Demonic Faith

Well take your Bible and turn with me to the book of James, James chapter 2. James chapter 2. You know that we are in verse 18 through 20 this week. Now last week we began to see James in a different light. We began to see James as a protester to the false faith which had infiltrated the fellowships that he was writing to. We know the context. These were Jewish Christians who had been persecuted. They had been driven out of Jerusalem to so many different places. They were experiencing lots of different circumstances.

But James is seeing into these fellowships and he is protesting this false faith that he has seen infiltrate the hearts and the lives of the people. Now those great reformers that we talked about last week in the Protestant Reformation were not the only reformers and protesters in church history. I don't know if you are a student of church history. I enjoy history. I enjoy lots of different history. But in church history there have been many men, there have been many peoples who have protested false doctrine, false teaching. We learned about some of these men like Luther and Calvin and Zwingli as we studied church history.

But they were not the only ones. James is doing a great job of protesting false faith and seeking reformation in the areas of false faith in the lives of these people. Now we see this journey of restoration, reformation and protesting starting verse 19 and this job for James goes all the way down to verse 26. Now this morning I want to show you that James was not the first reformer, was not the first one to protest for true faith in the scriptures. Quite a few years before James there was one by the name of John. We know him as John the Baptist. And in John the Baptist we see him protesting the false faith of the people of his day.

And John, he bursts onto the scene. We see one of the accounts in Luke chapter 3 and immediately John has a showdown between the Jews, the Jewish leaders and he attacks this false faith that was so prevalent in that day. I'll read to you the scripture in Luke chapter 3. You don't have to turn there. Now in the fifth year, the fifteenth year of the reign of Caesar Tiberius when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod the Tetriarch of Galilee and his brother Philip was Tetriarch of the region. And it goes on to say that the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And what does it say? He came forth.

He came forth preaching baptism of repentance. That was his theme. But we go on down and it says that verse 7, "He therefore began saying to the multitudes who were going out to be baptized by him, 'You brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath or the wrath to come. Therefore bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance and do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father.'" Now what is James doing there? Or excuse me, John. John is attacking their workless faith. These Jews, these Jewish leaders, they had a faith, a faith of words, but it was workless. There was no works behind their faith.

Also he attacks their lack of repentance. Basically what John is preaching is, you have faith with no works and that faith is a dead faith. Then also James is attacking their trust and their religious heritage. What does he say? "Don't say to me that you have Abraham as your father." James is a, John, excuse me, is a protester and he is a reformer. Simply put, John and James were attacking the false faith in their day and they were standing for true saving faith. Both were protesters and both were reformers. Now in last week's message we saw how James attacked dead faith. He attacked dead faith.

And it is very important for us to see that last week James, now listen, describes their faith. He gives a description. What does he say? He says in verse 15, "You have a powerless faith." He says in verse 15 through 16, "You have a compassionless faith." And then in verse 17 he says, "You have a dead faith." This is a description of their faith. Now in this morning's message we see that James does something a little different. He dissects their faith. I guess if I can use this language, James cuts open their faith and he reveals what is inside. I think many of us remember those days of dissecting animals in school.

For this it made me remember those days when I used to hunt and fish for my grandfather. I had a grandfather that took a lot of time with me and we would go squirrel hunting and he just knew just how to shake those vines and I kind of have a joke. He shook the vines. I shot the squirrels. He skint the squirrels. My grandmother cooked the squirrels and I ate the squirrels. I don't eat them these days. But you know whether it was a squirrel that I killed or a fish that I caught or a deer that we killed, he would take that animal and he would clean that animal and he would open up that animal and he would show me all of those parts.

He would show me the lungs and the kidneys and the liver and the heart. He would open up their stomachs to see what they had been eating. I just had a science class right there with my grandfather. He would dissect those animals. And that's exactly what James is doing for us in the text before us this morning. He is dissecting their faith. He's going a step farther than a description of their faith and he's showing what is inside of these words that they have. Now the title of the message this morning moves from dead faith to what we call demonic faith. As we have had the habit of, we'll put the message title on the screen and the points.

But the title of the message this morning is demonic faith. And let's look at the verses that are before us this morning starting in verse 18. James says, "But someone may well say, 'You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without the works and I will show you my faith by my works.'" Verse 19, "You believe that God is one. You do well. The demons also believe and they shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?" Obviously, the title of the message comes out of verse 19 and we're going to look at the subject demonic faith.

