So have you ever heard the following phrase? No good deed goes unpunished. That's one of the Hall of Fame phrases that my mom has used my whole life. I've heard it all the time. No good deed goes unpunished. What does that mean? Well it's a tricky little phrase, but I have scoured the globe of idioms. I have looked for historic help and I think I have got a bit of an explanation that I think will be helpful for us to say that no good deed goes unpunished is basically kind of a sarcastic way of saying sometimes, even when you do the right thing, you get punished. Sometimes when you do the right thing, it still doesn't work out the way you thought it would. For example, imagine that I'm at a big community banquet and I've already gone through the big line, the buffet line and got all my food and I'm sitting at the table and the person sitting next to me, we're through the meal and they look up and they go, you know what, I didn't get any dessert. Now, naturally there's no way in the world that I would have not gotten dessert. And so I mean I have my cake right there. So I said, hey, you know what, why don't you take my chocolate cake? And I'm just going to go back up there and get another oh no, no, no, really look, you eat this check, I can go get some steps in and work some of this food off it's fine and I'll go get some more cake. And so I go and I walk up to the cake table to the dessert table to discover a lady standing there and she says sir I'm so sorry we are out of desserts. Yeah no good deed goes unpunished. I'm I'm doing a nice thing, I'm being really kind and that ain't no cake for tao when I get over there. It's not good. Now. That's probably a bad illustration because the reality is if I go to a banquet and I miss out on dessert, I'm just getting in the car and going to Freddie's afterwards. You know I mean I'm going to get me a big frozen Custer with you know cookie dough and butterscotch swirl and I'm fine. You know, so maybe that wasn't the best example. Mhm. But no good deed goes unpunished. What if we could flip the script? What if there was a way for every single deed to never be punished? What if there was a way for for every good deed to always be rewarded? Is there such a way? Absolutely. What is it? Well let's see if we can find out together. We finished our series last Sunday 7G. The speed you need. But I got a little more speed in me. So we are moving from seven G. 27 G. Plus this sunday uh in the seven G plus series. And we've been taking a theme from the bible that begins with the letter G. And so this week we will continue and our theme today is good. Our message is simply titled Good mary and joseph after Bethlehem, they had some more kids and we will be turning our attention to the letter from James, the half brother of jesus, looking at James chapter two verse 14. This is what James writes, what use is it my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works, what use is it? Some of your bibles say, what good is it? What good is it to say? You have faith and yet not have works? What does it mean to say that you have faith? There's a story told about a a pastor, He was walking through an interesting part of town one night and this guy came up, pulled out a knife on him and said give me all your money buddy. The pastor said, hey man, you don't want to do this, I'm I'm a baptist minister. The guy put down his knife, he goes, hey I'm a baptist too, man, this is great. Fantastic. See sometimes talk is, is cheap, it doesn't measure up and that can be especially true when you're talking about having faith in God saying you have faith in God does not necessarily mean that you have faith in God. There is saying faith and there is saving faith. What is true, genuine saving faith? Is it just believing facts about jesus, Is it just being involved in a, in a local church, Is it just kind of saying that you have faith? Is is that all that it takes? James seems to be setting up a kind of a compare and contrast here, he's saying there's a one side of faith a kind of faith if you will, that that can talk the talk right? Hey, I'm a born again christian, you know, I'm I'm I'm saved, you can say it, you know, I'm I'm a believer, I believe in jesus and then there's another kind of faith that walks the walk. You know, I'm a christian, look at my deeds in life, look at what I do in life. But James is pulling us toward something completely different, He's pulling us not towards two different kinds of faith, but one faith faith that walks and talks One day Jesus was teaching and he said this in Matthew Chapter seven, not everyone who says to me Lord Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my father, who is in heaven, that person we'll enter in other words Christianity by definition is a sane and doing faith. It is a talking and walking faith by definition and that's why James is calling into question this whole idea of talking only faith, he's saying, how can you just say that you have faith? It's sane faith, but is it saving faith? See saving faith is not just agreeing with facts about jesus, saving faith? Is taking those facts and defining your life by those facts. Taking the facts about jesus and incorporating them into every part of who you are, your