The Epistle of James tells us about the character that we are to possess, about the Christ we are to praise, the continuity we are to perceive, and about the conditions we are to presume.

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. To the 12 tribes in the dispersion, greetings. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. May He indeed add His blessing upon His Word.

Let’s pray once more for the preaching of the Word. Let’s pray. Dear Lord, our Heavenly Father, what a privilege we have again in coming before You, being in Your presence, hearing from You in Your Word. Lord, we ask, give us ears to hear and eyes to see. and hearts that are open to receive from you now. Lord, we do pray that you would grip us, arrest our attention, and remove all those distractions of our week and the things that are to come, Lord. Help us to be clear and to be thoughtful and be attentive, away from the things that swirl around in our minds. Help us to hear and receive, Lord. Help us to bend our lives and our wills towards you. We pray that the instrument of your word this morning and the meditation of all of our hearts would be acceptable in your sight. In all God’s people said, Amen. Amen.

When we begin this new sermon series in the book of James, the epistle of James, we’ll give more of an introduction and I’ll talk more about the book as we work through. But now I want you to recognize that it is an epistle. Most of you know that an epistle is a letter. It’s in a letter. When I was a little boy, we were taught how to write a formal letter. We were learning how to write to others, like to our grandparents or whomever, right? We learned this formula to write with. And of course, this formula started with the person you’re writing to, right? Dear Grandfather, or to whom it may concern. And then we closed the letter with our name, right? From your loving grandson. Well, there was a formula in the first century as well, and it was a little bit different. It began with the from and to portions. So right off the bat, when you got a letter, you knew who it was from. You didn’t have to wait till the end. And we see this here in James 1.1. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. To the 12 tribes in the dispersion, greetings. And so what can we learn from a single verse, especially an introduction here? What has the Lord given us here in this single verse? Does it tell us about our lives? Tell us about our Lord and His working in our lives? Indeed, the Lord has given us this letter, and in doing so in this introduction, it tells us much about living through trials and life in union with the King of kings, right? That’s what we’ll see throughout this letter. But what does this verse tell us about our Christ and our lives? Well, it tells us a number of things that we can learn. It tells us about the character that we are to possess. It tells us about the Christ we are to praise. It tells us about the continuity that we are to perceive in this life and through God’s plan of redemptive history. And it tells us about the conditions that we are to presume. Before we look at those lessons, though, let’s take a moment to look at the author, right, and what’s in the letter. The first piece of information that we encounter, of course, is that James is the author of the epistle to James. That seems kind of obvious, but there are a handful of people in the New Testament named James. The consensus of much of the church historically is that the James of this letter is the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. James is the leader of the Jerusalem church. So let me take a couple of minutes to give you a quick review of this James that we’re speaking of who wrote this letter. Matthew 13, 55 tells us that he names Jesus, Jesus’ brother, his brothers, and James is the first that he mentions. Apparently James and his other brothers didn’t come to faith in Christ during his earthly ministry. We know this because Mark records this incident where Christ’s family come to get him saying that he had lost his sense, right? He’s out of his mind. However, the unbelief of James, we know, did not continue, right? He didn’t die an unbeliever. And we know this. Paul tells us, 1 Corinthians 15, that the risen Christ, remember, this is when Paul is giving this summary of the gospel at the end of 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 15, 7, and he says, the risen Christ appeared to James, then to the apostles, and last of all, to Paul. And so what we draw from this is that this appearance was also a call to leadership alongside the 12 apostles and Paul himself. In Acts 12, the same James is mentioned as being in a position of church authority. Right after Paul’s miraculous deliverance from imprisonment, he in effect hands off the Jerusalem church to James. And from that point on in the book of Acts, James is recognized as the leader of the Jewish church, the Jewish Christians rather. And so we read in history as well, that the first bishop was James, the first bishop of Jerusalem. In Galatians, where Paul is most