And you see on the screen, we have three major points this morning. Number one, we will see an empty argument. We will see an empty argument. Number two, we will see the proper confession. And then number three, we will see a useless position. An empty argument, a proper confession and a useless position. So let's dive into the verses that we've just read together. And I want us to see, number one, if you're taking notes, number one, we see an empty argument. Go back to the verses that we've read, verse 18. James says, "But someone may well say, 'You have faith and I have works.

Show me your faith without the works and I will show you my faith by my works.'" We know that this is still a very serious subject. What is the subject of all of these verses? The subject is true faith versus false faith. This is still extremely, extremely serious. Now whereas in the previous verses, James asks a series of questions. Here in verse 18, James is exposing an argument. He is exposing an argument that is among the people. So let's look at this empty argument and let's just divide this verse. First I want you to see that one argues for faith with no proof. First one argues for faith with no proof.

Go back to the verse, "But someone may well say, 'You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without the works and I will show you my faith by my works.'" One argues for faith with no proof, no works. This is the one who claims to have true Christian faith and nothing else is necessary. You get that? This is the one who claims to have true Christian faith and there is nothing necessary to prove that this professed faith can bring salvation. This is the one with no proof. Their faith is in word only. Their faith has no works behind their profession. They have a profession of faith but they do not back that profession with works.

They are arguing this position. Second, I want you to see one argues for faith with proof. Again, go back to the verse, "But someone may well say, 'You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without the works and I will show you my faith by my works.'" This is the one who claims to have true Christian faith but they point to their works, their Christian works as proof of their faith. I want you to see that their faith is in word form as well but also their faith is in work form. They have a profession of faith but they have works that are in the midst of that faith and there is one arguing for this position.

So you have this argument. Now in verse 18, James uses the word "someone." The King James reads a little different. It says, "And a man may say." But later in the verse, James uses the word "I." James is clearly contrasting himself. Now he's still being humble. He's still being loving but James is contrasting himself to those who claim to have faith. They claim by word and profession only and he's drawing a line between himself and them. James is pointing out their empty argument and remember, this faith that is spoken of, this is claiming to have a saving faith being a born again Christian.

I cannot think of a better example than what we just read in Luke chapter 3. You don't have to turn there. What was going on? All of these Jews were coming to John. John burst on the scene. The word of God came to John. He burst onto the scene on the Jordan Riverbank. These throngs of people from the region of Judea and from the city of Jerusalem, they were coming to John and what does he say? "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance." Even the religious leaders stepped up to the situation. And what does he say? "You are a brood of snakes. Produce fruit." What is he saying? "I don't care about your profession.

I don't care about your religious heritage. I don't care about your words." John is saying, "Give ample works to your profession." Where are the works? And I want to tell you, we have these, I call them arguing Christians all around us today. I mean really, some of you have come to realize that some of your loved ones are nothing more than arguing Christians because you approach them about coming to church, you approach them about the gospel, you approach them about godly things and immediately they begin to say to you, "Well, I'm a Christian. Well, I've been baptized. Well, I'm a member of the church.

Well, I've been saved and all they have is words and all they pose is an argument. And look, we know people like this everywhere." Many times these kind of people show up at certain times in the life of the church. I knew a minister one time. He was a little bit on the sarcastic side, even the smart alec side, and he would preach at Easter and he would call them Easter bunnies because they just show up at Easter. Many times these arguing Christians will show up at certain times in the life of the church. I'll tell you one that was my pet peeve for years, baby dedication. Now I'm all for dedicating our children.

I dedicate my children once a week, once a month, sometimes five times a day. But you know it's been abused in the life of the Baptist church because once a year, twice a year, we'll have baby dedication and moms and dads will come and they will dress that little baby in some cute clothes and they'll take a charge from the minister or the pastor and they'll recite some words. I've been sitting there sometimes and think, "He hadn't been in three years." But he'd tell you he's a Christian. "Oh, I've been baptized.

I'm a member of the church." They're the arguing Christians and some of us need to realize that our families are full of these kind of people. You can come to them with the gospel and they will take a step back and say, "Well, it's just words." This is not some new phenomenon in the life of the church. This isn't just something that went on in the life of the church during the time of James and it's just resurfaced now today. But back in the '80s, there was this big conflict going on in evangelical Christianity. And John MacArthur took it upon himself to write a book that was, I mean, it just split people right down the middle.

