Bible Class - James

but can you can y'all start over here and just shout out your name so i know tracy merle alice by the way merle likes his coffee black just to let you know manny scott larry anita and that's larry who just sat down i just happen to know that larry's sitting close to larry and the only i'm terrible with names but if i forgot his name i'd be in a real bind because that's my father-in-law so to let y'all know um and what's really tough about that being your father-in-law your paw-in-law that means my wife's going to be in here his daughter and he's going to be in here so if i mess up i'm sure i will hear about it actually let me tell you what's been incredible about larry he has he if he's who should be up here teaching because what we're going to learn about james is a lot about patience and he has um for me not yet said hey clay can you do this different and um and that means that the man has a lot of james already in his system all right keep going tell me names tell me names i didn't hear i'm sorry dennis excellent veronica richard richard and did you see what just happened i did it i walked where i wasn't supposed to so dennis i i was so enamored and to listen that i i already that's why i'm having to practice to stay up here hey we're just shouting out names if you're just getting in here and so i would love to um start on this side and work our way back in tell me your name leanne shane say it loud shay perfect i was throwing it in on there tina jennifer hey if you're online and just joining us to let y'all know it's the first week we're teaching james i'm trying to learn how to stand right here and so i've been asking people to throw out some names real quick as people are coming in if you're online and you want to throw your name out we'll go back and we'll watch it later so that we can say good morning to you as well keep going we're at um tina brianna jennifer brienne jennifer heather lacey candice ryan robert robert kathy delores huh back here freddy jason oh gosh that can't happen right if you're a child of the i'm i'm was born in 75 and so if you're if you watch movies in the 80s i didn't watch movies with freddie and jason in them because i'm one of those people if if i watch a scary movie i'm in a bind so concerning that freddie and jay easton are sitting together um and then very back rick rick rex jim marie all right well look let's do this let's get started um if you were just coming in or just joining us we were just trying to get some names my name is clay mcconnell and they have asked me to teach the book of james um the interesting thing about the book of james for me is james um james was with me i would even say it this way james comforted me james taught me james i don't know the exact right word james mentored me james is um one of the reasons i can stand here today before you because in 2015 2016 i found myself in one of the biggest trials of my life and what's unique about that is if you if you were to look at my bible and and this is uh this is my bible and i was showing um my daughter ruth ann um a bible and we were talking about it and there's a um there's a rubber band holding this section in because um this bible has been with me for a long time and so i love this bible and there's all kinds of notes and different highlights and so if you have your bible with you one of the things i love to do is to highlight and to write notes and so if you were to look right here this note right here in my bible this note says this john ward bible study february 15 2016 trials of life are inevitable that's what the note says and in february of 2016 i found myself not in one not in two but in three different bible studies on the book of james do you think god was trying to tell me something and so what we're going to do this morning is we're going to begin to study the book of james and as we do that i want to do this i want to ask god to come into this place come into my life come into your life open your ears open our eyes so that we can see what god is trying to say would you pray with me god we come before you right now and we just ask that you would impart your wisdom we asked lord that you would you would make yourself known to each of us wherever we are in whatever situation we find ourselves in lord your servants are asking for your wisdom we pray all this in the name of christ amen so as you heard me say the book of james found me in one of the toughest times of my life so that you know a little bit about the guy standing up before you i was born my name is clay keener mcconnell all right i was born the son of billy keener mcconnell actually william keener mcconnell and his dad was massey keener mcconnell and his dad was mitchell keener mcconnell do you see there's kind of like a little tradition happening here there's a keener name in there and there's a mcconnell name in there so the keener comes from this guy who is a bishop in the methodist episcopal church in new orleans back in 1870s and 80s and he wrote some books and i actually have some of his books that he wrote he was a great his name was bishop christian keener and so he was a good man who served god and obviously there's a heritage there that my family wanted to name me um that they named a lot of us and so it's really interesting that's that's kind of the name that comes behind me uh and you'll hear later about names as well because i have a son now named william uh remember