“GO GET THEM AND BRING THEM BACK”

JAMES 5:19-20

INTRODUCTION C.J. Mahaney tells a story that powerfully illustrates the truth of this morning’s message. “As I sat with my family at a local breakfast estab­lishment, I noticed a finely dressed man at an adjacent table. His Armani suit and stiffly pressed shirt coordinated perfectly with a power tie. His wing-tip shoes sparkled from a recent shine, every hair was in place, including his perfectly groomed moustache. The man sat alone eating a bagel as he pre-pared for a meeting. As he reviewed the papers before him, he appeared nervous, glancing fre­quently at his Rolex watch. It was obvious he had an important meeting ahead. The man stood up and I watched as he straightened his tie and prepared to leave. Immediately I noticed a blob of cream cheese attached to his finely groomed moustache. He was about to go into the world, dressed in his finest, with cream cheese on his face.  I thought of the business meeting he was about to attend. Who would tell him? Should I? What if no one did?” The harsh reality is that we all have cream cheese on our faces; in fact, whether you're aware of it or not, there's cream cheese on your face right now. Others clearly see it. And you need their help to identify its presence. My self-perception is about as accurate as a carnival mirror. The Bible says that we can be spiritually blind and yet think that we can see quite well. Without others' help to see myself clearly, I'll listen to my own arguments, believe my own lies, and buy into my own delusions. I'll forget God's warnings that "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice… The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Proverbs 12:15; Jeremiah 17:9). Sin in its deceptive power blinds us, leaving us unaware of our faults. That is why James warns us so strongly here in chapter 5. Last week we learned that there is a danger of which we should be aware of wandering or drifting away doctrinally and behaviorally from the truth and thus from Christ; that the danger is subtle and deceptive; that the danger is deadly serious, and if unchecked leads to eternal consequences. There are at least sixty occasions when we are specifically warned to be on our guard against this kind of deviation from believing and living the truth. As I said, the doctrine of eternal security does not make warnings and exhortations superfluous. God’s way of keeping his sheep secure is through regular warnings against sin and exhortations to trust Christ. No man is so far advanced along the Christian pathway, so knowledge-able in the Scriptures, so experienced in Christian service, so prominent in church affairs, that he is beyond the reach of Satan or the treachery of his own heart. There are far too many who play with sin and presume upon grace, and do not realize that they can make shipwreck of their lives and die without forgiveness, even though they claimed to be Christians and belonged outwardly to a new covenant community. So last week we were encouraged by Paul’s exhortation to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:16 “Watch your life and your doctrine closely.” We learned that I must watch what I believe and how I live. I must give full uncompromised attention to both. And I must watch it closely and consistently, not casually or occasionally. Scripture constantly warns us to, "Take care!" or "Take heed!" or "Look!" In other words, don't be careless or nonchalant or inattentive about the condition of your heart. Look at it. God's way for his chosen ones to get to heaven is not without vigilance and watchfulness and self-assessment and diligent use of means of grace. But I ended my sermon last week by saying that the reality is we cannot watch ourselves by ourselves. On our own, you and I will never develop a competency for recognizing the cream cheese on our faces, our sin. We’ll need help. And that, my friends, is why we need one another. God has in His wisdom designed the discerning and loving eyes of others to help me to persevere and stay on course. By God's grace they can impart clarity to help protect from the hardening effects of sin. Others can exhort you, encourage you, and correct you. They are a gift from in your battle against sin. And you will never grow out of need. From the subtle and serious danger that even in the best of circles there is the possibility of a Christian wandering astray from doctrinal and moral truth, James now turns to the matter of how such lapses should be dealt with.

I. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE BODY OF CHRIST TOWARDS ONE ANOTHER” My brothers . . . someone brings him back…whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering” By the usage of the words brothers, someone, and whoever; James says that when someone strays from the truth it is the task of believers to go after them and “bring him back.” James makes a powerful and challenging statement to us all in the church: The responsibility of restoring those who have wandered is the responsibility of every Christian who is walking with the Lord. As Christians who care for the church, we ought to be sensitive to moral changes in our own behavior and be sensitive to changes in our brothers and sisters. If you ignore your brother’s sin it may contribute to his death. You may be an accessory to his destruction because you kept saying “it’s none of my business”. Now what James is saying radically goes against the grain of contemporary post-modern culture. David Wells, in his book Above All Earthly Powers, Christ in a Postmodern World, characterizes the mindset of our times as being anti-institutional, deeply privatized, rampantly individualistic, and therapeutic in its modus operandi. Kind of the opposite of what the scriptures teach! That is why it is so important that we do what the apostle Paul tells us so that we do not become victims of the age in which we live. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). God ordains that all Christians be in a church fellowship where God is loved and honored and His truth is proclaimed, taught, and practiced.  Paul writes Timothy, “I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of truth” (1 Timothy 3:14-15). The church should be the one place where you can count on finding the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. As a result we in the church are to care for each other to believe and live the truth and one way that we are to manifest that care is in reaching out to one another in gentle, loving, caring, and humble encouragement, exhortation, and correction. God means that the care that flows from Him through his Son should come to the church through the members of the church to each other. So James says, if your brother or sister are wandering away in doctrinal or moral error, they’re in danger, go get them!  Intervene with care and compassion, but intervene! If you relate to the body of Christ with a passive, disinterested “live and let live” attitude, James suggests that attitude is a “live and let die” attitude! I want to give every member of the Lighthouse Christian Fellowship permission to come and grab me and turn me back if you see me heading down the wrong road Here is a radical call to each of you as members of the body of Christ.  Hebrews 3:12–13, “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.” Our relationship with the body of Christ is crucial to the progress and growth in our relationship with God. Personal insight is the product of involvement in community with others in the church. Notice four things here: 1. In verse 12 the danger day in and day out is that an evil unbelieving heart would lead us away from God. Unbelief is the issue. The issue is failure to trust God's promises. 2. Then (in verse 13) notice that being involved in the local church is essential: "Encourage one another day after day."  You need the help of others. We are regularly and continually to encourage and exhort one another. Why? 3. That's the third thing: the way our hearts become unbelieving (verse 12) is by being "hardened by the deceitfulness of sin" (verse 13). We need help to keep from being deceived by sin because sin is active daily and continually. How are we going to be rescued from the deceiving power of sin? Sin threatens to blind and harden us all. 4. We are responsible to “see to it that none of you have a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” God has appointed you to help others persevere in faith and fight against the hardness and blindness of sin and vice-versa. Now it is plain from verses 12 and 13 that something more than preaching is in view here. I try to do this in my preaching—exhort you weekly not to have an evil heart of unbelief. But this text says two things more than that. One (in v. 13) is that this exhorting is to happen "day after day," not just once a week. And the other is it is to be done by "one another"(v. 13)—that is, you are to do it to each other, not just get it from the preacher. It is very interpersonal. This means we must humbly recognize our need for others. So we must humbly and aggressively participate in the body of Christ by inviting and welcoming correction from others. Are you doing that? Are you practicing Hebrews 3:12-14 and if you aren’t, why? In this passage He’s saying, “As your Father, I want to protect you from the deceitfulness of sin and its hardening efforts. So by my grace, I’ve designed My church and provided this practice of speaking up to guard one another. We need that help, and we need it every day. This is Hebrews 10:24 puts it another way, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” Notice that the writer of Hebrews tells us to be thoughtful and to come up with a strategy to stir up one another to love and good works before they fall away. God has appointed you to help a few others persevere in love and good works. For the writer of Hebrews Eternal security is a community project. You are responsible (and this is a weighty statement) for the perseverance of your brothers and sisters. How does the Church help us avoid an "evil heart of unbelief?" The answer is that we must be the church for each other. And what is the main thing that the church does for each other? We must be involved, we must be accountable, we must be together, and we must be in relationships that specifically and strategically cause us to speak to each other in ways that help us not be deceived by the allurements of sin. Or to put it positively, we speak to each other in ways that cause us to have hearts of faith in the superior value of Christ over all things. We fight to maintain each other's faith, by speaking words that point people to the truth and value of Jesus and if someone is drifting away we go after them to bring them back to Christ. There are couples who are drifting and thinking that their marriage can’t make it. They need someone to come alongside and show and tell them an alternative to divorce. There are those in trials who feel like giving up or sinning to ease their pain. They need someone who has been there to come alongside and tell them about a sustaining, sovereign, strengthening God who works all things to the good. There are singles who think that maintaining moral purity is impossible. They need others who are walking in purity to come alongside and show them the way. This is a definition of church: a community of believers who’ll convince you that you can make it, and then stand beside you while you try, and are willing to go after you if you don’t. Let me ask you a few questions to help you evaluate where you stand in relationship to what I’ve been saying this morning. Do I confess my sin constantly? Do I confess specific instances of sin and not just general categories of sin? Do others find it easy to correct me? Do others know areas of temptation in my life? Do you have faith that God wants to use others to help you to grow?

