In this insightful episode of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack Hibbs delves into the challenging teachings of the Book of James. Through the provocative question of whether salvation comes by faith or works, Pastor Jack underscores the importance of genuine faith that manifests in our actions. He illustrates how faith is perfected through works by examining examples from Scripture, including the compelling faith of Abraham.
If you could right now raise your hand and say, yes, I’m a Christian, then James is saying to all of us, plug your ears, plug my ears, and we’ll all watch you for a month, and we’ll tell you if you’re saved or not. You will be known by the fruit that’s in your life.
SPEAKER 01 :
This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I’m David Jay, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God’s Word, the Bible. What does it take to be a great leader? Whether you’re managing a business or running a household or navigating relationships, leadership is about so much more than titles and tasks. In The Way of the Shepherd by Dr. Kevin Lehman, you’ll discover some timeless principles of biblical leadership that really apply to every area of your life. Through some compelling storytelling, Dr. Lehman shares seven powerful secrets that’ll help you lead like the Good Shepherd does. Those secrets include understanding the people you lead, assessing their strengths, building trust, ensuring safety, providing direction, implementing correction, leading with compassion, Personally recommended by Pastor Jack Hibbs. The Way of the Shepherd is available today for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com slash real radio. That’s jackhibbs.com slash real radio. Get your copy of The Way of the Shepherd by Dr. Kevin Lehman at jackhibbs.com slash real radio. On today’s edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series called The Book of James. Today’s title, Salvation by Faith or Works, Part 2. Now, before it became one of the books of the New Testament, James was a letter that was sent to the Jews who chose to follow Christ. And here in part two, James continues to encourage them to have true faith in Christ. You see, we need to make sure that we are truly following Jesus Christ. Indeed, we’re not saved by works, but faith without action is an empty faith. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that what we profess has to agree with what we do. Salvation is faith and works because true faith concerns itself with the needs of others. Now, with his message called Salvation by Faith or Works, Part 2, here’s pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.
SPEAKER 02 :
James 2, verses 21 to 26 in our study, as we go through a very, very interesting portion of Scripture, it all began, really, the firestorm began in verse 14 of this chapter. And we can read it and make our way through. Though the text is verses 21 to 26, the context begins in verse 14. James chapter 2. So let’s begin there so we don’t make any mistakes and follow along with me in verse 14. James said to us last week, what does it profit my brethren if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food and one of you says to them, depart in peace and be warm and be filled and you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus 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 without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God? You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble. But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled, which says, Abraham believed God and it was accounted unto him for righteousness. And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith only. Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. We talked about last time in our study that true Christianity is going to be a working Christianity. The fact of the matter is we are not saved by what we perform. We are not saved by being good. We are not saved by being the best citizen in the community, the most law-abiding. We’re not saved by any of those good standards or those good works that we might attempt to though those things are very good, the fact of the matter is the Bible tells us that we are saved when we put our faith in Jesus Christ. Can you remember that I said that, please? That we are saved by putting our faith in Jesus Christ. Listen, not putting our faith in faith. You might say, well, that’s a stupid thing to say. Are you sure? Have you ever heard somebody say, come on, man, just have more faith. Oh, come on. You know, if you just had enough faith, as though faith is somehow the medium or the vehicle that we’re supposed to have faith in. Does the Bible say anywhere to put your faith in faith? Be careful. Be careful what you hear. You don’t put faith in faith. And you don’t put your saving faith… On the fact that you raised your hand at a crusade or maybe in the service. If somebody asked you, are you going to go to heaven? And you say, well, yeah. Well, how do you know? I raised my hand a couple of years ago. What does raising your hand have to do with you being saved? Are you trusting? Are you trusting in the fact that you at some point in time made some kind of an ascent or something? decision that I’m going to raise my hand or I’m going to come forward at the crusade. Do you think that saves you? That doesn’t save you. Well, what about being a member of a church? It doesn’t save you either. Well, if you knew what I had to go through to be a member of the last