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[0:00] Now we'll begin this evening a study working through the book of James. It's not a book that people look at a great deal in the New Testament.

[0:11] Perhaps the opening verses here, verses 5 to 8, about asking the Lord for wisdom in prayer, that is often perhaps referred to also the reference to Elijah in the closing chapter, being a man of like passions with us and how he prayed and the Lord answered his prayer then.

[0:30] But James gets neglected, but certainly overlooked to quite a bit, quite an extent. So we'll be looking in the coming weeks through the portions of the book of James and working our way through the chapters, all Lord willing, of course.

[0:46] Now James, as many of you will know, is simply the Greek or Anglicized, now we would have to say, version of the name Jacob. And we've been looking at Jacob on the Lord's Day evenings in the Old Testament there.

[1:00] And you might think, well, how on earth do you get from Jacob to James? And I think we've touched on this in the past, but it's basically, as language does, of course, evolve, particularly as it moves from one language into another or one country into another, so is likewise with the name Jacob or Ya'cob, as it would be in Hebrew.

[1:20] And this in Latin, which of course was the language through which learning was mediated for so much of the first thousand years and more of our history, the first millennium and a half since the time of Christ.

[1:35] Latin was the language through which learning and writing was disseminated. And Ya'cob in the Hebrew becomes simply Ya'cobus in the Latin. And this then, Ya'cobus, becomes the means by which this name is translated and transmitted, which as it, in French, for example, this Ya'cobus became simply Jacques.

[1:56] In French, as it moved into Old and Middle English, Ya'cobus became, instead of three syllables, Ya'cobus, it became, you know, the middle syllable, the cold sound, became sort of diminished.

[2:11] So it became almost like an apostrophe in the middle and it became Ya'bos. Now when you've got Ya'bos, then the B can very easily become softened from a B sound into a M sound, so you've got Ya'bos.

[2:28] And the U then very easily softened perhaps into more of an A sound and an A sound, so you've got Ya'bos. And as the Ya' can so easily become, as it does with Anglicization, a J as opposed to a Ya' sound.

[2:45] And so you get from Ya'bus, you get Ya'amus. And so James becomes the Anglicized version of it. So it evolves across the countries, across the languages.

[2:58] This James would, of course, in Hebrew and in Greek indeed, would also be Ya'cobus there. But that's the name he would have been known by. And this is the Lord's brother, this James.

[3:11] It's not one of the twelve apostles, but he takes on, if you like, the mantle of an apostle later on. The first hint that we have of this James is that where the Lord is teaching during his earthly ministry, and we see how when he came to his own country, to Nazareth, and we read that the local population were offended at the sort of high status that he had, his great learning that he seemed almost to be, you know, not only showing off to the locals he seemed to be, as they thought, but they're also thinking, well, where on earth did he get all this wisdom?

[3:50] Where on earth did he get all this learning? Mark chapter 6 at verse 3, they said, Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judah and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?

[4:04] And they were offended at him. Now this is the first mention of James, the Lord's brother. And given the name order in which they are mentioned, we must assume that James was the eldest of these four brothers.

[4:20] We don't know exactly how many sisters Jesus had, remembering that these would be technically half brothers and sisters, and so far as these would be the children of Mary and Joseph, whereas Jesus, of course, his father is God, although his mother is Mary.

[4:35] But James would be, we assume, the eldest of these four brothers, James, Joseph, Judah, and Simon, and the sisters are not named. There was at least two of them, if it's in the plural.

[4:46] Matthew says, referring to the same incident, are not all his sisters here with us, rather than both his sisters. So that might imply there is three or more of them.

[4:57] So there would be at least six, if not seven or more children, born to the marriage of Mary and Joseph after Jesus himself was born.

[5:07] So James, then, is, we assume, the next born after Jesus. And clearly, in the early part of his life, he was not convinced about his brother, his half-brother's messianic status.

[5:22] When we turn back a couple of chapters to Mark chapter 3, we see how, we read how his brethren and his mother came standing without sin, and calling him.

[5:33] And a multitude sat about him, and they said, Behold, my mother and my brethren without sin for thee. And he answered, let's say, Who is my mother or my brethren? And he looked round about, and them which sat about him and said, Behold, my mother and my brethren, for whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister and my mother.

