I want to show you from three different authors – Paul in Hebrews, then James and Peter – what faith is. James 1:2 says, ‘Brethren, count it all joy when you fall into divers (many) temptations, knowing this, that the testing of your faith works patience.’ So we have to understand that faith is only as good as its test. I can show this to you again and again in Scripture. 1 Peter 1:7 speaks of the trial of your faith, being more precious than gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire – that is your faith – your faith is ‘tried with fire so that it may be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ, whom you have not seen, but believed…’
James says ‘the testing of your faith works patience’, but here, Peter is saying, your faith is more precious than gold! How can you describe it?! Faith is more valuable than gold! It’s fact! Even gold can perish and wear out, but faith, when it’s tested through fire, won’t fail. Faith that has been through the test will be found to praise and honour and glory when Christ comes back! When Christ comes, our reward, our witness and our testimony, is that we possess a faith that doesn’t fail! A faith that doesn’t give in, that doesn’t buckle under pressure. We need a faith that doesn’t bend, a faith that is constant and reliable – even when it goes through the ultimate test!
Back in James 1, it’s the testing of your faith that works patience, the ability to endure, and makes you perfect, wanting, lacking nothing, vv3-4. But in v5, ‘If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask God who gives liberally to all, without upbraiding or criticising, and it will be given him.’ BUT, v6, if you lack wisdom and you’re asking God who does give – freely – the condition is, you MUST ask in FAITH! When we come in prayer, this is not just a repetition of words or reading from a book. When you ASK God, ask in FAITH! Don’t waver in faith – because you will get what you ask! Faith has to be to the ultimate of not even wavering… It is so difficult to hold on to faith in the face of the real tests!
I speak from experience. Not many alive have been through such a testing of faith as I have been. When I had the throat cancer in 1964, I refused all treatment. I walked away from the hospital after my diagnosis saying, “No! Nothing! Not a pill, not a tablet, nothing!” If my faith had wavered, I would not have got the answer! You know, after three months I was convinced I was healed and went back to the doctors. They looked, and said, “The cancer hasn’t disappeared, it’s become so big, you have to have an emergency operation!” This was the Friday. I was to come back on the Monday. I HAD to hold on to the faith that God had given me a promise. I KNEW because I KNEW that I KNEW that God would heal me! My only difficulty was, when I went back to the doctors who now were expecting to cut me up, how would I convince them God had healed me in the intervening three days?
It comes back to this question of asking in faith, and holding on to that faith, like a drowning man holding onto a rope. Faith is not quite like it may at first seem. Faith is not a theory, it’s not a ‘religion’. It’s some thing different. It’s a gift, and it works! James 1:6 says, ask in faith without wavering, because he that wavers – is like a wave of the sea! I’m a sailor. I’m all too familiar with the waves – and the wind that drives the waves and tosses them about. The stronger the wind, the bigger the waves! James is saying, your faith MUST NOT BE LIKE THAT! It’s got to be consistent; it’s got to be stable and strong. Not UP and DOWN, UP and DOWN! So many of us Christians, one day we’re up, and the next day we’re down. We’ve got to be consistent, because v7 says, if we’re not, ‘Let not that man think he shall receive anything from the Lord!”
I’m trying to show you how your faith can work, how you can see miracles
I’m trying to show you how your faith can work, how you can see miracles – but it is not that easy! You’ve got to pay the price, you’ve got to be consistent, and you CANNOT, like so many people, be UP one day and DOWN the next! Your faith has to be – LEVEL!!! God doesn’t waver, God doesn’t get blown about by the wind, God isn’t like the sea! God is consistent and stable. Our faith has to be anchored in that – in the stability, in the consistency of believing and knowing God!
Now in James 2:15, we’re looking at another aspect of faith: ‘If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you will say, “Go away, be in peace, be warm and filled” – in other words, “Be blessed, but I’m not giving you anything” – if you see someone who is in need and you only speak words of comfort, and don’t give them the things that they need – in the same way, faith without the works to go with it, is dead! That faith is just theory, empty words. So someone may challenge you, v18: ‘You have faith, and I have works, I do the job. Show me your faith that is without works and doesn’t do the job, and I will show you my faith by what I do.’
This is a tremendous challenge. Because James says in v20, ‘Faith without works is dead!” In other words, if your faith is not something that is operational and practical, something by which you are living, something you are going to DO SOMETHING ABOUT, that faith is NOT faith! Faith is only evidenced by what you do, by how you live! I cannot myself find stronger words than James uses here, faith without the work to accomplish it is dead! Dead! There are so many whose faith is dead. Simply because it only exists in theory, but never in practice.