family, your marriage, your parenting, your kids, your job, your education, your vacation, every part of the facts about jesus become a part of who you are, because you are committing yourself to the person of jesus. When someone gets married, they're not just committing themselves to the idea of marriage. They are committing themselves to a certain specific person. It's not just a general thought, it is a specific action, a specific promise, a specific commitment to a specific person. On another day, Jesus was teaching and he said this in Luke chapter nine. If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. The importance is very clear that Jesus is calling a person to himself, come to me, come to me, follow me, Follow me, you see, to follow after Jesus christ is not primarily a call to a religion, it's not primarily a call to a denomination, it's not primarily a call to a certain church or a certain church leader, all those things are part of it, but the primary call of following jesus is a call to the person of jesus to commit yourself to rest into believin to trust and to rely on to cling to the person of Jesus Christ as your ultimate and only source of salvation and hope and satisfaction. Saving faith is this intentional, precious look to the person of jesus. Saving faith looks at jesus and the work of the Cross considers what God has done through jesus. It's not just the story at this moment in history where jesus for six hours, one friday gave his life up out of love for us and you look at that and you say, I believe in that, I mean I understand all of it, but I I believe in that, but that's what I need. I believe in the cross. In fact, if I don't believe in the cross, I've got no hope, I've got no, I've looked to other people to rescue me and it won't work. The only hope I have is in jesus. Yeah, I believe that God, here I am, save me, make me yours. And when a person's heart makes that kind of commitment, that they can't just like go back to watching tv there, there's something that changes something moves, see, saving faith is a saying and doing faith, it is a walking and talking faith, it is words and it is works, it's all of it, all of it together. Now, let me take a moment just to say this, there's some people that say that what James is saying here is in conflict with things that the Apostle paul said elsewhere in the bible and the letter to the church at Rome paul was very clear in a lot of different ways that you cannot be saved by your works. And here James is saying, well, you know, your, your faith is not enough. You gotta, you gotta have some works. So is there conflict here? Is there a problem? What what gives? Well, what gives is the context of what we're doing? What, where we're at? It's always important when you're reading a verse in the bible to figure out what neighborhood that that verse lives in. You know, what's the address of this verse? What's the neighborhood of versus around, what's it talking about? For instance, kind of in a, in a practical way, imagine that I were to buy some, you know, a gift for somebody and when it was, you know, stone cut organic grits and I send this bag of grits to someone in the south and they're going to get it and go, hey, you have breakfast tomorrow. Alright. But what if I were to send that same gift bag of, of stone cut organic grits to somebody in the Yukon and Canada, you know, they may think, I guess I'm supposed to throw this out in the driveway on the ice, you know, put it on the sidewalk somewhere, You know, context matters what's happening and who's involved, all of that matters. So paul, when he's writing about how your works don't save you. He's writing to the church at Rome and what the church at Rome was doing was saying, hey, look at our good works man. Look how many times my, my name, you know, shows up in the, in the church printing. You know, I did this and I did that. I got a plaque at the church with my name on it. You know, look at all these things that I'm, I'm doing in the community. Look, look at all these wonderful things that I'm doing for the glory of God. And they were saying, hey, you know what it is, all about our works. That's what salvation is about. And paul said, no, y'all are missing is, it's not works. You're, you're living on works and you're ignoring faith. James on the other hand, he's writing to people that they were building everything on their profession of faith. You know, there's a, hey, I, I prayed the sinner's prayer. I shook pastor's hand. I got baptized. I'm, I'm good. I'm set. You know, they were doing everything by faith alone or are saying faith, their profession of faith alone with no works. So it's two different neighborhoods, two different groups of people to different conflicts. But the same conflict. Ultimately somebody put it this way, paul and James are not soldiers of different armies fighting against each other. Their soldiers of the same army fighting back to back against enemies coming from opposite directions. It's always true. It's always a both. And it's rarely an either or and so there's no conflict in the bible or especially between paul and James over faith. It's very clear. In fact, paul even wrote almost the exact same words that James wrote when