what's my dad's name my dad's william keener mcconnell so my son's not named william my son's name hawkins clay mcconnell but what you'll see is my dad was william i'm clay and my son is hawking so you'll hear a little bit about him later he's 21 months old 22 months this week there you go something like that um so let's read the first verse of james if you would uh with me um james chapter one verse one james a servant of god and of the lord jesus christ to the 12 tribes and the dispersion greetings that's 1-1 right that's it let's read it again james all right what's his name james thank you that's what i'm talking about james now here's what's unique so we already know who the author of james is it's simple starts out first word james here's what we don't know we don't know what james if you know anything about jesus you will hear jesus call all kinds of people james you have james the son of zebedee you have james this you have james that because there's a ton of james and it would be like saying john nowadays right there's a bunch of john's ironically i don't think we've ever heard the names do we have any john's in here what are the odds right we have freddies we have jason's um do we have a jacob in here i have a nephew named jacob um jacob's a strong name because you know in the old testament you have a jacob right and so jacob is a man of faith and so you want to name your children names have significance so you want to name your kids you want to you want a name that has significant james is significant because it is a form of jacob which means we can already tell you that the author probably was raised was steeped in the jewish tradition so the old testament just from his one name just from the start of his name we would know that james steeped in the old testament knows knows jacob old testament because he doesn't start himself off as a a follower of christ what does he say a servant of god now in in the greek it would probably say a slave and when i say probably it says slave okay but in our term world um it's unique because slavery is not a good practice slavery was very different in the old testament times in the new testament times than it is now and i'm not saying that it was it was a lot better then but it was different then okay and so they had slaves in the in the new testament so for him to say a slave of god a servant of god people would have all kinds of different connotations going on we live in what 2021 so our connotations of slavery is very different did you know that on this day uh in the 1700s you had one of our founding fathers freed 500 of his slaves pretty cool huh before before the emancipation proclamation in the 1800s this guy i think it was the largest per um freedom of slavery in the united states other than on that day so it's a pretty interesting thing but slavery means something very different back then see because if you're a slave back then you have your master's status pretty cool huh so if you were a slave of a rich person and you went to go somewhere and to deliver a message you would be delivering that message on behalf of that really rich person and they would they would treat you with a status of that really rich person to let you know but i'm not here to talk a lot about slavery here's what we have to talk about james a servant of god and of the lord jesus christ so this is who we know he is we know he's jewish he's a servant of god and we know that he's a servant of jesus christ there are a lot of different speculations about who this particular james was i will tell you this i fall into the camp of he was probably jesus's brother james okay and the reason i fall into that camp is because as you will see as we go through this study for the next seven weeks he says a lot of things that are paraphrases of what jesus says this is like if you've ever read proverbs in the old testament uh so the psalms i told y'all in 2015 and 16 i was in a bind and i'd always told people this because i had i had been told this that if you're ever in a really tough spot open up the psalms and read them as a love letter written written by god to you so like change some of the pronouns and read it as if it's written to you that i experienced in 2015 and 2016 along with the studying of james and so james is a lot like the proverbs there's a lot of wisdom literature in james and so jesus oftentimes whenever he spoke and taught he would you would hear the beatitudes blessed are those who are this so james is going to have a lot of those jesus sayings and we're going to see some even this morning but anyway so let's do this matthew um 13 55 and 56 matthew chapter 13 verses 55 and 56 says this is not this the carpenter's son so what's happening is they are um they're wondering who jesus is and they're like certainly this isn't jesus but here's here's what it says it's not this the carpenter's son is not his mother called mary and are not his brothers james and joseph and simon and judas fair so here you see specifically in matthew you'll see it in mark you'll see it in other places as well there was no question that jesus had a brother named james now we all know kind of the the rest of the story right we know the 2000 years later version back then they were thinking it's not this the carpenter's son they were thinking it was joseph's son okay so they didn't have the knowledge that we have that it was james is probably like a half brother yes okay so his they might