August 22, 2004

John W. Fowler

Scripture: James 2: 14-26

I wanted to share with you about a living faith and rally day is traditionally a great day at this church. It’s a time when you come back — people on vacation, schedules are different in the summer but especially with people’s kids being back in school. This is a time where, hopefully, on a weekly, very regular basis, you want to come to God’s house and be with the people of God. There is a power here when we come to worship the Lord because God is in this very room. When we sing the hymns of faith, when we hear His Word preached, when we are with God’s people — the people who are praying for you, the people who are with you in the times when you celebrate and the times that you are grieving this is a very special place. And what a difference it makes when you make that commitment to serving Jesus Christ and being with His family. James, this brother of our Lord Jesus, is exhorting people to truly put their faith into practice and in Chapter 2 he sounds that note very strongly when he says:

I’ve been watching on some of the Olympics. I love to watch it. It’s some of the most, I guess really the most, amazing athletes on the face of the earth. It’s just incredible what they can do. I was watching some of the divers the other night and it’s just, to me incredible that anyone would dive from that height. It would take about ten or twelve people to push me off just to jump, much less do a hand stand and then do all these little twirlings and twistings that they do and not kill yourself when you hit the water. The commentator I was listening to was talking about everything they were doing wrong and I thought, my word, I think this is really something. Gymnastics is that way too. I never was very good at gymnastics. I don’t like being upside down and I think anyone who can do more than a somersault is really something. This past week when Paul Hamm vaulted — you know, in the Olympics you can’t do just what you did in PE classes, you know, jump up on a horse and hopefully you don’t kill yourself — you really have to do something spectacular, and he did, but his landing was awful. He impressed the judges, but in the wrong way. He actually hit one. If they have to stick out their hands to catch you when you fall, that’s not good, and he felt like, probably his gold medal chances were over. But he felt like, well, I’m going to give it my best and if I can get a bronze — good. Silver, at that, was the most optimistic thought. But the high bar was his best routine. He did a near perfect routine and won the gold medal for the Americans by the narrowest of margins, I think in some eighty years. It was called one of the greatest comebacks, a tremendous rally for the American team.

Rally day is a day that we come back to Christ. And literally today in the life of this Church we have come back to the sanctuary where people have gathered since the turn of the century to do what you are doing today — to come and to sing the hymns of faith, to hear God’s Word, to be with His people, to know and seek the hope that Christ is real; He is alive; He really did rise from the dead. He really is more than a good teacher who lived long ago. He is someone who wants to live in my heart and my life, someone I can talk with and walk with, someone I can love and someone who loves me.

Today I want to share with you about three kinds of faith that James speaks about, one in particular, but two for a little bit. First of all, the first faith James talks about is a heartless faith. A heartless faith is just simply that, it is people who profess their faith but somehow the Lord just hasn’t got a hold of their heart yet. He says it this way:

You may have heard this before. I came across this this week. This is a paraphrase of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. It says:

His name is Jeremy Reynolds and God began to speak to him in the seventies about serving Him, and especially serving the poor and needy over in England. He felt led to come to America and found a good Christian woman; married her. But as he was growing in his walk with Christ he began to have financial difficulty and actually was close to being evicted from his home and so they finally heard there were jobs out in Arizona, so they packed up the car; had about three hundred dollars and they went about as far as they could. When they finally got there they found the jobs weren’t there. To make a long story short, they were homeless. That wasn’t part of the plan. I mean, he was wanting to help the poor and the needy but he didn’t want to be the poor and the needy. But Jeremy Reynolds said that he believed that God gave him that opportunity to actually feel and experience: What is it like to not have a home? What is it like to be poor? And this book, The Homeless Problem, the Solution is very much a nuts and bolts about how he has built — he calls it — Joy Junction. It’s a shelter for families out in Phoenix, Arizona. He points out a whole lot of the mechanics and the nuts and bolts about getting community support for a homeless shelter, but you can tell, though, throughout the book, before anything like that happens, whether it’s a homeless shelter or other type of mission of mercy, God has to start working on the heart.

James says that some people have a heartless faith. They profess it but God hasn’t really gotten through to their heart at this point. And then he also talks about an intellectual faith. These people can recite the Apostles Creed, maybe the Nicene creed, every creed in the Methodist hymnal — they know a lot of theology; know the Bible, but somehow it’s just up here; it hasn’t gotten to the heart; it hasn’t gotten to the will. He says it this way:

James was kind of blunt, but what he was saying is just like you see in the New Testament, like when Jesus saw the of the Geresenes demoniac and he had a legion, just demon-harassed, and they believed that Jesus was the Son of God —not that they wanted to worship Him, not that they wanted Him to change their lives, but they believed.

