January 14, 2018
Hymn 192 – Simply trusting every day
Prayer
We trust people around us every day of our lives. We trust that other people driving on the road won’t hit us. You trust your parents to feed you meals each day. On the other hand, though, there may be certain people you don’t trust. Perhaps someone lied to you, and lost the trust they had earned from you.
Proverbs 28:25-26. The most important trusting we can do is trusting the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour, and believing that He died for our sins. However, once we’re saved, do we trust the Lord as we live our lives for Him? Do we believe that He cares for us? We might lose trust in someone that doesn’t keep their promises, but we can always trust in the Lord. Matthew 10:29-31 tells us that God watches over even the sparrows, so we can trust that He is caring for us.
A girl named Hannah had just learned to ride her bike without training wheels. She, her brother, and her parents were out for a bike ride one day when they came to the top of a big hill. This scared Hannah, because she didn’t think she could make it down the hill without crashing. However, her parents assured her that they would walk beside her and keep her safe; and she got to the bottom safely. Similarly, the Lord comes beside us and helps us in our lives. Proverbs 29:25. Fear will paralyze us, but we can trust in the Lord for help.
King David ran into a lot of scary situations in his life. He faced a lion and a bear while tending sheep, fought the giant Goliath, and was hunted by King Saul. Yet he wrote, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee,” (Psalm 56:3).
A boy was once playing in the woods with his dog, building a fort in the winter. His dog suddenly decided to run off, and the boy chased after, trying to catch it. Once he did, though, he realized that he was lost, and that the falling snow was covering his tracks. It was a frightening situation, and he had to trust in the Lord to help him find his way out, or to send help. We may not have situations this serious come up often, but there are times we are afraid, and in those times we can trust the Lord to help and protect us.
Psalm 57:1. David had storms and calamities in his life, and he trusted in God to deliver him from them. When the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked, he trusted in God’s assurance that everyone would escape safely. These men trusted through times of danger. It’s like our hymn said, “Praying if the path be drear, If in danger for Him call.” If we’re in danger, we can call on the Lord. In 2 Samuel 22:1-4a, David praised the Lord for delivering him from Saul, and protecting him from his other enemies.
Proverbs 3:5-6. We need to trust the Lord with all our hearts. There are many decisions that we face with the new path of each day, and we should trust the Lord to guide and help us with them. The Bible says to cast “all your care upon Him, for He careth for you.” It would be offensive to God if we didn’t trust Him!
Ruth is a good example of trust. She had come from the land of Moab, but put her faith and trust in Naomi’s God; the God of Israel. She trusted Him to show her the right place to glean. Ruth 2:12. The Lord blessed her trust. He directed her path to Boaz, and even had her be part of Jesus’ family tree!
There are many more Bible passages about trust, but may these one encourage us to trust the Lord more.
James 2:18-26
The final section of this chapter is about the proof of one’s faith. Faith is related to trust. Faith is the way of salvation. Is is possible to see the existence of faith without evidence of faith? Romans talks about the existence of faith, while James, here, is talking about the evidence for it. Remember the story of the tight-rope walker who was wheeling a wheelbarrow over a water fall. After the crowd had quieted from cheering for him, he asked them if they thought if he could take someone across in it. There was one man who was very sure he could do it. He asked him, “Will you let me take you across?“. The man wasn’t about to do that. He had a say-so faith; not true trust. He didn’t show evidence through work. It’s one thing to say something and totally another thing to do it. It’s easy to talk. We have several examples in this chapter. One might expect to see Abraham here. He’s the father of the Jews, but Rahab, on the other hand, it a Gentile.
James is all about the evidence of faith. You never see a say-so faith truly trusting because there is no evidence. In verse twenty-six we read that without works faith is dead. He’s looking for existence and evidence. Darby says “dead” could also be “fruitless”, “null”, “not working”. There must be a manifestation of what’s in side. The work is the fruit. The work of faith is not natural to man as seen in our examples. A person can have good works, but not have faith.
If you read the story of Abraham in Genesis and Romans, you find that many years before Isaac was born is when Abraham encountered God. On a starry night he talk with God and believed His promise and it was accounted to him for righteousness. After Isaac was born, some time later, he was asked to offer him. James points out that this was the evidence of the faith he had before. It appears to be implicit faith.
That was something that probably only God saw. Some works of faith are just between us and God. He proved to God that his faith was real, although everything was written down for us. We may be ask to do what only God can see to prove our faith to Him.
The word “perfect” from verse twenty-two could be translated as “complete”. It was the completion and evidence that Abraham believed God. He hoped against hope. (Romans 4:18) Paul shows that, how through faith, Abraham was justified and accounted righteous, and James shows the evidence for that faith.
Every time we see Rahab mentioned it’s always attached to the smear of harlot. It was a past activity. She was justified by works. By what she did for the spies she was rescued, and she is in the genealogy in Matthew, and in Hebrews eleven. God worked through Rahab.
James says if you have faith you need to show if through your works. You could take this as a personal examination or find evidence in others. what kind of faith do you have? As we learned in chapter one, we’re to be doers of the word and not just hearers.
Hymn 29 - Come, every soul by sin oppressed
Prayer