Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory and Dr. Robert Jeffress.

We're dedicated to bringing you bold biblical teaching that transforms your life and strengthens your walk with God.

And you can study God's word alongside Dr. Jeffress in person on the 2026 Pathway to Victory Cruise to Alaska.

Speaker 2

Have you ever witnessed the breathtaking majesty of massive glaciers rising from crystal blue waters? Or stood in awe as bald eagles soar over snow-capped mountains?

I want you to experience these unforgettable moments with me on the Pathway to Victory Cruise to Alaska, June 13th through 20th, 2026.

Speaker 1

Join Dr. Jeffress and the Pathway to Victory family for a spectacular seven-day adventure aboard Holland America's luxurious Koningsdam.

Indulge in elegant staterooms, world-class dining, and expansive decks perfect for breathtaking views.

Visit historic ports like Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan, where wilderness and frontier history await.

Speaker 2

There's something powerful about connecting with God and fellow believers in the majesty of his untamed wilderness. I truly believe this journey will refresh you spiritually, physically and emotionally.

Speaker 1

Cabins are filling quickly, so reserve yours today. To book your spot on the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska, call 888-280-6747 or go to ptv.org now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress and I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program.

On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, where there is genuine faith, there will always be visible fruit. If somebody lives their life and there is no spiritual fruit, it means there is no saving faith.

That is the message I'm going to unpack over these next weeks from the letter we call James.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. If someone examined your life like a detective, do you think they'd find enough evidence to prove that you are a Christian?

James believed that authentic faith always reveals itself through our actions. And today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress explains why good works matter more than you might think.

But first, let's take a minute to hear some important ministry updates.

Speaker 3

Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. God never intends for his children to work beyond their physical and emotional limitations, so that burnout is the result. In fact, the Bible is very clear about creating personal space for rest and relaxation. In that spirit, we're preparing a refreshing vacation experience for you and your family next summer. The dates for the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska are June 13th to 20th. In addition to unparalleled sightseeing in the Great Frontier, we've invited Michael O'Brien to bring music along with family-friendly entertainment from my favorite comedian, Dennis Swanberg. So join us for seven days of rest and renewal. All the details can be found online at ptv.org.

Today, we begin one of the most practical studies ever presented on Pathway to Victory. In his New Testament letter, James admits that life is difficult, but he doesn't stop there. While life is difficult, James tells us there's purpose in our pain. Furthermore, he teaches us how to moderate our speech, care for the needy, and how to deal with temptation. To complement this teaching series, I've written a companion book for you. By reading my book, you'll be motivated to stand firm in difficult times, knowing that the process is producing spiritual fruit in your life. Bearing fruit is undeniable proof that your salvation in Christ is real.

We'll send my book to your home with our thanks when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. It's called "How to Know If You're Really Saved." We'll say more about my book on James and other resources later in today's program. But right now, let's get started with today's study. I titled the first sermon in the teaching series "How to Know If You're Really Saved."

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Many of you may have learned to share your faith through the program called Evangelism Explosion. It was developed by the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, pastor of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. In that method of sharing your faith, Dr. Kennedy suggested there are two questions you can ask somebody to determine their relationship with God, whether or not they're truly saved. The first question is very simple: Have you come to the place in your life where you know with absolute certainty that if you died, God would welcome you into heaven? A non-Christian will say, "Well, I hope so," or "I think so." But no, eternity's too long to be wrong. If you're really saved, you know that.

The second question is even more informative. You can ask somebody, "If you were standing before God and he were to ask you, 'Why should I let you into my heaven?' what would you say?" Ninety-nine percent of the people you ask that question to will say, "Well, I would say because I keep the Ten Commandments," or "I live by the Golden Rule," or "I attend church," or "I got baptized." They will point to some work or works they have done. Yet we know the right answer to that. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not as a result of works, lest anyone should boast." But does that mean God doesn't care about our actions? Is God disinterested in our works? Does God not care about what we say, what we think, and how we treat other people? Such an idea is preposterous. Good works do matter.