have a different dad um but james would be the brother of jesus that would be what i would think and the reason i would think that in to let you know if we were to continue to look at some other um possibilities look in acts chapter 12 verses 17. in acts chapter 12 verse 17 we will see that it says this paul's talking and he's talking about you know going out and talking to other gentiles and other nations and he's coming back and they're debating what to do and he says he motioned to them with his hand to be silent and describe for them how the lord had brought them brought him out of prison and he added tell this to who tell this to james and to the believers all right so here you have him james described as also a believer so now we know that james was a believer in jesus christ and we know that hey paul's saying tell this to james all right so i'm trying to give you a lot of different references to who this james is who we could speculate this james arthur would be we would know he was jewish he would be kind of a christian jew and two thousand years later that's weird for us to say because we would think of him as a uh jewish christian but in reality he was more of a christian jew because he was raised jewish but then his is starting to believe in jesus and i want you to know um he was there at the if you look at acts chapter 1 um verse 14 and i know i'm jumping around i'm just i'm throwing a lot of things to you because they might stick on a wall i never know who it's like reading out of a phone book you never know what's going to hit who and so acts chapter 1 verse 14 says this all these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer together with certain women including mary the mother of jesus as well as his brothers all right so you have after jesus is ascended um you have mary there you have his brothers there and they are believing in jesus and that's very important because let me tell you something james wasn't always that way okay so earlier whenever i said hey isn't this the carpenter's son you can go back and read that whole context and basically his brothers are there to say jesus be quiet you're embarrassing us all right so what's unique is although james ended up believing hey jesus is the messiah it didn't always start out that way and so that's kind of who we have is james he's a brother of jesus could you imagine growing up in that family i mean let's just pause for a second that would be tough right i mean i have a younger brother and he is i call him my smarter younger brother my wiser smarter younger brother because my younger brother has never made a bee in his life you hear me he went through a master's in accounting program as a 4.0 student um he's brilliant whenever it comes to books and and that's a good thing but i'm compared to my younger brother could you be imagined if i was compared to jesus right well jesus did it this way that would be tough and so anyway mary has quite um quite the job to be a mother to these these children and so i suspect that this james that we're talking about is probably jesus's brother because as we'll see later on throughout the teaching there's a lot of things that he quotes that are just so similar to what jesus said and i think that he probably heard jesus say it a lot fair because when you hear something over and over it's almost like you can say it and so if you're coming in right now just know this my name is clay i'm here i'm teaching james and i am going to be stealing a lot of things that this guy right here says whirsby so if you want to go and study after this is over go grab this book i also studied adamson he wrote this commentary on james there's another guy named francis chan and he does a lot of videos and so some of the things that i'm you're going to hear me say are going to be parallel to what he says and the reason is because i am not worried i'm like james okay i'm going to say things that are really similar to jesus but i'm going to try to say them a little differently james isn't trying to plagiarize jesus right he's trying to be encouraging to the jews the christian jews who were in the look at james chapter one again james 1 1 who were in the to the 12 tribes in the dispersion greetings so that's a real weird word and you might not know what dispersion is so what we need to do is we need to understand who james is writing to so james is writing to the 12 tribes which means again he is jewish because you would know that there's 12 tribes of israel and the dispersion is the case because you have a lot of jews who have to be outside of jerusalem they have to be outside of israel because they've either been persecuted or because it's if you go back and you read the old testament there's this narrative throughout the old testament okay when you were being the people of god you were in israel then when you quit being the people of god you're never i mean they're still jewish they're still the people of god but when you quit this is what it says in genesis 12 you were blessed to be a blessing okay so when you are being the people of god and you are being blessed and you are being a blessing you're in israel then when you start hoarding the blessing and you start keeping it for yourself and you when you quit being the people of god dispersion god sends you out to all the nations and you have to learn a lesson and then you get to come back and you're the people of god and you can see this throughout