[5:53] Now, earlier on, of course, we read that Jesus' friends had sought to take him. They thought he was beside himself, that he, who did he think he was?

[6:04] He obviously had become unhinged, perhaps with too much time in the desert, or perhaps too much learning or study or whatever. And the implication is that Jesus' mother and brethren were seeking to sort of bring him under control.

[6:16] They didn't believe in this messianic office, or certainly his brothers didn't, at that stage. And we're told explicitly in John's account of the gospel, in chapter 7, after these things, Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in Jewry, that is, amongst the Jews, for the Jews sought to kill him.

[6:37] Now, the Jews' feast of tabernacles was at hand. His brethren, therefore, whom we must assume are James and Joseph and Judah and Simon, therefore said unto him, Depart hence and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest.

[6:53] For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, show thyself to the world. For neither did his brethren believe in him.

[7:05] At that time, James and the other brothers did not believe in him. It's certainly a strange thing to say to a brother that presumably you love, when you know that the Jews in Judea are trying to kill him.

[7:17] Say, you know, go and fit to Judea. Show yourself to the world. That's not inviting an assassin, than what on earth is. But neither did his brethren believe in him. So, in other words, James at that time did not believe in him either.

[7:33] But we read that after the resurrection, if we look at 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul is quite explicit, that after Jesus rose from the dead, said that he was buried, that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures, he was seen of Cephas, that is Peter, then of the twelve.

[7:54] After that, he was seen of above 500 brethren, at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James, then of all the apostles.

[8:06] Now, this is not James, you know, the apostle, James the brother of John, son of Zebedee. It's not James the son of Alphaeus. This is James, Christ's brother. He was seen of James, then of all the apostles.

[8:18] Because it's already specified that he was seen of the twelve. And seen of Cephas, Peter, then of the twelve, in other words, the rest of the twelve, then he was seen of James, then of all the apostles.

[8:30] In other words, those that weren't just of the number of the twelve. James gets a special resurrection of Europe. Now, we don't know whether that is to confirm a seedling faith which has already begun, or whether it is to transform James' understanding of his half-brother's messianic status, in the same way as Paul was transformed on the road to Damascus.

[8:53] But we do know that James receives a special post-resurrection appearance of Jesus. And by the time of Christ's ascension into heaven, in Acts chapter 1, verse 14, we read, These all continue with one accord, in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.

[9:16] So, by this stage, by the time of the ascension into heaven, all of Jesus' brothers and his mother are now convinced of his messianic position.

[9:28] Not only are they convinced, but clearly James begins to assume, or is given, the post of, or the position of leading, the earthly church in Jerusalem.

[9:42] We know that, for example, the church was scattered after the persecution of Stephen, except for the apostles, because after Stephen was put to death, we read that they were all scattered, except the apostles, chapter 8, verse 1, of the Acts of the Apostles.

[10:01] And it may be at that point, that James then rises to prominence. Because we read in Acts chapter 12, when Peter is released from prison, miraculously by the angel, that he says at verse 17, he, beckoning unto them with the hand to hold their peace, declared unto them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison.

[10:21] And he said, Go, show these things unto James and to the brethren. And he departed and went into another place. So, James clearly is regarded now, after Peter has been put in prison, and Peter has had to disappear, James is now regarded as the leader of the church in Jerusalem.

[10:38] So much so, that when you come to the council of Jerusalem, in Acts chapter 15, we read that after, you know, Paul and Barnabas have said their bit, and then Peter has said his bit, and chapter 15, verse 13, after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me.

[10:57] Semi not declared how God at the first had visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name, and so on, and then he speaks, and then he gives his understanding of the situation. And then he says at verse 19, Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them which from among the Gentiles are turned unto God, but that we write unto them that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.

[11:24] For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preacheth, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day. Now, two things are quite astonishing here. Firstly, that this is James, the sort of head, if you like, earthly head of the church in Jerusalem, making this statement, saying, The Gentiles, we must not bind them in to the law of Moses in all its fullness, and the circumcision, and all the rest of it.

[11:51] Here's four basic things they're required to do, but other than that, just preach the gospel to them. The second thing, though, which we should notice, is that after Peter's spoken, Paul's spoken, Barnabas has spoken, everybody's said their piece, James sums it all up, and he says, okay, now, my sentences.