In fact, the same Paul who wrote those words in Ephesians 2:8-9 also added a verse, verse 10, about the place of good works in a believer's life. He says, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." Paul says in verses 8 and 9 that we are not saved by our works, but he adds in verse 10 that we are saved for good works. You see, the apostle Paul believed that good works without faith leads to spiritual death. But James, as we're going to see today, says faith without works is a dead, non-existent faith. How do you reconcile those two statements? Martin Luther, the great reformer, said it this way: "Faith alone saves, but saving faith is never alone." Where there is genuine faith, there will always be visible fruit. If there is no fruit, if somebody lives their life and there is no spiritual fruit, it means there is no saving faith. That is the message we are going to unpack over these next weeks from the letter we call James.

If you have your Bibles, turn to James, chapter one. Beginning with verse one, I want to make two observations about the book of James as we begin this study. First of all, James is intensely practical. It's a practical book. Now, James was pastor, as we'll see in a moment, of the church in Jerusalem. He was the first pastor of the church—well, not the first, but he was an associate pastor, then became pastor of the church in Jerusalem. He had the job, as I do every day, of trying to keep his congregation awake every Sunday morning. James had a style of writing that's very captivating. He uses a lot of pithy phrases, things like, "Be quick to hear, but slow to speak and slow to anger." He says, "Prove yourselves to be doers of the word and not hearers only." He uses lots of illustrations in his letter. He talks about ships and rudders, horses and bridles, fires and springs of water. He makes startling statements to grab his reader's attention. He'll say things like, "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials." How do you pull that off? How can you be joyful? Why would you be joyful in the midst of trials?

In chapter two, he says, "You believe that God is one. Congratulations. The demons believe that and they shudder as well." There are a number of startling statements in the book of James. It's a practical book. But secondly, James appears to be problematic. There are problems people think with the Book of James. In fact, Martin Luther, whom I just mentioned a moment ago, was so convinced that James did not belong in the Bible that he called it the "Epistle of Straw." He thought it wasn't weighty. He doesn't talk about things like the atonement, the resurrection. He only mentions Jesus twice. He never talks about the second coming or the Holy Spirit. So people assume that James really doesn't belong in the Bible, but that's a misunderstanding of what James is about. James assumes all of these truths, but he's talking about practicing our faith.

Before we dive into the deep end of this epistle, what I want to do today, in the few moments that we have together, is really three things. First of all, we're going to gain an overview of this letter we call James. Understanding the background of any book of the Bible is important if you're going to understand what's being said. You can't interpret and apply Scripture correctly unless you understand the background of the writing of a book. We're going to do that for a few moments today. Secondly, I want to survey the topics we're going to be exploring in the weeks ahead. Think of it as a preview of coming attractions, if you will. Finally, I want to leave you today with two practical principles that come from the Book of James that I want us to keep in mind these next weeks.

First of all, an overview of the book. Who is the author? Well, that seems to be a simple question when you look at verse one: "James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes who were dispersed abroad." Who's the writer of the book? He says at the beginning, this is kind of like an email. In our letters, does anybody still write letters? If you write a letter, you sign your name at the end. If you receive a letter, you have to flip through the pages to see who sent it. In James' day, in the first century, they would put their name at the top of the letter, the sender, and then the recipient, kind of like our emails today. So James identifies himself. James wrote this letter, right? Well, that's right. But the problem is there are at least five different James in the New Testament, and we have to decide which one we're talking about.

On your outline, I've listed the five James in the Bible. First of all, there's James, the father of Judas. Did you know there were two apostles named Judas? Jesus had not just one, but two. There's the bad one, Judas Iscariot, but then there's another Judas. By the way, wouldn't you have hated to be the other Judas? Can you imagine spending your life going around saying, "I'm not that one, I'm the other one"? Well, the other Judas, the good Judas, had a father named James, and we know nothing about him. So that's probably not the writer of this letter.

Secondly, there was James, the son of Alphaeus. He was an apostle and the brother of Matthew, but we don't know a whole lot about him other than what we find in Matthew 10:3. Thirdly, there's a James who was known as James the Less. Isn't that a horrible name for somebody? James the Less, the Younger. We really only know one thing about him: he was a follower of Christ who was there at the crucifixion according to Mark 15:40. Then fourthly, you've got James, the brother of John. He too was an apostle. In fact, he and his brother were both called the Sons of Thunder. Something about their personality gave them that nickname. They were both sons of Zebedee, James and John. We know that James was the first apostle to be martyred for his belief; he was beheaded under the order of Herod Agrippa the First.

