Christ Church Leavenworth
James 5:19-20
November 23, 2025
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OT READING: Ezekiel 3:17-21
NT READING: Jude 22-25
Take Cover
READING OF THE TEXT
Our text this morning is James 5:19-20, these are the words of God:
My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.
PRAYER
Our Father and our God, we come before You this morning through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit. Destroy every argument that our minds might try to raise against You and Your Word this morning and take every one of our thoughts captive to obey Christ, in Whose Name we pray, Amen.
INTRODUCTION
Well, after five rounds of gut punches and eye pokes, we are about to hear the final bell on the beatdown that has been the book of James. It began with a handshake, but ever since it has been all elbows and choke holds. The letter reads something like this: “Hell-o, my name is James, son of Joseph, you killed my Brother, prepare to die.”
The dominant theme of the book of James is that of doing what you have heard and putting your works where your words are. You say you have faith? Great, show me! This passion for confronting hypocrisy was perhaps driven by the fact that James knew all too well what it was like to be associated with Jesus without following Him. He was Jesus’ brother. He grew up with Him. So, He was close to Him, but he was also distant from Him. He was family, but he was not a follower. That is, until Jesus rose from the dead. The risen Christ appeared to James according to 1 Cor 15:7. That changed everything. So, James knows from first hand experience what it’s like to be around Jesus without believing in Him.
Sadly, that situation is the same for many today. They are around Jesus, but not with Him. They are affiliated with Him, but they do not follow Him or His Word. And so, in an effort to confront this, James extended the right hand of fellowship and wrote this letter in order to smack some sense into us. Hard teaching produces softened hearts and that is the desired end of the book of James.
With that in mind, please turn to James 5:19-20 and follow along as we finish our study of the epistle of James.
SUMMARY OF THE TEXT
:19 “My brothers” James begins his final plea on common ground. He does not point out that he is a natural born, half brother of our Lord and Savior, nor does he remind everyone of his authority as the Head of the church in Jerusalem. No, he appeals to the fact that they answer to the same Dad. It is on this ground that he makes his final appeal and prefaces the last admonition of this letter.
So, ”If anyone among you wanders from the truth” If. “If” is a small word and a big deal. In the year 345 BC, Philip II of Macedon was looking to conquer Sparta. He sent a message to the Spartans asking, “Should I come to you as a friend or as a foe?” Their reply was simple: “Neither.” Growing impatient and hoping to impress upon them the seriousness of their situation, Philip responded with the following threat: “If I invade your land, you will be destroyed and you will never rise again.” The Spartans famously replied with a single word: “If.” If is a possibility, but not a given. It serves as a warning. James employs it to warn his readers that anyone can wander. So, take heed, pay attention, stay awake, and keep watch.
God is the only one who can make something out of nothing, but when it comes to people, anyone can make something out of anything. “Anyone” can wander off, and anything can become an idol. So, stay sharp. This isn’t just something lost people “out there” do; it is something that, note what James says, “anyone among you” can do. In saying this, however, James is not trying to produce paranoia in God’s people per se as much as he is trying to prepare men. The problem, however, with saying something like this is that it almost always misses the mark. A preacher says something like, “be careful” and all the careful saints shuffle their feet and fret that they aren’t being careful enough. Meanwhile, Johnny Danger, the kind of person for whom the warning was actually meant, misses the point entirely. The point then is this: do not be more insecure, but be more on guard.
And that is because the word for “wander” that James uses here is elsewhere translated in the NT as “misled or deceived.” So, employ a healthy skepticism. As 1 John 4:1 puts it, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out.” It is not a sin to be lied to, but it is a sin to believe in lies. God, in His kindness, has not left us on our own to guess which is which. There is such a thing as truth, but there is a catch: there is only one of them. James refers to it here using the definite article. Not just “truth,” but “the truth.” The reason a man can be misled is because all roads DO NOT go to the same place. If they did, he could not, technically, be misled. He could be delayed or made to take a detour, but in the end, he would still end up in the same place as everybody else. But hear me out, all roads do not lead to Heaven. That is the lie of the Coexist Cult. If you see that bumper sticker on the car in front of you, do not follow it. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” If that is true, there are no other truths. Christ is Lord and you should come along quietly. If that is not true, Christ is either a liar or a lunatic; and in either case, it does not make sense to continue to call Him “Lord.”