And the name of the book was The Gospel According to Jesus. If you don't have that book, you need it. It's one of the essentials in our library. Every time I had a copy, I gave them away. As a matter of fact, last night I went on Amazon to see if I can purchase me a new copy. The Gospel According to Jesus, and I ran across an article that one of our Southern Baptist leaders, his name is Al Mohler, what he wrote about this book. And just listen. He says, "Back 20 years ago, the evangelical world was torn by a controversy over the very nature of salvation known as the lordship controversy.

Out of the context of this controversy, John MacArthur would write one of the most important books ever to emerge from his ministry. In the Gospel According to Jesus, John MacArthur got right to the heart of the matter. The urgency? It's a question. John MacArthur rightly believes that nothing matters more than what scripture says about the good news of salvation. His book was a much-needed corrective to dangerous misunderstandings of the Gospel found commonly among some evangelical teachers 20 years ago.

The release of this new edition, updated after two decades, is an alarm that these misrepresentations of the Gospel still threaten today." And he goes on with an excerpt from the book, and let me read the excerpt. The Gospel, in vogue today, holds forth a false hope to sinners. It promises them that they can have eternal life, yet continue to live in rebellion against God. It encourages people to claim Jesus as Savior, yet defer until later the commitment to obey Him as Lord. It promises salvation from hell, but not necessarily freedom from sin.

It offers false security to people who revel in the sins of the flesh and spurn the way of holiness. By separating faith from faithlessness, it teaches that intellectual assent is as valid as a wholehearted obedience to the truth. What did John MacArthur do 20 years ago, and what did Al Mohler do in writing this article? They were saying, "Faith without work is dead." We've got arguing Christians all around us. We see that it is an empty argument according to what James is saying. Let's move on. If we look to, or Roman numeral II, we see the proper confession. We see the proper confession. Go back to verse 19. "Do you believe that God is one?

You do well. The demons believe and shudder." Some translations may say, "trimble." Now I said earlier that James is dissecting the faith of the people. And what James is doing here, he uses an example from Scripture to illustrate the type of faith that these arguing Christians have. James shows their proper confession. Now listen, because it's a word game, but it is not a saving confession. It's proper in word, but not proper in works. So let's divide this verse to show and expose and dissect this confession that these arguing Christians have, or so-called Christians. First I want you to see James' approach. James his approach. Verse 19.

"You believe that God is one? You do well." What we see here is James uses or appears to use sarcasm. James is placing an emphasis in his teaching. He's not just trying to be a smart aleck. He's trying to place emphasis. He's trying to heighten their attentiveness to what he is trying to say. Now we know that James is a loving teacher, but James uses sarcasm. Notice also that James is using an illustration to teach them. What is he doing? James is saying, "All right, I want to show you what you're like. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to cast a story alongside of you to illustrate to you who you are." So this is James' approach.

He uses sarcasm and he uses a teaching tool. But then also, second, I want you to see James' teaching tool is demons. His teaching tools, his teaching tool are the demons. You don't have to turn there, but let me turn to the Gospel of Mark. Chapter 5, this is an incident of Jesus dealing with someone who was possessed by unclean spirits. And I want you to notice as Jesus approaches this particular one, I want you to notice what happens.

Verse 6 of chapter 5, "And seeing Jesus from a distance, he ran up and he bowed down before him and crying out with a loud voice, he said, 'What do I have to do with you, Jesus, son of the Most High God?'" Who is talking here? This is not the man. This is the demons that are within the man. Because in the Scripture, we see this is the demoniac man who came out of the tombs. What does he go on to say?

"I implore you by God, do not torment me, for he had been saying to him, 'Come out of the man, you unclean spirit.'" These are the demonic spirits that are talking to Jesus, and Jesus' teaching tool for the Christians or the so-called Christians that James is dealing with are the demons. Now let's just divide this teaching tool of the demons. Let's just see what James is trying to do. Notice right here as we've read in Mark that the demons have proper belief. The demons, they have a proper belief as what we have read. We notice that they believe in the one true God. They believe in the one true God. They believe Jesus is the son of God.