he was writing a letter to Titus titus chapter one verse 16, Paul says they profess to know God, but by their deeds, they deny him. So they had a profession of faith in christ but their life canceled out their profession of faith. There was no evidence that they were actually following the person of jesus. They just said that they were following the purpose of the person of jesus. You know, they're mugging people but they're saying they're Baptists. You know, there was inconsistency things didn't match up. I was reading an article a few years back by somebody named Brandon Clements and and he was writing about the difference in a profession of faith and a possession of faith and he said back in the day, people, if their country was at war with another country, they depended on the messengers. The messengers were how they got the news. And so a messenger would come to their village, their city, their town and they'd have some news and the news would either be good or the news would be bad. Brandon puts it like this. If it was bad news, it might sound like this. Run for your life, certain death is coming with the other nations army because our army is lying dead on the battlefield. They are coming to kill and pillage us all. Run for your life. This this isn't make believe this actually happened in history. People in their village waited for the messenger and the messenger came and said, Run Ryan or the messenger could come with good news. And the good news, Brandon said, might sound like this. The battle has been won. The blood of our soldiers has purchased your freedom. You won't be killed, You are free, relax and enjoy the victory that's been won for you. And he described the villagers sitting on pins and needles waiting for the messenger to come. What's the news going to be? Because whatever the news was, that's life, their existence depended on what the messenger would say. Everything hung on that message. So you can imagine when it was good news that came, you can imagine when the good news came that they were going to be okay. That, that they were free. Here's the thing. Dear christian, your news ultimately is always good. Always. I don't care what the doctor says tomorrow. I don't care what the news says this afternoon. I don't care who grumbles about something at lunch after church today. No matter what you here, if you are in christ your news is always ultimately good. Why how this is how Brandon described it. The blood of another has purchased your freedom. Breathe easy. Death is no longer your fate. If you profess to know, jesus, that is yours. It's yours didn't. Some line from the preacher in the stained glass window church on sunday morning, it is the truth of your life. Death is no longer your fate breathe easy. That's what it means to be in christ Brandon goes on to say can your heart heave, wow. When you hear of the religious pressure and religious performance that you've been freed from by the blood of jesus. If your heart can't heave like that, you might have saying faith but not saving faith, saving faith reminds us that it is only through christ grace alone. Through faith alone in christ alone. There's no other way. But then someone might be thinking, hey look I don't want to hear any of this work stuff. Hey buddy, I'm I'm born again, I'm under the blood so I'm free. I'm free to do whatever I want, I'm good. I got my ticket. Alright let's set that next to the words of jesus. Someone may say, hey I'm born again, I'm under the blood, I'm free to do whatever I want. But jesus said take up your cross and deny yourself. See that's like cutting up a banana for breakfast and you put it on a plate and you Sprinkle some cinnamon and you put some turmeric on it, some italian seasoning. Yeah, I mean you can do that. But but that stuff doesn't go together right, doing whatever you want and denying yourself. They don't go together, you see the call of a christian is completely different, not bad, different, great different, we get to breathe easy because death is no longer our fate, but our faith is different, Jeff thomas says this, we are saved through faith alone. But the faith that saves is never alone. It is always zealous to do good works, Zealous, great word. You you are zealous like you really really, really want to do things for the glory of God. You do now. We won't always perfectly do that right? We can't we can't perfectly do everything in life for the glory of God. But faith, true faith saving faith, it wants to, there's some zeal to do all for the glory of God. And in fact when we fail to do off to the glory of God, when we fall down and we sin when we mess up, we get back up again and we get back up quick as possible and when we get back in and we go okay, I need some more zeal, I need to keep fueling my zeal for the glory of God. In other words, you won't completely bail on reading your bible, you won't completely bail on praying, you won't completely bail on church. Now there's this zeal and I say completely because we will bail right, we're prone to wander as we're saying, our moments will come. Well we'll have those moments when when we just can't seem to pull it all together, but what we will do in that moment is will be like the father that came to jesus