II. THE GOALS OF THIS RESPONSIBILITY- “someone brings him back... remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.” James's very last word, like his first, is one of warm encouragement. He says that when we understand our responsibility, we become participators in Christ’s search and rescue operation. “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us a ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). The same “us” that have been reconciled to God is the same “us” that have been given this wonderful ministry of reconciliation; bringing wandering sinners from inside or outside the church to God! That’s the goal of going after wandering brothers and sisters pure and simple, to bring him or her back to God.  This word epistrepho can also be translated “to turn back”. It is used frequently in the language of conversion to God (e.g. Matthew 18:3; Acts 9:35) and of repentance (Acts 3:19; 1 Thessalonians 1:9). So here, our responsibility to our brothers and sisters is so serious and our involve­ment is to be so total that James can say of our ministry to the wanderer that we `bring him back'. Oh what a wonderful privilege! Oh what a profound responsibility! Oh what an amazing part do we play in lives of others! Let us take the message to heart!

James encourages us with two wonderful things that happen when we bring them back to God. He who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death, and will cover a multitude of sins. If the sinner turns back from his slide into sin he will escape death: physical, where we can die under divine discipline (1 Cor.5; 11; Acts 5); or death in a broad sense, where we suffer from a deathlike existence of loneliness, bitterness, anguish, and guilt (James 1:5); or ultimately spiritual eternal death-eternal hell, wrath, judgment (Romans 6:23; Proverbs 14:12; Rev.21:8)  and will be restored into a relationship with Christ that covers all his sins (Psalm 32:1-2; Micah 7:19; Psalm 103:12). By so doing we will exhibit true wisdom, for “whoever captures souls is wise” (Proverbs 11:30). Who is the saver in this verse? It's the church member who goes after the straying brother. "He who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him." Do you see why earlier I spoke of how important the body of Christ is in regards to salvation?  Eternal security is certain for God's elect. But eternal security is a community project. Eternal security is not a mechanical automatic thing. It depends on God, and God uses means-brothers and sisters going after each other when we are straying into sin.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
I think it’s fitting that James ends his book this way. His entire book has been spent on exhortations. If anybody lives up to his word, James does. He has addressed the most intimate areas of our lives and done it with that spirit that only God could have directed. And so as he comes to the end of this book he closes it on a very serious note. He’s saying to us in a sense, “I’ve invested myself now in you who were wandering from the truth by giving you these five chapters, you now in turn take these truths, along with all the truths of God’s word and invest yourself in the lives of others.” He’s saying, “Do as I have done for you. Bold in commitment to truth, passionate in our concerns for others.” If you’re sitting in your easy chair by the fire and you know of a brother or sister who is lost in the storm, God asks you to inconvenience yourself. Get up, put on your coat, and go out into the storm to try to rescue your brother. It is an expression of genuine love for God and His church and your brothers and sisters, it is faith in action.

The longer I am a Christian the more I see that I cannot live this life on my own. So I encourage you to go to others and invite their gaze into your life. Tell them, "I want your caring eyes on my soul. I need your help. Where do you see cream cheese?" And I encourage you as well to go to others to bring your observations about them to their attention. Do this with the sure knowledge that ultimately we're all being guarded by another—our Savior Himself. He will indeed guard us and bring His work in us to completion in the day of Jesus Christ.