Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.1UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.08UNLIKELY
Fear
0.11UNLIKELY
Joy
0.66LIKELY
Sadness
0.22UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.75LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.32UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.92LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.62LIKELY
Extraversion
0.18UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.85LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.57LIKELY

Tone of specific sentences

Tones
Emotion
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Language
Analytical
Confident
Tentative
Social Tendencies
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional Range
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message.
The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
Engagement
On June 30, 1859, Charles Blondin became the first man in history to walk on a tightrope across Niagra Falls.
Over 25,000 people gathered to watch him walk 1,100 feet on a tiny rope suspended 160 feet above the raging waters.
He walked across several times, engaging in different daring feats on each trip.
As the crowds gathered around him, he stopped and asked the audience, “Do you believe I can carry a person across in a wheelbarrow?”
The crowd enthusiastically responded, “Yes we believe you can do that!”
“Okay,” said Blondin, “Who wants to get in the wheelbarrow?”
Not surprisingly no one volunteered,
That is a great illustration of the idea we’re going to develop from our text today:
Workless faith is worthless faith
Someone once said that faith is like calories – you can’t see them, but you sure can see the results.
And we’re going to see this morning that real genuine faith will always be demonstrated by the works that flow from that faith.
Tension
Many of you are probably aware that in some circles, the passage we’re going to study this morning is one of the most controversial in the entire Bible.
That is because some claim that James is contradicting Paul and the other New Testament writers who taught that salvation is by faith, not by works.
Although he later removed the comment from his preface to the Book of James, Martin Luther once called it the “epistle of straw” because he erroneously believed that was the case.
As we’ll see this morning, a closer look at what James wrote will reveal that not only does James not contradict Paul, he actually complements Paul’s teaching.
Truth
So let’s go ahead and jump right in because we have so much to cover today.
Before we jump into the text, I need to take a few minutes to explain why it might appear at first glance that James is contradicting Paul here in order to show why that is not the case at all.
Paul and James are writing to different audiences, with different purposes.
So even though they use some of the same words, those words are going to have different meanings given that context.
Paul is primarily writing to Gentiles, many of whom were not yet followers of Jesus.
They were being taught a kind of legalistic salvation in which they were told they first had to observe the Jewish law before they could become a follower of Jesus.
So his focus was on the fact that salvation is not dependent on man’s works, but rather on the grace of God.
James was writing to Jewish believers, some of whom had perhaps even taken Paul’s teaching out of context and held to a libertine salvation that required them only to claim they were followers of Jesus without the need for a change in lifestyle that would demonstrate the genuineness of their faith.
So his focus was on the need for a mature faith that is demonstrated by the way a person lives.
So the way that Paul and James use three key words in their writings differs because they have different focuses:
Faith
Paul - volitional trust
James - knowledge
Works:
Paul - works of the law
James - acts of love/Christian lifestyle
Justify (to declare righteous)
Paul - justification before God based on faith alone
James - justification before men based on works
Both Paul and James write about the importance of both faith and works.
Instead of being contradictory, they actually complement each other.
Perhaps it’s helpful to think of that in these terms:
Paul stresses the root of salvation
James emphasizes the fruit after salvation
This makes a lot of sense when you consider what James’ audience was struggling with the most.
They were trying to figure out how to live with each other in this new thing called the church.
They were facing persecution from other Jews who used to be their friends.
They weren’t really sure about how much of the Old Testament law they needed to keep.
They were having a hard time getting along with each other.
They didn’t know when to pray or how to pray or what to pray for.
So James is giving them a crash course in discipleship.
We see this right away in this passage.
James asks two questions, both of which are negative rhetorical questions in Greek, which simply means that the expected answer is “no”.
Let’s look at those two questions:
What good is it, my brothers is someone says he has faith, but does not have works?
We could reword that question like this:
If someone says he have faith but does not have works, it’s not really any good, is it?
The key word here is the word “good”.
It could also be translated “beneficial”, “advantageous”, or “profitable”.
So James isn’t even considering salvation with that question.
He is basically saying that if someone says they have faith, but their actions don’t reflect that, it doesn’t have any benefit in their lives or in the lives of others in the body.
Here’s the second question:
Can that faith save him?
Or we could reword it like this:
That kind of faith can’t save him can it?
Unfortunately some translations leave out the word “that”, which is really unfortunate because James is not writing about faith in general, he is writing about the kind of faith that is not accompanied by works.
It is also important to understand which aspect of salvation James is writing about here.
We’ve talked about this often before.
There are three aspects of salvation.
For the most part when Paul is writing about faith and justification, he is writing about the past aspect of salvation.
At the very moment I put my faith in Jesus I was saved and I was justified before God.
Here James is focusing on the present aspect of salvation.
I am being saved and becoming more like Jesus.
We see that very clearly in verse 22:
We’ll come back to this passage in a moment and talk more about Abraham, but for now what I want us to see is that the goal of works is to “complete” our faith, or as it can also be translated to “perfect” our faith.
So James is focusing here on how works are necessary to make us more mature spiritually.
That is why we have said this morning that...
Workless faith is worthless faith
Maturing in our faith requires the kind of faith that is accompanied by works.
When our faith is not accompanied by works, it is worthless in the sense that it does nothing to help our faith mature and become complete.
James further emphasizes this idea by identifying...
FOUR KINDS OF FAITH
Saying faith
Unfortunately, I’m really familiar with this kind of faith, because at one time that’s all I had.
When I was a student at the University of Arizona, a young man came and shared the gospel with me and I “prayed to receive Christ”.
So if you would have asked me if I was a Christian, I would have said, “Yes, I prayed the prayer”.
That is what James is talking about in verse 14 when he writes “...if someone says he has faith...” But honestly at that time in my life I had no intention of making any changes in my life and had anybody observed my life they wouldn’t have any changes either.
Looking back now, I don’t really think I was a disciple of Jesus at that point.
I guess only God knows that for sure.
But I do know that whatever kind of faith I had at that point was certainly not profitable for me of for anyone else.
Emotional faith
We see this in a couple places in this passage, most notably in verses 15-16.
Today’s equivalent would be when we become aware of a need for a brother or sister in Christ and we tell them “I’ll pray for you”.
First of all, how many times do we really even do that?
But it’s even worse to have the ability to meet that need and not doing anything about it.
We have an emotional reaction to the situation, but we’re just not willing to turn our feelings into action.
That’s another violation of what James called the “royal law” in the passage we studied last week - to love our neighbors as ourselves.
The other place we see that is in the response of the demons.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9