[12:10] So in other words, yes, it says, it pleased all the apostles and the elders of the whole church, but he's the one that finally pronounces and says, right, this is what we're going to do. And everybody just goes along with it.

[12:22] Everybody used to accept it. Such is clearly the influence, I won't say power, but the position that James now has in the church in Jerusalem.

[12:34] And when Paul later on returns to Jerusalem, it is to James and the other apostles that he has to go. It's James that he has to convince of the reality and the potency of his own witness to the Gentiles.

[12:47] And so we read in chapter 21 of the Acts from verse 18, the day following, Paul went in with us unto James, and all the elders were present. And when they had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had brought among the Gentiles by his ministry.

[13:03] And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord and said unto them, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe, in other words, believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

[13:13] And they are all zealous of the law. And they are informed of thee that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, seeing that he ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs.

[13:28] What is it therefore? The multitude must needs come together, for they will hear that thou art come. Do therefore this that we say to thee. We have four men which have a vow in them. Then take, purify myself with them, be at charges with them.

[13:40] Pay their expenses, in other words. That they may shave their heads, and all may know that those things were of the work and formed concerning thee are nothing but that thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the law.

[13:52] In other words, James is not saying, look, come on, obey the law, just, you know, because that's what you should do. He's saying this to Paul because Paul is a Jew. And the charge against Paul is that he's saying to Jews elsewhere, ah, forget about the law, you don't have to do that, you don't have to keep that.

[14:06] And he's saying, look, you're back in Jerusalem now. You have to show people that you are a law-abiding, faithful Jew. Now, as far as the Gentiles are concerned, verse 25, Acts 21, which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered from idols and from blood and from strangle and from fornication.

[14:29] So, after that, of course, Paul gets arrested and so on. And when he writes to the Galatians, he says again in chapter 1, he says, after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and I voted him 15 days but other of the apostles saw an unsaved James, the Lord's brother.

[14:46] James, the Lord's brother, has a huge, then, influence in leadership in the church in Jerusalem. How does he rise so high? Well, apart from his family connection with the Lord Jesus himself as his half-brother, James, clearly, whether from early life or later in life, pursued a rigorous observance of the law.

[15:12] James earned a reputation as a Pharisee. And now, we think in the New Testament of all Pharisees against Jesus. Well, obviously, not.

[15:22] Not all Pharisees were against Jesus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. Joseph of Arimathea was a Pharisee. When we read there in Acts 15 about the council of Jerusalem there, we think, oh, the Pharisees were against those that wanted to spread it to the Gentiles.

[15:38] No, remember that it says in Acts 15 that there arose up certain of the sect, verse 5 of Acts 15, there arose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed.

[15:50] In other words, these were there among the Pharisees who believed and accepted that Jesus was the Messiah, that he was the fulfillment of all the scriptures. And James clearly obeyed the law, kept the law, had a reputation even amongst the unbelieving Jews for his devout godliness.

[16:09] And with such a reputation within the church and without the church, perhaps we can see how he came to rise to such prominence. In the end, he was martyred.

[16:22] He was put to death by those chief priests and unbelieving Jews who were rattled by the fact that they couldn't pin anything on him. They wanted to suppress the sect of the Nazarenes as they saw the Christians as being.

[16:36] And they knew that it was spreading amongst the Gentiles and they knew that James was the head, in leadership terms, of this sect as they saw them. But they couldn't pin anything on him because everybody knew he was such a meticulous law-keeping Pharisee.

[16:54] He might believe his half-brother Jesus to be the Messiah, but they couldn't nail him down on anything. In the end, all they could do once the Roman governor was changing and that as one governor went out and before a new one came in, in that brief interregnum period, they lynched him, basically.

[17:13] They assassinated him, put him to death and there was a great outcry and there was a lot of trouble followed upon that. But James had such a good reputation amongst the Jews in Jerusalem because he was known as a godly, devout, law-keeping Pharisee and yet he was convinced and persuaded of the reality of his half-brother's Messiahship.

[17:40] James here is, we might say, as an apostle who had a resurrection appearance of Christ, he is a Jew for the Jews. Now remember that when Paul writes to the Galatians, he says, Peter was to be criticized at one point.

