James: The Brother Who Became a Servant

[Music] praise God brothers and sisters I'd like to start this morning off with Isaiah 43: 18-9 forget the former things do not dwell on the past see I am doing a new thing now it Springs up do you not perceive it I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the Wasteland you know Jesus Christ he he washes away all of our sins all of our past and uh with this new year you know we should just leave all that in the past all the all the regrets all you know the sins and stuff because Jesus Christ he washes it all away and you know in this new year this is our first service um well first morning service in the new year um so let's focus on you know living A Renewed life in Christ and trying to serve him better this year uh and with that being said let's stand up and pray Lord God we thank you for this morning you've given us Lord we ask you and we pray Lord bless the service Lord bless the singing bless the pr preaching God speak to our hearts Lord help us to remember what is being said to us Lord so we didn't leave empty-handed God help us to learn your word better Lord and to become better followers of Christ all praise and glory be to you God Holy Is Your Name Lord all praise and glory be to you in Jesus name we pray amen good morning and for the start of our service we're going to sing a song by the name of Come Thou found [Music] [Music] Come Thou found of Every Blessing tune my heart to sing thy Grace streams of Mery never ceasing call for s s of loudest praise teach me some melious Son sung by flaming tongues above praise the mountain fixed up it Mount of the unchanging love here I raise my [Music] eer hither by thy help I'm come and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home Jesus saw me when a stranger wanding from the the fold of God he to resue me from D interpose his Precious Blood oh to Grace how great a de daily I'm con string to be let thy goodness like a Fed bind my wondering Heart To Thee prone to wonder Lord I feel it prone to leave the God I love here's my heart oh take and seal it seal it for thy courts of above Come Thou FR of Every Blessing tune my heart to sing thy Grace streams of Mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise teach me some melodious s Sun by flaming tongues above praise the mountain fixed upon it Mount of God unchanging love [Music] when peace like a river attend my way when Sorrows like sea Billows R [Music] rooll whatever my Lord thou Hast Tau me to say It is Well it Is Well with My Soul It is Well it Is Well with My Soul with My Soul It is Well it Is Well with My Soul though Satan should B though I should come let this bless Assurance control that Christ has regarded my heless estate and has shed his own blood for my soul it is wor it is Well with My Soul with My Soul It is Well it Is Well with My Soul my sin oh the Bliss of this glory is thought my sin not in part but a [Music] whole his name to the cross and I bear it no more praise the Lord praise the Lord From My Soul It is Well it Is Well with My Soul with My Soul It is Well it Is Well with My Soul and Lord hates the day when the fa shall be side the clouds be rolled back as a scroll the Trump shall ReSound and the Lord shall de said even so it is well with with My Soul It is Well it Is Well with My Soul my soul It is Well it Is Well with My Soul [Music] praise the Lord brothers and sisters for this morning that we have it's raining outside but you know God is good as was promised for us I woke up this morning and I couldn't believe how dark it was am I sure I was supposed to be waking up right now but you know I was supposed to wake up and serve God so praise the Lord and um I'm going to read a Bible verse in uh Jeremiah 29:1 and it says here for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope praise God and I want to also announce our program for this morning we will have uh brother Mark sing a song for us and then after that we will have uh brother Tim continue his message God bless [Music] God is my shepherd I won't be walk I won't be [Music] W he makes me rest in fields of green with quiet [Music] streams even though I walk through the valley of death and dying I will not fear cuz you are with me you are with me your Shepherd St comforts me you are my feet in the presence of enemies surely goodness will follow me will follow me in the house of God forever [Music] God is my shepherd I won't be wanting I won't be wanting he makes me rise in fields of green with quiet [Music] streams even though I walk through the valley of death and ding I will not fear cuz you are with me you are with me your shepher staff Comfort spe you are my feast in the presence of enemies surely goodness will follow me follow me in the house of God forever in the house of God forever [Music] in the house of God forever praise God well praise God my dear friends it's a wonderful morning amen you know I I totally understand what Dima was talking about uh me myself I'm a laid bird but the Lord calls and we wake up Amen to that uh this year it's a wonderful year uh 2025 we're all uh glad I believe to be alive and I know there's a lot of people that are sick right now but I thought everybody sick well it turns out that we're here and uh praise the Lord for that for our health so we're going to be starting a book The the Epistle of James and the reason why I chose this book was because you know when I was studying I was like wow this book has so much cool things for my life and the more I kept on reading the more I felt like I'm must sinner that needs Jesus you know because it it talks about how to tame our tongues where sometimes I myself have a hard time uh to tame the tongue I say something and then I'm like scratching my head why did I say that um and then it talks about works and that's a whole other uh topic later on that we're going to be going through but this short book I would say like what is it five chapters it literally has all the lessons for our life all the lessons and so I'm excited to to actually be be learning with you guys so I would uh encourage everybody to to bring their uh Bibles and notes and those that don't have their Bibles today we have one more that's available but uh if you guys need one just raise your hand and I'll have somebody bring