James Introduction (P1)

Have you ever asked your teenage child a question and then listened to him/her talk for a good 30 minutes and tell you absolutely nothing?    Has your spouse ever thought he/she told you something but the message was so veiled you had no idea what was being said?  Has a friend ever told you what you wanted to hear ... instead of telling you what was true?  Have you ever been the one to communicated in these ways?  I am guilty ... on both ends - the giving and the receiving.  And I don't like it.

I love working with people that say what they mean.  I don't have to second guess their comments or intentions.  The communication is straight and clear.  Of course we know straight, plain talk is no excuse for rude, hurtful talk.  Paul is clear in his admonition to believers in Ephesians 4:25, 29:

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor ... Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.  

As we approach the book of James, we will be listening to communication that is straight, plain, practical and for our good.  Beth Moore says in her study of James, "We are going to love this book if we can stand it!"

The author whose name is on the book, James, was the brother of Jesus, not the apostle.  The actual, same family, same household brother of our Lord.  Do you ever wonder what that was like - growing up in Jesus' family?  Families are messy - and we have no reason to think that Mary and Joseph's household was not messy as well.  From Matthew 13: 55 - 56 we find that Jesus had 4 brothers, names are listed, James is listed first, and sisters.  As befits that society ... girls' names are not mentioned so we don't know how many of them there were.  But this represents a house full of kids!  It was not a family of means.  Nazareth was a poor village.  Nazareth was small-town.

The little bit of information we can glean from scripture about James is that he made a remarkable journey in a few short years.  He moved from being an unbeliever (John 7:5) to a leader of the church, the believers, in Jerusalem (Acts 1:14; Galatians 1:19, 2:9)  Was it his brother's teachings that convinced him?  Was it witnessing some miracles?  Was it the resurrection?  We don't know the details of the when and why and how ... but the conversion happened ... James, the physical brother of our Lord, became James, the spiritual brother of his Lord.

One point to remember as we begin this journey ... James did not loose his Jewishness.  He was still fully Jewish ... and fully Christian.  It seems he had no time to mince words ... he got right at it as he wrote to Jewish believers all over the known world at that time.

Let's do the same ... let's get right to it.  Your assignment before you come back here?  Read the book of James ... straight through.  Read as if you received it as a letter ... not as a document to study.  Just get the "feel" for it

And may God bless our journey!