What James is saying is: Just because you believe up here, profess it, doesn't mean that it’s a faith that really is going to result in the Christian lifestyle. Now, John Wesley was a very intellectual young man, an Oxford scholar, had almost all of his Greek New Testament memorized. (I can’t read the New Testament in Greek; I’m still just working on reading it in English.) But this is a very scholarly man and certainly believed in working hard for the Lord. The Holy Club at Oxford, they visited prisons; they took up offerings for the poor. I mean, you would think, well, they are just the model of piety. But something was missing in his life. When he came overseas to be a missionary in Georgia to Native Americans, on board there was a great storm and there was only one group on board that really seemed to be calm and be peaceful. That was the Moravians. John Wesley was not peaceful and calm; he was panicky because he was afraid that he would drown, he was going to die. He was afraid to die. He asked the leader of that group, “Weren’t you afraid to die?”

“No, my people are not afraid to die. That’s why we can sing hymns.”

He wanted to know about that kind of living faith that you could have a peace even in the midst of facing death. He discovered it later. He went to Aldersgate Street, May 24, 1738, a thirty-five year old man. Someone was reading Martin Luther’s preface to the Book of Romans about how God works in the human heart, and he felt his heart “strangely warmed” that night. And what happened after that? Well, this man was still busy for God. I mean, he preached about three times a day. He went everywhere and anywhere, preaching, organizing. I mean this was a man who was very methodical and just was a great instrument of Almighty God. But what happened was, with a warmed heart now, he believed in salvation by faith alone and that resulted in a love for God that — that’s why he worked for God. He didn’t work for God in order to earn His approval; he worked for God because he loved Him.

What James is talking about, is not talking about salvation plus works is what will get you into Heaven. In fact, that’s what Martin Luther had such a problem with. Back in that time you could

give to Pope Leo’s building fund, get your relatives out of purgatory, and Martin Luther had a problem with that. Martin Luther, as he read the scripture, believed that it’s by faith alone in Christ that you go to Heaven. Paul said it this way in Ephesians:

So, what’s the difference? Well, the Apostle Paul is talking about the root of salvation’s faith in Christ. What James is talking about is the fruit of salvation. When you come to Christ, what are the results? What does it look like? Well, it looks like love. It looks like joy, peace, patience and calmness, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (tape change). . . . . . . . . . you learn to trust God in everything, I mean, not just where you are going to spend Eternity, as important as that is, but you learn to trust God in all things. He gives the example of Abraham. They were called Abram and Sarai. God, well, God does things a little bit differently. I mean, if I were going to start a nation, I wouldn’t go looking for a seventy-five year old man and a sixty-five year old woman. But God does things a little bit differently. And then, if I told them that they are going to be the, you’re going to be the father of a great nation, I would tend to be believe, well, nine months or, well, OK, maybe a year, but no, twenty-five years later is when that promise was fulfilled. That took a lot of waiting; that took a lot of trusting and Abraham and Sarah, sometimes they failed their faith test. Sometimes Abraham lied about Sarah being his wife and said, “Well, she’s my sister,” because he was afraid that they would kill him when they would go into foreign lands. He even took matters into his own hands with having a child by Hagar, her maid.

So, it’s not like it was perfect, but when you get to this greatest test of his life that James talks about: “I want you to take your son, this precious son that you waited for so long for, I want to sacrifice him on the alter on the mountain.” And sometimes we think: that’s just so strange. Why would God call you to sacrifice your child on the mountain? But think about it though. If you think about this in terms of really asking God, offering your children to Almighty God, to do as He pleases, to have His way, then you get a sense of what Abraham was going through.

And it says that Abraham, as he had the knife, he heard the voice, “Abraham, Abraham, don’t hurt the boy.” And God had provided the sacrifice for him, the ram that was caught in the thicket. Hebrews gives us some insight about what was this man thinking. It says that Abraham believed that God would even raise his son Isaac from the dead. He didn’t know how it was going to turn out, but that’s what happens when you learn to trust God in all things, especially with your family. You don’t know how it is going to turn out, but you go ahead and you trust Him.

I think of the second time that I was appointed to the Methodist Church. It had been a good day; we had only been in our first assignment, in Mocksville for two years and I think that I wasn’t doing very well on my sermon, and so I took a lunch break and went jogging, and came back and then had a phone call from my District Superintendent. He had missed the first round of appointments because he had had a heart attack but he made the second round, and sure enough, they needed me to go somewhere. I was just kind of shocked. I thought, now wait a minute. I have only been here two years; my wife is eight months pregnant. I don’t think this is a good idea. And then I learned: he wasn’t really asking me. And then I started complaining to the Lord about this. I thought, this is not good timing. And then, what came into my mind was: Stewart Auditorium with the other preachers, kneeling and laying hands and believing God has called me to preach, and saying that you will go wherever, whenever He wants you to. And it began to dawn on me: Ah, that’s what they were talking about. But it is an adventure. And that’s what happens when you have a living faith. You learn to trust God in all things, and that’s what James wanted to tell us in using the example of Abraham.