Then also we see that they believe in the judgment to come. I went back and I studied so many of the different accounts where the demons would speak to Jesus. He never, he not, they didn't always speak to Jesus. But many times they would beg him not to judge them. So they have a proper belief. They believe that God is one. They believe that Jesus is the son. And they believe in the judgment that is to come. Also notice that the demons even fear God. They even fear God. What did it say that the man did? The man went and fell at his feet. Going back to the book of James in verse 19, what does it say? You believe that God is one? You do well.

The demons also believe and shudder. Now this word shudder in verse 19, in the original it means to bristle or to tremble or to be fearful. The King James translates it "trimble" and that's very accurate. So what we see here is that the demons actually do fear God. Matthew Henry the Old Puritan says of this, "They tremble not out of reverence but hatred in opposition to that one God whom they falsely believe in." They believe but yet they are not converted. What do we see here? The demons even fear God. Then also we must notice that the demons are in rebellion against God. I went back and made a few notes.

They rebelled against God and glory passed. We know that Isaiah gives us that account when Lucifer rebelled against God and he took so many of those angels with him and there was this great rebellion in glory and somehow, some way there was a war there in glory and they were cast out of heaven. The demons rebelled against God. Also we see that they rebelled against God during Jesus' ministry. They were constantly in opposition to Jesus although they were no match for the Son of God. And also if we understand spiritual things, they are rebelling against God even today.

And James is using the demons in their proper belief, their fear of God, in their rebellion against God to illustrate the faith of these people. MacArthur has a rather lengthy discourse on these demons but it needs to be read. He says, "As far as factual doctrine is concerned, demons are monotheists, all of whom know and believe there is one true God. They also are very much aware that scripture is God's word, that Jesus Christ is God's Son, that salvation is by grace through faith, that Jesus died, was buried and was raised to atone for the sins of the world, and that he ascended to heaven and is now seated at their Father's right hand.

They know quite well that there is a literal heaven and a literal hell. They doubtless have a clearer knowledge of the millennium and its related truths than does even the most devoted Bible scholar. But of that orthodox knowledge, divinely and eternally significant as it is, cannot save them. They know the truth about God, Christ and the Spirit, but hate it and them." What do we see? The demons are perfectly orthodox. Their doctrine is true. Their theology is accurate. But yet they tremble. Why? Because they are in rebellion against God. Now what is James saying in this verse? Demons who have faith with no works are the same as the demons.

As a matter of fact, the demons have a more accurate belief than most. James is saying their confessed faith and factual knowledge is not enough and they are just like the demons. Some of you might say, "Wow, preacher." James says it. Look, I can't think of a better explanation or a better example. But that story in Luke chapter 3, when John the Baptist is standing there, that's why he looked at those people and he said, "You are a brood of snakes." Because they had a demonic faith. They had a faith that discounted the lordship of Christ, who Jesus really was. They were orthodox. They were true in their theology.

They professed to live far and love the one true God. So they denied Jesus and that's why he could look at those men and say, "You are a brood of snakes." Because John understood what James later taught. They had demonic faith. We have people all around us just like this. You know, I thought about an example. And it's kind of one that's comical but sad. But you know what it seems like in the church today, people are so excited when some celebrity professes Christ. You ever notice that? I really don't watch TV like most people do. We don't have traditional television. I've said that before.

But you know, there are all these celebrities that come out. And as I was looking at some news, I'm trying to keep up with what's going on in Israel and the Ukraine and places like that. I just saw a little article there, a side article about 30 celebrities who profess to be born again. I just kind of scanned through that. Some of them I'd heard of. Some of them that I know that profess Christ weren't in there. But I just made a little list. You know, the famous golfer Bubba Watson claims to be a Christian. Also the famous actor Steven Baldwin claims to be a Christian.

The old country music artist this past, Johnny Cash, claimed to be a Christian. The actress Jane Fonda claims to have had a born again experience. The NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon claims to be a born again Christian. The old boxer George Foreman claims to be a Christian. Now I'm not here to pass judgment. No doubt there can be someone in Hollywood who is genuinely born again. But if you follow their lives, if you watch their actions, if you follow how they live, you will notice that many of them profess Christ and can even articulate biblical truth, but yet they deny the power of God and they don't have true Christian works.

