Sermon Tone Analysis

! Tests of a Vital Faith (James 1:1-18)

!! James—The Brother of Jesus

The first word of the Letter of James identifies the writer: "James" (1:1).

In Hebrew, the name James is /Jacob/.

At least three prominent followers of Jesus bore this name: James the son of Alphaeus; James the son of Zebedee; and James, the Lord's half brother.

James the son of Alphaeus drops out of the biblical record so completely that he probably was too unimportant to get away with the simple designation that opens the letter; Herod Agrippa I beheaded James the son of Zebedee about AD 42-44 (Acts 12:2).

Obviously, the man who wrote the Book of James was so well known that he only needed to use his first name.

James the half brother of Jesus meets that qualification.

God sent His Son to a home.

All of the daily difficulties and tedious chores of domestic life conditioned Christ's growth.

James observed his older half brother's reaction to them all.

One can guess James's thoughts as he watched Jesus wander the hillsides of Galilee, often meditating on the scroll of Isaiah.

James witnessed the day when Jesus left their quiet home to walk to the Jordan River where John the Baptizer preached.

What shock seized James when Jesus returned to preach in the synagogue at Nazareth and claimed to fulfill the words of Isaiah (Luke 4:16-21)?

James's and others' verdict appears plainly in Mark 3:21.

They thought Jesus was out of His mind.

John recorded that Jesus' brothers half taunted Him, insinuating that a real prophet should show himself in Jerusalem (John 7:1-5).

John clearly stated that Jesus' brothers did not believe in Him.

Do you have a family member who rejects Christ's claims?

Perhaps you would be encouraged to know that Jesus' own brothers rejected Him at first.

No record shows that His sisters ever placed their faith in Him as Savior and Lord.

You have not failed just because your family does not believe.

Jesus did not coerce James into belief.

How, then, did Jesus' unbelieving brother become the chief pastor of the church at Jerusalem and the leader of the first great church council?

(See Acts 15.)

The key seems to be an appearance to James by the risen Christ.

Paul alone recorded that Jesus appeared to James for a special conversation (1 Cor.

15:7).

For James, Jesus' resurrection transformed a mere brother into a glorious Lord.

James's transformation caused him to wait with the disciples in the upper room for the Holy Spirit's power (Acts 1:14).

With the death of James the son of Zebedee about AD 42-44, James, Jesus' brother, became head of the Jerusalem church.

!! James—a Palestinian Jew

The Letter of James breathes the atmosphere of Palestinian Judaism.

Even without the author's name, one could know that he lived in the Promised Land.

For example, James wrote of the patient Palestinian farmer who waited for the early and late rains (Jas.

5:7).

The early and late rains were characteristic of Palestine, not of Italy, Egypt, or Asia Minor.

James the Jew wrote of "Abraham our father" (2:21), "Lord of sabaoth" (5:4, KJV), and assumed that his readers were familiar with Job, the prophets, and Jewish law.

He even called the Christian place of worship a synagogue (2:2, Greek text)!

God always uses the background of those whom He calls.

So, James the Jew wrote his letter for those whom he knew best, Jewish Christians.

The Letter of James has less about Jesus' life than any other New Testament letter.

Yet, no other epistle reflects more of Jesus or contains as many echoes of His words.

For instance, James made at least fourteen allusions to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Each chapter of James has echoes of his half brother's great Sermon.

If Jesus' words so saturated believers' conversations, what impact would they make?

!!

An Early Letter

The Letter of James does not come with a postmark.

How does one know when a letter like this was written?

Suppose you went to a meeting one year that changed your life and the lives of those around you.

If you wrote a Christmas letter to all of your friends that year, would you not describe that meeting, or at least mention it?

Or, suppose that the city where you live was destroyed.

You certainly would mention that in your letter.

Similarly, in about AD 49-51 James presided over a meeting that changed the church.

At the Jerusalem Council, Gentiles were freed from keeping the Jewish law in order to become Christians.

In AD 70, James's city, Jerusalem, was wasted.

Indeed, a strong tradition places James's death in AD 62. James's letter makes no reference either to the council or to the destruction of Jerusalem.

Because of that, it may have been written sometime between AD 44 and 50.

This would make the letter a rival for the honor of the oldest writing in the New Testament.

The Letter of James was not as quickly accepted as authoritative Scripture by the early church as were some other books.

The first clear reference to the Book of James as Holy Scripture came from the theologian Origen of Alexandria in North Africa sometime after AD 231.

By AD 393, however, the whole church had accepted the biblical authority of James.

Later, Martin Luther disparaged the letter.

He called it an epistle of straw because he thought that James disagreed with Paul's view of faith.

Luther put the letter at the end of his German translation of the New Testament.

Now, the book is where it belongs: in the midst of the great General Letters of the New Testament.

Today, believers accept its authority as a God-breathed Word without error.

!! James—Brother and Servant

Today, writers sign their letters at the end.

Often, readers look at the bottom of a letter first to see who wrote it.

Ancient writers stated first who wrote the letter.

James began his letter in this manner (1:1).

Note that James claimed no special title.

He could have claimed botherhood with Jesus; yet, in humility, he made no mention of that tie.

James did not claim his title as pastor of the Jerusalem church or even as an apostle.

He simply was James, standing before his Lord without any earthly title.

Every believer stands before Christ in this manner.

Indeed, the only thing that James wrote about himself was that he was a bondslave "of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1:1).

The only claim that he made was one of ownership by God in Christ.

Like all believers, he was bought with a price (1 Cor.

6:20).

The language that James used connected Christ with the God of the Old Testament.

Such confession offers a unique testimony to Jesus.

James shared the Nazareth home, the boyhood days, and the Galilean hills with Jesus.

Yet, he confessed that his brother now was his Lord and deserved equal devotion with Jehovah God of the Old Testament.

!! God's Scattered People

God had not lost the address of His Old Covenant people.

James sent the letter "to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad" (1:1, KJV).

He included as the recipients all Jews as well as Christian Jews.

Remember that the earliest Jewish believers had no sectarian name that separated them from other Jews.

Many had not broken from the synagogue.

At first, Jewish Christians maintained the hope that all of their fellow Jews would turn to Christ.

James chose the strongest possible way to address all Jews.

Gentiles read and profited by James's letter, but I feel that he wrote primarily to his Jewish brethren.

God's people usually have been scattered.

Thus, James addressed the twelve scattered tribes.

By the time James wrote, as many as 4,000,000 Jews were scattered in the Roman world.

The different groups of people who listened to Peter's sermon in Acts 2 suggests how dispersed the Jews were.

In almost every distant city, Paul found a synagogue.

Strabo, a geographer who was contemporary with Jesus, exclaimed: "It is hard to find a spot in the whole world which is not occupied and dominated by the Jews."

They were Jews of the Diaspora or Dispersion.

Only a persevering postman could have carried James's letter to all the scattered Jews!

This letter probably addressed a particular group of the Diaspora.