As your Pastor one of my main responsibilities is to preach God’s Word to you. This role is as old as the Church itself, for it is God who “gave… some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4;11-13). Preaching, then, is part of the pastoral role of reminding Christians of what God has spoken in His Word, and teaching how to apply it to our daily lives. (This, by the way, was the major role of the Biblical prophets, all of whom did more reminding of what was already known than predicting what was yet to happen!)
Preaching, then, is one of the ways God communicates to His people. (Other ways include the Bible, prayer, the community of faith, our conscience and nature.) It is my job in public proclamation to carefully and faithfully handle the Word (see 2 Timothy 2:15), and it is your job to receive it and put it into practice (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17). Since it is God’s Word that is the standard, both the speaking and hearing must always be evaluated not on what we want, but on what God wants—what He has already made clear by His Word.
To that end we are going to begin a new preaching series that will go through the end of June using the New Testament book of James. This is a very practical book written by James, the half brother of Jesus, and the pastor of the early Jerusalem congregation (see Acts 15:13, 21:18 and Galatians 1:19, 2:9). To have a better understanding of this letter, I offer a synopsis written by Eugene Peterson (best known as the author of the Bible translation The Message) in which he summarizes for us the importance of The Book of James: Deep and Living Wisdom:
When Christian believers gather in churches, everything that can go wrong sooner or later does. Outsiders, on observing this, conclude that there is nothing to the religion business except, perhaps, business—and dishonest business at that. Insiders see it differently. Just as a hospital collects the sick under one roof and labels them as such, the church collects sinners. Many of the people outside the hospital are every bit as sick as the ones inside, but their illnesses are either undiagnosed or disguised. It’s similar with sinners outside the church.
So Christian churches are not, as a rule, model communities of good behavior. They are, rather, places where human misbehavior is brought out in the open, faced and dealt with.
The letter of James shows one of the church’s early pastors skillfully going about his work of confronting, diagnosing, and dealing with areas of misbelief and misbehavior that had turned up in congregations committed to his care. Deep and living wisdom is on display here, wisdom both rare and essential. Wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth, although it certainly includes that; it is skill in living. For, what good is a truth if we don’t know how to live it? What good is an intention if we can’t sustain it?
Over the next 10 weeks James is going to remind us of that which we already know: that the testing of our faith develops perseverance (1:3); that we should show mercy as we have received mercy (2:13); that we should not just listen to the word, but do what it says (2:22); that faith without deeds is dead (2:26); that we should tame our tongue (3:10); that we should show God’s wisdom by our good life (3:13); that we should submit to God and resist the devil (4:7); that we must trust God for tomorrow (4:15); that we must be patient until the Lord’s coming (5:7); and that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective (5:16).
Let us both hear and put into practice this “deep and living wisdom” from our Lord!