the old testament whenever there's problems with childbirth whenever there's problems with money and famine see because money is very different back then um i'm going to ask a question i'd love for you online to know this how many of you all know who bill gates is you could raise your hand okay lots of people know who bill gates is bill gates steve jobs they kind of had this competition and they created computers and chips and all kinds of things apple computer microsoft bill gates has made a ton of money has anybody in here become poor because bill gates made money have any of you became poor because bill gates made money in the day of jesus if people became rich it was oftentimes because other people became poor so their economy is very different than our economy that we have in the united states and what's amazing is our economy in the united states is shifting and i'm not here to talk about all these different political shifts but know this now if i go to amazon or go somewhere online and i click order i have no idea where it's shipping from okay the world economy is changing and so in the day of jesus you had the romans and rome was there and rome came in and one of the reasons you have a dispersion is because rome when they conquer a people they take some of them and they put them in other places because if you don't have one group in one certain place it's easier to keep them under wraps keep them under thumb fair and so you have these jews who are praying hey let us all come back together they need a messiah hence the reason they were so many people that were prepared for jesus during that time and so james the brother is writing to the people who are being persecuted and here's why a lot of these christian jews could be being persecuted because if you believe that jesus is the messiah you're going to go to worship together with your other jews because who are you trying to convince that jesus is the messiah the jews are in the dispersion you're trying to say hey if we believe in this if we do this then maybe we can come back together and be the people of god but what happens is you go to the synagogue and you say that and you have people like saul who kill you because they don't want jesus to be known and so that would be a pretty intense trial fair that would be pretty intense so here you have james servant of god and of the lord jesus christ to the 12 tribes and the dispersion greetings my brothers and sisters when you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but joy now if you have a pen and you're outlining or underlining do this i want you to go ahead we'll just read um through verse five but where it says in your bible it might say count it nothing but joy it might say considerate nothing but joy it's gonna say some word like that circle count consider it count it nothing but joy because you know you know circle no that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let circle let let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete lacking in nothing if any of you is lacking in wisdom ask circle ask circle ask if any of you if any of you is lacking in wisdom ask god who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly and it will be given you fair i just said to to do four circle four y'all remember them count no let ask so one of the reasons that i tell you that james is very jewish and i haven't counted them okay i'm going to use that same word i have not counted but one of the reasons i know it is because there are over 50 imperatives in james where is he he decided to go and count them all there's over 50 times that james says do this he doesn't say hey i think you might want to do it he says do this imperative and there are people that are a lot better any english teachers in here okay good uh if there's a grammar teacher online you have to forgive me it's been a long time since i've had english but an imperative is a directive go and do this james a lot like a proverb the proverbs if you do this if you want to if you really want to get your enemy one of my favorite if you really want to get your enemy be really nice to them being nice to them is like keeping lumps of coal on their head now am i being nice to them to heap lumps of coal in their head but ironically being nice is like keeping lumps of coal in their head okay so it's a proverb it's a wisdom literature james consider it like a proverb like a wisdom literature so when you find yourself in a trial and i have no idea but i know this when i was in the toughest trial of my life i was invited to it in ruston john ward he's my dentist by the way john ward and if there's a dentist in here go to your dentist i'm not trying to plug john ward i'm just saying he's my dentist and he said hey i'm going to be teaching james if you want to come and i said no problem because i was in a bind and when you're in a bind you have to listen for whatever god is saying and so then i come over here because my buddy said look you've been going to church why don't you get out of why don't you get out of your comfort zone why don't you come over here and go to church in a different place so i did so i came over here to white's ferry road because rustin is it's kind of like man the old testament it's a small town everybody knows everybody and everybody knows everybody's business but you know what's unique about that it's not just rustin i think it doesn't matter where you are that's what it's like