December 15 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

James 1:

¹James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.
²My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
³Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
⁴But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
⁵If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
⁶But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
⁷For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.
⁸A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
⁹Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:
¹⁰But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
¹¹For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.
¹²Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
¹³Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
¹⁴But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
¹⁵Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
¹⁶Do not err, my beloved brethren.
¹⁷Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
¹⁸Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
¹⁹Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
²⁰For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
²¹Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
²²But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
²³For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
²⁴For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
²⁵But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
²⁶If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.
²⁷Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

Devotional:

James gives us many pictures! We have seen how God used the stones in the river and how He used the rainbow. We know how Jesus used the bread and the wine and the shepherd and the sheep. James uses the sea tossed in the wind— perhaps the sea of Galilee. Later in the book he uses ships and fountains and fire. In this section he uses the mirror.

The mirror he had in mind may have been made of polished metal rather than glass. But even if it was not as good a reflector as our mirrors, it still showed up the dirt smudges and the unkempt hair.

Do our children wonder what good it does to read the Bible? Have them look in the mirror. Then go on to the practical precept of verse 25. Looking in the mirror is not enough to change us. We were acquainted with a scholar who read the Bible in seven languages yet continued in his unbelief. People may attend several Bible studies a week and yet show little growth. The good in reading and studying God's Word lies in obeying the God who speaks in it. As we see the smudges we need to cleanse ourselves from them. We need to comb that disheveled hair.

This is the lesson of James the teacher. 'Faith, if it hath not works, is dead' (2:17). His lesson is for us today and for our children.