zealous, remember, to defend the gospel against Judaizers who were zealous for the Torah, right, wrongfully so, it’s interesting that Paul recognizes the authority of James, right? And I’m gonna read from James chapter one briefly to give you a A sense of this, James 1 verses 18 and 19 says this. I’m sorry, Galatians 1, 18 and 19. It says, then after three years, this is Paul, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remain with him 15 days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. Right? And then if you go over to Galatians 2.9, he says this, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and nay to the uncircumcised. So you have these, we learn something of the brother of Jesus, James, from these passages. And this fits perfectly with Luke’s account in Acts, about the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, where James makes this decisive speech in favor of including the Gentiles into the church without mandating that they be circumcised. James received Paul and his entourage gladly, it says. Paul then went to report to James and to the elders this marvelous work, these marvelous works of the Lord in bringing the gospel even to the Gentiles. And Luke says that when James and the elders heard this, they glorified God. And then at this point, the record concerning James falls silent, the biblical record. But we do read about James, the brother of Jesus, In other places in history, other historical writers, we know from Josephus that James was stoned to death in AD 62 by the Sanhedrin. Apparently, there was this envy that all the people were converting to Christianity, so the high priest makes up a charge against James having to, with a violation of the Torah, Although Josephus doesn’t tell us what this charge was. But the fourth century Christian historian Eusebius tells us about this. He records this rather about the last words of James, the brother of Jesus. And he takes this down. These were the last words of James according to Eusebius. Why are you asking me about the son of man? He is seated in heaven at the right hand with great power and will come again on clouds of heaven. And so they stoned him to death for his steadfast faith in Jesus Christ. So it’s clear that James was a Christian man. He was a believer. He was deeply committed to Jesus as Messiah and Lord. But before this, James, the brother of Jesus, as we saw, didn’t believe that he was the Christ. John 7 verse 5 says, for not even his brothers believed in him. Believed in him. And this, of course, is language that signifies faith. Faith in Jesus Christ for salvation to believe in or to believe into Jesus. And so he’s indicating here, John, that there was no saving faith in Jesus Christ on the part of his own family during much of his earthly ministry. But at some point we know that God changed his heart. He changed the heart of James. We don’t know when, but we know that he did. As to the content of the letter, as I mentioned earlier, it’s much about trials in Christian living. It challenges us, this book of James, that we’ll walk through. And that’s a good thing. God’s word does this. He does things through his word and spirit for his people. It was given to challenge us, to bring discomfort for our sins, and to convict us of it as well, right? And to push us on to righteousness, right? It’s an aid to us. It’s the tool, the means of grace that He’s given us, one of them, to mortify our sin and to bring us alive to righteousness. And the book of James does this very thing, right? It’s an exhortation both to individuals and the church as a whole. We’ll see more of this as we get into the body of the letter. But for now, let’s move on to answer those questions, to answer that opening question. What does this verse, this introductory verse, James 1.1, what does it tell us about our Christ and our lives? First of all, it tells us about the character that we are to possess, the character that we are to possess. Notice how James describes himself, his self-description in this verse. It tells us quite a bit about him, frankly. When we see who he is and how he describes himself, we see something, we learn something about his character, more specifically, about his humility. James is the half-brother of Jesus. They grew up in the same household, they had the same mother. But notice that he doesn’t call himself the brother of Jesus Christ. He calls himself the servant of Jesus Christ. The servant, Jesus’ servant, his bondservant, his slave. James could have said many things about himself to describe himself. He could have said, from James, the leader of the Jerusalem church. That was true. He could have written, from James, the pillar of the church of God. That was true as we saw that Paul called him. He could have written, James, the moderator of the first general assembly in Jerusalem. That was true as well. But that’s not how he introduces this letter and speaks of himself. He says, James, a bondservant. It’s a word you may have studied, dulos. James, the servant. What the word means is a permanent, willing slave. He says, I