[17:55] He says, Peter was come to Antioch, I would suit him to the face because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles, but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision and so on.

[18:13] You might think, well, James then must be encouraging separation here. No, James is not encouraging separation amongst the Gentiles. You know, Jews separate out the Gentiles.

[18:25] James is a Jew in Jerusalem, meticulously observing the law. It's one thing to do this in a Jerusalem environment where he is almost like amongst the people who have come from him then think, oh, we can just transplant this out into the rest of the Roman Empire where you can't.

[18:46] You can't. It matters then. Once you're actually rubbing shoulders with Gentile Christians, it matters how you treat them. It matters how you interact with them. You know, if we were to say, you know, we look around our small gathering tonight and say, oh, look, we're all white British people here, white Scottish or whatever, and think, well, so what?

[19:05] Why wouldn't we be? But if you take this gathering and then plonk it down into, say, South Africa or Zimbabwe or some other place and say, look, here's this exclusive gathering of all white people.

[19:17] Look, doesn't this look terrible? Doesn't this look exclusive and racist? Well, that environment that's plausible would look as if, oh, look, no black people allowed in here. But here, that's obviously not the case.

[19:29] Yes, it is an exclusively white gathering, but it's not by design of excluding anyone. It's simply, that's the culture and setting in which we are.

[19:40] If we were in a different culture and setting, of course, you'd expect a mix of races and faces and skin colors and so on. It's just where we happen to be. Now, James in Jerusalem is this law-keeping Pharisee.

[19:54] He enjoys such a high reputation, well, enjoys it on my word, he has such a high reputation amongst the Jewish people, both believers and non-delievers. And one of the things we notice here is that he is writing to Jewish believers.

[20:10] James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting. That means Jewish people. It means Jewish believers in Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah.

[20:24] This is not to all in Stundry, this is not to Gentiles as well, but this is to the twelve tribes, the Jewish believers. And so, James is a Jew for Jewish believers.

[20:37] And I think, okay, now you've established that, what's that got to do with us? We're not Jews, we're Gentiles. But, what James is telling these Jewish believers, obviously, the lens through which this is filtered is his Jewish background.

[20:53] But what he is stating to them is every bit is applicable also to Gentiles. But even our Lord, even our Lord taught his disciples that they were to go to the Jew first and then to the Gentiles after that.

[21:09] And Paul, likewise, the apostle of the Gentiles always began in the synagogue. And only when the unbelieving Jews rejected the gospel, then did he go to the Gentiles.

[21:20] What we receive, we receive through the prism of the Israelite heritage and culture. What James writes to the twelve tribes, he does not shut out the rest of us from, but rather, it is to them first applicable and then to the rest of us afterwards.

[21:42] You know, as Jesus said, you know, to the woman, the Syrophoenician woman, let the children first be fed. This is their Messiah. This is their inheritance. This is their cultural reality.

[21:54] We inherit, yes, what they don't want. We get the crumbs under the table and even that's a feast in itself. But the tragedy is how many Jewish people rejected Jesus of Nazareth at the time and how many still do.

[22:11] And one of the reasons is, of course, they fear that if they accept this Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, they will somehow lose their Jewish identity.

[22:24] And this may have been part of the problem at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. People say, oh, no, no, no, you're going to circumcise them, you're going to keep the law of Moses, and yes, you get Jesus as sort of the cherry on the top, you get the Messiah as the completion of it all, but James, you've got to have the law first.

[22:42] You've got to have the law and the prophets and the circumcision and the Passover, and then, yes, you get Jesus and the whole thing fits together. But what they miss is that the Jewish nation, the Israelite people, were not so much intended to be, you know, the baby in the cradle, as it were, so much as the cradle in which the baby is placed.

[23:06] They were the vessel in which Messiah was to be prepared for and brought forth. But the baby outgrows the cradle, and the cradle, yes, we have sentimental value and it still may be kept and it still may be used later on and so on, but the whole thing is the child itself.

[23:25] The whole thing is the growth, the fulfillment of the promise. And the Jewish nation is intended as the vessel in which this precious package is delivered.

[23:38] The nation that God brings into being as the descendants of his servant, Jacob, who incidentally bears the same name as James. And Jacob's twelve sons become the twelve tribes of Israel.