church I attended, that ought to account for something. It accounts for nothing. Does that bother you? Does it upset you? The Bible says it’s by faith in Jesus Christ alone that we’re saved. Well, then what’s James talking about here? Oh, don’t worry. James is talking about what a Christian is to be like after they’ve come to Christ. When a person says, Lord Jesus, I ask you to come into my life and save me from my sin. I ask you, Lord, to be my redeemer and to cleanse me from my wickedness and to fill my life with your life, to give me your direction. Lord, I come to you now. I believe Jesus died on the cross, that he rose again from the dead. I believe that he’s coming back. I believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior. In his name I pray, amen. The very next thing that will begin to happen Maybe you won’t feel it or see it or sense it at first. From that moment on, if you were sincere, God will begin to work in your life by the power of the Holy Spirit to produce the fruit of the Spirit. And works will flow out from your life. And your unbelieving friends and your unbelieving family and your unbelieving enemies, they’ll all be able to say, something’s different about her. are about him. There’s been a change. Now you and I may not sense the change. We may not see it as fast. In fact, do we see it as fast as we want to see it? Man, I thought, man, and I honestly, I was so naive. When I accepted Jesus Christ, I was so glad to be delivered from my past life that had just happened like 10 minutes earlier. I’d been delivered. I’m born again. I’m in the prayer room at Calvary Costa Mesa. I’m a new person. I heard everything Greg Laurie said and the new convert counselor was talking to me. I’m brand new. I’m brand new. Oh, right. And I look over and there’s a really cute girl that she got saved too. And I’m thinking, hmm. And then in the prayer room where I was converted, I had to ask God to forgive me for my sin again. What had happened? I was really meaning that prayer, and I really went down up front, sweaty palms and all. I knew I was a sinner. I knew I needed to be delivered from my past life. Well, then what was going on in that prayer room in my head? Slowly, but ever so slowly, the death of the old man. That’s why Paul the Apostle said in the book of Romans, we need to reckon the old man to be dead. Don’t you love that word, reckon? You can see Paul with an old straw hanging out of his mouth. You need to reckon the old man to be dead. Well, the word reckons is a mathematical term. It means to look at what you once were, look what Christ has done, apply that to your account, and you, by God’s decree, are stamped, are you ready? Holy. The word holy. When Paul wrote to the church at Rome, he said to the Romans there, to the saints, holy. In Christ, the word hegeos is the word saints. Hey, they were still kicking around with the old man. They would be in church. Now, I know this doesn’t happen to any of you, but they’ll be in church and they’ve got their hands lifted up. They’re praising the Lord. And they open their eyes and this real sick, pervert thought goes right through their head. And you’re just like, man, where did that come from? I thought I was saved. You are saved. That’s why you’re having a war inside your head. But there are those who come in and out of church, James is saying, who don’t even know what we’re talking about right now. They might be so proper, so self-righteous, I don’t mean that in a mean way, that they’re very happy to be a Christian and all is well. And they’ve never been, you know, I’m not bad. I’m quite a catch, actually, to the kingdom. And… doing quite well, thank you, and I’m not like this guy over here, and I don’t have any ministry to say of, just that I’m here, and the church should be glad that I’ve attended today. Well, watch out, because you yourself may be the furthest from the kingdom. Jesus talked about a man like that who stood there and justified his moral condition when a very repentful sinner stood in the corner, wouldn’t even lift his head up to heaven, but bowed his head down and beat on his chest. And every Christian’s gonna know what I’m talking about in a second. When that man beat on his chest and said, oh God, forgive me, I’m a very sinful man. And every Christian goes, man, I know how that is. When you draw close to Christ, there’s an incredible awareness of the most minuscule sin. Of course, to God, sin is sin. But is there a battle in your life? Is there a struggle? James is saying to those who sit in the church and they think themselves to be of the faith and yet see their brother and sister in need and do nothing about it, James says, in fact, your faith is dead. And in fact, he said last week in verse 20, do you want to know, oh foolish man, that faith without works is dead? It’s a question of sarcasm. He’s asking the question in verse 20, do you even want to know? You don’t want to know, do you? You don’t care is what James is implying. There are those in the church who could care less about this message right now. They’re just doing time. They’re doing God time. So that somehow in their conscience, they can say to God, hey, come on, man. I listened to that guy yet for almost an hour. I went to Calvary Church, Calvary Chapel. What’s the big deal? Let me in. Let me in. Hey, you’re not letting me in. You know, what’s the deal? Are you really saved? Then if we were all deaf, James is saying, if you could right now raise your hand and say, yes, I’m a Christian, then