My Sunday School lessons

Anyone who's been paying attention to this blog since around March will notice that I haven't been posting as often as all that. (Not that I posted that much to start with). The main reason being that I've been teaching Adult Sunday School at my church (Covenant Presbyterian Church, Waynesville, NC) since Sunday March 4 of this year. Not satisfied with a traditional "quarterly" I opted to write my own notes for the class, thereby guaranteeing that I'd have a lot more work to do each week.

For months now I have been considering simply posting some of the lesson notes that I have written. For various reasons I have put this off, but now I'm going to do it. Today's post will begin my class notes from the epistle of James. If anyone cares to read these notes, fine. I hope you get a great deal of information from them.

I don't offer them lightly, but I'm also hoping that this doesn't open a can of worms in which everyone wanting to discuss comparative religion begins posting comments and e-mailing me day and night.

I'm not going to pretend that these notes are all encompassing. I'm writing simply from a Christian perspective, and even within Christian circles there are often disagreements on some of the finer points.

I also realize that I am departing somewhat from the stated purpose of this blog, wherein I proposed to ramble about my life as an artist and musician. Then again, since this Sunday School class has become something very important to my life, and as it affects my creative output as well, it is relevant to my "day job".

With that said, here are the notes:

Sunday March 4, 2007

James chapter 1: 1-18

•James 1:1 “A Strong First Impression”

I was tempted to say the meat of this first passage was in verses 2-18 but then was caught short by my own familiarity with this sort of salutation. It occurred to me that I was jumping ahead.

James is making a radical statement here:

“James, a servant of God…”

Familiarity has dulled our response to these words. Here a man is claiming to be a slave of God Himself! It is unlikely that many Hebrews living at this time would have thought in these terms; i.e. “I am proud of my slavery!”

Recall that the Pharisees claimed they were “slaves to no one”(John 8:33), in spite of the occupation of Palestine by Rome. So for any Hebrew to announce proudly his slavery would be a radical idea at the time.

If that’s not outrageous enough, he equates God and Jesus Christ (recall that you can’t be a slave to two masters, so this statement can only be taken as affirming the Deity of Christ).

This statement to a Jew during this time would be analogous to a British citizen coming to the US now and calling us “colonists”. It would rub us the wrong way. We might laugh it off, but we’d want to make sure that this Briton would know that we were no mere colony of the United Kingdom by the time we parted, right?

Historical context: The Nation of Israel had existed in various forms for nearly 1500 years at this point. The remnant of Israel had returned from Babylon 400 years before-and in spite of occupation by Alexander’s army and then the Romans, the Jews still considered themselves a free nation.

So James makes two outrageous claims here. (1)He’s a slave to God, and (2) God and Jesus are one in the same. I’m not sure of the construction in Greek but I suspect that these are actually reversed: “God and Jesus are the same, and I am a slave to God.”

Considering the political climate of the time James had signed his own death warrant with this salutation. He had offended both the Jewish rulers and the Roman government with this statement.

•Who is this James?

Probably NOT the Apostle James. Apostle died in A.D. 44, or about 11 years after Christ’s resurrection. The James here is writing to the “tribes scattered among the nations”, a reference to the first persecution (Acts 8:1).

The other two James mentioned in the NT did not have the standing in the early Church or the authority that seems apparent from this letter. In other words, they’d have likely identified themselves more clearly in the salutation.

Most likely this James was the eldest of the brothers of Jesus. He doesn’t actually say this, but the evidence is pretty good. (Seven qualifications found in NIV intro to James).
So if we assume that this is that same brother, what do we know about him from the Gospels?
(Matthew 13:55) He is listed first among Jesus’ brothers. So if he wasn’t the second son he was the most prominent.
(John 7:2-5) He and his brothers doubted Jesus initially. Typical of brothers, and reminds me of how Joseph’s brothers treated him.
(Jude 1)You’ll recall that Jude was a younger brother of Jesus, and in his epistle identifies himself as “brother of James”.

