The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost IF IT DOES NOT HAVE WORKS, FAITH IS DEAD
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen! In today’s Epistle, God’s apostle James famously says, “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” Dear Christian friends, Many people, including many Christians, think of God’s Ten Commandments in a narrow way. That is to say, many people think of God’s Ten Commandments as God’s list of things He forbids to do. This sort of thinking is absolutely correct, as far as it goes. God most certainly has given His Ten Commandments to you so that you will not do certain things. God wants you to use His commandments in the same way that you would a shopping list or daily to-do list, starting at the top with commandment #1 and working your way, every day, through to commandment #10. For example, • God is not joking when He says to you, “You shall have no other gods.” When God says these Words to you, He is telling you to stop being an idolater and to put away your gods, no matter whom or what they may be. You have another god whenever you wish to trust or love something more than the one true God. God wants you to use His first commandment every day, inventorying your household gods, as it were—identifying those things that you love more than the one true God—and to stop loving them. • God also speaks with great earnestness and seriousness when He thunders in His commandments that you must never dishonor your father and mother (Fourth); that you must never harm or neglect your neighbor’s body (Fifth) and possessions (Seventh); that you must not despise or ignore God’s gift of marriage (Sixth). When God says these things to us, He makes a demand upon our behavior. When God says these things to us, He most certainly forbids certain actions and lifestyles among us. When God says these things to us, He is breathing the fire of judgment and condemnation for our sin—our sin choosing to do exactly what He has so clearly told us not to do. Most assuredly, God’s Ten Commandments are what He forbids us to do. As you heard today, God will hold you accountable when you do what you have been forbidden to do. God will hold your daughters accountable and He will hold your sons accountable when they also ignore God and do what He forbids. It is clearly written, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.” (If you can smell smoke, you might be in the fire.) God’s Ten Commandments tell you what you must not do. God’s commandments constantly and unceasingly accuse you of what you have done. But that is NOT the whole story of what God’s Commandments do for you. As King David rejoiced millennia ago, “Your commandment is exceedingly broad [O Lord]” (Psalm 119:96). God’s Ten Commandments are deeper than the ocean and higher than the sky. God’s Ten Commandments stretch farther than the east can run from the west. God’s Ten Commandments barely get scratched on the surface when we narrowly think of them as God’s list of things He forbids. “Your commandment is exceedingly broad [O Lord]! (Psalm 119:96) Today’s Epistle cracks open the door for us, so that you can begin to see some of the other things God’s Ten Commandments will do for you—even while they are constantly accusing you. Today’s Epistle might even allow us to think of God’s Ten Commandments as a source of daily blessing and happiness to us—even while they continually identify our sin. 1. The first blessing of the Ten Commandments, mentioned in today’s Epistle, is the outward peace and unity that these commandments give to us Christians. Simply stated, we all get along better when we all observe and keep the Ten Commandments. Disunity and unhappiness spread like disease when even one or two of us choose to live as if the Ten Commandments do not matter. Today’s Epistle illustrates this first blessing of God’s Ten Commandments by rebuking Christians who show partiality, or who pretend that some people in the congregation are worthy of more attention than others. In today’s Epistle, God points to His Ten Commandments as the way we show the same love and equal love to everyone. God says, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.” These Words, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” are really God’s summary of the Ten Commandments (Mark 12:28-31). With these Words, God is pointing to the Ten Commandments, not only as a way of forbidding you to do things, but also as a way of showing you how best to love your neighbor. Your feelings of partiality will not cut it. Peace, unity, and happiness among the brothers will thrive when we each treat one another with equal affection for all, thus fulfilling “the royal law according to the Scriptures.” 2. The second blessing of the Ten Commandments, mentioned in today’s Epistle, is far greater than the first and infinitely more cheerful than the unceasing accusation of the Law. God wants you to know that you can use His Ten Commandments every day, but not merely as a way of identifying your sin. You can use God’s Ten Commandments every day as a way of identifying the Word and Work of God in your everyday life! Stated another way, God’s Ten Commandments show you that “the Word of God… is at work in you believers” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). What I mean is this: What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? …faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. We know that faith comes only from God. Faith comes to you—miraculously delivered by God the Holy Spirit—when you hear “the good news about Jesus” (Acts 8:35), who was “who was delivered up for our trespasses and raise for our justification” (Romans 4:25). God’s Ten Commandments do not give you God’s gift of faith. The Ten Commandments, however, most certainly will show you how God’s gift of faith is powerfully and miraculously working itself out in your life! • God’s gift of faith works inside of you in the same way that gasoline works inside of a car engine. Just as the gasoline produces the energy that moves your car forward, God’s gift of faith likewise produces good works within you. And good works are nothing other than the Ten Commandments. “Faith without works is dead,” but if you can see good works being produced in your life—if you can see, even in a small way, how God’s Ten Commandments are being kept in your life—give thanks and praise to God! This is a sure and certain sign that His gift and miracle of faith is alive and well within you. • God’s gift of faith can be compared to a basketball dropped through a hoop: that which enters through the top will not fail to drop out off the bottom again. In the same way, when God’s life-giving gift of faith enters into your ears and your heart and your mind, it will not fail to accomplish the purpose for which God sent it. Just as a basketball drops naturally from the hoop after it has entered, faith in the same way will naturally come out of you in the form of good works. This is why it is written in today’s Epistle that you show your faith by what you do. • Or think of the analogy of a soda machine. When you put your money in, the bottle of soda comes out. In the same way, when God puts His good gift of faith inside of you, like coins into a soda machine, good works come out of the chute like a bottle of root beer. “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” Yes, the Law always accuses us. The Law accuses us because of the dreadful disease of sin, from which none of us will ever set ourselves free. But don’t trample the flowers just because they happen to be growing in horse manure. God is doing a good thing in you. God has given you His gift of faith, through the announced forgiveness of your sins. That happens to you only because of Jesus. But God’s gift of faith does more than make you certain that all your sins are forgiven, that you are going to go to heaven, and that things will end well for you in eternal life. The gift of faith also produces daily miracles in you—God’s miracles, worked by God Himself and worthy of no credit to anyone but Him. Good works are God’s miracles, even though they occur in such empty places as your life and mine. Whenever you see good things being produced in you, take another look God’s Ten Commandments. God’s Ten Commandments will help you identify and make sense of those good, miraculous works that God alone has produced. _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
