2026-09-20 Living a Holy Life - Daring to be different

This morning's message wraps up a series on daring to live differently based on the book of James. It touches on thinking differently in faith, making faith real in daily life, and now, living a holy life. Living holy doesn't mean perfection but the direction we face together, striving with Jesus, not on our energy. The focus is on coming as we are, learning from Jesus, and living in step with Him. James emphasizes wisdom, humility, and good deeds, cautioning against envy, selfishness, and worldly desires. He urges us to submit to God, resist evil, and humble ourselves, knowing that a good life is rooted in wisdom, humility, and good deeds. It's a challenging but worthwhile path to follow. But this morning we're going to be finishing up a series that we've been in the last couple of weeks. We have been journeying through the book of James, this letter that was written to an early church following this theme of daring to live life differently. This has been a short series with us and if you've missed any of the Sunday mornings in this series you can head to our YouTube channel. On there now is every Sunday morning from Barry's site but also Sudbury's site as well. They're doing all the same things that we are. So the first week of this series we looked at what it means to think differently as we step into faith with Jesus. Last week we looked at what it means to make our faith real. What our faith looks like as we live that out into the world. This week we're bringing both of those aspects together as we look at what it really means to live a holy life. Now I wonder for you, as you hear this phrase, live in a holy life, I wonder what maybe that stirs in you as you consider this whole theme. Is it inspirational to you? Maybe you're in the room this morning and you've encountered Jesus, you're reading your Bible maybe for the first time and seeing this man, Jesus, that we believe is still calling us today and you're seeing the way he's doing life and you're thinking that's inspiring, that's what I want to be like. Maybe there's someone you know and you look at them and you think now that is what a holy person looks like. When I grow up I want to be just like them. Or maybe you come at this whole area and instantly you start to think of where the gaps are in your own life. We can think maybe if I was more patient, maybe if I read my Bible more, prayed more, maybe if I was kinder, that would look more like me living a holy life. Or maybe you're even one step beyond that, that actually this whole idea of living a holy life, it just brings up a sense of defeat in you, that you've tried, that maybe you've failed and you're tired. Maybe the idea of a holy life just conjures up to you a list of things that maybe you currently do, that you're thinking you probably shouldn't be doing. Actually to live a holy life might be to give up some stuff. But however we come at this focus this morning, we want to just start by coming back to what does it really mean to live? A bit of baggage around this crosshead already is that we will say as a church that we invite people to come as they are. Come as you are. And it's not just a cute phrase, it actually sums up what we see being lived out in the life of Jesus. If you read through the Gospels, what you will see of how he gathered and did life with these men that followed him, with the community beyond that who began to gather around him, was that he takes this bunch of very ordinary and very different people and he says, would you just come and follow me? Leave what you've been doing behind and come and learn what it looks like to enter into real life as you follow with me. He didn't invite them to a list of rules or to this club where everyone is really very well behaved, where they've got their best face and where they are just fine all the time. If you read through the Gospels, these people mucked up a lot. The things that come out of their mouth, they're just like you and me. But Jesus' invitation to us is to come as we are, not when we're all sorted. Not only on our best day but also on our very worst days when we find ourselves in the pit not knowing what to do next and to just make that choice to keep following him. And so what that means for us as a church community as we look to follow Jesus as a group of people together is that we want this church, we want this community of people to be a place where we all just get to come as we are. We get to come as we are but look towards Jesus and we learn how to live in step with him together and see what it is that he might do with our lives. Jesus is inviting us into a life where we thrive with him, not strive out of our own energy and our best efforts. And this is what a holy life is all about. It is not about perfection. But a holy life is about the direction in which we are each of us and together corporately facing our lives in. So with that in mind we're going to pick up in this letter from James this morning. We're in chapter 3. If you've got your Bibles with you or on your phone but it's also going to come up on the screen behind me. And we're starting at verse 13. And James writes, Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in humility that come from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us, that he gives us more grace? That is why scripture says God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble. Submit yourselves then to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up. Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and destroy but you, who are used to judge your neighbour. Now listen, you who say today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say if it is the Lord's will we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone then knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them. Now as we reach the end of this passage that we're sitting in this morning, we've just read James ask us this question. Maybe it's a question that you've considered for yourself. And he asks, what is your life? Is it a good life? What is it built on? What direction are you pointing your life in? And I can't imagine that in this room with all of us this morning, there isn't one of us who doesn't want to live a life that is good, which has an impact, which doesn't feel like it's wasted. And as we read through that passage, all that James says, we need to do is to look at ourselves. And as we read through that passage, all that James says, we don't want much of what James points