James continues, “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back” So, up until now, this has all been bad news: people you know and love and even call brother can wander off. I have been a Christian long enough now to know that this is not hypothetical: names and faces come to mind. They were with us and then, one day, they weren’t. We pray for many of them every Lord’s Day during our congregational prayer. And here, at the end of :19, we get a glimmer of hope that suggests that these prayers are not in vain.
While anyone can be deceived, “someone” can bring them back. If someone gets lost or confused along the way, they can be retrieved and straightened out. But take note, while anyone can be led astray, not just anyone can bring them back. Now, this is not to say that you have to be a special kind of Seal Team Six Christian in order to try to save the lost. You do not need to be a saint with a very particular set of skills. There are, however, some qualifications to consider when determining who should be sent and when they should go. It isn’t just for anybody at any time.
Listen to the warning of Galatians 6:1 “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” Notice again that “anyone” can get caught up in “any” kind of nonsense. But who should go after them? Anyone? No, according to the passage, “you who are spiritual” should go. But what does that mean? It means someone who is actively walking in the Spirit, bearing the fruit of repentance, and carrying their own load. If you are struggling with your own load, you can still be a Christian, but you might not be in the best position to volunteer to help someone else with their load. If you have your feet on solid ground, you can afford to lend a hand to someone sinking in quicksand, but if you are having a hard time standing on a rock, what makes you think you will fare any better on sand?
There is no problem so bad that you cannot make it worse. Note that Paul warned “those who were spiritual” by saying, “keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” Why? Because as we’ve observed several times already, anyone can get caught in transgression… even someone on a rescue mission. So, make sure that you’re in a position to offer help before you volunteer and if you are, be careful.
Because, getting back to James, what was the point of finding the right “someone” to go out? To “bring someone else back.” The modern push towards empathy moves that goal post. It does not want to bring the person back, it wants them to feel “seen” right where they are. The goal is to make them feel better about the position they are in, not to convince them to put themselves in a better position. But a Christian cannot make time for that kind of nonsense. Lives are at stake. You are either going to feel uncomfortable before God for not saying something or you are going to feel uncomfortable before people because you said something. And yes, that is easier said than done, but our duty is not done until we’ve said it.
And when you do, know this :20 “let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death” There are many unknowns involved. How will they respond? How long will it take? Will you get tongue-tied? Will they get defensive? But in all of these what-ifs, James wants you to be absolutely sure of something: “whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death.” In other words, it is worth the risk.
Consider this exhortation from Francis Schaeffer, "We as Bible-believing evangelical Christians are locked in a battle. This is not a friendly gentleman's discussion. It is a life and death conflict between the spiritual hosts of wickedness and those who claim the name of Christ. It is a conflict on the level of ideas between two fundamentally opposed views of truth and reality. It is a conflict on the level of actions between a complete moral perversion and chaos on one side and God's absolutes on the other. But do we really believe that we are in a life and death battle? Do we really believe that the part we play in the battle has consequences for whether or not men and women will spend eternity in hell? Sadly, we must say that very few in the evangelical world have acted as if these things are true. It would be closer to the truth to admit that our response has been a disaster." So, do not listen to that voice in your head that says this isn’t that big of a deal or that it can wait until later. Do not look only to your own salvation but also to the salvation of others.