am this to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that tells us a lot about this man’s character, about his humility. There’s a lot of corrupting false teaching, falsehood, that we see from secular God-hating psychology that talks about people’s problem, and in essence, much of man’s problem is a problem of low self-esteem. You’ve probably all heard this, but that’s not the problem. The problem is a high esteem of self and a low esteem of Christ. James had a proper view of himself because he had a proper view of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in humility, James viewed himself as a bondservant, a slave, a servant of Jesus. But you know, brothers and sisters, this character isn’t to be unique to James, right? This is what we are to see ourselves as well. those who belong to him, those who name the name of Jesus. We need to be real before the Lord and search our hearts and ask those kinds of questions. Do I see myself in this way? Am I a servant? Do I see myself as a servant of my Lord? And here in this introduction we have an implicit call to believers, humility and servanthood. And rather you’re young or you’re old, we all need to hear this, right? We all need to ask this question. Do you view yourself as servants of Jesus? Is this how you’re living? Deliberately, joyfully serving the Lord? Does this reflect, or how we’re living, does that reflect the world? Is Jesus everything to you, or do you think little of Jesus? These are good questions for all of us, because we all will be servants of something. We will all serve something. If not Jesus, we will serve the enemy, or we’ll be servants of the world. but may our practice and our planning and our priorities show a commitment to our Lord. This is what we see in James. He didn’t merely call himself a servant of Jesus. He was a servant of Jesus. And so we see here the character we are to possess, but then also we see from this opening verse the Christ we are to praise. Very briefly, look at the opening salutation again. He says, James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. We learn something about James here, but we also learn something about Jesus. We see here a testimony to the lordship and the divinity of Christ. Right, and we see this when we see how he puts, in kind of parallel construction, or put on the same level, God and the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Right, the same level. James, who earlier doubted his brother, in what he was saying and doing, and didn’t buy into it, he didn’t believe him, he once thought him out of his mind, right? Now he says what? I am a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. And oh, that we, dear Christians, would have this high view of Jesus, right? And this praise and glory to Him, right, as a foundational, a fundamental thing in belief and thinking in our life to glorify Him. And then we would have a longing to know Him more and to praise Him more and be conformed more and more to His image. May this be our heart’s longing in reality, this Christ whom we are to praise. We’ll talk about more of this later as well as we move through. But we move on to our third point. We see here, we learn what this tells us about Christ in our life, the continuity that we are to perceive, the continuity that we are to perceive. We learn in this verse, the wonderful continuity and unity of God’s plan and redemption for his people. Notice how the recipients of this letter are addressed, the two portion. James uses what? He refers to them in Old Testament language. See what he says there in the second half of that verse, to the twelve tribes. The 12 tribes here is not a descriptor of the Jews of old, or even the current Jews in the synagogue, but of Christians. It’s a descriptor, it’s describing believers, Christians, more specifically the Christian church. He’s talking about language, he’s taking this language from the Old Testament and he’s applying it to the New Testament church. And this gives us direction in our theology. This gives us understanding, this gives us correction in our thinking as well as we read and we try to make sense of God’s unfolding plan of redemption. And actually what James is doing, he’s taking this ancient title of Old Testament Israel that comes from the time of what? Of the patriarchs. The patriarchs, and even in the wilderness. The 12 tribes, and he is applying it to Christians. In this application of Old Testament language to the church, it shows us something. It shows us, among other things, that the church is the fulfillment or the continuation of God’s people of old in Israel. The church today, here and now, is not God’s plan B, as if his plan A was thwarted somehow and he needed to start something else. It’s not a great parenthesis. It’s not disconnected from Old Covenant Israel. The church is the continued unfolding and fulfillment. It’s the fruition of God’s plan with his people of old. And we see this, right? God’s unified unfolding plan of redemption. It clarifies. When we do, it helps clarify and corrects our reading of the Old