it to you but going um through James I I realized a couple things that I didn't know before and um may we all understand that everything that's in this Bible was chosen by the Holy Spirit and everything that's in this Bible is good for our personal lives mine yours and everybody who reads it and so when we read these things and we take the steps that it teaches us to take then we conform into the image of Christ and that's the beautiful um I would say thing about the Bible is that if you want to conform in the image of Christ read the Bible and you will see how you will be more like him but starting James we're going to today just just go through who the author is who who he is who he is not um we're going to learn today what he did and how he died you see James is actually um an English name but but his name in Hebrew is Yakov and his name in Greek is yobas um baby boss no no not that cartoon it's yakob boss um and so that translates yobas or Yakov actually translates into Jacob so so the Book of James is is actually the book of Jacob um that was his original name and his parents which was Joseph and Mary they they named their son after the descendant of Abraham which we know Isaac and Jacob and so when we see the the name James and we're going to be reading in multiple locations it's actually his original name is Yakov yobas which is Jacob an epistle what's an epistle epistle is just a letter and over here James he's a Jew he's a Jew but he's a conformed Jew he does not go by the Jewish laws anymore because he believed like in his Savior Jesus Christ and so uh he's writing these letters to the Jews who accepted Jesus Christ who believed in Jesus Christ because we know that Judaism it only believes in one God it believes in one God it's a monopolistic or something like that yes um the reason why I look at Pastor Henry is because he knows all this stuff so so so if I need any help then I can just ask him but um Judaism believes in one God Islam believes in just one God um I know that uh like also Jehovah Witnesses they do not believe in the resurrection and but we believe in the Trinity of God so so over here James he's writing this letter to his church to his people that believed in Jesus Christ and the purpose of his teachings was that faith without works is dead faith without works is dead if you say you believe in Christ yet your Works show otherwise you live a different lifestyle but you call yourself a Christian he says you do not believe because based on your works is your faith in Christ and over here James he's teaching the the the Jews because they live by the law you know um circumcision and and all that stuff and and James like no guys okay the law is great but faith in Christ is better faith in Christ is what gets you to heaven because we are all law Breakers we are all law Breakers we all bear the penalty for the laws that we've broken but faith in Christ is what saves us and over here uh James he's telling that to his people and um I believe that he's telling that to us as well you know we can argue that well Works faith I mean if you believe you don't really have to show your works I think that's the that's the danger of um uh Calvinism is that the the belief that you do not have to show your works that you are saved you do not have to show your works that you are saved but over here we see the total opposite the total opposite that by your works you show your salvation and the Book of James was written about a.45 ad45 so that's after the birth of Christ so James happens to be the younger brother of Jesus the last image that's not the actual image of James I actually don't know how he looks uh so you might see different images of James one younger one older one more handsome One not so um but it's written in ad. 45 so James he was about I would say 43 to 48 years old when he he has written this Epistles or this letter to the the Jewish nation that believed in Christ okay who J James was not you know for the longest time I thought James was one of the Apostles that wrote this book it turns out he was not uh James was not the uh how we read in James the brother of John the the sons of thunder you know the the hot attitude sometimes I'm like Lord please help me I'm like James and John you know and then the Lord is like you know knee ankle hurting I'm like Lord okay I come to you but over here we see that uh James in John uh like over here the the disciples they had this hot attitude but this was not the James that the the Bible uh that wrote this book and also another uh disciple of Jesus was James son of alus the Bible says and this is also not the James that wrote this epistle this James like who wrote his Epistles he was actually the half brother of Jesus why the half because this James his father was Joseph or the father of God or of Jesus was God and so like even though they had the same mother but they had different fathers and over here we read in Matthew 13:55 um it says is this not The Carpenter's son is not his mother called Mary and his brothers James Joseph Simon and Judas so the James who wrote this epistle is this James uh the the half brother of Jesus Christ and over here we see that Mary had four sons and one of them name was Judas well this is not the Judas that um betrayed Jesus this is uh the Judas that that was offended by his name because of what that Judas did so he actually changed his name to Jude which we actually also read in the Bible the letter of Jude or the Epistle of Jude or the book of Jude and that's also the half brother of Jesus so like when you read in the Bible that um the the brothers the sisters of Jesus they actually didn't believe that he was God um because there was this one inst where they came to take Jesus home and Jesus said who is my brother who is my sister who is my mother is those who do the will of of my God and over here um like we see that the brothers they didn't even believe in Jesus as being the god which is interesting because I would think that if you're born in the same family and prior to anything an angel of the Lord appeared to Mary and told her who is going to be in her stomach he's from God he's from the Holy Spirit you would think that Mary would maybe share that with her other kids like hey I'm sorry but this is God you know you would think