James is saying to all of us, plug your ears, plug my ears, and we’ll all watch you for a month, and we’ll tell you if you’re saved or not. You will be known by the fruit that’s in your life. That all of a sudden brings a very serious note into all of our hearts. Are we really going to go to heaven? Well, that depends on you. It doesn’t depend on me. It depends on you personally, and for me, me personally. James chapter 2, beginning in verse 21. We’ll see four points to our message this morning, and they’re all illustrations. This is kind of fun. It’s going to drive the point home to us. The first illustration is Abraham’s saving faith. Abraham had saving faith, verses 21 to 23. The second illustration is found in verse 24, and that is what saving faith really is. How do I know I’m saved? That’s verse 24. Third point is the illustration of Rahab’s saving faith. Now that’s a radical conversion for you. Verse 25. And then finally the fourth point, the fourth illustration is the illustration of dead faith itself. Yes, dead faith. You can have dead faith. You can say you believe in God and live like you don’t. That’s called dead faith. A lot of people have dead faith. By the way, there’s three types of faith mentioned in the Bible. There’s dead faith, There’s dynamic faith. That’s what you and I want to have. And then we saw last week in our study that there’s demonic faith. That even Satan and demons believe in one God, as we saw last week. And they tremble when they think the thought. Remember? We’re going to have to stand before God in the end. Satan and the demons tremble over that fact. And then last week, James comes across the line in verse 20 and says, you don’t even really want to know yourself if faith is dynamic and alive in your own life. There’s a dead faith, there’s a demonic faith, and there’s a dynamic faith. And of course, we want the dynamic faith. And so he says to us in our first point, so mark it down, the illustration of Abraham’s saving faith. This is what it’s going to take or the type or the level of faith to get into heaven. And by the way, let me give you a little hint. Any little child can have it. Okay? Any little child can possess this faith.
SPEAKER 01 :
You’re listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. You know, to hear more episodes and maybe catch up in the series, just go to jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. And for now, let’s get back to our teaching. Once again, here’s Pastor Jack.
SPEAKER 02 :
The illustration of Abraham’s saving faith. James says, was not, verse 21, Abraham our father justified by works? When he offered Isaac his son on the altar… He says, do you see that faith was working together with his works and by works faith was made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled, which says Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And he was called the friend of God. There’s three things under this point that I want you to see. The first one’s found in verse 21 and that’s the act of offering up Isaac. This is an incredible story. Abraham is commended right here by James. He’s saying, I want all of us to make sure that we have faith like Abraham. If we have faith like Abraham, then we have saving faith. And here it is. God tells Abraham, I want you to take your son, your only son, and I want you to sacrifice him to me. Take him to a hill or to a mountain that I’ll tell you. And so it says in Genesis chapter 22, you can write it down on your margins or next to that verse in your notes of your Bible. In Genesis 22… Abraham gets Isaac and gets two other witnesses, by the way, four of them on donkeys, and off they ride. And all they know is that they’re going to go worship the Lord. Abraham knows in that very first day that God had commanded, go offer up your son. Isaac didn’t know it yet. And you might say, well, wait a minute, Jack, I’ve seen the Sunday school photographs. How can a little tiny baby be riding a donkey? He wasn’t a tiny baby. Isaac was somewhere around 30 years of age if you read your scripture carefully. Isaac’s 30-ish. Abraham is way over 100. Now, this is kind of funny because it says that they went in agreement. They were going to go worship God together and they had two servants riding along with them. Only Abraham knows that God says, I’ll show you a mountain that I want you to sacrifice your son, and after you kill him with a knife, I want you to make a burnt offering of him to me. Now this freaked him out. It had to have freaked Abraham out. Why? Because God had never required a human sacrifice, nor does he. It’s not like God’s nature. By the way, the book of Hebrews tells us that God had to test Abraham. Why did God have to test him? A lot of scholars, we can only speculate, a lot of scholars believe that Isaac became… a threat to the throne room heart in Abraham’s life, that Isaac began to take the throne that God had occupied in Abraham’s life. And so God says to Abraham, you take your son. Now, God was not going to go through with this, but Abraham didn’t know it, did he? Does God ever ask you to do something and it seems like insanity? Did you move 800 miles north just to find out that you were supposed to come right back here and live just a few houses over from where you used to live? Just for one person to get saved and that job up north? You know that stuff happens to people. And you step back and scratch your head and you go, how can this be? It happens. Strange things. What if God was to tell you, can you imagine if God