Testament. And it brings it all together. And it also brings us to a greater appreciation of our part in the plan of God. his unified continuing plan. We more fully understand that the Old Testament is our book. It’s our history, right? We more fully understand these things, and that from Genesis to Revelation, Scripture, all of it, is the book of the family of Christ. Of course, the New Testament bears testimony to this very thing. We don’t have to look at all the verses, but John tells us this. Paul tells us this, the author of the Hebrews tells us this. Jesus declares as well that the whole of the Old Testament, right, the law, the prophets, and the writings, the three categories, how they organize the Old Testament scriptures, they all speak of him, he says, right at the end of Luke. He says, they all speak of me. And so James is very addressed to the Christians that we see here. as the 12 tribes reminds us that the Old Testament, that that history, that that era, that that epoch, it’s ours. We belong to that unfolding plan. That’s our family, that’s our story. There’s one people of God, one way of salvation, one plan. God is sovereign. He doesn’t have some plan B that we’re in. He has one plan, plan A. He’s always worked out that plan and we’re part of that plan. The church is part of the one people of God of all the ages. And so even in terms of the terms that James uses here in verse 1 to address the church, he reminds us of the heritage and glory of the Old Testament. God is having his way. He’s working his plan. He is sovereign. He will bring it to completion. And we see that the glory, that heritage and glory of the Old Testament, we see its usefulness to us and it’s profitable to us. And our part we see as well in the one plan of God and the one people of God in all of ages. So this is something significant for us. We talk about this a lot, but we need to view God’s word, His revelation to us in these terms because that’s what we see here. And so this continuity that we’re to perceive And then lastly, we see the conditions that we are to presume, or the conditions we are to expect. James, this use of Old Testament language for Israel in the wilderness that he uses sets the tone and the context of the letter, of what’s to follow, and the whole letter. These words of introduction in verse one tell us about our what? Our present life situation in a fallen world, and what we can expect in this world. where God’s chosen covenant people, you see, but we live dispersed as pilgrims in a fallen world. And again, notice the language that James uses here. He uses Old Testament language for Israel in the wilderness, right? He says, to the 12 tribes, and then what does he say? He uses language from Israel in the wilderness, and he sets the tone for the verses that follow, and also for the rest of the book. He calls them, what, to the 12 tribes in the dispersion. in the dispersion. You probably well know that’s also a title for the Old Testament saints, right? To the 12 tribes dispersed abroad, to the 12 tribes scattered among the nations. Of course, this brings to mind what? It brings to mind the wandering of Israel in the wilderness, the pressures of the wilderness, the testing of the wilderness. When Israel was wandering without a land, without a land that belonged to her. Or perhaps it makes you think, it brings to mind the exile when Israel as well was out of the land. But this language, this Old Testament language for Israel the pilgrim, Israel the wanderer, Israel the dispersed, it sets the tone for the context of what’s to follow in this chapter and also the rest of the book. What’s James gonna talk about from verse two almost to the end of the chapter? It’s trials, it’s trials. And what better image or verbal picture could James have painted for us for the trials that he expects Christians to face than that of the wandering and dispersed tribes of Israel? He says, that’s who you are, Christian. He uses this language of the 12 tribes to draw attention to the pressures and persecutions of this life. Think of Israel in the desert, in a land not their own. passing through to the place they would rest, to the place of God’s plan and promise. That’s who James says you are. Someone has said of this very thing, you are the Lord’s 12 tribes. You are dispersed throughout this menacing and troublesome and testing world. Your homeland is elsewhere, right? Your citizenship is in glory, not here. And he goes on, the quote, and you have not yet come to take up your abode there in your homeland. Your present lot is to feel the weight of life’s pressures in the lure of the world’s temptations, and then insidious ever-present push to conform to the standards of the world’s godless environment. You are the Lord’s people indeed, but you are not yet home. You’re not yet home. James is reminding you that in this fallen world, you should expect that it should challenge us. We should expect this challenge from the fallen world upon us in our lives. We should accept obstacles. We should expect hindrances. We should expect the pressures of this