Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing. Open your heart and receive today's blessing rooted in 1 Samuel 17. They all told David he couldn't do it. He was too young, too small, too inexperienced to face the Philistine giant. Maybe you've heard it too.
You're too unskilled, too unschooled, too unscarred. I bless you to remember how God Has enabled you to endure every past predicament, so you will have courage to confront. Today's giant. The God who delivered you from the paw of the lion? And the paw of the bear will deliver you from the hand of the enemy again.
And that's the gospel. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. We are part of the redemptive story because we're telling the whole world about the love of Jesus. I'm telling you, it's one story from Genesis all the way to Revelation, and it's all woven together by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I love the Word of God.
That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Word and Spirit: The Beauty of Balance, as presented at Renolda Church in North Carolina.
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More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news? Christians.
Your faith. It's not dead, it's alive. A true Christian's faith is Got life to it. It does the stuff that life does, moves and acts and feels and thinks and works. And and so Faith without that would be dead, but Faith is real faith, real faith.
that you have in Christ, it's something that is powerful. Faith works, we say. And by this nuanced meaning, I mean in the first place, faith works. In a sense of like there's a factory for faith, like a faith works place. And it's in the Word of God, it's in the testimony of our lives, it's in the fellowship of the saints, it's in the worship of God that our faith grows and is built.
And so there's a way in which our faith, that there's something working that's building our faith. But there's also a sense in which faith works in the sense that it is effective. But I want to talk today about how it is that faith is demonstrated by the way that it works. And the place to find this message of this in. Mystery of the balance of faith and works is in James chapter 2.
James chapter 2. And I turn to you there. This is an epistle that Lovers of grace and of the gospel of grace may not turn to as often. But I hope that I'll be able to demonstrate for you today that James is not in conflict with Pauline gospel. He's not in conflict with the whole beauty and notion and power of being saved by grace through faith, but that he's looking at this from the angle of what real faith is all about.
So, James chapter 2 at verse 14. James 2, verse 14. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled.
Without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, You have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I'll show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one? You do well.
Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works. And faith was completed by his works, and the scripture was fulfilled.
that says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. And he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way, Was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
dead.
So faith works is the Message. I read this week about an Amish man. He had made his first trip with his family to a shopping mall, never been to one of those places before, with all of the decorations and lights and electricity and all these things he'd never seen before. And he came up to a strange sight. He saw these two metallic doors that were flush up against the wall.
And they were there, it had a seam in the middle of these two men. And there were circles over each of the doors that one would light up sometimes. Once it had a G and a one and a two and a three. And over on the right-hand side on the wall, there were buttons that you could light up: arrow pointing up, an arrow pointing down. And he just sat there with his son, and he was just staring at these things.
What might it be? And a a woman walked up. She was uh unkempt and She was she was not an attractive woman. And uh She came over and she pushed a button on the right-hand side and The doors magically opened up. And she stepped in and the doors closed.
And a few moments later, some lights up top. flashed and there was a dinging sound. and the doors open back up. And the most beautiful 35-year-old woman you ever seen stepped out. And the Amish man turned to his boy and said, Son, go get your mother.
That's true. That's not what we mean by faith works, okay? Yeah, that's uh Faith is something that is so On the one hand, mysterious, and on the other hand, so simple. Um Any child can understand what it is to have faith. Believe something.
Faith works in its effectiveness in the sense that Faith in and of itself has an effect. The basketball player who's got the game on the line with one second left and a free throw in his hands to win the game. If he has faith, if he's confidence, the word we use, if he has confidence, that he's going to make the shot. Then he's more likely to make it. In other words, faith works, it's effective just in and of itself, right?
Like life works like that. Faith is effective in the sense naturally, but also somehow mysteriously spiritually. God says it's impossible to please Him without faith. It's what He loves, He loves a trust relationship with Him. And so the essence of the gospel is that we are not saved by our works, we're not saved by our merits.
But instead, God did something absolutely extraordinary that even the angels longed to look into. And no one could have ever guessed, even with all the prophetic visions and all the shadows, no one could have foreseen that God would do something so extravagant and so remarkable that He Himself would take on human flesh to be a human being so that He could represent fairly all of humanity and live a life that we could never live and pay a price that we could have never paid, so that God could be at the same time just, and that is punishing sin, which is just what justice does. but also justifier. demonstrating that He's a God of love and mercy.