and so it was it was time for me to get out of my comfort zone to get over here and whenever i'm over here there's this guy walking through the halls and you know what his name was chad johnson and um and chad johnson looked at me and said look uh i don't really know you but god's kind of putting on my heart if uh if you want to you should come over to julian sims sims automotive we're trying to uh start a little bible study it's gonna be on james exactly you know them all and so i said okay and so i ended up in three different bible studies on james and y'all it spoke to me and it spoke to me because my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but joy now i'm a preacher teacher you call it what you will but i'm going to try to get into a couple of the words and you know we kind of got into that with james trying to tell you who he was does your bible say my brothers or does your bible say my brothers and sisters so a lot of you will say brothers a lot of you will say brothers and sisters okay here's the unique thing my brother was at the hunting camp this morning so i stayed at the hunting camp last night because i'm a duck hunter duck season starts next week i can't wait uh it's teal season and so dove season started yesterday and so i was out there and please i have had plenty of people say we're not supposed to shoot the lord's bird i want you to know i don't shoot the white ones okay they have to be dirty and unclean they have to be great all right so uh i totally understand but and so i'm out there and and you know my brother's there and this morning i was getting up early to continue to prepare y'all i've been nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof teaching you guys isn't that funny i've been nervous nervous nervous my wife's seen it she's been watching me study and read and wake up early or go to bed late trying to figure it all out because it meant so much to me in my life i don't i don't know what you're going through i don't know why god has you here i know what god had me in james whenever i was going through it and so i'm trying to study and and i'm like you know what back whenever and it has been a long time speaking of english teachers a long time it's been over 20 years since i've been in english over 20 years since i've studied greek okay but that word brothers and sisters in greek it triggered with me this morning that word is gender inclusive and what i mean by that is that's why you'll see some of your bibles will just say brothers some of your bibles will say brothers and sisters and so my brother at 6 30 this morning comes walking through i'm getting a cup of coffee and i said what you're doing he said i'm going to scout later so he was going to look for dove and i said hey and my brother by the way is fluent in spanish okay he um whenever he was in college he learned spanish and he went and did um some mission work in costa rica and he said clay you really know spanish when you start dreaming in spanish and so uh i said hey um i i think i recall this isn't isn't spanish like greek isn't it gender inclusive um if you were to say my brothers like my brothers and sisters he goes well if you have sisters then it would be and i said what would that be he goes miss hermanos so my brothers and sisters so it can be gender inclusive that's that's the greek for it i mean if you want to get really into weeds that's why some of your bibles will say my brothers and sisters and some of them just say brothers but so um my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of any kind we circled this word what is it count a lot of your bibles will say count a lot of them will say consider the the greek there is count it's a it's a very um accounting term okay count it nothing but joy really when you go through a tough time count it nothing but joy really but so often our attitude determines where we're going to go so if you count it nothing but joy from the very beginning we'll become mature um i was trying to think about the difference between happiness and joy and these emotions and you can see uh if you're online i don't know if you can see the coffee coffee mugs up here but they say what what do they say can you all say it really loud together thank you that's what they say do y'all know who said it yeah it's on it's on the coffee mug phil robertson anybody there when he said it i was you know when he said it it's so funny so he they were willie is brilliant and i say that because he was wanting to start a show i would never have pitched this show because i would never be vulnerable enough to show you all of that me and my brother argue about okay and so um oh baby that's how clean i am thank you i love it um that's funny right there that's real time right so um i um i love it it was a dryer sheet in case y'all didn't know everybody's kind of mumbling to themselves oh i put it on i should have figured it out i love it um so um just like that though y'all real time this show was in real time so a buddy of mine knows willie and he was they were all together at a concert and i was there and we were i was on standing on the back wall because they're duck hunters and i'm duck hunters but tim sometimes when you get too many duck hunters together you're trying to one up and i just i'm not interested in the one up right now on duck hunting and so um they weren't one up and they were just talking so me and my buddy martin were on the back wall just