Consider the following: Proverbs 24:11 “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” If you see someone sleep walking to their death, try to wake them up. You may have to raise your voice. You may need to do our best impression of an alarm clock. Just keep chirping. Do not give them a snooze button. They may end up throwing you across the room. But if they don’t wake up, they will die. Remember our NT reading from Jude :22-23 “Have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.” If you see a soul flirting with fire, snatch him away from the flames before he gets burnt. Have mercy on him. Yes, he should not have wandered so close to the flames, but you should not let him get burned without a fight. Show mercy. Get into that fight. Now, mercy is different from grace. They are not synonyms. Grace is getting a good that you were not owed, like getting ice cream for the kids or flowers for your wife just because. That is grace. But mercy is NOT getting the bad that you DID deserve. See the difference. Grace is getting good that you did not earn, mercy is NOT getting bad that you have coming to you.
So have mercy on those who doubt. Their doubts may be their fault. That’s why they need mercy. They should not have entertained those thoughts or read those books or gotten too close to that person, but they did. Have mercy on them and try to snatch them out of the pot before it boils. They don’t know that they are about to be cooked, but you do.
Recall our OT reading from this morning from Ezekiel 3:17-21 “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul.” You cannot make someone listen, but you can make sure you speak. Yes, they may ignore your warning for them, but don’t let that be an excuse to ignore God’s warning to you. If you do, you are simply in the same boat as the other guy, drifting away from the Word of God.
There are many sins, but there is only one Gospel. There are any number of ways to wander off, but there is only one way to get back. As such, sins will always outnumber the solution, but they will never overwhelm it. The grace of God in the Gospel of Christ is sufficient to save anyone for any number of things. So, cheer up! You are worse than you thought, but God’s mercy is better than you imagined.
After five chapters of spiritual jiu jitsu, James has us dead to rights. The screen reads, “Finish Him!” So, what does he do? He reminds us that the blood of Jesus “will cover a multitude of sins.” So, if you have a bunch of sins, come and welcome to Jesus Christ. He has more forgiveness than you have sins. If you’re not convinced that you have that much to be forgiven for, come and welcome to Jesus Christ. You are wrong, but welcome. Even the sin of thinking you don’t have much to be forgiven for can be forgiven and covered by Christ.
Remember this am’s declaration of pardon from 1 John 1:8-9, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” There is no one sin so bad that Christ cannot cover it and there is no number of sins so large that Christ cannot cover them. So, what keeps you from coming? There is no one so bad that Christ cannot save him and no amount of sin so much that He cannot account for it. Notice the word James uses here, “cover.”. We are more familiar with phrases like, “your sins are forgiven,” or “your debt is paid,” and YES, and AMEN, to all of it. But here, James uses the word “cover” to describe what Christ does for your sins. But what does that mean?
When we hear the word “cover” with respect to “sin,” we usually think about trying to hide them, as in a cover up. And that’s no good, right? Why would God want us to participate in a cover up? Let me explain. Trying to hide your sins is wrong. The problem with your attempts to cover your sins, let’s say by lying about them or keeping them secret, is that they don’t work. They don’t cover them. That’s the problem. The recognition that your sins need to be covered is good and proper. They do need to be covered. The problem is that you’re really bad at it.
Remember back to the Garden of Eden. We have the first man, the first woman, and the first marriage and these words from Genesis 2:25 describe the scene: “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” So, the man and the woman were uncovered before God and before each other and there was zero shame to be found anywhere. They had nothing that needed to be covered. Shortly thereafter, however, the serpent tricked the woman into eating the forbidden fruit and then she gave some to her husband who also ate it. Genesis 3:7 describes what happened next, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” What was the first thing they did after sinning? They tried to hide it. They got creative. They learned how to sow. They looked at fig leaves in a new way. They were motivated to cover their crime. But it wasn’t enough. You cannot cover one sin with another.