that day, and he said, jesus, I believe help my unbelief in other words, jesus, I believe in you. But there's some stuff I don't understand, there's some stuff I'm struggling with help my unbelief, help the things I can't do the math on saving faith can be struggling faith. We were going to struggle. But saving faith cannot be false faith And it's false faith that James seems to be talking about with this next question, listen to verse 14, can that faith save him? Can kind of faith that says it has faith, but there's no works. Can can that faith save that person? Can the faith that does not consistently breathe easy, that death is no longer their faith. Is is that true saving faith? Or maybe let's just make everything super uncomfortable for a minute. Okay, If looking at the gas pump every single time and imploding every single time, Is that true? Saving faith of looking at the political landscape in our nation and every single time imploding just completely imploding over all of it. Is that true? Saving faith? If looking at every practical and and technological change that happens in the world and just completely imploding over how much you hate or how much you don't want it to be that way. Is that true? Saving faith if sin in your marriage or sin in a dating relationship just consistently happens and you just ignore it and blow it off and say it's no big deal? Is that true saving faith? It's spending hours and hours and hours watching Fox news or, or Tiktok or playing candy crush or, or playing halo 99 combat, you know, un compatible. I don't know all these words if all of these hours and hours and hours of screen time and phone time and and, and even just radio time, all of this and we're downloading and we're downloading and we're downloading, but we spend very little time with God. Does that look and sound like true saving faith? Listen, we're all going to have our moments where we lose it all right, and it might be at the gas pump, it might be over something with politics. We're going to have our moments, we're not perfect and we're going to have those days where we're going to sit in our good chair and now we're going to pull out a bag of money chose and some buffalo chicken dip and, and we're just going to binge watch, you know, empty nest or Simon and Simon or MacLeod or whatever whatever your show is, you know, we're just going to veg out, you know, it's going to happen. But again, as believers, what we're always doing is saying, hey, when you peel away the layers, who am I really is there a saving faith underneath the moments? one Theologian said that James is basically asking this, can the faith that you say you have truly save you. That's that's the question, right? Because we can say all day that we're Baptists, but if we spend all day mugging people, it doesn't really matter, we can say all day that we have faith, but James is saying if there's if there's no works to match with the faith, are we just saying we have faith or do we have saving faith? Are you just wishing on a on a southern baptist star? Are you just wishing on a presbyterian star? You're wishing on a methodist star, wishing on a catholic star, wishing on an atheistic star, You're just wishing on some religious star and just kind of hoping everything's going to work out in the end true, saving faith according to all that we see in the bible is by faith alone, through grace alone in christ alone, all of it is is wrapped up in jesus, but that faith is not alone, it is zealous for good works. Its zealous to be kind to christians at church, it is zealous to be kind to mean lost non christians who have never been to church. It's zealous to be patient with teenagers, if you're a senior adult, it's zealous to be patient with senior adults, if you're a teenager, it's zealous to serve people that are like us, serve people we like and it is zealous to serve your enemy. I mean this is the teaching of the bible. It's the example that jesus set zealous to do things that seem odd to us for years and years. I've always laughed. I was like, look there is no church that's not full of conflict. Every church I've ever known about or hear about, it has been a part of there's always conflict, but there is a really important thing that we should do as christians when there's conflict in the church doesn't mean we should ignore sin by any means. But most conflict in the church is usually selfish, petty and arrogant. And so there's something that we need to do if you have kids, you've learned this from the penguins of Madagascar. Sometimes you just need to smile and wave. Smile and wave. Boys smile and wave. Sometimes it's the most important thing you can do because you know why that person that's angry, they ain't going to listen to you. They're not that person that's upset, they're they're not going to listen to you and that's not even in church. You know, that's at your house too. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is smile and wave. Why? Because sometimes smiling and waving is the most zealous thing you can do for the glory of God. Faith alone is never alone. It always has this zeal, this is a zeal for jesus, not just the idea of jesus, but the person of jesus, listen over the last few weeks. I have interacted with a number of people that are really struggling to even believe in God and some of you have people like that in your life. Um, there's a lot of stories out there of, of professing christians that are abandoning the faith. So whatever math you're struggling with right now, whatever it is about God, that you can't quite figure it out, whatever places in the bible, you don't quite understand whatever issue and culture uh, seems to be one of those issues that people just say, well christians are hateful and awful about whatever anger or abuse or apathy you experienced in your home, whatever it may be. Can I just plead with you to turn your eyes upon the person of jesus because there is no perfect parent, no perfect pastor, no perfect politician, no perfect church, you're wasting your time looking for it. But there is a perfect savior, there is a perfect person, jesus, the christ turn your eyes upon him whatever you don't understand, do everything you can to believe in him and then ask God for help with the unbelief, but turn your eyes upon jesus over and over and over again. Why? Because in christ, you can breathe easy in christ death is no longer your fate. This is a promise from the very throne of heaven, Consider this truth. A person can only be saved by works, A person can only be saved by works and not what you're thinking, bless his heart, thank you, hit his head on the flux Capacitor when he came back into time. Here he he has no idea what he's talking about, spent this whole sermon saying that, you know, it's not by works by faith and now he's saying it's it's by works. I didn't hit my head, I didn't stutter your ears, aren't flapping. I promise. It is exactly what I meant to say. Every single person that has ever saved is only saved by works. The work of the Virgin birth of jesus, The work of the Cross of jesus, the work of the empty tomb of jesus, the work of the Second Coming of jesus, every person is only saved by the works of jesus. Jeff thomas says this, our faith did not obey God's law. Our faith did not die for us. Our faith did not rise from the dead. Every single person in heaven will be their only because of the good works of the Lord, Jesus Christ. So cling to the good works of Jesus Christ, cling to the work of the cross, Cling to the work of the empty tomb, Cling to the good work of our great savior, Jesus Christ and after you cling then do good works for the glory of jesus. Do good works for the glory of God, do good works unto other people so that God would be famous and that he would get attention and that people might discover in jesus what it means to breathe easy. We have the ability to help others by the grace of God discover what it means to breathe easy. Last sunday I told you about my new cameraman friends that I met at the passion conference in Atlanta back in january Alexey and marco and just with an impact they had on my life, just from the kindness of of how they served in in such a tremendous way. And Alexey uh texted me I think it was monday he had listened to last sunday's message. I had told them, hey you guys are going to be in the sermon. And so Alexis sent me a text back and just uh was telling me how much he enjoyed the message and and then he said oh yeah and by the way he said um something interesting happened at our church this weekend. They run the cameras at at their church there in Atlanta and he said in the middle of the service all of a sudden all the power went out like we completely lost power. He said the only thing that that was on was the emergency lights and he sent me a video of what happened when the power went out and before you watch the video I didn't hear it. I just want to say what happened before the power went out and what happened after the power out went out was the same thing. They didn't miss a beat. They just kept worshiping, listen to what happens. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah they didn't stop. No one freaked out. No one got mad, no one left, No one got afraid. They just kept singing. You are good good. Oh listen the lights are going to go out. We're fools. If we think the lights are not going to go out, the lights are going to go out. Something bad is going to happen, something wrong is going to happen, something frustrating is going to happen. Change is going to come that we don't like for all of us of all ages our whole lives. But when the lights go out, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ will never go out it will be as bold and as bright as it has ever Ben and we should take great hope in that truth. We should look at all of the moments of life and say you know what, no matter what happens there's this thing that I heard about that said no good deed goes unpunished. But as a believer that phrase will never apply to me why? Because in christ every good deed is rewarded. How because death is no longer our faith. Listen faith and works there together saving faith walks and talks too good. But it's not just about doing good. It's not even about being good, it's about seeing the one who is eternally good dear christian today, tomorrow three weeks from now on the best day of your life and on the last breath of your life, breathe easy because he is good, he is good.