[23:51] One of them, Judah, becomes the founder of the people of the Jews. But it is the Israelites who become the chosen nation. Through them the Lord brings forth his servant David and then the Messiah descended from David in the fullness of time.

[24:07] The Messiah is not the antithesis of Jewish identity. He is the fulfillment of it all. Now, when you have the fulfillment, you don't need to cling on to all the preparatory sort of paraphernalia.

[24:27] You may choose to do so, and that's fine if you choose to do so. But it's not the main product. It's not what it's all about. James here recognizes that.

[24:39] That is why he says, look, the Gentiles don't need to do all this stuff. Those who are Jews, they can't stop being Jews. They're not going to stop being Jews just because they've accepted Christ as the Messiah.

[24:50] They can keep on doing it. They can keep on circumcising their children and keeping the Passover and doing all the stuff they always did. It's part of their inheritance. It's part of their culture. Yeah, that's great. But you can't make a Gentile into a Jew.

[25:02] Anymore than you can make a Jew into a Gentile. But the thing is that whilst they feared that they would lose their Jewishness, rather when they accept the Messiah, they recognize that this Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of the Living God, is in fact the glory of Israel's inheritance, the fulfillment of Israel's inheritance.

[25:28] And the thing that you find as the gospel spreads throughout the world is that he becomes in turn the glory of each successive nation to which the gospel comes.

[25:45] If I were to say to you, those of you who are native Gaelic speakers, you would say, what is the glory of your language? You would probably say, the Gaelic Bible and the Gaelic Psalms.

[25:58] And even those amongst what we might perhaps irreverently call the Gaelic Mafia, you know, the media culture, which is pretty non-Christian and so on, would have to acknowledge, yeah, well, when it comes to the Gaelic language, the ultimate expression is probably, yeah, the Gaelic Bible and the Gaelic Psalms, yeah.

[26:15] And that is that through which what was mediated? The gospel was mediated, the gospel that then became the vehicle through which generations of children were taught in school and taught the catechisms and taught to recite the Psalms and so on.

[26:31] It became the glory of Gaelic. It became the glory of the Sway. If you were to say to anybody, even Richard Dawkins, Christian hating atheist par excellence, has acknowledged that the glory of the English language is the authorised version of the Bible.

[26:53] They had put Shakespeare on one side, yes, the authorised version on the other. It has become the glory of that language and nation and people.

[27:05] And wherever the gospel comes, it becomes the glory of that people. It becomes the glory of that land. It becomes that which transforms them from the savagery in which we are by nature into the glory that we were designed for.

[27:24] the dignity that men and women were intended for but only realised and only complete as they enter into relationship with Christ.

[27:36] The fullness of their humanity, the fullness of their identity. What is one of the old-fashioned labels for Ireland? The land of saints and scholars.

[27:51] And what is it that Ireland produced saint after saint that went throughout Europe and Scotland and St. Patrick and St. Columba and all these others because it produced saints of the gospel.

[28:04] And likewise we think, oh, the founding fathers of America. And what were the founding fathers of America? The Puritans. Those who went and sailed on the Mayflower and founded Plymouth and the New England colonies founded on Puritan Christianity.

[28:21] It is the glory of every nation and to which the gospel comes. And as that nation embraces the gospel, it grows and flourishes and blossoms into the fullness of its identity that was intended in Christ.

[28:41] When was Scotland at its most glorious? I would suggest to you in the times of covenant and witness, when people, yes, were hounded for their faith, but they held fast to the national covenant, the solemnly egon covenant, and they held to that.

[28:59] And in the fullness of time, when they won their victory at the end, that became the establishment of religion, the glory of Scotland's identity.

[29:11] And even though then a union with England followed, Scottish law was separate from English law. Scottish education was separate from English education, and above all, the Scottish church, religion was distinct in its identity from the Church of England to the south.

[29:31] And the glory of the land was the simplicity of the gospel as it was practiced, according to the word of God.

[29:41] It became our identity. So you see, whilst the Jews may have feared the loss of their identity, if everybody wasn't made to become Jewish, you can't make somebody what they're not.

[29:56] I would love to be a native Gaelic speaker, but I'm not. I would love to be able to be part of that culture and heritage, but I'm not. What is my glory?

