INTRODUCTION:

There are so many ways of making an oath.  You’ve probably heard many of these, and maybe you’ve used a few yourselves.  Oaths that use words such as “I swear to God”,  “I swear on a stack of Bibles”, “as God is my witness”, “may God strike me dead if I don’t”, and the list goes on.  As a kid, an oath that I heard quite often was “I swear to God, hope to die, stick a thousand needles in my eye”.  That’s a pretty gross oath!  In the Boy Scouts a favorite oath that was used after making a promise was “scout’s honor”. Is there a particular formula that you have used in order to let people know that you were telling the truth?  Is it necessary to go through that rigmarole so that our word will be trusted?

James seems to come from out of the blue to talk about this subject of swearing and oaths.  As we dig into this verse I think we are going to find some connections with what has been said earlier in this letter.  This is a verse of Scripture that is easy to misunderstand and misinterpret if we don’t look at it from the context of the Old Testament Scriptures, the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the historical setting and culture in which these Hebrew Christians have been immersed since childhood.

I.  THE REPROOF (verse 12a)

II.  THE CORRECTION (verse 12b)

III.  THE REASON (verse 12c)

WELCOME TO THIS NEW CONSTRUCTION SITE:  James 5:12.  I’ll give you a glimpse at the initial blueprint, and will be filling in some of the gaps in the outline today.  Just one verse of Scripture, but there’s a large foundation beneath it!  This could be a sizeable structure by the time we get through with construction, but I won’t swear to it!  You’ll just have to take my word for it.  Work will be moving along quickly on this site, so please come back and see.  The “heavy equiment” is moving in at the moment.