extraordinary things

Posted on February 12, 2024 by Jefferson Vann

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extraordinary things

James 5:13-18 (JDV)

James 5:13 Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises.
James 5:14 Is anyone among you sick? He should call for the elders of the congregation, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
James 5:15 The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up; if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
James 5:16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.
James 5:17 Elijah was a human being as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and for three years and six months, it did not rain on the land.
James 5:18 Then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain and the land produced its fruit.

extraordinary things

Any kind of suffering can be a cause of joy if it leads the sufferer and his congregation to a more consistent prayer life. God does not always use this means, but he can. My prayer for a fellow believer who is suffering is an opportunity for my own growth and spiritual enrichment. It is also an opportunity to operate in reciprocal spiritual gifts. It is also an opportunity to demonstrate that we ordinary human beings can do extraordinary things by connecting to our extraordinary God in prayer.

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A Spirit-controlled tongue

Posted on February 11, 2024 by Jefferson Vann

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A Spirit-controlled tongue

James 5:12 (JDV)

James 5:12 Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your “yes” mean “yes,” and your “no” mean “no,” so that you won’t fall under judgment.

A Spirit-controlled tongue

The same tongue that could get a person in trouble by criticizing and complaining can also get a person in trouble by swearing rashly. James encourages his readers to allow God’s Holy Spirit to tame their tongues — something that no human can do. A Spirit-controlled tongue needs no extra help from an oath. His yes means yes. Her no means no.

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blessed endurance

Posted on February 10, 2024 by Jefferson Vann

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blessed endurance

James 5:9-11 (JDV)

James 5:9 Do not complain, brothers and sisters, about one another, so that you will not be judged. Look, the judge stands at the door!
James 5:10 Take as an example, brothers and sisters, the suffering and patience of the prophets who spoke in the Lord’s name.
James 5:11 See, we count as blessed those who have endured. You have heard of Job’s endurance and have seen the outcome that the Lord brought about — the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

blessed endurance

We will be tempted to criticize and complain about those closest to us and the devil loves it when we do that. The judge stands at the door, so we need to learn to be patient with one another. Endure the uncomfortable to avoid the unbearable.

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perspective on the prospective

Posted on February 9, 2024 by Jefferson Vann

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perspective on the prospective

James 5:1-8 (JDV)

James 5:1 Come on, you rich ones, weep howling over the miseries that are coming on you!
James 5:2 Your wealth has rotted and your clothes are moth-eaten.
James 5:3 Your gold and silver are rusted, and their rust will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasure in the last days.
James 5:4 Look! The pay that you withheld from the workers who mowed your fields cries out, and the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of Armies.
James 5:5 You have lived luxuriously on the earth and have indulged yourselves. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughtering.
James 5:6 You have condemned, you have murdered the righteous, who does not resist you.
James 5:7 Be patient then, brothers and sisters until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth and is patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
James 5:8 You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, because the Lord’s coming is near.

James writes to readers who have been welcoming the rich as prospective members of their churches with open arms while shunning and turning away the poor. In today’s passage, he tells his readers that the destiny of these rich people is condemnation by the Lord at his second coming. To prefer the rich is to side with those who will be destroyed.

Patience in this context is to open your hearts to all, without looking at what we might benefit from our hospitality. It is to proclaim the gospel to all, without stopping to ask whether this person might be able to support us or not.

Knowing what will happen at the Lord’s coming helps us to see people with the proper perspective.

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appear, disappear

Posted on February 8, 2024 by Jefferson Vann

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appear, disappear

James 4:13-17 (JDV)

James 4:13 Come on, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.”
James 4:14 Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring – what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then disappears.
James 4:15 Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wants it, we will live and do this or that.”
James 4:16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All boasting like that is bad.
James 4:17 That is why to know the good and yet not do it is a failure.

appear, disappear

Last night (as I write this) Penny and I took a walk right after a rainstorm. There was still light enough to see the steam boiling up from the road and blanketing it. By the time we had finished the first half-mile, there was no steam anymore. It had appeared quickly and then disappeared. It was a short-lived phenomenon.

James tells his readers that since their lives are like that, then they should spend them in humility. They can make guesses about tomorrow, but they don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We have a Lord, and his desire and plan is what matters. We are his.

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let him judge

Posted on February 7, 2024 by Jefferson Vann

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let him judge

James 4:11-12 (JDV)

James 4:11 Don’t disparage one another, brothers and sisters. Anyone who disparages or criticizes a fellow believer disparages the law and criticizes the law. If you criticize the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
James 4:12 There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to criticize your neighbor?

let him judge

Why does James say that disparaging others is disparaging the law? Often we Christians use the term law as a bad thing: legalism and hypocrisy. But to James, law and gospel are the same thing: the message of salvation through Christ. Jesus is both the lawgiver (savior) and judge (destroyer of those who resist the gospel).

What does this have to do with my attitude toward other believers? To disparage another believer is to criticize someone for whom Christ died. It is to deny that deliverance has taken place. It is to reject someone whom Jesus has chosen. We must let Christ be the judge.

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sometimes righteousness

Posted on February 6, 2024 by Jefferson Vann

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sometimes righteousness

James 4:7-10 (JDV)

James 4:7 That is why you should submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
James 4:8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
James 4:9 Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
James 4:10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

sometimes righteousness

Since God does not want frenemies, we need to take sides. We need to stop submitting to God sometimes and the devil other times. We need to stop being comfortable with a sometimes righteousness. We need to resist the devil at all times and submit to God at all times. Our hands and hearts are dirty with sin, and we must cleanse them.

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frenemy

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Jefferson Vann

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frenemy

James 4:4-6 (JDV)

James 4:4 You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility with God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.
James 4:5 Or do you think it’s without reason that the Scripture says: The breath he made to dwell in us envies intensely?
James 4:6 But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says: God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

frenemy

When it comes to friendship, God does not like it when we try to take both sides of the road. Either we love God or we do not, and he knows when we are pretending. He does not want a frenemy. Every breath that we breathe yearns for God — not the world or its treasures.

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what we want

Posted on February 4, 2024 by Jefferson Vann

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what we want

James 4:1-3 (JDV)

James 4:1 Where do the conflicts and where do the fights among you originate? Don’t they come from your pleasures that wage war within you?
James 4:2 You are desiring and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask.
James 4:3 You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

what we want

One way that philosophy has sought to deal with the problem James is addressing is to rid ourselves of desires — to become a stoic who wants nothing. But James does not prescribe that policy. He tells his readers to bring their desires under control by bringing their requests to God for the things we really need. Wrong motives must be recognized and repented of. The alternatives are conflict, warfare, murder, and coveting.

What we want is a serious matter with God.

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malicious mindsets

Posted on February 3, 2024 by Jefferson Vann

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malicious mindsets

James 3:13-18 (JDV)

James 3:13 Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his results, with the humility of wisdom.
James 3:14 But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and deny the truth.
James 3:15 Such wisdom does not come down from above but is earthly, physical, demonic.
James 3:16 For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and every evil practice.
James 3:17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without pretense.
James 3:18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who cultivate peace.

malicious mindsets

James identifies two enemies of peace here. They are bitter envy (hatred of others who are more well-off than you) and selfish ambition (seeking to be more well-off than others). These two mindsets are present within the early church — to whom James writes. They are both masquerading as wisdom, but in reality, they are anti-wisdom as well as anti-peace. Those mindsets are causing disorder and producing “every evil practice.” They must be uprooted and replaced by true wisdom, grounded in humility (treating people as if they are actually better than you) and peace (maintaining purity and gentleness in interpersonal relationships).

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