And according to what James says, it's demonic faith. But you know what's even scarier than that? There are people all around us. Listen, they can tell you theology, doctrine, biblical truth. They can go down the line and recite the Ten Commandments. They've gone through our Sunday school classes, our discipleship training classes. They've gone through our WMUs and our brotherhoods and they've been in revivals and they can tell you Bible truth after Bible truth after Bible truth after Bible truth. But what James is saying is if they have faith without works, even though they have knowledge, it is demonic faith. Go back to what he says.

You believe that God is one. You do well. He's being a smart Elick. The demons also believe, but yet they shudder. It's almost like he's saying they tremble and you don't even tremble. All you do is offer an empty argument. I have faith. I have faith. He's saying you don't even tremble. And it's sad, but our loved ones, if we really get honest, they don't just have a dead faith. They've got a demonic faith. Look, they have a proper confession in word, but it's not saving. Let's move on. Number three, or Roman numeral three, we see a useless position. We see a useless position.

He says right here in verse 20, "But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?" Here's another question. Again, James, he asks a question to get the readers to review and notice the error of their way. He is clearly showing them how useless their position is as they profess Christ, but have no works that prove that they have saving faith. He is explaining to them the uselessness of their position. First, I want you to see that he calls them foolish. Go back to the verse, "But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow?" First, he calls them foolish.

Now the King James says, "O vain man." Now the word vain or foolish basically in the original means empty. James is saying to them that they are empty spiritually. What is he saying? They are vain. They are foolish. They are empty hearted spiritually. And he calls them that. What does he say? "But are you willing to recognize, you foolish, you vain, you empty spiritual man?" Second, I want you to see he calls their faith dead. "But are you willing to recognize, you foolish, empty fellow, that faith without works is useless?" Again, he's touching on what was said in verse 17. We saw that last week. It is a dead faith. It doesn't function.

That word dead that is used all through these verses, what does it communicate? Dead. It can be used to be applied to a dead body. Third, I want you to see he calls their faith useless. "But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?" The English Standard Version, the New International Version, the New American that I'm reading for them, used the word useless. This carries the idea of fruitlessness, no productivity. You get that? This carries the idea of no fruit and no productivity. I'll give you an example.

I referred to my grandfather earlier, but in my family, in my grandfather's family, he had a piece of property and he had a house on that property and it was used as a family getaway. And all my life, my grandmother and grandfather had something in the yard that I'd never seen before, crabapple trees, two of them, one on either side of the yard. And I grew up eating my grandmother's crabapple jelly. Now what I've learned now is you can take any fruit and you put enough sugar with it and it'll taste good. But when we were kids, we would go out and get those crabapples. I mean, they were bitter.

I mean, your whole face would draw up, but you know, it's amazing. One of those crabapple trees died, but the other one lived. And you know what happened to that crabapple tree that lived? It never produced again because it takes two. It was unproductive. And when that unproductive crabapple tree died, it didn't bother my grandfather a bit. We just pushed it over with a tractor. Why? Because it was useless. And that's what James is doing. He is saying you have a useless position. You are foolish. You are vain. You are empty in your words. James is still arguing like he was in verse 18 and he is arguing the uselessness of their position.

He is arguing the uselessness of their faith. He is arguing that they are useless. They are fruitless. They are unproductive and they are even harmful because what has this false faith done to the fellowship? And again, I go back to John the Baptist. Again, that is why John was so harsh. That's why he called them on the carpet. Some might say, "Wow, John, how are you going to gain a crowd by preaching like that?" No, it was the truth. These Jews that were before John that day, they were foolish because they were empty spiritually. They were useless because they had no fruit and they were unproductive.

That's why he said, "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance." He explains their uselessness. See that's what John MacArthur did back in the 80s with that book, The Gospel According to Jesus. He was showing that it was unscriptural, unbiblical to say you can have faith without works. And what he did was he attacked it with verse after verse after verse after verse. And what did he say? It is useless. It is unproductive. And he goes on to name names and show how damaging that false faith was in the church. And he lost a lot of friends. We see James, what is he saying? You have a useless position. It's just words.

Now in conclusion or as we begin to conclude, last week we had dead faith. This week we moved to demonic faith. I want you to see how it builds because see dead faith is an empty profession, but demonic faith is that same empty profession, but along beside it is true biblical knowledge, belief in biblical factual information that can be orthodox and true and right. It can be right down the line, teased, crossed and eyes dotted. But yet James shows that it is demonic in nature. Now just like last week, I concluded the message by some Southern Baptist statistical information.

