he takes his backpack and he unzips this this bag and he pulls this blue bag out and if you're a duck hunter you know you don't bring blue bags to the duck blind right he he pulled this blue bag out and then he unzips the blue bag and he pulls this fishing pole out that's that long and then he does this and he extends the fishing pole and the fishing pole extends out to about six feet and he has a cork and a little jig on it and he throws that cork and that jig out there and would you believe that we caught eight catfish and my buddies made a lot of fun of me because they kept saying hey clay why don't you try because they all know i hate fishing and so finally after much humiliation after much guys being guys i take the fishing pole and i cast it my buddy jacob's reaction was clay that was a pretty good cast i didn't know you could throw they had never seen me cast a fishing pole and for good reason i did not catch anything i cast twice and i said i'm out i'm not going to do it it's just it's not me but you know it is golly when when that bait when that lure that's the greek word here to let you all know being lured and enticed by it when that bait is so good that that fish can't resist it you know we can talk about a lot of things the need for food y'all the need for food and water is not bad you have to have it to live but when food and water becomes life and whenever they have shows on tv of people who can't move anymore and have to have food and water brought to them food and water has missed the mark when when that you know alcohol becomes something that you can't put down it didn't start that way did it it just didn't there are other things that are just good that are pure y'all do you know that every one of you is here because there was a an act that in pure in marriage is holy but when taken outside of the context of marriage and holiness it becomes depraved and so what i'm telling you is the enemy is going to use things that are spectacular when done right that god created for good and what we're going to be tempted is we're going to be tempted to to go and to do something to get out of another situation that's what it has been traditionally in my life when i get under stress and my wife knows all these things because when we started dating we had the most um you know just pull back and show your heart we had the most intense conversations because i didn't want to live through just this brokenness ever again and so i shared with her hey here's my triggers here's what i know i know that whenever i'm at work i work in a third generation family business and if i'm at work and things are good and my home life gets tough i'm okay god has made it where i can sustain that i know that if i'm at if i'm at if work's good and my home life is bad all right or vice versa if home life is great and work is really tough it's okay but guess what when my work life is tough and my home life is tough and y'all it happens we're humans man that's when clay has to guard his heart because the enemy's coming and he's coming hard and fast for me and so if clay's in a bind clay needs to good news rhonda will know if i'm going to bind at the house right and it's not just i can get in a bind with her you know i've got a 16 year old son i don't know about y'all but anytime as a child starts to drive i thought i prayed before i have a 19 year old daughter she's in college out of the state i can't get there and fix it anymore even something as simple as a flat tire it can be crazy what can get you into a bind man just the kids at home fighting just that bickering bickering bicker and bicker and bickering you know it's like you just want to escape you want to get out and there's always something there's this bait and let me tell you something about the devil he knows the right color of lure to dangle out there he went to fishing school and so when that happens you got to guard your heart you got to beware you've got to do what jesus did what did jesus do whenever he was tempted word of god word of god word of god he knew scripture scripture scripture and we're at a disadvantage do you know why we're at a disadvantage from people who were reading james because if you have a bible you can take it with you and that also means you can close it and you can put it up and you don't have to get it back out do you know that people in the in the day that jesus was there and james was writing they books were a commodity you didn't have a lot of paper and so what they would do is they would go to synagogue and then they would have somebody who was very educated read and then guess what they would do they would memorize and so if you were a good jew if you were a good person you would have memorized the first five books of the bible the torah you would have it memorized and then you would start memorizing the psalms and the proverbs the wisdom literature so james remember last week when we were talking and by the way my alarm's about to go off my alarm's going to go off because at 9 40 we have about five minutes and the reason we're ending at 9 45 and by the way i can't remember who it was but i'm going to shut it off so it doesn't go off they they facebooked messaged me last week and they said this they said thank you for ending at 9 45. i said why is that they said because once it at 9 45 it shuts off and we never get the end of it and so we're going to end at 9 45 because there's other people who won't be a part of it if we don't um and so and it will give us a time to do this to go and be doers we can go down there and we can be greeting people and welcoming them welcoming them here does anybody know frank raise your hand if you know frank okay if you're if you're online you didn't see it but like 80 of the people in this room just raised their hand and says i know frank frank it's so simple just that handshake and that hello and yet it means so much and so you can and online people y'all have a ton of franks i mean i can name misty i can name a lot of other people who are so good at just welcoming and greeting so it doesn't matter where you are if you're here or there you can be a frank to somebody and don't be a freddie um sorry freddy um so back to um but when one is tempted by one's own desires and being lewd and enticed by it then when that desire has conceived when that desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and that sin when it fully is grown when it is fully grown gives birth to death that's the crazy thing about the devil and the bait he uses it's like the first time you sin what do you do the temptation is in your head and you're like oh man if i just do that and then you do it and it's like isn't it the first time am i am i lying i mean i don't want that to be the truth but then the second time and the third time and the fourth time and then all of a sudden and i could actually get emotional because i've been there then all of a sudden it's like you're trapped by the sin that you thought was a relief and you thought you were doing something to escape and what you really found out was it's not an escape it's a trap and you're hooked and you can't get off the hook that's what it is yes yeah we have the free will to stop amen but it doesn't matter how the sooner you do it better and this is what c.s lewis said to that so if you can't hear a lot of times online so what he just said is clay you have the free will to stop at any time and not only do you have the free will you have god's holy spirit working inside of you begging you pulling you getting you back saying stop stop stop and i know people who have stopped drinking stop smoking stopped lots of things with just a stop and i know some people it's taken a lot of different times but god's spirit works inside of us this is the way c.s lewis would say that and he wrote this book called the great divorce and it's not it's not the divorce of um a man and a woman it's the divorce of sin from our lives and it's a fiction book so it's a great book because it's it talks about fiction and this is how c.s lewis would say it if in the end you end up in heaven you're going to look back at your life even your life on earth and you're going to say man even life on earth was i was in heaven because the whole every step took me into heaven and if at the same time you you go to hell and you're in hell and you look back you're going to look at earth and you're going to say even my time on earth i was in hell because every step every decision took me one step closer to the to that path and so what he says is just so good and so this is this is the end because we're coming up with that time where we have to end know this francis chan again right now media francis chan has a great eight-minute video on this right here the trials and temptations but what god says is this every generous act of giving with every perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights with with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change so you know what when you succeed and man if you're sitting in this room that means you have beaten sin as well because we're not a slave to sin we're a slave to life we're a slave to jesus christ that's how james starts out chapter one that's who we are as a people we are a slave to jesus christ so every good gift comes from the father who is light and in him there is no shadow there is no darkness and that's who we are called to follow and to be like jesus christ let's pray god thank you for this time together thank you for the wisdom that's in this room lord as we pray for wisdom impart it to us thank you thank you thank you that you've given us ways out that sin is death but you are life lord help guide our steps this week to follow you we pray all this in christ's name amen

Channel: Whites Ferry Road Church

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Length: 43min 16sec (2596 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021