James The Lesser The Twelve Apostles Sermon Series Part 10 of 14

Hello and welcome to Social Media Ministries. My name is Spencer Coffman. Thank you so much for being with us. We are in the midst of a great sermon series about the Twelve Apostles. We’ve spoken about quite a few of them already.

Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, and today we are talking about another James. Today is James the Greater. We already spoke about James the Greater. He is James the brother of John. Today is James the Greater, possibly the brother of Matthew but we don’t know. We’re going to dive into that.

So if this is your first time with us, please hit that subscribe button. Hit the like button. Follow us, and be alerted on future sermons. In addition, please feel free to check out the playlist to get caught up on all of these sermons in this series. You can check that out on our YouTube channel or also on our website. We’ve got great messages.

If you’re a returning visitor, I really hope you have been sharing. I hope you’ve been using those buttons. Sharing on your social media networks to get more people to know who these great disciples were. These were some excellent men, some excellent Christians who we can learn from.

You can identify with every single one of them, and probably one or two more so than the others. You can see them and see you in their lives. You can. You can completely relate to them and take what they have done and apply it in your life and get out there and live for Jesus.

So let’s talk about James. James is also known as James the Greater. He was – he was the son of Alphaeus. We get this in Matthew Chapter 10 Verse 3. Matthew 10:3, we have “Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus.” James son of Alphaeus.

Now James is not mentioned a lot. He’s actually only mentioned a handful of times, like five times. So not much is known about him. However, we call him James the Greater because there is another disciple named James, who is known as James the Greater.

Now, this James was the brother of John, he was a Son of Thunder and he is known as James the Greater. More is known about him and that’s why he is called greater.

This is James the Greater. Now he’s a son of Alphaeus which makes him potentially the brother of Matthew. Remember Matthew was also a son of Alphaeus and we saw that before in Mark Chapter 2 Verse 14 where it said, “Matthew son of Alphaeus.”

Now of course, there is some debate about this. Just like today, in today’s world, a lot of people are named John. How many Johns do you know? A lot of Johns out there. Then, Alphaeus was a pretty popular name.

Kind of a weird name to be popular, but guess what? In that day and age, it was popular. So there could’ve been multiple Alphaeuses and Matthew was the son of Alphaeus and James was the son of Alphaeus.

Now the Bible does not do anything by mistake, so why would it identify them both as a son of Alphaeus if there were two different Alphaeuses and if they’re completely unrelated? We don’t know.

Someday when you get to Heaven, if you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you can ask God and you can say, “Hey why did you call them both sons of Alphaeus?”

He might tell you, “Ah because they’re brothers,” or “Because they are cousins,” or for whatever reason. He will give you the reason because it was all done with a purpose and a reason.

Some scholars say, “No, they are not brothers — multiple Alphaeuses out there.” Some say, “Hey, there is a reason they were both called sons of Alphaeus, they would have to be brothers.” At the very least they could be cousins.

They could be somewhat related and so that’s all. We’re going to leave that at that. It’s possible Matthew and James were indeed related, but not much is known about James.

Some scholars make the mistake of believing that he wrote The Book of James in the New Testament. I say, “make the mistake” because that book of the New Testament was written by a different James who is, in fact, James the brother of Jesus.

There are a few Jameses in the Bible. We have James the brother of Jesus. We have James the Greater. James the Greater, and then there is another James mentioned that we really know nothing about, like literally nothing. His name is mentioned and that’s it.

And if you want to know all the different Jameses in the Bible, you can do some Google searches and you can figure that out and get who they are and you can learn about that on the internet.

It’s a great place. Keep in mind anything you do learn there, though, could have been twisted or not quite accurate. So you gotta check multiple sources. You gotta do some good research.

But let’s go to Mark. Mark is directly in the Bible. Mark Chapter 6 Verse 3, this is James the brother of Jesus. So let’s see what this is all about. 6 Verse 3. It says (Mark 6:3),

“‘Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him.”

This is when Jesus was in His hometown trying to preach and prophesy and teach. And people in His hometown said, “No. We know this guy. He’s not special. We watched Him grow up. He’s a normal kid,” and they did not believe Him.

But the point is there, that one of His brothers is James. And James obviously, stepped into His calling and he wrote The Book of James. We’re not talking about him though. We’re talking about James the apostle who was not Jesus’ brother.

That could be why it was known as the son of Alphaeus, to give that distinction. We have the James, which is, the brother of John, son of Zebedee. Then we have James, which is, the son of Joseph, which is, Jesus’ brother.

And then we have another James son of Alphaeus who could potentially be Matthew son of Alphaeus’ brother. So it gives distinctions to identify who these men were.

So this guy is called James the Greater because the Bible rarely talks about him. He’s hardly mentioned. In fact, every time he is mentioned, it is the last — not quite the last, but it’s toward the end of a list.

And he’s always referenced in every list as James son of Alphaeus. Every time. He’s always James son of Alphaeus. So little is known about him, that there is even some disagreement on how he died.

We don’t even quite know how the guy died. Some people say — Okay, well, first of all, let’s take a look at what we know about how he lived. This is James son of Alphaeus. James the Lesser. A follower of Jesus.

So no doubt Jesus said, “Come. Follow me,” and he did. He left everything behind, just like the other disciples. We see that as a common theme. They get up. They leave everything. They follow Jesus.

