Welcome to the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast.

Right now, we're going through the entire Bible to understand it is one big cohesive story.

We're covering one book each day, and this one is about James.

The book James is a letter written by James almost surely.

This is the James who is the half-brother of Jesus, and this letter is written to...

Jewish Christians scattered all over the place in general.

Unlike the letters we got from Paul, this letter is not addressed specifically to a church that is going through a certain set of circumstances,

and it's not addressed to some kind of partner and ministry on a personal level.

This is a general letter, and indeed that's the nickname that has been used for all of the remaining letters of the New Testament.

These are general letters or general epistles that are just directed at a wide audience of Christians dealing with big topics that lots of people would have been asking about.

And the book of James, in particular, is directed toward Jewish Christians who are scattered all about.

And we know that because at the beginning it says,

James, a servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations.

In this opening chapter, we figure out pretty quickly that he's writing a very practical book that is meant to give direction to Jewish Christians like James,

who are struggling with the transition from thinking in second-temple period, old Jewish failed paradigm categories to thinking in terms of the New Covenant.

The kingdom categories, this new paradigm of what it is to be a Jewish Christian, a Jewish follower of Christ.

Now, James would be an expert in the difficulties of that transition and an expert in anticipating the questions people would have,

because he wasn't initially convinced that Jesus was the Messiah.

There's a bunch of stuff throughout the New Testament that indicates that Jesus' whole family dragged their feet a little bit.

Looks like at least on one occasion, they felt like maybe he was getting in over his head and they needed to come and rescue him.

And they wouldn't even come in to a talk that he was giving instead.

They stood outside and sent messages in to be like, we need to talk to you, we need to retrieve you.

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