chatting and um willie and my buddy are saying hey look we're trying to film this new show and so we have my obviously i was there last night we were at the duck camp and so this duck camp is a fun place you can be there year round um alligator season starts right now you can go froggin there's chill hunting there's dove hunting so there's something you can do year round and this they were trying to film in april may and june and i want you to know there's not much you can do in april may and june that's outdoors but in june you can frog and so we were going to go frogging and so they asked hey do y'all have any beaver dams i'm like do we have beaver dams yeah we got thousands of beaver dams and so they wanted to film psy and phil tearing out a beaver dam and then they wanted to film um the guys going frogging because i think miss kaye was they were trying to get her to do a cookbook lots of different things but they're trying to do it on a budget right so they're trying to get as much film as they can because they don't know if this thing's gonna they don't know the rest of the story the paul harvey version they don't know if it's going to take off or it's going to flop and just cost a lot of money okay so there they ask and they say we say sure you can come out to the camp so they come out to the camp y'all they're taking black tape and they're taping over like vanguard or honda they're trying to cover up all the stuff so that if the show does make they don't have to go back and do post-production and take all these little names out until they get sponsors and so one of the things how many people do you think it took how many people do you think it took to film three rednecks frogging [Music] the general rule of thumb that i have now learned is multiplied times 10. so it took 30 people to film three rednecks frogging okay and i want you to know we only had four boats and when you have four boats somebody's gonna learn a very good jesus lesson on how to walk on water and so what ends up happening is we're out there and um they they film i did not know this but did you know that when hollywood and new york and all these people show up that there's unions involved and the unions say that you can only work 12 hours and so i'm not i'm not i'm not getting into politics i'm just telling you that's that's the parameters we were working with okay so you had literally two producers one director an audio guy a light guy you had all these camera people the camera people had camera people assistants it's just a lot of folks and they're all there to film through rednecks frogging and what ends up happening is you frog at night and so they had these big lights because you had a lighting guy and they have these tripods and what do you do if a big light goes up in the air you need to put sandbags at the bottom of it so they're trying to put sandbags in the boats full of people it's going to sink anyway we get through all the little details we go frogging and we started they started filming at three o'clock in the afternoon the beaver dams and so by three o'clock in the morning i know it's almost time because it's coming up on the 12 hours and i know where the hunting camp is because it's our land and right there i know it says robertson land on tv they weren't trying to to make believe i just want you to know this they filmed a ton of it on their land i didn't want our name on it because i didn't want somebody trying to come out to our place and go hunting no offense um and so they they're filming and it's coming back to the camp and right there at the very end we're in what's called alligator alley do you know why it's called alligator alley anybody want to take a guess ironically you think it's called alligator alley because there's a lot of alligators it's called alligator alley because there's a lot of frogs and the alligators love to eat frogs like you justin and so it's called alligator alley so we're coming down alligator alley and alligator alley it's tight you know we have boats together and phil's up there and he is great at driving a boat and you have jason the front and i want you to know if you ever go frogging with jace he is a magician he can like he i promise you he does calisthenics and all kinds of stuff so he can reach and grab these frogs they were making fun of willie because he was kind of the ice chest man the guy who just sits in the middle and puts the frog in the in the bucket and to be honest that's what willie was doing that night like they didn't have to make that up okay and this is just the way it was and so anyway at the very end um there he is jace sees this frog it's the biggest frog we've seen all night so he does the superman and you can't even see it on the show but he literally does this superman out of the boat to grab the frog which i would never do in alligator alley so he grabs the frog he's standing in the water the fact that he didn't you know how like cypress trees have all this the fact that he did not spear himself is a modern day miracle he gets back up he's he's so proud he's handing it to willie have the frog that's in the boat and we are busting a gut laughing and the audio guy is yelling quiet on the set and i'm sitting here thinking it's a swamp how is this a set okay and so all this is happening real time and finally and if you've ever seen phil man he can shake like three hands with just his one so he grabs you know he grabs the frog that's losing