out, do we? There are some dark places that he speaks about in there. Some places where we don't want to live. But actually, as we've read that this morning, we can all recognize that there are times that we find ourselves in those places in our hearts. We'd all love to fast forward through to verse 17 where James talks about being these peacemakers who sow in peace and reap this harvest of righteousness. And yet we often find ourselves feeling quite far from it. If we look back on our day, do we see ourselves sowing peace? Or do we often sit there and just have a list of things we wish we'd maybe done a little differently? And the starting place for this fruitfulness that James describes, it comes from a rootedness. Just like if you look at a tree, a tree for it to grow, for it to flourish, for it to look as healthy as that one in that picture there. That tree has to have really good roots that can draw up all the data and reflect what the fruit of our lives looks like, what we're growing to look into. Is it healthy? And if we were to sum up all that James has said in that passage for how to live this good life and what it would look like, it would be this. That our holy life looks like good deeds done in humility from a place of wisdom. Good deeds done in humility from a place of wisdom. Now we can look at that and say, what a great rule to live by, what a great thing to aim for. But we don't need to have been trying to live this way for more than about half an hour to know that it's not easy. But this guidance from James is so good. But along the way of trying to live like this, we encounter people and situations and scenarios which we find ourselves getting tripped up in. So this morning as we take a look at what it is that James is saying and also we then look at how we want to live this out in our own lives. Where should we be looking for the things that might trip us up? The places that we can find ourselves getting tangled up, feeling far from this honourable, good and wise life that we're wanting to head towards and to live out. And the area that James points us towards to be alert of tripping up is in our relationships. We know, don't we, that relationships have the potential to be such a precious part of our lives. Whether that's our family, if we're married, our marriages, whether it's with our work colleagues, our neighbours, the community that we find around us. We know, don't we, that when things are going well, these places are life-giving and fun and restorative and it's like a little slice of heaven. But we also know the flip side of that is that when they go wrong, it can be so painful, it can be destructive in our lives even. And James asks this really practical question. He says, what causes fights and quarrels among you? Well, James is really real. He says that this will look like for you at the root of all that's often going on in those places of conflict. It looks like envy that we're looking at what somebody else has and we either want it for ourselves or we're feeling so robbed of something because we don't have it. We find ourselves judging others where we're looking on either up close or from afar and just judging their behaviour. Well, they shouldn't be doing this and they should be doing that and why do they make that choice? That's a stupid choice to make. We're judging other people. We're taking the place that actually only God is intended to take. We can find ourselves getting caught up in gossip and slander where we're talking badly about another person to others whether there is any truth in it or not. We can find ourselves getting caught up in self-centeredness where we think what we want, our desires, are what is right, are what God wants. We begin to put ourselves in the centre thinking that everyone else is just around to serve us. And we know, don't we, that when we find ourselves caught in these places of conflict with others, it's horrible, isn't it? We feel it emotionally. We can even feel it in our bodies, that stress and that tension, that sick feeling when we know we've got to see them. Or the space in our heads that it takes up as we go round and around and around what they've done, what we've said, what we want to say. We can waste hours going over and over it. And we know, if we really think about it, this is never a place of life, is it? And spiritually it is absolutely a place of death for us. Nothing can grow from this place. But when we find ourselves in these places, and we all do, we all will do, it's actually an opportunity for us to start to notice it as a red flag in our lives. A red flag on the state of our hearts, how soft they are. James says, don't you know that friendship with the world, dealing with life, you know, what he means by that is when we find ourselves dealing with life as the world does, the way the world behaves, rather than the way that Jesus shows us, the way he points to. And he points out the simple fact that every time we do that, every time we align ourselves with the world, what we're doing is actually making ourselves an enemy of God. We're putting ourselves opposite what he says. To just carry on in our own ways, even without realizing it, signals that we think in some way we know better than God does. Or we may find ourselves believing the lie that we cannot change the way we've always done life. It's just always what I've done. I can't help but respond by that, in that way. You know, these ways in which we can live our responses out, they all start with those inner thoughts that we have. It's all of what we spoke about on the first week of this series. But James says that if we hold on to these emotions, if we hold on to this envy and this jealousy, this selfish ambition, you know, going after the things that we don't have at all costs, we will find disorder. Because out of disordered thinking will always grow disordered life. It's what is at the root, so it's what will come out. It's the stuff that when we feed the envy and the jealousy and the judgment in ourselves, that's the place where we choose to root ourselves. We shouldn't be surprised when it starts to come out of our mouth. When it's typed out on a text or on a social media post. You know, those moments where we just kind of want to smush it down a bit and say, well I didn't mean that, you didn't understand what I meant. You know, as I was planning for this morning, I found this sticker that said, I'm not arguing, I'm just trying to explain why I'm right. You know, sometimes it is as simple as that we don't want to see what