world, the evil of this world. We do not and cannot know the hidden will of God. I have no idea what God’s purposes are. in that hidden will, but we do know this, we do know this, that when you’re united to Jesus, you’re united with the Savior, who not only in the glory that is to come, but in the sufferings of the present, right? We don’t wait for that consolation, for that union, for that comfort, and that assurance, and that strength that comes from him. For glory, we’re united to him, even now in this life, as pilgrims, as wanderers, as the dispersed. And for some mysterious purpose, purposes we don’t know, God has given you the privilege of joining in the sufferings of your master, right? The privilege of joining into his suffering. And that’s really it, right? It’s not merely James that we see humble, right? The character we are to possess is the character and humility of Jesus, our King, right? He is the praiseworthy Christ. and the continuity that we are to perceive is rooted and grounded and comes to completion in Jesus. And the conditions that we are to presume and to expect, we are to do so because our lives, by the Father’s decree, will pattern after the lives of our Savior, who first suffered severely and then was glorified. Suffering and then glory. It’s all about Jesus, right? We’re united to this one, our Savior, our Redeemer and King. And for those outside of Jesus, it’s suffering and then punishment, more suffering, eternal suffering. But you who’ve believed in the gospel and accepted Christ as Savior, entrusted in Him alone for forgiveness and freedom and final, true, eternal rest, rejoice and praise Him. Yes, for eternity, but also praise Him in the muck and mire of this land, this pilgrim land in which we live, knowing that His promises are sure and true, and that He promises to keep you for the inheritance that He has earned through His life and death. What could be more glorious, dear Christian? As we work through this book, and as we work our way through life, let us do so trusting in Him, our Savior. Even in this world, I’m sorry, even in this word that we read here in James, this word of greeting, He calls us to this pilgrimage, trusting in our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so may we now and ever trust in this glorious Lord, our glorious great God and Savior, for every moment and every trial and every triumph in our lives, all to the praise of His glory.

Let’s pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank and praise you again for your mercy towards us. We thank you that you are sovereign and just and good and powerful. And Lord, we do praise you for the way that you work and for your wonder and love and your great mercy. Father, we pray, help us to embrace the bigger picture about our trials and through the pains and strains of this life and that you would do so in a way that brings honor to your name. Pray, Lord, that we would mature, that we would not waste our suffering in self-pity, rather that we would embrace your promises and gain comfort and grow thereby. Father, we pray that as your word does and has gone out this morning here and around the world, that you would feed your people and strengthen them. or we pray for those who suffer in our midst. Lord, we ask you to encourage them and use us as your body on earth to act in that encouragement. Father, may you grant them comfort, the comfort indeed of your spirit and the peace that transcends all human understanding. We pray for those who are struggling mightily against sin. Even now, we pray grant them victory. and grant that they may see who they are in Christ, dead to sin, once and for all. And Lord, may they live in newness of life that’s been earned for them through Jesus. Father, we pray for our children, the children of this church, that you would bless them and that they would love you, Lord, with all of their hearts. And that as they struggle in this life, as they suffer, even as they sin and fail, that the gospel would become all the more real to them and truly become good news as they embrace it by faith time and time again. We pray for the parents here today that they would love their children and rear them according to your word and the true and holy faith. Father, we pray as well for our unbelieving loved ones. Lord, we ask, grant them faith and repentance in life, even new hearts and home and glory. For your glory, Lord, we ask as well, we grant the husbands and wives here to love one another with a Christ-like love and sacrificial service to one another. Even for all of us, Lord, we pray, married or single, young or old, help us all to have fat hearts filled with your love, so caring and loving one another, that the outside world would see and wonder and be captivated by your people’s uniqueness, Lord, by your people’s love and peace. Father, we pray, use us in our lives to witness to your glory. Pray that you would feed us afresh again this day with Christ, the bread of heaven. May we see that this is our life in sustenance, even in the midst of famine. We ask this all in Christ’s name. Amen.