Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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“My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”[1]
No sheep ever decided to get lost; but sheep do nevertheless become lost.
No Christian ever came into the Faith with a determination to stray; but Christians do stray.
No child of God ever began to follow the Saviour with the desire to turn aside after false teachers; but children of the Living God are led astray by false teachers.
Worse still, believers can and do deceive themselves, straying into error and deserting the path of righteousness.
James concludes his letter to early Christians with a blunt statement emphasising our shared responsibility for the welfare of all the sheep.
His statement flies in the face of contemporary ecclesiology, and undoubtedly insults the teaching of many church experts.
However, we take our instruction and draw our faith from the Word of God, and not from the experts.
Therefore, we are compelled to apply the instruction James gives us to our own life as a community of faith.
*Prone to Wander* — “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth…” The hymn writer has spoken a great truth that applies to each of us when he wrote:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.[2]
A propensity for straying marks sheep—it is the reason they require a shepherd, often accompanied by a guard dog.
And a proclivity for wandering marks the people of God.
The Old Testament at times appears to be one dismal account of the people of God turning from pursuing hard after the Living God to following their own desires.
Consider, for instance, one of the Psalms of Asaph.
“Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things that we have heard and known,
that our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children,
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.
“He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;
and that they should not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
whose spirit was not faithful to God.”
[*Psalm 78:1-8*]
That Psalm continues, adding incident to incident each pointing to the bent for rebellion that marked God’s chosen people.
Despite delivering them repeatedly, they “sinned still more against Him” [verse 17a], rebelled against the Most High [verse 17b], “tested God in their heart” [verse 18] and “spoke against God” [verse 19].
Later, the author says that “despite His wonders, they did not believe” [verse 32b].
In summation, “they tested God again and again” [verse 41a].
A minority of the people that had been delivered from Egypt grumbled against Moses and Aaron [see *Exodus 15:24*], and their complaining led to widespread dissent [*Exodus 16:2*] that brought the newly delivered people to the brink of destruction [see *Numbers 11:1 ff.*; *14:1 ff., 28 ff.*].
It is a dark history, and one which Stephen uses to rebuke religious leaders in Israel when he was compelled to offer a defence of his service before the Saviour.
“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.
As your fathers did, so do you.
Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?
And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it” [*Acts 7:51-53*].
Tragically, that propensity to stray has not been eradicated from God’s people in this age.
Each of us is disposed to turn aside to our own way, imagining that we know what is best.
I believe that the tendency is exaggerated among us who live in North America.
We have developed a culture marked by rugged individualism, in which we are trained from infancy to stand alone against the ravages of life.
Our heroes are stalwart individuals who require nothing of others and who stand firm against every form of evil.
To a degree, this reflects a healthy sense of responsibility for oneself; however, it does not meet the biblical criteria for life in the Body.
Here, within the Body of Christ, we bear responsibility for one another.
James is not speaking of evangelism at this point.
Tragically, preachers have frequently used this passage as a staring point for insisting that on evangelistic efforts.
Look at what James says, however.
He is speaking to the community of faith—to the local congregation.
He says, “If anyone among you,” indicating that his focus is the assembly that he identified as the “synagogue” [*James 2:2*, */sunagōgé/*, here translated “assembly”] and as the “church” [*James 5:14*].
This shared responsibility is central to what James is saying at the conclusion of this letter, and we will return to this matter shortly.
However, for the moment, we need to remind ourselves of who we are and of our propensity to stray from the truth.
The Word of God warns us against our bent to evil.
The Apostle was merciless on himself, and despite the modern emphasis upon feeling good about ourselves and building up our self-esteem, he saw himself as sinful.
“What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.
So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.
“But I need something /more/!
For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help!
I realize that I don’t have what it takes.
I can will it, but I can’t /do/ it.
I decide to do good, but I don’t /really/ do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway.
My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions.
Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
“It happens so regularly that it’s predictable.
The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up.
I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight.
Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge” [*Romans 7:15-23*].[3]
Listen to this iteration of the apostolic conclusion with the cry of a truly convicted man.
“I have learned this rule: When I want to do good, evil is there with me.
In my mind, I am happy with God’s law.
But I see another law working in my body, which makes war against the law that my mind accepts.
That other law working in my body is the law of sin, and it makes me its prisoner.
What a miserable man I am! Who will save me from this body that brings me death” [*Romans 7:21-24*]?[4]
If the Apostle struggled without great success against the tendency of his own sinful nature, then we should not be surprised at his conclusion concerning all mankind—“all, Jews and Greeks, are under sin” [*Romans 3:9*].
Now, it is one thing to gravely nod our heads and agree that all are sinners, but it is quite another thing to confess that our finest decisions are tainted with sin.
It is a difficult thing to admit that our minds are contaminated and that we are incapable of acting with heavenly wisdom or speaking with righteous intent all the time.
There is a tendency to imagine that we will just go it alone, that we will use the church for our own purposes and then move on with our lives.
We convince ourselves that we are responsible for ourselves, and no one else is responsible for our decision, except when we get in over our head, in which case the government can bail us out, or the pastor can come pray for us since we pay him to do that.
Such thinking is quite commonplace among modern Christians, but it was equally common in the ancient world.
Throughout the Proverbs are multiple warnings against going it alone.
“There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way of death.”
[*Proverbs 14:12*]
This proverb, sufficiently important that it is repeated [*Proverbs 16:25*], assumes that each of us is prone to follow a path of our own making, believing that we know what is right without any interference from God.
It cautions against choosing our paths without godly consultation.
However, we are warned that this choice leads to death—both death for ourselves and death for those who look to us from guidance and leadership.
Here are a few other proverbs in the same vein that caution against a “lone ranger” mentality.
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