it is that we're doing. We don't want to see the place that we're living from. And for many of us, we're walking through life carrying baggage. We're carrying hurts and behaviors and ways of thinking and doing life that we may have been carrying for years. We don't know how to do life in any other way. You know, some of it is stuff we've had modeled to us. Other things we've just picked up, but those red flags, rather than becoming a place of shame and condemnation for you, something to add to the load, these red flags are intended to draw our attention to things. They're intended to be a place where we meet Jesus. They should bring us to a place of humility. And humility far from being about thinking less of ourselves, far from being that place of shame and condemnation. Look at what I've done, I'm just awful. Humility is actually all about turning our hearts and our minds towards God rather than ourselves. Not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less. Less about how we feel, how we want to respond. And asking God, what do you say about this? When I find myself in this place, what do you say about it? What do you want my response to be? How can I respond in a way that even though there's pain and hurt, that actually I can still come out of it, I can live it out, bringing life. Rather than just walk it out, it brings us back to Jesus. And James gives us five key things to keep us looking up rather than in. He gives us five keys to move us from the inward looking place that we may have found ourselves living more than we would like. To begin to look outwards and into closeness with Jesus, but ultimately into freedom. And the first thing James points us towards, he says, Submit yourselves to God. Bring yourselves to Him. I don't know about you, but I know that God is everywhere. He is always with me. He sees and knows everything. And yet I can still find myself avoiding Him. I can know that He's pointing out something of the way I'm doing life to me. He can just be putting His finger on it. I know He's wanting to bring my attention to it. And yet I can still avoid just bringing it to Him. Maybe you know that feeling too. But actually we have a choice to submit to Him. We don't need to clear a day in our diaries to do that. We can start just in the moment that we know His finger on something. To just make that choice to be still with Him and say, God, there are some things that I am choosing to bring to you. That I'm choosing in this moment with this thing to come under Your authority. To say, I don't know what to do with it, but I know that You want to do something with it. As we do that, we're choosing again to give Him the final say in what our lives look like. Secondly, James says, wash your hands and purify your heart. He says, recognize that there are some things that you've picked up from the world that you're just carrying around with you. The stuff that's just got stuck to your heart. Whether that's behaviors or attitudes or ways of dealing with things that you just know you need to be rid of, you want to be rid of. That you know are getting between you and God, and not just that, but you and the people around you. Thirdly, he says that we would come to God with repentance. Repentance, it can sound like a really heavy word, can't it? But repentance is a gift. Maybe if there's one thing you view differently this morning, it would be that repentance is a gift given to you. It gives us a way to come back, not through being perfect. This side of heaven we will never be. But it gives us the ability to come and say sorry. To come before God and to set our lives again in His direction. James describes this repentance as looking like grieving and mourning and wailing. Now we may not outwardly see that. You may do that in the privacy of your own home. But what he's talking about is like this gut-level sorry. That sorry that we are when God just breaks our heart for the ways that we've been unfaithful to Him. Where we've been double-minded. Where we've said I want to be faithful to you. I give you my whole life. And then we've gone and been faithful to a different way of doing things. We've turned our attention slowly or all at once away from Him. And the next two things that James points us to are astonishing actually. He says resist the devil and he will flee. You know we have an enemy who wants to hold us back from everything that God has for us. He wants to trip us up and then when we do he wants to cover us in shame and condemnation that just slimes us. That makes us stationary which stops us going back to God. But the invitation here is to resist the devil and he will flee. And to do that is you know when these red flags come up in your life pay attention. As you come across those situations where you feel the yuck just rising up in you. You know you can feel it in the pit of your stomach. You feel it in your chest. You can feel it in the pit of your stomach. You feel it in your chest. But actually in that moment you would just acknowledge that feeling. Submit that feeling to God that God I know I've got envy going on. I know I'm being really judgmental. But I'm bringing it to you. I'm bringing it under your authority. And his promise is that as we do that as we practice we get to practice building this response into our life. That the enemy will flee. He has to. Because the truth over all our lives is that Jesus has won. We are his. He has the power to break those things in our life. And finally James says come near to God and he will come near to you. You know the promise is that God is ready and waiting for us to come to him. And his response as we do this. The Psalms it promises us that he will never deny a repentant heart. He will never reject a heart that is sorry. But his promise is that as we come near to him his response is to draw so close to us. You know we can be so afraid can't we? If we come to him we're going to be met with disappointment or rejection or anger. But his promise is that he meets us. As we draw near to his heart his response is always to welcome us. Whether that's for the first time or for the hundredth time for the same thing. He meets us as his friend. James is pointing us towards not just a good life but to a kingdom life. What a holy life looks like. And it's a life where as we begin to step into it. It's like we're given the keys that unlocks the kingdom. In our families, in our friendships, in our church. As we allow God to bring his freedom. As we go after his way into a free and a holy life. Let's stand together.