Keeping it Real (The Book of James)

↓ Support our Podcast! ↓

You remember it like it happened yesterday: the whirlwind ministry of your half-brother, Jesus. His crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Then the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, and you witnessed the birth and growth of the fledgling church. That wasn’t very long ago. Your journey has been no less incredible; from doubter to believer, you were called to lead the Jerusalem Church.

Then the persecution came. Your church family was arrested, imprisoned, killed, or driven out of their homes. How can you encourage them? What can you say to them? How can you keep them focused on living for their Lord and Savior?

It is impossible to know every thought that coursed through the mind of James as he penned his letter to his brothers and sisters in the Christian faith undergoing persecution and hardship. However, his incredible letter to the church has given encouragement and guidance to hundreds of millions of Christians throughout the years.

Through this Holy Spirit-inspired letter, we catch a glimpse of James’ heart for persecuted believers. The letter has also given believers a roadmap to righteous living for the past 20 centuries. The words of James are brief, strong, and sometimes downright sharp, but the love driving this incredible pastor is plainly evident through his deep concern for the eternal state of his audience.

For the next few months, we are going to take a journey through this amazing letter. We invite you to join us and be blessed by the words of this incredible pastor of the early church, a man who was brutally martyred for his faith in Jesus: none other than the Lord’s half-brother, James.

Transcript

Speaker: 0:03

Hello and welcome to season five We've just come through a long in season four, and we thought and look at a totally different Something that would speak to us in a different way, impact our hearts differently, give us a different perspective. And one of the beauties of extremely broad in its approach. It's broad in its topics, it's broad and it's authors. It's even broad in its timeline, enormous period of time. And yet it's all consistent because it was inspired by the Holy Spirit. And so we can trust it. We know it's authentic. We know it's perfect. We know it's pure. But it also is brought to us before the flood, after the Christ, from authors that walks of life, all the way from palaces, down to persecuted and So Scripture gives this, this incredible width and breadth of approach. And so we're going to shift wildly away from what we were just looking at, the book of Genesis, Old Testament narrative history. And we're going to jump in season five into one of my favorite books of the entire Bible, and that is the book of James. Now, James is a small, hard of the New Testament, and it is spread around the globe during a happening in Jerusalem, and it There are no wasted words in the The author goes right after the In fact, he's kind of a little If you read the book, he jumps around and he talks about all these different things, but predominantly he's centered on this is how you should live the Christian life. It has the feel of a pastor who a lot of time to say it. And so he wrote down a letter And on page one, he referenced he remembered and he references And so it takes a little bit of effort to keep everything in order to keep everything in line when you're reading the book of James. And so to that end, we're going to change things up a little bit. We're going to shift our approach in this season of the podcast. We're really going to become A lot of times throughout the podcast, we'll take a verse, spectrum, we'll take context. We'll look across the scriptures and we'll see how that one verse in the context of its chapter, of its book and of the entire Bible, can teach us things about what we need to know about being Christ's followers, or can inform our perspective on our faith. But James is a little bit With James, we're going to the author is trying to convey How can this impact? How can the simple truths in It doesn't mean we're going to It doesn't mean we're going to surround our main verse. But it does mean we're going to when we look at these verses and from each verse on one or maybe passage and what it speaks to. Now, as far as the background of twelve adopt the traditional So we do believe that this author is James, the brother of Jesus, the half brother of Jesus. And we believe that this book is the late forties A.D. so this close proximity to the beginning crucifixion, to the Ascension. It is perhaps even the earliest And this belief, this stance twelve, is not some radical This is actually been the about eighteen hundred years world crept into the church. This is the position that was until about one hundred and ample evidence to suggest that And so we're going to go from the standpoint we're going to look at this book from the standpoint that this is authored by James. This is authored by James, the And he had something to say. He is the pastor of the church And he had something to say to Now James would also become an He would be killed for his This is a man who took his faith, took following Jesus extremely seriously. He gave up his life for it. And what's interesting is he some point during Jesus the Gospels that early on in not fans of his ministry. They they had issues with the preaching and teaching. James, like anybody else, even though he was the half brother of Jesus, had to come to a saving faith in his Savior, Jesus Christ. So we're hearing from a man who Messiah, but also had to be And that's that's an interesting James a very unique take on life of the church, and on the their lives before God. There are some incredibly hard Having grown up in New York and spending a lot of time in New York City, even working in New York City for a few years, I often joke that I'm not sure James was really from ancient Israel. I think he might have grown up And you'll see that kind of throughout the book of James. He doesn't waste any words. Like I said before, there's not a single wasted word in the book. And he calls it like he sees it, exactly how it is. Now, one of the things that we will not spend a lot of time on in the podcast is the perceived disagreement between Paul and James when it comes to justification. Paul talks about being justified add works to the conversation. Now, those are not actually in They fit together very beautifully when you examine them correctly. But we're not going to cover that in the podcast where we are going to cover that is in the deep dive. Emmaus Road study of the Book of concurrent with this podcast, the end of this podcast. So if you really love James and you want to get into a much deeper dive, if this podcast kind of interests you in the book of James, then keep your eye out on our website because we're going to release the Book of James. And in there you will find all And I think that will be a blessing for whoever goes through it. So without any more waiting, episode of The Book of James.