Friday, Oct. 26

To download an audio version of this, click here. 

James 2:14-19

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such a faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes or daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder.

You may or may not be aware that a whole lot of people in our culture have a negative opinion of churches – especially Baptist churches! I remember seeing a statistic a few years ago that claimed over 80% of people in the Chicago-land area have a negative reaction to the word “Baptist.” 

Part of that reaction is undoubtedly a misunderstanding about what the word actually means; and part of it is the relentlessly negative portrayal of “Baptists” in the media. It seems like every time a Baptist minister or Baptist church is featured on the news the pastor or the congregation is portrayed in a wildly negative manner (some of them, frankly, deserve that kind of treatment!).

This past August we did something as a church to combat that negative image. We set up a huge tent and packed 3,000 boxes of food to be distributed to our local region by an organization called, “Children’s Hunger Fund.” I hope you were able to participate in the food pack that day – it was great fun! 

You may not even have noticed that, along with packing boxes of food and enjoying roast pork, we parked the “Children’s Hunger Fund” semi-trailer in such a way that their logo could be seen from Keslinger Road, and we hung a large banner with our own “Serve the World” logo on the tent in the same way.

We did that because while some people may have “issues” with organized religion; and some may have issues with Baptist churches in particular; and some people may even have issues with Jesus, NO ONE has issues with feeding hungry children!

We simply wanted to send the message to our community that “whatever you may have thought about Baptist churches before, whatever you may think about people who call themselves ‘Christians’, and whatever you think about Jesus, we are people who put our faith into action in ways that serve others. We show our faith by what we do.

James writes:

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder.

Don’t skip over that last sentence too quickly! Here it is again:

Even the demons believe that – and shudder.

I can’t tell you how many people I have heard through the years say things like, “Hey, I believe in God…I don’t need to go to church … I don’t need to pray and read the Bible and do all that religious stuff… I believe in God and that’s enough for me.”

I think James might have been hearing the same thing 2000 years ago. And he says, “Good for you, you believe in God! Even demons do that much!” The whole point is to live like you believe in God!

The best thing we can do as followers of Jesus; as believers in the gospel; is to live in such a way that both Jesus and the gospel become visible!

In a sense, the whole world is waiting and watching and saying, “Show me!” 

So, what are we going to do?

Brian Coffey