James, chapter two, I am, well I'm so excited to share this chapter with you.

Now when I say excited, this excitement is also with some trepidation.

And the reason for that is brothers and sisters, boys and girls,

we are about to wade into an approach probably if not truly the single most debated, critiqued portion of scripture

in the entire Bible. So that's all we're doing today. We're just

approaching verses that have divided entire people groups, divided entire belief systems, denominations. So that is our assignment today.

How many you're glad you're not preaching today? Okay, great. Yeah, you can imagine how I feel.

So we're gonna approach this.

Now, I want you to buckle your proverbial seat belts

because James is not gonna pull any punches today.

He is going to tell you what he really thinks. Now,

context, context, keep this in mind. He is the half brother of Jesus. Remember, he did not

believe in Jesus during Jesus life and ministry.

Post resurrection Jesus appears to his little brother and says, hey it's me, I'm real.

James obviously has this radical conversion the grace of God revealed to him

and he becomes one of the great teachers and leaders of the early church in fact from

best we can tell probably James the, the book of James, the letter from James and Galatians

are the earliest letters we have written in the New Testament.

So it's early on that James becomes a voice, becomes a teacher, and a leader in the community.

Now, remember, as we recall a couple of weeks ago in our introductory week here, the six-week

journey, James's audience is the 12 tribes, 1800 years before this,

remember Jacob had 12 sons, those 12 sons formed the 12 tribes of Israel,

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