Finally, the last James is the one I believe is the writer of this epistle. He was known as James the Just, not because he was equitable and fair, but because he was a righteous man. He's mentioned in Galatians 1:19: "But I did not see any of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother." That's the writer, I believe, of this letter—the brother, to be technical, the half-brother of Jesus. What do we mean by the half-brother of Jesus? Well, let's look at James the brother for just a moment. We all know Mary and Joseph had a son, their first son, named Jesus. Right? He was the son of Mary. Mary was his biological mother. Joseph was his legal father, but not biological father. The Holy Spirit was the father of Jesus.

What people don't realize is that Joseph and Mary had a number of other children after Jesus. They had boys and girls, and they had them the old-fashioned way. There are some faiths, as you know, that teach the perpetual virginity of Mary, that she remained a virgin. No, she didn't remain a virgin; she had many children. Where do we find that in Scripture? In Matthew 13:55-56, the critics of Jesus were saying, "Who is this guy who's claiming to be the Messiah? Is it not the carpenter's son Joseph? And is not his mother called Mary? And his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And his sisters? Are they not all with us? Where then did this man come up with these things?" There's a listing there of the sons and daughters that Mary and Joseph had together, and among those was James, the writer of this epistle, who had an older brother named Jesus.

Now, I want you to put yourself in James' sandals for a few moments and think about what it would be like to have Jesus as your older brother. Can you imagine anything more annoying? I mean, here's the perfect child—never late to dinner, always washes his hands, never sits in time out. Your mother's always saying to you, "Why can't you be more like Jesus?" Who would want to grow up listening to that? I think that explains why James rejected Jesus as the Messiah at first. In fact, so did all of his brothers and sisters. None of them followed him at all. It was tough being a younger sibling of Jesus. But Jesus never let their rejection keep him from pursuing his ministry. They said they went to him at one point, John 7:5, and said, "You know, you've got to come home; you've got to quit this Messiah stuff. It isn't working. Nobody's following. People are going to think you're crazy." But Jesus knew who he was. He pursued his ministry. He didn't listen to his family members, but he never lost his concern for them.

Remember, after his resurrection, First Corinthians 15 says he made a number of appearances, special visits to people to show he had been raised from the dead. Among those first people Jesus appeared to was his half-brother James, and James became a believer. In fact, all of his siblings became believers because 40 days after his resurrection, when he was preparing to ascend from the Mount of Olives, we find in Acts 1:14 that Jesus' family, his brothers and sisters, were among those in the upper room who were praying. Jesus saw his siblings converted. By the way, I think there's a principle here. We can't control anybody's responses to the Gospel. We've got a ministry of sharing Christ with as many people as possible. But the first audience we ought to be concerned about is our family—our fathers, our mothers, our brothers and sisters, children, and grandchildren. They're the most important audience we have to share the Gospel with, and I think Jesus illustrated that in his post-resurrection appearances.

Now we've looked at James the brother; let's look at James the pastor. As I said, from the earliest days of the church, it's evident that Peter was the beginning leader of the church at Jerusalem and John was his associate pastor. But somewhere that began to change. When we come to Acts chapter 12, James was the recognized leader of the church at Jerusalem. You say, "How do you know that?" Well, remember in Acts 12 when Peter was miraculously released from prison and he went to the home of John Mark, where the other believers were praying for Peter's release? He appeared to them, told what had happened, and he sent word to make sure that they told James what had happened. Why James? Because he was the leader of the church. When we come to Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council—perhaps the most important church council to date—it's clear that James was the one presiding over that council and made the determination of whether or not Gentiles had to be circumcised to become Christians. We'll look at that more in just a few moments. Every time Paul went to Jerusalem—five times, according to Scripture—he always met, among others, with James. In fact, it was James who extended the right hand of Christian fellowship to Paul, affirming that Paul was called to minister to the Gentiles.

Thirdly, James the writer. We've really talked about this, and I don't have time to pursue it. There are only two candidates really for the authorship of James: one is James the Apostle, who's the brother of John, and the other is this half-brother of Jesus. I believe when you compare the Greek style used in the Epistle of James with James' speech in Greek that is written in Acts 15, there are similarities there that really argue for the half-brother of Jesus being the author.