[30:08] Christ is my glory. Me and him, and him and me. And whatever my background or nation or culture, Christ is the glory of that culture.

[30:21] Christ is the glory of that heritage. And you see, so when James is writing to Jewish believers, the Messiah is the glory of their inheritance, all their Israelite heritage and preparation, the Lord of Moses, and all the prophets, and all the culmination in Christ.

[30:40] Christ, so likewise he becomes the glory, not so much of Gentiles as a whole, but as he moves, as the gospel moves from nation to nation.

[30:52] Where did Paul take the gospel to? He brought the gospel to initially Greece and then into Europe, and then he said, and then I must also see Rome. Now, whilst of course we would not accept that much of so-called Romanism is in fact biblical Christianity at all, there's no escaping the historical fact that when the Roman Empire was falling apart, it was the church centered in Rome that held things together.

[31:19] Likewise, the glory of Greece, a Greek Orthodox church, yes, lots of idolatry, lots of mistakes there, but it is their identity, it is part of the glory of their mission, and as a nation embraces that identity, and all it is to be learned, and all there is to be steeped in it, and to Christianize, if you like, their education, their law, and all that they do, and the way that they operate as a nation, the people, they become the more blessed, become the more glorious, but as they turn their back upon it, they become more diminished, and things begin to fall apart.

[32:05] James, the servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes, which are scattered abroad, greeting. He goes on to talk about temptations and difficulties, we don't have time here to go into that tonight, Lord willing, we'll pick that up again next Wednesday, but I want us to recognize where James is coming from here, yes, he is a Jew of the Jews, with a reputation for godliness and law keeping, you might think well that's quite different from his brother, really is it, because Jesus didn't do that really, did he, didn't he?

[32:41] We're not told that Jesus was a Pharisee, but then the Bible doesn't tell us that James was a Pharisee either, it's secular sources of history that identify the leader, we can call that, of the church as being this James, and that his reputation as a fantasy was something which was admired even by Jews that didn't accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, his death caused such an outcry even amongst unbelieving Jews that there had to be investigation, and heads had to roll afterwards as a result because he stood in such good stead, because he recognized that the law which he obeyed and which he fulfilled and sought to obey in every detail as Pharisees do, the law as Paul writes in Romans, the law is spiritual, although he is caught up, as Psalm 19 says, you know, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, what is the glory of the law?

[33:40] The glory of the law is its fulfillment in Christ, the law is our soul master to bring us to Christ, the law is glorified in the final consummation of it all in Christ, you see, Christ becomes the glory of every man, of every nation, of every place where the gospel comes as it is embraced, not just the Jew, the Jew never needs to worry that by embracing Christ Jesus, he or she ceases to become so Jewish, but what time after time Messiah Jews, as Hebrew Christians, those Jewish people who have embraced Christ as their Messiah, have come to recognize is that from perhaps being indifferent or secular Jews, they have become more religious, more devout, more proud, if that's not the wrong word, of their Jewish identity, steeped in their culture and energy, they have become fulfilled Jews, completed Jews, and likewise, if we are

[34:49] Scottish or Irish or whatever, English, whatever we may be, what is the glory of our nation? Is it, oh, because we get whiskey, we get drunk at football matches or whatever, is that what we're meant to be remembered for?

[35:02] Is that what we're meant to stand for? Oh, the glory of our land is Christ, the glory of our land is the heritage Christ has given us as a covenant of nation, which will be glorious again, not to the extent that we might win medals or football matches or competitions or sporting events or run our own governments in Edinburgh, whatever the case might be, we will be glorious to the extent that Christ is brought into the centre of our nation once more, that our laws are God-othering and God-feeding, that our education reflects that, our children are brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

[35:45] Our flag reminds us of his martyrs. Even these things all point us to Christ if we will but have eyes to see it.

[35:57] So as James writes yes to the twelve tribes, James is writing as a Jew for Jewish people, it is not exclusively so.

[36:08] It is a message which has a ring and a requirement and which has an application to every nation under heaven and every people group in all the world because this is not something that God intends just for one little nationality.

[36:29] The seed of the woman that crushes the serpent's head is intended for all mankind across every nation and becomes their glory as he becomes their God.

[36:44]  Now , he is But so as people have no say that water