Look what happened in the next verse: “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
They had tried to cover parts of their bodies from each other with fig leaves, but when God came around, they went even further and tried to hide their entire bodies behind the trees of the Garden. In other words, they lied. That is what camouflage is. It is pretending to be something you are not. “I’m a forest, Don’t mind me.” And while there may be a lawful way to do that during times of war with wicked men, there is never a lawful way to declare war on God. For that is what lying is – deception is a declaration of war. Children, if you lie to your parents, you are declaring war on them. Husbands and wives, if you lie to your spouse, you are declaring war on them. And if you lie to God, you are declaring war on Him. So, not only are you a sinner, but you are also stupid… and about to lose a war to boot. When our first parents tried to hide their privates behind some leaves and their bodies behind some trees, it was not only ineffective, it was an act of treason. You cannot cover one sin with another one. God sees through it all.
Listen to what Adam said in :10 after he got caught, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” Adam knew he was naked. He tried to lie to himself by putting on fig leaves, but he still knew. And at the end of the day, he knew that God knew. And that’s why he hid. He knew the fig leaves weren’t covering his sins, so he found a new place to hide. But God saw through that as well. So, Adam tried tried to cover his sin with excuses. :12, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’” Where lies don’t work, many try excuses. But excuses cover responsibilities about as well as fig leaves cover privates. Which is to say, they don’t. Not to be outdone by her man, the woman, apparently now in the mood to follow his lead, decided to try her hand at blameshifting. :13 “Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”
But the sins of others cannot cleanse you of your own. Your sins will find you out and curses come with them as we see in :14-19. In :15, however, when cursing the serpent, God says something surprising: a Seed of the woman would someday save the sons of man from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” The Son of God was born in the likeness of men that He might make men into sons of God. He covered their sins so that they might again be naked and unashamed before God.
Because Adam failed at a tree, Jesus was nailed to one. Because Adam disobeyed under a tree, Jesus obeyed on one. God sent His Son to cover our sins. As a way of providing them an idea of what was to come, God provided Adam and Eve with a better covering. :21 “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” God looked upon the fig leaves of Adam and Eve and had mercy on them. The only reason they needed to be covered in the first place was because of their sin and yet instead of leaving them to hide behind fig leaves and trees, God provided them with better clothes made of skin and fur. And in this, there is a picture of what was to come. Just as an animal had to die in order to cover their bodies, Jesus would have to die in order to cover their souls.
We try to cover our sins, but we fail. The only way to cover your sins is to drag them out into the light so that Christ can cover them. Darkness cannot cover them and Christ will not dwell in darkness. You must bring your sins to the light that they may evaporate under the heat and light of the Son. You cannot hide your sins from Christ. “Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.”(Mt 10:26) Nothing is covered that isn’t covered by Christ. It will be revealed. Why? Because it isn’t as covered as you think it is. “No creature is hidden from His sight, all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:13) No one is hidden from God. No one. Nothing is hidden from Him. No one. Everyone is naked, exposed, and in the dock.
You cannot cover or conceal your sins. There is nothing that can protect you from the firing squad of God. There is nothing that can hide you from His sights. You cannot cover sins by redefining them. You cannot conceal your evil by calling it “good.” You cannot relabel the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You cannot cover your sins with good works. If you try to cover your sins with doing good things, you only end up, as Martin Luther once said, with “snow covered turd.” You may look nice and pure, but the Son will reveal how much you stink. You cannot cover your sins with lies. You can throw some people off the scent by lighting a candle, but the hound of Heaven knows what you did and He will always sniff you out. By the grace of God, all your sins can be forgiven, even the sin of trying to cover up your sins. Confess that as a sin and it will be forgiven. So, stop trying to hide your sins from God and start confessing them to Him. For in Christ, your sins really can be covered, hidden, and forgiven… thanks be to God.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, Your Word is living and active and sharper than a double-edged sword. Our hardness of heart is like a pad of butter before the hot knife of Your Word. Cut through all of our attempts to cover our sins that keep You at bay. Strip off every fig leaf we have fashioned that we might be truly covered in better clothing of the life, death, and resurrection of Your one and only Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. We ask these things in His name and we offer up the words of the prayer He taught us to pray singing…
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