So through the cross of Jesus Christ, God is both just and justifier. And therefore, we who are in Christ find ourselves into a whole new position in the cosmos and a whole new posture of our relationship with God that has now been reunited, not because we did something. But because God did something. And when we believe that, We have faith. And faith is a mystery and it's a marvel and it's a gift and it's powerful.
And what James is saying is, I want you to see what this faith is really all about. The great reformer Martin Luther called this epistle epistle an epistle of straw. He'd have soon done away with it. There have been some scholars who said, well, James and Paul just don't agree with each other. Here's James saying we're justified by works, and Paul saying we're justified by works.
Some have said, just throw this epistle out of the book, and others say, But what I want to show you today is that This is James giving a perspective or a definition An angle. to tell us, here's what real faith looks like. In other words, We're saved by faith. But real faith looks like this. Faith Works.
They're so closely together. that you can't just separate this Theologically, we separated. But what I want to show you today is, and this is what James is trying to demonstrate here and throughout his epistle. that there is such a deep, deep connection that you could say things that he is saying. Let me first just address the question when you come, if you're a lover of grace like I am.
and you're a lover of the gospel, and you come to a text like James. has here in chapter two And you read lines like this. How do you interpret something like this?
Sometimes people who have had a fresh encounter with God, and have, especially those who have heard so much of the message that we preach of grace, and It's like you can be baptized in this. You can just be immersed in the gospel and realize. Oh, I've lived so much of my life under shame and legalism, and to come into the glorious revelation of the finished work of Jesus and the burdens that lift off of us and the joy that comes and the freedom and sweet savor of. Oh, such amazing grace. And yet, sometimes we'll come to a verse like this and go, oh no.
And I've had people actually come to me and just say, I was feeling so wonderful about all the revelation I was getting from God and everything. But then I read this verse and it feels like it's just unraveling the whole theology. It feels like it's just taking it apart. And the first thing to say about this is that to understand any portion of Scripture, you must interpret that scripture in the context of the whole of Scripture.
Now, if you ever have heard me preach much, you'll pick up on this. And I want to reiterate it over and over with you. The Bible is one great story. This is one of the things that's so amazing about the Word of God. How could it be that people Who have different pens and different cultures and different era of time are writing down scriptures.
that then compiled From all of these different eras of time, protected in astounding ways with their accuracy, and then come together in this one book that has in it narrative literature and has wisdom literature in it, and apocalyptic literature and has instructions in it, and has stories in it, and has all variety of manner of cultural influence that might have come in through these writers. But you put it all together, and it's absolutely mind-bending to me as a student of literature how anything like this could come to pass when, right from the very beginning on page one, you begin to see shadows and types of understanding what will actually be fulfilled in Christ Himself, so that the whole of the Word of God comes together in this amazing, seemingly seamless tapestry that has been woven together. It has to have been orchestrated by an author who is beyond it and above it and transcended over it. The marvelous thing about the Bible is that it is one great big metanarrative telling the redemptive story of a God who made a beautiful world and made people in his own image and how those people in their rebellion against God found themselves by their sin separated from God in a gulf, a chasm so great that no one could ever climb over it or get through it. No one could ever pay a price that was dear enough, an infinite price, an ultimate price.
No human being was righteous, not one of them.
So no one could come or climb their way back to God.
So this God, this God, this creator of the ends of the earth, had so much love and so much compassion and so much longing that he did the unthinkable. He came and his only begotten Son, a God who became flesh. Who'd ever heard of such a thing? And this human being, Jesus of Nazareth, lived the sinless life. He lived a life that we couldn't live.
He paid a price that we couldn't pay. He was a hero. He was a hero who'd come to rescue the damsel in destruction. And this hero was not just a heroic character, he was a real man in real history, and yet he is God Himself, and He's ascended on high, and He's made us to be His bride forever and forever. And so it is that we've been given a great co-mission in this world, and we are part of the redemptive story because we're telling the whole world about the love of Jesus.
I'm telling you, it's one story from Genesis all the way to Revelation, and it's all woven together by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I love the Word of God. And so, when you read a text, You read that text. Saying, where does this fit into the story? Where does it fit in to the story?
And if you don't read it like that, with this primary hermeneutical principle. Scripture interprets scripture. Have you ever come to an unclear text that's unclear to you? Don't get worried about it. More clear scriptures interpret the less clear scriptures.
We know this, God is love. If you read the Bible, one thing you know for sure, God is love. The steadfast love of the Lord endures forevermore. His loving kindness is new to us every morning. God is love.
So, if you come to a prophetic verse that says. The Lord says, Esau I have hated. You don't all of a sudden go, oh no, everything's wrong. You go, where does this fit into what I know to be true about who God is? See?