the boat and he grabs it and he gets it but whenever he grabs it you know the frog was going the wrong way so the frog's butt sticking up the air and he slaps it and says that's going to make miss k happy happy happy that's what happened that's what happened and we're all busting a gut laughing they're yelling at us quit laughing okay and if you would have told me then that there would be coffee mugs they say happy happy happy i'd called you a liar i wouldn't have been trying to do it to be rude if you would have told me then that i would visit new york and i would see in times square their faces i wouldn't believe when you face trials of any kind you see you're going to be up here one day and you're going to be down here because life is full of seasons what i love about that family is no matter what season they've been in they've been nice and kind and generous when they had little they were nice and kind and generous and when they had lots they're nice and kind and generous it's because they have joy not happiness joy joy is something that you can have no matter what season of life you're in fair that's what james is saying whenever you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but joy because you know you know know it it's an imperative listen know it know know know that the testing of your faith produces endurance i don't know who this is speaking to i don't know who it's for i don't know who the audience is today but no know that that time in your life if it's now or if it was then or if it's tomorrow know that there is an endurance that is going to come from that and you know what's interesting about bible studies you can study all the bibles you want you can study all the lessons on patients you want but do you know how you get patients through trials do you know how you get endurance through the marathon that's how you get it there's some things that you just can't get inside a sunday school classroom now you can know you can know it you can learn to know it so that when you go through it you're prepared but fall back on it know that the testing of your faith and francis chan has a great lesson on testing go it's in james so and by the way if you're part of this church which if you can hear my voice welcome to god's family you are part of this church our church subscribes to this thing with called right now media and so you can call the church office and you can get a a passcode to get onto right now media so you can watch francis chan's bible study on the book of james and you'll see where i get some of my material because i what's unique for me is whenever whenever i hear somebody say it that's good i want to say it again and then all of a sudden if you know that i was saying go watch francis chan and you hear it again do you know what takes me a lot of times of hearing the same thing for it to stick go watch what francis chan says about the testing he breaks down that word testing and it's really cool but you'll have that's homework 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 so that you may be what mature and complete lacking in nothing um can y'all look it up matthew 5 10-12 real quick 5 10 through 12. jesus's words the beatitudes james probably heard jesus speak this hundreds of times blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven 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 remember these people are probably gathering in synagogues throughout the dispersion and they are being persecuted on behalf of jesus and here james is saying something almost identical but with just a small twist so this is what i want for us this week i told them earlier i said uh is it dennis no dennis tell me your name one more time richard richard and dennis and then were here early and so i said look he asked me he said what are we going to be talking about i said if we go james 1 through 12 i will be shocked okay and the reason i said that it will go a lot quicker other times but we needed to understand who probably james was if james was the son a brother of jesus fine if james if it's a different james no worries he's still steeped he heard jesus he was jewish he's still steeped in that old testament tradition and so know this this week if you're facing a trial here's what i want you to do i want you to come up i want you to get a coffee mug and i want you to drink coffee and think happy happy happy things they're free get you a coffee mug if you're online i'm sure the church will mail you one we ain't charging for them you'll just have to pay shipping get you a coffee mug there's a difference between joy and happiness and what we we're going to do is we're going to have an outlook of joy so that we can overcome trials pray with me god you were good you were good in the good times and you were good in the bad times thank you for being god help us to walk in your footsteps to develop that endurance jesus you did it help us follow you we pray all this in christ's name amen so i had to jump off line just then because they've got to go because they're going to start worship so i'm done because i want to be able to talk to them next week too but i'm dead serious these coffee mugs come get a coffee mug if if all these coffee mugs go away it's spectacular fair go

Channel: Whites Ferry Road Church

Views: 873

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: hc0EldB_LLU

Length: 46min 31sec (2791 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021