And I had to go back over this information and I want to bring it back to our attention to show you just how relevant this message is today. Last week I called your attention to what is called the annual church profile statistical summary. What it is that Southern Baptist gather all of their statistical information, they put it together and Life Way Christian Resources publishes this statistical data so that we can have an indication of what's going on in the life of the churches. But I shared with you last week that in 2012 in the Southern Baptist convention, there were over 46,000 churches, there were 15,872,404 church members.

But the weekly attendance averaged 5,966,735 and I explained to you that there were in 2012 9,905,669 people who did not attend but yet had their name on the church roll. And you know I did a little math last night and it didn't take me long. That's two thirds of the people. Oh, AWOL, who knows where? It doesn't get any better in 2013 because the numbers dwindle, the numbers go down. And I want you to notice something, in 2013 there were 46,125 churches, 91 more churches. But yet the numbers went down. Why? Because membership numbers went down and the church attendance numbers went down as well.

But still if you do the math, it's still two thirds of the people are AWOL. Who knows where? So in two years, 2012, 2013, two thirds of the people who had their names on the church roll, they walked down the aisle, took the preacher by the hand. The preacher said, "Here's Johnny, here's Susie, here's his family, here's this little boy, this teenager." And they profess Christ, they love the Lord, they've been baptized and their names on the church roll, two thirds are gone. So if I take the Word of God and I work from the Word of God to that problem, what James says is they have demonic faith.

They had enough factual information to walk down the aisle, articulate a conversion experience, articulate something of significance so the preacher could say, "Here's Johnny, here's Susie, here's his family, here's his teenager, here's this elderly man." They profess Christ, they've been baptized and they remember the church. Because what James is saying is, "Faith without faith, without works is dead." Let me tell you, the fundamental work of a Christian is they will plug their lives into the church. The church is the bride of Christ.

To say that I am a Christian and I don't love the church, that is as idiotic as me saying I love my wife but I don't want to be with her. That's just as erroneous. That's just as wrong. And yet we have throngs of people on our church rolls. Where are they? You can knock on their door, you can take their name, you can take a poll and they can tell you, "Yes, I've been saved. Yes, I'm a member of the church." You can poll them on their biblical knowledge and they can articulate probably biblical truth that you don't know.

Because many of them have been through our Sunday school classes and our discipleship training classes, many of them have taught. But according to James it's demonic. But yet there's something else that alarms me. Last week I called our attention to the pastors task force on Southern, the SBC evangelistic impact and declining baptisms. Basically what this is, this is a task force that is put together to determine why the numbers are declining. And in this it names the men who are a part of this task force, their purpose and their date that they first met in 2013 and it says that they assess the problem.

But I want you to notice what I mentioned last week. It gives statistical information on baptisms, 25% of Southern Baptist churches reported zero baptisms, 60% reported no youth baptisms, that's ages 12 to 17, 80% reported zero to one young adult baptisms, that's ages 18 to 29. The only consistently growing age group in baptisms is age five and under. But yet when I thumb through the area where it talks about addressing problems, it alarms me. They say pray for spiritual awakening. I can agree with that. They say with urgency we must join together in fervent and effective prayer for spiritual awakening in our churches and our nation.

I can agree with that. Second it says model personal evangelism and provide pathways. Because as pastors we must intentionally model and prioritize personal evangelism while providing clear pathways for our congregants to follow. Based on the numbers that I see our personal evangelism stinks. Our methods of evangelism stinks. The way we evangelize stinks. So what they're saying is do better what we've been doing that ain't working. That alarms me. They say right here create a disciple making culture. That is a very nice way to say this. Those people out there they just need discipling.

Listen church I have chased down people for years who don't want to come to church and you cannot make them a disciple. But yet when some man some woman is radically born again. When a young child is born again a teenager is born again they will have a love for the bride of Christ, the things of God, the word of God, the church of God, the people of God, and you won't be able to beat them away with a stick. But yet see according to this one you got to go chase them down and you got to go beg them. That's bogus. It doesn't work. Look when I got saved I didn't know Job from Job.