And then, also, a living faith really believes that God, he loves everyone, that it is not a faith to keep to ourselves; he is really interested in all people and he uses the example of Rahab. I mean, Rahab is a prostitute! Joshua, and the Children of Israel, it’s one of the great times in their life. They have been wandering in the wilderness all this time. Joshua and Caleb are the only two who lived to be able to go in the Promised Land; everyone else has died off, and so here comes this next generation. They step into the river Jordan; it parts, miraculously. I mean, they are in the desert; they don’t know how to swim. Are your going to step into the river and you don’t know how to swim? And then Joshua says, “Now, be sure you take up stones from the river bed.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to tell your children what these stones mean.”

They get over there. And they send out two to spy out the land. And they go and they stay with Rahab. And Rahab, well, she hides and covers up for them and the king’s men go hunting for these men who have come in to the gates in Jericho and they can’t find them because Rahab is protecting them. But tells them that “the fear of your people is on these people. They know that God is moving among the Israelites and they tremble before you.”

And they told Rahab, “Get all your family together in this household. Put a red thread outside your window, and when we come to take Jericho you will be saved.”

And so, sure enough, after they marched all that day around Jericho and they shouted and the trumpet blew, then the walls came down. Jericho was taken but Rahab and her family were saved because God loved that prostitute and her family. And that woman is direct in the genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a reminder to me that the Gospel is for all people and the Great Commission is still the primary mission of the Church.

And then he uses one last example and he says it this way:

Jimmy Carter, in his book, Living Faith, talks about coming back home after he had a career in the Navy and what it was like to be with his father in his dying days, a very holy moment, and he just didn’t realize, as I think sometimes we do, what an impact his father’s quiet, strong faith in running the family business — the peanut business and the farm there — had on that small community of Plains. In fact, so much so, that he and his wife Roslyn made the difficult decision to come back home and to live the faith in that community.

What does it say to us: The body without the spirit is dead? The living faith believes that it is a faith for eternity. We believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and by faith in Him, we will live forever. Today, as you are in this sanctuary, you can think of people, you see where they are sitting. They are in Heaven today. Maybe a spouse, maybe a child, maybe a father or mother. But you have a sense that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. You are grateful for the course that they ran. I tell you, if there is any Christian doctrine that I believe, it is the Resurrection. Every Lent my prayer is — to whatever I give up or whatever I do to grow spiritually — I want to be sure, come Easter Sunday that I can convey the best that I can that Christ is alive and by faith in Him ye too will have eternal life and that He is alive. It is a faith for eternity.

How alive is your faith? Let Christ live in your hearts. Let Him change you. Let Him grow in you, grow up to spiritual maturity.

Let me close by talking about back at the turn of the century. We are so fortunate for Genoese Davidson’s excellent history of our church. I commend it to you to read and I like reading about the pastor they had at that time. I think he’s a whole lot better than I am, so far as building programs. I mean, he was Chair of the Building Committee. If I had been Chair of this Building Committee, it would be a long time before we would have been back in here. But also it sounds like he was head of the capital campaign because, you know, they were real straight forward about the way they got money. Sunday School was shortened before Church for thirty minutes, you know, everybody would come in and give your pledge or if you didn’t do that then you could come by the parsonage to Preacher Lideker and bring your cash all day long. And they really wanted cash; I could tell at the turn of the century that’s what they wanted. And then also, when they had their big to-do on Easter Sunday 1918, it says that he borrowed Mr. Coffey’s truck and he went to High Point to get the art glass and he delivered it without a single scratch. It only took fifteen hours to get to High Point and back. I love you’all but I’m not going to make a fifteen hour trip to High Point and back to get glass for you, so they were real fortunate in those days.

But as excited as they were when they first came to the sanctuary to worship the Lord, you can tell that Preacher Lideker has a lot of good things to say at the quarterly conference come October 1918.

He talks about, “The our Sunday School is well-organized, going fine work. Gradually it has become adjusted to the fine facilities of this new building. We had a good revival meeting at which a large number of people were revived and made reconsecration.”

But he said, “My greatest defect,” he says it this way, “is this lack of conscience on this matter of attending Church services.”

What’s he saying? He’s saying that even though we have this beautiful place to worship, he’s still, his heart is that more and more people will have a heart for worship. He attributed this to the old church which was so small that a lot of people just went to Sunday School and there wasn’t enough room to go to Church, so they weren’t in the habit of going to worship.

But as he says, “I’m confident though that with time that will change.”

I would still say that today. I pray that you would rededicate yourself today to serving Christ, to be rededicated to worshipping Him with His people and truly have a faith that lives, and lives so strongly that others will want to know this wonderful and glorious Lord that we serve.

Today, as we sing “What a Friend we have in Jesus” I invite you to rededicate yourself to serving Him. I invite you to come to the alter if you would like to. It’s a special time to give thanks to God for this living faith that He has given us. Let us pray.