We can easily fool ourselves. A life that pleases God will have proper priorities. Three of these are brought into focus here: 1) keeping one’s tongue (speech) bridled, 2) caring for those who cannot provide for themselves, 3) saying no to soul-pollution.
We live in an age where the word 'Christian' is, for many, a synonym for hypocrite. We are often accused of making sanctimonious claims while acting just like everybody else. "Deeds done in the humility of wisdom" (James 3:13) are the surest challenge of this caricature. Such deeds characterize the life of Christ and James (Jesus' younger brother) and can serve as our guide in following the Lord. The New Testament letter written by James is neither soft nor cerebral. It is quick moving, hard-nosed, steeped in Judaism, and a bit homespun at times--focusing less on what to believe and more on the way of life that belief inspires. James gives attention to godly wisdom and applies it to the development of godly character. This letter is both hope-filled and practical. Chapter one of this letter begins with a salutation and then proceeds quickly to important instruction regarding suffering, sin, and service. Having 'gotten our heads on straight,' in the first chapter, chapters two to five deal with relationships and behavior in the believing community. James, chapter one, will be our text for the five messages. We will take up the last four chapters in a subsequent sermon series. May God grant us ears to hear, obedience from the heart, and influence that brings honor to Christ.
Enter multiple search parameters to narrow the list to sermons matching all of them. For example, choose
Book: Psalms
Speaker: Stedman, Ray
to see sermons by Ray Stedman that also have a specific reference in the Psalms.
Click on the Clear Filters button to see the whole list again. If you are getting no results, make sure that you don’t have a filter parameter that you did not intend.
Click on a column title to sort the list by that column. Click a second time to reverse the sort order. By default the list is ordered from newest to oldest (reverse chronological).
If a selection list (drop down menu of Book/Chapter/Speaker/Sermon Series) extends below the sermon list and overlaps these tips it will not function correctly: Clear Filters to reset the list so you can make your selection. This is a bug in the software that we hope can be fixed in the future.
The Book filter will not find every sermon that touches on a particular book
it cannot find sermons where the book name does not appear in the Scripture References column, e.g. filtering on Luke does not find a sermon with reference Matthew – Revelation.
Scripture References in the catalog are not complete for all sermons for various reasons
If you are exploring the library by Date, note that the date selector has unfortunate limitations:
You must select both specific from and to dates for the filter to work. Just typing in a year in one field, for example, will not narrow the list to that year.
In the calendar browser that pops up, you can click on the month/year at the top to move by larger periods of time. For example, if January, 2019 is displayed and you click on it you can choose months in 2019, click again and you can navigate through years.
Typed in dates must be in the format shown in the sermon list: 20 Jan 2019. Other formats such as 1/20/19 do not work.
Typed in dates will sometimes be misinterpreted and replaced: try editing the replacement text into your desired date rather than clearing the field and starting over.
The Search field only searches the catalog list of sermons displayed on this page. Unfortunately we do not have the capability to search the text of sermons at this time.