that maybe she would say hey guys leave him Al alone he knows what he doing you know but over here we see that they're constantly telling Jesus hey it's time to go like let's go Jesus you're you know you're wasting people's time almost like that you know and over here Jesus gets kind of like frustrated and he's like hey you know who's my brother who's my sister you know and stuff like that but so James actually only believed in Jesus after the resurrection after the resurrection and it's interesting because the Bible says that when Jesus came he came to 500 or something people and then he came to James I'm like wow like why to James not to James Simon Judas you know all his other uh Brothers but but only to him you know so it looks like he has some kind of special connection with James and like when we read in James 1 over here James a bond servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ a bond servant see like over here they changed the the name to bond servant but it actually meant slave so James A Slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ I mean I would never say um to to my brother you know I'm your slave I mean that would just sound weird or I'm your bonder servant even though say he's older than me you know I show respect I'll show respect you know as an older brother but to say slave it's it's just getting solow to to the uh ground just getting solow putting him so much higher than yourself I am a slave to you and over here he says of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ he puts them on the same level he understood that Jesus Christ is God all along that brother that they were kind of telling hey you're wasting people's time is actually God himself who came into flesh and over here James he just surrenders himself he says I'm your slave and God uses him God uses him where James actually believes in Christ so much that in his life he he becomes a leader and a pastor of the Jerusalem Church um show the Jerusalem Church so over here this is not the actual Jerusalem Church because um I guess in in ad70 there was a war between uh the Jews the Jews and the Romans and they destroyed everything but they rebuil the church in the same place ad 326 so about 250 years later and so right now to this day if you would go to to Israel or to Jerusalem you would see this church there a 326 we live in 2024 so this church is thousands of years old and people are still Gathering there to this day you know and so and so over here we see that James he becomes the leader the pastor of this Jerusalem Church and this Jerusalem Church all of a sudden now consists of Jewish uh Believers and Gentiles and Gentiles and I don't know if you read the Bible to where you saw that Gentiles and Jews they did not get along actually Jews they would not sit around the Gentiles they they uh saw them as inferior people and so like over here the the Jews um they they held on to like even though they accepted Jesus Christ in their life but they held on to their laws to their circumcision to their uh like you can't have pork and all that stuff where the Gentiles they didn't care they're like we don't need no circumcision we're going to eat all the pork we want you know and so they they constantly had this uh battle James had this battle at church all the time and he got a special name uh they they called him James the wise the reason why he he got that title he got that name was because he was able as a pastor and as a leader to keep these two people together um like it was said that there were multiple times where the church was about to split but they submitted themselves to the pastor and he was able to to keep these two people together and what later they um the church it became strong because not the laws not the uh Traditions unified them but Jesus Christ and so when James was teaching them not about the Jewish law but the laws of Christ it touched all the hearers all the Believers it put everybody on the same level everybody the Jews no longer thought the Gentiles were inferior they put the Gentiles on their level and that's when God started to move in that church and that church started growing rapidly and also uh James had a couple other nicknames uh he had James the little so um it was said that he was probably short short he wasn't this tall handsome uh you know brother in Christ that everybody was like oh Solomon Solomon no or yeah yeah Solomon you know he he was tall and handsome but but he was short in stature but very wise very wise and it makes sense now why Jesus showed up to him alone because Jesus Jesus had a plan who's going to be the leader of that church and it almost seemed that James was the wisest of all the other brothers and so Jesus comes to him and um it also says that that his other nickname was James the just you know he was an honest man and people could look up to him he was also a man of prayer a man of prayer and they were saying that James actually he he prayed so much that like his knees they look like camel knees and I don't know if you've seen camel knees so uh camels have like hair around their knees but like on their knees is just no hair just looks very scary uh don't look if you don't want to but but I'm pretty sure all of you will now um and so and so um they they they saw his knees like after his death and um because he prayed a lot he prayed a lot and he um they were saying the two things that James stuck to was prayer and the scripture that was his like his thing he would teach the scripture and he would pray for the church and you know that's why our church we we bow our knees when we pray either we stand up like in the beginning we stood up to pray or we bow our knees because like in the Old Testament when people would come to before a king they would fall on their knees some would even just lay on the ground you know and then the king would say stand up and when we stand before our King we bow our knees we bow our knees right now um it's sad to see this thing going on where people sit praying we they bowed their head you know but it was never like that I mean prayer was always bowing of the knees because we are bowing before the king and sometimes um people would stand before the the king maybe like the the wise men of the area you know they they didn't necessarily