Let me give you a kind of a natural example. In the natural, you could see something like this, maybe make sense of how we also look at the spiritual things. Our daughter, Abigail, 18. Wonder if my wife went to Abby and said, Abby, we need you to clean up your room. And let's say Abby responded and said, Which she would not do.
But if she responded and said, See there, you just had me so I could work for you. I'm nothing but a slave around here. I'm just Cinderella in the ashes. I'm just sick of it. I think I'm going to run away from home because that's all this is about.
But this whole time, there's nothing else about here. It's just work, work, work. That's all anybody cares about right here. That's all anybody wants from me. That's all you care about.
And as there's such a Well, she wouldn't say that. The reason, really, she wouldn't say that is, she might say, I don't feel like cleaning my room, but the reason she wouldn't say that is because there's a whole story. That if you try to sum up our story by Abby Go clean your room. You'd miss the story.
Now if you're going to understand this story... You're going to have to go back to that delivery room and watch my wife labor and Bring that child into the world. And see the love. that started then. If you want to know the story, you'd have to...
See thee. See the father stand there with tears rolling down his face. You'd have to know the story included uh A time that There was a terrible car accident that could have taken that child's life and Angels were there attending.
So she was not harmed. You'd have to know 18 years. Of parents sacrificing for her and loving her and speaking blessing over her life every day.
so that it would go well with her, You'd have to understand from a parent's perspective what love really is. And you'd have to know that that father would be willing to lay his life down for her. How foolish it would be. to say it sums up the story of this household. By the verse.
Abby, go clean your room. You see what I'm saying? I love God's word. You don't pull out a little text from James and go, oh no, this unrivals it. Instead, you look at the text.
And you say, well, what is God saying to us through this text? since we know that God saves us not according to our own merit.
Well, the first thing that you do is you understand the nature of God. Our theology arises out of the Word of God. And that theology arises out of the understanding of the. wholeness of the word of God. Right?
So in the end, our theology matters. And what you understand about who God is. and why he came to justify us. through his grace by the mechanism of faith. As you understand that this God Who created us in his own image loves us so very, very much.
That he would rather Come and be insulted. and persecuted Marked Tortured. suffocating and dying On our behalf, rather. than to simply annihilate us. God wants people in heaven.
God wants fellowship with his people. It's who he is. He's not trying to Keep people out.
Some people have this idea of God. It's like he's like sitting up behind me like you said. You messed up. That was it. You didn't have enough works.
You're out. I went to the Dixie Classic Fair as I do always this year and I went over to play my regular game. that I always win. I have hidden talents. Yeah.
And one of them is the small basketball toss at the Dixie Classic Fair. It's a small basketball. And a very small rim. The ball will barely fit into the rim. But the rim's not very far away.
And I win it every year. I win a stuffed animal or a Basketball prize, or something like that. I win every year. And so I went over this year and I gave him my five dollars, which entitled me to play three games. You get two tosses, and you got to make Both of them.
No problem. And uh I went up And I started my procedure. I'm going to go ahead and clue you in. This is for free. Yeah.
The secret to the small basketball toss. at the Dixie Classic Fair. You must do it underhanded. If you try to do it overhanded, what happens is that the arc and the height increases the level of difficulty to which you'll probably never make it. Any little mistake, it'll hit the rim and it'll bounce violently out.
But if you toss it underhand with a gentle backspin on it, I win it every year. Uh And now you know Alan Wright. Few tips along the way here on the program. It is Faith in Works, part one of a three-part teaching series as we wrap up the entire bigger, larger series of The Beauty of Balance. Hey, Alan is back in a moment, maybe with an underhanded basketball shot and additional insight for this in your life and a final word today.
Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's Daily Blessing. It's free and just a click away at pastoralan.org.
So, Alan, I love that illustration there at the fair, and you've got the games, and this is the strategy, right? This is the way to win. And so, often we can take that in a spiritual sense, and that can be contorted, I guess, into a works-based theology that goes, again, to that extreme. But where about the beauty of balance in this series? It is a wonderful statement to say faith works, because what it means is that.
At many levels, through our faith, God is working. And when you have faith, Everything within you is energized to work. And yet it is not works righteousness. That says faith works because the faith that works is a true faith that we have in God. And so that's what we're learning about is really when faith is alive in God, how much it absolutely moves us on behalf of everything that we believe.
Faith doesn't sit around and be lazy and idle. It is a faith that changes the world. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan Wright Ministries. you
