Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Can You Offer? | New Testament | James 2

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

How do you react to people in need? Is prayer enough? Tanya discusses the role that God's family should play in the lives of others according to James 2. What do you have that could help someone else? Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages:  James 2

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. Sometimes hearing, I'm praying for you just doesn't cut it. I used to be part of a ministry that had a children's program, and while the adults were meeting to study the Bible, the children were simultaneously learning about the Bible and doing like fun things together. But we always, always, always needed more volunteers than what we had to keep our classrooms open. I was constantly casting vision and encouraging and then downright pleading with people to volunteer with the kids. To be honest, once they did it, they were almost always happier than they would have been if they spent their time someone else. Anyway, when I was asking people for help, you know what the worst thing was for me to hear?

I'll be praying for you. It was basically a Christian way of saying, I'm not going to do that. And I honestly would rather someone just say, I'm not going to do that. Sometimes we don't know what to do, so we tell people we will pray. Sometimes we tell people we will pray and we actually do it. And for sure, the Bible teaches that prayer should be our first tool and is, along with God's word, our most powerful weapon. But the situation in James chapter 2 isn't about any of those motives.

It's about how Jesus removes us from a life of sin into a generous life of faith. It's about living out the richness that comes with being part of God's family. Chapter 2 begins like this, my brothers and sisters believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. James makes it clear that he isn't talking about doing something to be part of God's family, but he's going to be talking about something because we are part of God's family. And as members of his family, James is telling us we should live and engage with one another and with the world. It must have been relevant when James wrote to these believers, just as it's relevant to us today. Michael Sandel. He's a political philosophy professor at Harvard, and he writes about issues of justice and

virtue and why they are integral parts of a healthy society. He's written a few books, but one of them is a result of a popular class he teaches at Harvard, where he presents 12 moral and ethical dilemmas for the audience to consider. Then he offers insight on the right thing to do for the good of society, which is sometimes a little bit surprising considering the self-expressionistic values of our day. Now, one of his arguments is that when inequalities in a society are high, the nature of society is under threat. He says that a shift from self-interest to concern for others is a common good for society. Now, James says that concern and care for others is not only a common good, but evidence that our lives have been changed by faith. So James, chapter 2, verse 15,

suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, go in peace, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is that? So James is telling the story of a brother or a sister in real need. It's not that they need food later in the week, but they need it today. It's not that they need clothes to look better, but they need them to stay warm and decent. So what does their brother or sister do? Well, they say a prayer over them.

They say go in peace, keep warm and well fed. And this is a specific blessing. It's full of faith. It's trusting that God will provide for them and telling them that they should believe the same. What the person says is religious. It's theologically correct. We can't argue with the statement. It's more about what isn't happening that James says is the problem.

What the person isn't doing is going to their closet to find a warm cloak to share with a less fortunate family member. Because there are words and no action, James says, hey, this is a cop-out, and it just masks a refusal to help out the person in need. What good is a prayer like this, James asks? And then he answers in verse 17, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. It's useless, and it's without life. Now, the principle is knowing or saying the right things doesn't mean we are part of God's

family. This is a strong argument, so James uses examples from the Old Testament to illustrate it further. First, he talks about Abraham, who left his home and his family to follow God to an unknown place because he believed God's promises. And James explains that Abraham's decision to follow God and put his trust in him was so firm that when he faced a giant test, you might recall how God called him to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. Abraham was willing to follow through. Now, I hope you and I aren't ever called to do something so challenging as Abraham. But I do hope that our trust in God is so firm that we are ready to follow through when God does put something or someone in front of us.

Now, the next illustration James uses is Rehab. And in Joshua 2, the prostitute Rehab, she had heard about God's deeds in the land, and she believed them in her heart. But when the Israelites came to conquer Jericho, that belief, wasn't enough on its own. See, Rahab, at risk to herself, hid the Jewish spies from her own people, and then she lowered them on a rope so they could escape. In doing this, she models faith translated into action, and she was delivered. Now, James is not contradicting what Paul taught in Romans 328, that we are justified by faith and not by works, but he is saying that faith without works is

bogus. As members of God's family, we're called to love the poor, the widows and the orphans, were called to care for them many times in scripture. And James uses an example of the poor in chapter 2, but works include anything we do as we live at our calling as members of God's family. Margaret Mead, she was an anthropologist who spent a great deal of time studying primitive cultures. She gave a lecture where she asked the audience, what is the earliest sign of civilization? What do you think?

Is it a clay pot? Is it a tool used for agriculture? a method of communication. Mead said it's none of those. To her, evidence of a truly advanced civilization was a healed femur, and she held up an example of a healed leg bone in front of her students. She explained the evidence of healed femurs was never found in savage societies. There, clues looked more like wall struck with arrows and crushed skulls.

But a healed femur showed that someone must have cared for, for the injured person. Someone must have hunted for them and brought them food probably at their own personal sacrifice. In her words, savage societies could not afford such pity. The Bible presents the family of God as one such cure for savage society. It is part of God's plan to restore his creation. The Bible teaches that because we believe God's promise, we should help people, and we should help them right away even at personal cost to ourselves. James is saying that when we do these things, we are more fully living like the family of God. If you go to Google and you just do a quick search for people who are considered very generous in our society, you're going to

see names like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, even Keanu Reeves, who said he was, quote, embarrassed by money and wanted to give it all away. And the Bible isn't really saying, what do you have so much of that it's burdensome to you. Give that away. It's saying, what do you have that can help someone else? Do you have time? Do you have special training in an area like carpenter or mechanics or accounting that could help someone? Do you have experience with older adults or people with special needs? Maybe you're not even sure exactly what you have to offer, but you see a need and you are willing. Maybe you're willing to do for just one person what you wish could be done for everyone who shared that need. When we receive the love of God from others, we know more fully who God is.

But when we extend God's love to others with our hands and our feet, we know more fully who we are. God's beloved children, saved by grace, and transformed into his likeness. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.