was to tell you what he told Ezekiel? Ezekiel, I want you to lay on your side for 135 days and preach to the people, laying on one side. Then I want you to get up and lay on the other side and preach for like another 120 days. Can you imagine God saying that? Oh, God would never say something like that. Oh, you never know. What about Isaiah? Here’s a funny guy. Isaiah was mystery prep. He was born and raised in the courts of the king. He had a silver spoon in his mouth, gold spoon, so to speak. Isaiah pampered, prophet to the king. He had it made. And then something happened. And the Lord told Isaiah, I’m looking around for young people. This is in the scriptures. I’m not going to tell you where it is. You go search it later. God told Isaiah, I want you to pull your shorts down and shine your rear end at him. And you tell Israel, you see the shame back here? See that shame? God says, that’s what’s going to happen to you if you don’t repent and follow me. Can you imagine being a prophet of God? And God says, okay, I want you to turn around and drop your robe. Why? Because I’m trying to tell them, it’s an illustration, Isaiah. You’ve got to do this. Lord, you’re creating those in a way. Can you imagine? There’s another part where Isaiah, God says, go naked. Walk around in the streets and tell them, your embarrassment is going to be nothing like it is, or my embarrassment will be nothing like it is compared to yours. God’s going to devastate you because you won’t turn from your ways. Can you imagine being a messenger of God? Lord, use me. To make an illustration, to drive the point home, Abraham takes his son and God says, I’ll tell you when you get there that this is the hill. I don’t know about Abraham. You know, kids are on the back of a car. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? I bet Abraham’s riding the donkey. Is that the hill? How about this hill? For three days they rode. After the command came out to Abraham to kill his son, in Abraham’s heart and Abraham’s mind, his son had been dead three days. A three days journey away until they get to the place where God says, that’s the hill, that’s the mount, right there. Remember the name of it? Mount Moriah. It’s called Golgotha today. It’s the same place where another father offered up his son 2,000 years ago. Jesus Christ. Did Abraham know that he was acting out the prophetic offering of Jesus Christ himself through the Father? I don’t think so. But God tells Abraham to go do this thing and Abraham moved in faith to offer his only begotten son. And of course the angel of the Lord stops him as he’s going to sacrifice his son. But it’s an amazing thing because here’s Isaac, 30 years of age, and he’s laying down willfully. Not only did Abraham believe that the promise that God had given, remember what that promise was? Abraham through Isaac, I’m going to bless the entire world. But Isaac hadn’t been married yet. Isaac didn’t have any kids yet. Abraham literally believed that God would have to raise his son from the ashes, from the dead to fulfill the plan. And Abraham trusted God to do that very thing. That is incredible.
SPEAKER 01 :
pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio with his message called Salvation by Faith or Works, Part 2. We’re glad you could spend some time with us today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack’s series called The Book of James. It’s a series on being doers of the Word of God and not just hearers only. And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, hey friends, this is a plea and it’s not gonna take much for me to convince you. The plea is this, will you pray? Will you pray for California? Will you pray for the devastation in Southern California? It is absolutely apocalyptic in scope. The devastation is pretty much beyond imagination. It’s as though a atomic bomb had gone off. and the loss of animal life, the loss of property, the loss of business, the loss of everything, of course, the loss of homes. For some people, maybe even the loss of their faith, because they may have built their life, as it were, on the sand. We pray not, but we need to pray for the salvation and for the church’s opportunity to love on Los Angeles like never before. Listen to this, my friends. I’m asking you to join me as we pray and intercede for not only those that are hurting, But even greater than that, let’s pray for the salvation of those in the Los Angeles, Southern California area in light of this horrific devastation. And let’s pray that God causes this to be an ash heap that causes beauty to rise out of it. And there’s no greater beauty than for a spiritual awakening to take place in the church and for many to come to Christ. Let’s pray. Let’s pray now. Father, in Jesus’ name, we heed your word. We can watch the gates, as it were. We can watch out to be careful. But unless you’re the one that protects the city, we do it in vain. Lord God, we pray for the salvation of millions of people in the Los Angeles area, tens of millions in the region. We pray, Father God, that your church would rise to this occasion to show the love of Jesus and give the gospel of God. And Father, we pray for those that are mourning the loss of their loved ones. So God, we give it to you now. We pray. We pray by leaving it at your feet. In Jesus’ name and all God’s people said, amen. God bless you and thank you. Keep praying.
SPEAKER 01 :
This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We’ll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
