We like the blame game. It’s never our fault. That’s been the truth since the very beginning. Adam and Eve get caught after having eaten the forbidden fruit and what do they do? Eve blames the snake, Adam blames his wife and even blames God Himself and from that point on; the blame began. We don’t want to take responsibility and we want to as it says in Romans 2 that our conscience will excuse ourselves. The fact is that when we caught or when things go bad, we like to blame something and typically, it isn’t ourselves. That’s exactly what’s going on as we continue the first chapter of the book of James.

Siddhartha Gautama was a wealthy prince in India. When he looked around him, what he saw was human suffering. This caused him to forsake everything he had to figure out a better way to live. In the course of this journey, he made what would be called the four noble truths. You may realize this by now, but Siddhartha Gautama is better known as buddha and the founder of Buddhism. The truth is, Everyone in the world has to figure out what they will do with human suffering. Siddhartah Guatama sought his way, but at some point, everyone wonders why is there suffering. As Christians, One of the great questions we have to wrestle with is how a good and loving God allows suffering in this world. Well, today we start James Chapter 1 and the subject of suffering.

Last time, we looked at our present experience when it comes to what often happens when we allow earthly wisdom to take control. It all leads to conflict. Conflict with ourselves, conflict with others and conflict with God Himself. But does that have to be our experience? The short answer is no, it doesn’t. But how do we get there? How do we go from conflict to peace? Well, let’s look at this next section in the book of James and see.

We saw last time what heavenly wisdom should look like. Really, what we saw is the characteristics of heavenly wisdom are. Now, how does that work in the real world? What does it look like when heavenly wisdom is acted out, or we could say, how does it look when it isn’t acted out as it should? That is exactly what we will look at today as we continue our study in the book of James.SourcesMacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1998). James. Moody Press.Moo, D. J. (2000). The letter of James. Eerdmans; Apollos.Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary. Victor Books.Carson, D. A. (2007). James. In Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament. Baker Academic;  Apollos.

Martin Luther called the book of James an epistle of straw. Does that mean it should be completely ignored? Did Martin Luther really want this book thrown out of the Bible? Certainly, this book contains some tricky things that we have to study in order that we understand them completely.  Let’s start studying that first book written in the New Testament… the book of James.

God uses difficult times to grow us. Listen to this episode to hear our experience of this past year.

Christ arrived for one reason: To die on the cross for our sins.

What are your expectations? The Israelites expected a king, but Jesus came first as a Savior. 

Light into darkness is a big theme in Scripture. We know this world is very dark, but we also know this: Light has come into the world.