But I got saved on a Friday night and the next day I was at church. Before I got saved I stayed all night doing this that and the other but after I got saved I stayed out late at the church. I barely knew Old Testament from New Testament but I wanted to hear the word of God. I didn't know what Israel meant. I remember my preacher preaching I kept thinking why is he talking about the Jews? I'm not Jewish. And then finally one day sitting in the seat I realized what it all meant. Jesus was a Jew. And it all came to God. I wanted to be there. And you can't disciple, listen, a goat.

James says they have faith without works and it's demonic in their goats. And it goes on to say part of this addressing the problem serve the next generation. Look the next generation needs the gospel. And look they're talking about reaching the next generation when the current generation has walked out the door. Don't try to reach the guy that's five miles away when the guy who just left and lived right down on the corner you can't reach. I think it was Paul Washer was talking about American missions. He says do you really want to take what we've got over there? Then number five it says celebrate evangelism and baptism.

How can you celebrate baptism when it's not happening? How can you celebrate that kind of evangelism? What am I trying to show you? We have a problem of demonic faith far more than you and I know. That's what's wrong with us. And see if you ask me we ought to do a study of what the scripture says the church should be, what the scripture says the church should preach, how the scripture says the church should function. And look if we start doing that we'll have to get rid of a whole lot of other junk. That's the title of the message, demonic faith. See at first reading you'll think James is being a little harsh.

John the Baptist he's kind of rude. I mean these guys are kind of we can't have that today. That's what we need today. You know it's sad. It's really sad to think that our mothers and fathers, our sons and our daughters, our loved ones, our neighbors and our friends. They have a faith that they can articulate. But it's not a saving faith. And according to James it's demonic. I said this to Brother Keith last night. I know this isn't scripturally accurate.

But it's as if one day when these people that we love die and stand before God and they are cast into the lake of fire and it's as if they're slammed into a jail cell and the demons slam the door closed and they scream through the bars. But no I believe in God. I've been baptized. I believe in Noah and Moses and Abraham. It's as if the demons will look at them and stick out their tongue and say we do too. But it's just that grave. It's just that damning. It's just that horrible. It's scary because in many places we're proud of what we have. But really James would say it's demonic.

Brother I pray that you will rescue us from this dead and this demonic faith. I pray that you will show us just how damning it is. Lord we do need an awakening. But not like what we think. Lord we don't need an awakening to show us how to do what we've been doing better. We need an awakening like Lazarus had. Lord he was dead and he was brought back to life. And I pray God you will rescue us from this cultural Christianity. This game of words. This charade. God we've been duped. We've been lied to. But if we have money in the plate. If we have numbers and the pews we're good.

Lord we've fallen prey to believing that if we can communicate or a theology just ride lead someone down the Roman road we're successful. God I pray that we will see this success. In our own lives as being like Jesus. Being a Bible Christian. Having works true works. That go before our words. And permeate our words and go after our words. Help us to see that true faith built a church full of people who love you. And they really do want to be a Christian in their heart. They really do want to be a Christian at work. They really do want to be a Christian when they're at leisure.

God help us to see that James was trying to purify to reform the error. And God give us an understanding of what you want to give us. Lord I am thankful that you delivered me from this erroneous belief so many years ago. Lord I thank you that I had a pastor who believed that anybody could be lost. People who didn't live for you needed to be saved. Lord I thank you that you kept me from playing the church game. And oh God I pray for those here this morning that need this corrective word. That I've got to believe that there are some here who need to realize that their lost loved one isn't good. Their lost loved one is damned.

Some of us need to realize that the ones that we love and know that are not Christian. Lord it's demonic. Father I pray for that man or that woman that's here this morning that you are showing them that their faith is not noble. It's not true. It's not clean. It's not worthy. It's not biblical. But it is a lie. God I pray that you will show them that their faith is just as wicked and just as vile and just as dirty and just as gross as the faith of the demons. Show them their rebellion. Show them their anarchy. Show them their gross hatred of you. And God by your good grace grant them the ability to repent. Call their name. Open their eyes.

Unstop their ears. And father may rush to your feet to be born from above. We love you. I love you. I thank you that you saved me so long ago. Now I thank you for the truth that we desperately need that you're giving us. This in Jesus name. I want to ask you to keep your heads bowed. Nobody looking around. I want us to close the service a little different this morning. Some of you no doubt are praying for loved ones. Family. Some of you need to pray for yourself. But as the Spirit leaves you, you pray.