•James 1: 2-7 “Happy Trials”

vs.2 “Consider it pure joy…” How often do we do this? I know I don’t. When I face “trials of many kinds” I pout, grumble, mope, complain, rant, etc. But James says I should consider it a joy--PURE JOY! Delight in it.

But James is a practical man and doesn’t simply leave us with an empty platitude. He goes on to tell us why.

vs.3 “Because…” Very important word, “because”. He gives us the reason for the trials: To develop perseverance. But what good is perseverance?

vs.4 James really anticipates these questions well! What good is perseverance? It’s making us, “finished, mature, complete, not lacking anything.”

We all know what it’s like to be younger than we are now. And we should have some idea by now that wisdom is a result of experience, and time is required for us to have experienced things: When we were infants we didn’t know not to touch a hot stove. By the time we reached 5 we only touched one by accident, and then thought it was the end of the world. Now as adults we avoid hot stoves when we can and cope with a burn if one happens.

This is a simple material example of perseverance growing wisdom, and James wastes no time in connecting wisdom to perseverance:

vs. 5 “If any of you lack wisdom…”

This is often pointed to as one of God’s sure promises in the Bible. “…he should ask God…and it will be given to him.” But people often say that’s all you have to do, ask and BOOM! You’ve got it. But why then does James go on?

vs.6 cautions us “…when he asks, he must believe and not doubt…”

What is meant here by “believe”? Is it scrunching up our faces trying to force ourselves to believe something that defies our senses? Is it like clapping our hands in hopes of making Tinkerbell get well?

Of course not--People who truly believe in something don’t go around saying “I believe, I believe, I believe” in some sort of self-hypnotic mantra.

How do believing people behave?

They’re quietly confident--they can face any trial that comes their way with Joy and Perseverance!

vs. 9-11 James goes on to give us some specific examples.

Notice particularly the voice of belief in vs. 11 “…for the sun rises with scorching heat…” James speaks with complete confidence that as certain as the sun rises and flowers wilt, so our destinies are sure.

vs. 12 James sums up the principle. The result of blessing with the crown of life has resulted not from one instance of faithfulness, but a lifetime of smaller cycles of Trial-Perseverance-Blessing arriving at this ultimate blessing.

vs.13 “Tempted” here is the same root word in Greek as the word for “Trial” in vs.2-3. The distinction is that “Trials” are defined as external difficulties (like getting burned by a hot stove) and “Temptations” are our inner moral struggles, as in vs. 13-15.

“…no one should say God is tempting me…” Why? I actually hear this sort of thing a lot, from the unsaved and the Christian too.

First off we should recognize that God is Holy. Temptation doesn’t work on God because it has nothing to offer to God, no way to appeal to Him. (We attempt to drag God down to our level when we think that He could be tempted). God doesn’t hunger or thirst, he doesn’t need a house, or a bigger car. He has all the power, knows everything, etc. God doesn’t have these sorts of desires. (Admittedly, Jesus did face temptation in the desert, but this was his Human nature, not his God nature).

But we have desires aplenty. And they affect us.

vs. 14 “…each one is tempted when his selfish desires drag him away…”

Selfish desires drag us away -- away from what? The confidence that God has provided, and is providing, and will provide what we actually need.

That’s why James tells us in

vs. 16-17 “…every good and perfect gift is from above”. Everything else comes from selfish desires.

And finally James shows us the ultimate perfect gift:

vs. 18 “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth…”

Would I be digressing here into Calvinism to point out that I often tell friends that to be “born again” is nothing that we ourselves do? We had little or nothing to do with our first birth, how can we have anything to do with our second?

We have to look at all these words through fresh eyes.

We could look at life in the darkest of terms. Every single one of us is going to face difficulties in the near future, if we aren’t facing them right now; but as Christians we know that beyond those problems we have “the crown of life” waiting.