Now let's look at James the martyr. As I said, he became pastor probably in A.D. 44. He served as pastor until 62 A.D. when he was executed. We don't have any biblical record of his execution, but we have secular recordings of it. Eusebius, the church historian, says that members of the Sanhedrin, that sect of the Jews that denied supernatural work, actually took James up to the pinnacle of the temple and threw him into the Kidron Valley, 170 feet below. That would kill most people, but it didn't kill James. He still remained alive. So they came and tried to stone him to death. When that didn't work, they took a wooden club used to beat out washed clothes and crushed his skull in. That's how James ultimately died as a martyr. He died faithful to the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and his older brother Jesus. That is the life of James.

Now, let's look at James, the letter. It was probably written in A.D. 44, and notice that it's written to the twelve tribes that are dispersed. It's a reference to Jewish Christians. He wrote to Jewish Christians who had been dispersed from Jerusalem to other parts of the Roman Empire. Why had they been dispersed? It came in waves. It started in Acts 7 when Stephen was the first Christian martyr and he was stoned to death. Paul, Saul of Tarsus, who became the apostle Paul, played a part in that. Then there were subsequent persecutions that forced the Jewish Christians out of Jerusalem. There was a famine in Judea that made them want to leave as well. But that was all part of God's plan to share the Gospel.

Now what's interesting is these Jews who have been dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, if they were able, came back to Jerusalem several times a year for important feasts and celebrations. When James saw these fellow Christians, Jewish Christians, come back, he noticed attitudes and actions in them that did not correspond to their faith. He noticed that some, because of persecution, were considering giving up their faith. He wrote this epistle to say, "Look, the mark of a genuine Christian is not just what he professes, but what he possesses—a new kind of life, works, visible works that confirm Christianity." That's why James wrote this letter to the twelve tribes.

A couple of things I would say about this letter: first of all, it's very application-oriented. There are 108 verses in the letter of James, and 54—half of those verses—are commands. For every verse of biblical content, there is a command, an application to make. This is about faith in action. It's also interesting that James uses more figures of speech, more analogies than Paul does in all of his letters combined. James is a preacher; he's trying to be practical and clear. There are also more allusions to the Sermon on the Mount in the letter of James than in all of the rest of the Bible. That's interesting because it came from the lips of James' older brother, Jesus. It's also important to remember that there's no great doctrine that is explained in James, which led Martin Luther to call it an "epistle of straw." But it's not because James said these doctrines are unimportant; doctrine is very important, but James assumed those truths were believed by his audience.

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The practical instruction in James' Letter can revolutionize the way you adjust your attitudes and actions. Truth begets obedience, and if you genuinely believe God loves you and has a plan for your life, you'll demonstrate your faith in the way you speak, show humility, and the way you deal with suffering. You see, it's not enough to attend church. Our salvation in Christ is validated by our faith and our godly behavior.

That's exactly why I wrote a book on James for you, because this letter demands more than sitting through a good sermon. As a Bible teacher and pastor, I've spent years digging into James' practical tests of faith, and I want to share those insights with you. My brand new book walks you through James' Letter, helping you apply his penetrating questions to your own life. Are you growing closer to God every day? What's the evidence, the fruit of your salvation?

Here's the bottom line. You don't need to settle for surface-level Christianity. Allow the book of James to transform how you live out your faith every day. So let me send you my book, "How to Know if You're Really Saved." We're pleased to do so when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory.

By giving a gift today, you'll empower us to provide Pathway to Victory on television, radio, the daily podcast, and all your favorite digital platforms. In the end, God will use your generous support to pierce the darkness with the light of His Word. Thanks so much for linking arms with Pathway to Victory. Here's David to tell you more.

Speaker 1

When you get in touch with Pathway to Victory and give a generous gift, you're invited to request how to know if you're really saved. That's the brand new book by Dr. Robert Jeffress. Just call 866-999-2965 or visit our website, that's ptv.org, and when you give $75 or more, you'll also receive the complete set of unabridged messages for this new teaching series, How to Know if You're Really Saved. They come on both DVD and MP3 format audio discs, so you can watch them with a small group Bible study or maybe listen in your car. Again, call 866-999-2965 or visit our website, that's ptv.org. If you'd prefer to write, here's that mailing address: PO Box 223609, Dallas, TX 75222. That's PO Box 223609, Dallas, Texas.

I'm David J. Mullins. Join us next time for part two of the message, How to Know if You're Really Saved, here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.

You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.