Coming back to that time when I had the throat cancer in 1964, only a few years before, in 1959, I had pioneered the church here in Dewsbury where I still live. We saw the most incredible miracles, they were reported in the press, we still have the press reports – blind eyes opened, the deaf healed, cripples walked, the terminally ill were restored to normal life… But shortly after that, only 5 years later, I was diagnosed with cancer, and the people who saw all those miracles said, “Now look what he’ll do! He’ll go to the doctor and have the treatment, the operation…” But the challenge to me was that I COULDN’T! I was in a very difficult position. Here I am, preaching about faith, telling everyone I believe in miracles of healing, encouraging them, praying for them – and seeing the results! But when it comes to ME, it’s this whole chapter in James that comes to me: if I’ve got faith, it’s got to work NOW! Not because I had any sense of courage, but because my church was watching, and I had said to the doctors, “Absolutely NO!” – I KNEW, this was one of the biggest tests of faith in my life. Could I put into practice the faith I was telling other people to have?
I was released on the EXACT day God had promised! God doesn’t fail!
This is exactly the question that James raises here. Very easily one man will say he has faith, whilst another one will say he’s got works. But you have to demonstrate that this faith works in your life! It’s no use having a faith that wavers, and at that critical time when I had the throat cancer, my faith must not waver. It was the same when I was in the prison. After I’d been tried and found guilty (I would have been ashamed if I had not done anything communism could not find me guilty of as a Christian), God gave me a vision and a dream and showed me the exact day I would come out of the prison! But I had to hold on to that faith. Eventually, when I managed to smuggle my own Bible into my cell, God confirmed the dream in the Scriptures. But in those last months, such pressure had built up (you’ve got to be in a communist prison to understand) – that I failed! My faith failed! I had a heart attack. The prison doctors gave me an ECG; a German doctor who was in prison in my cell went with me and interpreted the results for me. What had happened was that the stress of the prison, and the stress of waiting for the deliverance, brought me to a minor heart attack.
When I went back to my work bench (I was in a labour camp), I cried out to God, I wept before God, “O God, I’ve let go, my faith has failed, I’m not going to get out now…” I knew in my spirit that if I failed, if I wavered, I wouldn’t get out! That’s what I’m trying to tell you, that’s what the Bible is saying… I cried out to God! And the Lord reassured me, because He does understand, and I got the peace that, yes, I had confessed and wept before Him over my failure, and He understood me. And yes, I was released on the EXACT day God had promised! God doesn’t fail!
But if we don’t have that faith, the very work that we do is in vain!
James goes on to say in v21, ‘Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered up Isaac his son on the altar?’ Works! Come on! His faith was tested, proved, and he was justified by the fact that though God had promised that it was through Isaac that He would make Abraham the father of a great nation – now here he was with his one and only son, the promised son, putting him on the altar, prepared to kill him – in faith that God would still do what He said! Because v23 says, ‘Abraham BELIEVED God, and it was imputed unto him as righteousness…’ Abraham was saved, in anticipation of the death and resurrection of Christ, by that act of faith in laying his only son on the altar, believing God, that He would what He said – in the extreme.
Through it all we have to realise that holding onto God by faith is the only way into the Kingdom!
Somehow we have to understand and accept THIS challenge in the day in which we live in NOW! Whether it’s through Covid, or through the persecution that will come, or through whatever is happening in your life, whether for the Jews through the Holocaust, or for the Russians through the prison camps – through it all we have to realise that holding onto God by faith is the way into the Kingdom!
If your faith isn’t tested, it will remain weak. The difference between faith and works has always been an issue for the Church and for me. We know we are not saved by works, but yet Scripture says, faith without works is dead! James 2:24 says, ‘By works a man is justified, not by faith alone!’ In other words, if you’ve got faith, your life has to change. The alcoholic has got to leave the alcohol behind. The drug addict has got to leave the drugs behind. The sinner has got to leave the sin behind. You have to demonstrate the power of that faith to change your life! And change your attitude…
James 2:25 says, ‘Rahab the harlot was justified by works when she received the messengers…’ You know the story how she hid them and delivered them and sent them on their way, and how she put the red chord in the window, symbolic of the Blood of Christ and was herself delivered by the red chord, just as you and I are delivered from every power of the devil by the Blood of Christ. The Blood of Christ is the answer, it is the way through!
Your body is only alive because of your spirit in you, so your Christian experience is only alive when your faith works!
James 2:26 sums it up, ‘For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.’ Your body is dead – your arms, your eyes, your heart, your legs –when the spirit in you is departed, your body is dead. That happened even to Jesus on the cross. His spirit departed, He gave it back to His Father. Your body is only alive because of your spirit in you, so your Christian experience is only alive when your faith works! And I want to show you how you can do this.