have to bow they would stand and so like we do stand and pray but you know it's uh it just kind of reminds me um like when we uh say stand for the the The Anthem we don't sit for the anthem nor do we sit for the uh pledge allegiance of the flag right we stand like we honor the flag you know those that that honor the flag but when it's time to pray people sit and bow their head and over here this kind of taught me a lesson that the reason why it's it's important to Bow your knees before God is because he is the king and when we have our requests we bow before him we honor him and that shows high respect to to our god to our Lord and James death was was a very tragic death I would say uh he was martyred under the the high priest anus and uh there's another name for for the high priest like ananus who was a sardy and um aari was a person that rejected the they they rejected the the resurrection of Jesus they rejected Angels uh they rejected the the that Holy um kind of that uh spirit life outside this world they believe that once you die then you die forever that's it there's there's no Heaven there's no hell yet they were still Priests of the Roman Kingdom and so and so over here this this church this little tiny Church made up of Jews and Gentiles is growing rapidly is growing and it's making a buzz it's making a buzz people are saying like who is this guy who is this church so they they're they're intrigued they start coming and this church is growing because the truths that they haven't heard they are finally hearing and then ananas or like ananus or Hannas he sees this like all his congregation is flocking to James but he's a high priest he answers to the to the Roman authorities and he has two choices they can either start persecuting the church or they just remove James and so he decides that we're going to take James out and so they they are ready him and tell me if this sounds same to to somebody else in the Bible they arrest him for um uh uh breaking the laws of the Jews and they sent him to death for that crime and what we know is that the other person that was arrested the same way and sent to death was Jesus Christ he was arrested for uh breaking their laws that were not the laws of the country itself and based on their laws he was sentenced to death and we see that James had the same sentence in the same death as his brother Jesus Christ and um they they take him to the peak of the temple and they push him off and he falls down and he's still alive he broke his bones he's in pain he's still alive so they run down they grab Stones they start stoning him he's still alive they don't know what to do so finally one of the guards comes and takes like um a bat and just like smashes his head and then James dies but you know this this James he's that one who wrote this book that we're going to be studying next week and what we see is that after his death the church only grew stronger you know what we can notice is that when there's Freedom people don't want to go to church but when there's persecution that's when the church grows and after his death the death of a just man A wise man a man that was the half brother of Jesus himself passes away and from that point on the church starts growing and with that I would like all of us to stand and pray and then we'll continue bow down sorry bow down let's Bow Down e and standing will all together seeing there is a fountain filled with [Music] blood there is a fountain filled with with blood drawn from Immanuel s and sers plunged beneath the flood loose all their guilty stains who saw their guilty stay lose all their guilty stay and siners cled beeath that flood loose all their guilty [Music] St the dying Thief re reice to see that fountain in is St and there I the I see wash all my sins away wash all my sins St away wash all my sins way and there may I go as wash all my sins oh away dear ding L thy preious blood shall never lose it till all the Rome Church of God be Sav to sin no more be save to sin no [Music] more be safe to S till all the Rome Church of God be save to S no more there s by faith I saw the stream th flow we [Music] woulding love has been my theme and shall be till I die it shall be till I die and shall me till I die wee me love has been my theme and shall be till I die well our service has come to an end and those were some good words in the psalm redeeming love is the theme and uh praise God for his redeeming love but we also have a a thankfulness from uh Christina she said that God healed her from cancer so praise God for that that amen he is powerful he's our creator so he can do it and we believe in his power praise God for that um I know a lot of people are sick my kids are staying home because they're sick last night was rough but uh but you know we're going to pray for all the people that are sick as well does anybody else have any needs oh yeah and her brother at the shelter um I guess he got his wallet stolen his keys and everything that he had just last night he woke up this morning and it was all gone so we're going to pray that God restores that to him okay let's pray Lord God we thank you we thank you Lord for your redeeming love Lord God that redeemed us Lord God from all our sins from all our trespasses and transgressions Lord God and you gave us a new way a new life and we thank you Lord God we also pray God we give you thankfulness God that you are a god of healing you heal those that are sick and today we have a testimony God that you healed uh Christina from her cancer Lord God and we thank you that you are a mighty God that can heal Lord Jesus God and and we also pray for all those that are sick Lord I know there's some kind of thing going around Lord but we ask for your healing upon all those that are right now sick Lord Lord God and we also pray for her brother that lost everything this morning God may you restore it to him May that person who took whatever he took restore it back to him Lord God you know how to do that Lord we thank you for this morning in Jesus name we pray amen Our Father in heaven Hallowed Be Your Name Your Kingdom Come your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us lead us not into temptation but Deliver Us from the evil one for your kingdom your power and Glory forever are yours amen be blessed