So this James son of Alphaeus got up. Left everything. Followed Jesus. He lived his life with Jesus. Healing. Teaching. Learning. Understanding. When Jesus died, James probably went out with another disciple and taught and prophesied and he was filled with the Holy Spirit.

He probably did some signs and wonders. Things like that. He was eventually killed — martyred for his faith. So he was a Christian. Some people somewhere did not like that and killed him.

Now there were two potential schools of thought, so to speak, two ways that he could’ve died. Now, of course, he could’ve died any number of ways, but these are the two that people disagree on.

Some say he was sawn to pieces, probably while he was alive. They laid him out on a table or something, either publicly as an execution, and got out the saws and started cutting him up as a form of public spectacle to kill the Christians. Or he was beaten and then hit on the head with a club.

So like maybe during the beating, somebody whapped him with a club and it killed him and they didn’t get to finish whatever sentence — maybe they were going to crucify him — but they gave him a beating first and then accidentally killed him.

Or perhaps he was beaten, and then his form of execution was to be hit on the head with a club and have his skull crushed, and so we don’t know. But those are the two schools of thought. That either he was sawn to pieces, or he was beaten and then bashed on the head with a club and he died.

In either instance, they both seemed to be some form of public execution, not like a crucifixion, but, more similar to like a beheading. Either he was whacked with a club or sawn to pieces. Kind of a public spectacle.

Now you may think that is pretty brutal of an execution. Yes, it is. But in that day and age that was normal. That was normal. People were often beheaded, either with a sword, or an axe, or the guillotine. They were, later, as days went on, people, I guess they didn’t like all the blood, so they started hanging people.

Back then, in this time, Emperor Nero would light Christians on fire and use them as candles in his garden parties. They were the light provided. That he would light them on fire and so there was a lot of brutal stuff back then about how they persecuted Christians. This wasn’t uncommon.

So he could’ve been beaten and then hit on the head or he was sawn into pieces. After all, medieval times they used to slice open your belly and then pull out your intestines on like a spit and your intestines would wrap around it and you would be alive during this whole process.

It was a form of execution and it could last for hours, and people would watch in the town square. You say, “What in the world?” Yes, what in the world? They were godless. Why do you think they are attacking Christians who are trying to bring God to them? They don’t want it, they’re rejecting it.

Brutal. However, because so little is known about James the Greater, none of this information can really be verified and that’s why there are two different opinions. Neither of them can be pinned down as that is the exact way he died.

Maybe he was beaten, hit on the head with a club, and was unconscious and then they sawed him to pieces. Could be all of it. We don’t know. The facts are, though, that he was the son of Alphaeus. Which means he could’ve been a brother of Matthew. So let’s go with that.

If he is the brother of Matthew then he would’ve probably been similar to Matthew. What was Matthew? He was a tax collector. He was educated. He was a money man. People didn’t like him, though, because of that.

So maybe this James was also educated and he was doing something else. He could’ve been working in the square, or the public places, or politics. He maybe learned how to do something.

Maybe he was a medicinal man, or a lawyer, or any type of senate, he worked in the council. We don’t know. But if he was educated, he would have had one of those educated professions.

It’s also possible that he was not the brother of Matthew and he was a son of a different Alphaeus. So then maybe he could’ve been uneducated and really kind of did nothing.

Although, he didn’t do nothing, because he left everything and followed Jesus. But we don’t know. He could’ve been a commoner. Maybe he was a baker, probably not. Maybe he was a butcher, we don’t know.

We don’t know what he was, but there is a very good chance that he was ambitious and he also had to be somewhat educated, as in, he probably could read and write.

He was also ambitious. We know he was ambitious because he was willing to get up and leave everything and follow Jesus. In addition, there is a really, really good chance that he was a sinner. A really good sinner before Jesus called him.

Now a good sinner — I mean he was a bad person. He wasn’t a good person. He was — could’ve been a crook. Maybe he was a brawler or a drunkard, someone that could’ve been outcast. We don’t know.

We don’t know a lot about him, but the chances are if he was someone who was — let’s say, off the deep end, or a drunkard, or something like that, we would know more about him because the Bible would tell us of this great transformation.

This leads us to believe that James was probably an everyday average Joe. He was a normal guy. He probably got up in the morning, went to work, went home at night.

We don’t know if he had a family or anything like that, but he probably worked nine to five and that was it. A very simple life. A common life. Some, sometime along the way, he met Jesus and Jesus said, “Follow me. Come with me.”

And he said, “Yep, I got nothing else to do. Let’s do this.” He said “My life is plain, it’s common, I’m ready. Let me dive in. Let me live a life of adventure, of excitement, following the one who saved me.”

Because he was a sinner and he got saved by Jesus, he was a devout follower of Jesus. A man of excellent faith and he was willing to go wherever Jesus wanted him to go. Wherever. He was sent out, two by two, took nothing with him. Later on, just a cloak.

Don’t even take that. Just take your bag of money. Don’t even take that. Enter into a town. Stay with them as long as you can. If no one wants to put you up, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them. He traveled around preaching the gospel, sharing Jesus with as many people as possible.

We can learn from James. Perhaps this is you. Perhaps you’re out there living your life. You wake up in the morning tired. Maybe not physically tired, but you’re just mentally tired. You’re tired of a boring life.

You’re tired of waking up, putting on the coffee, having your eggs or your cereal for breakfast, getting ready, and going to work. You’re tired of working all day at your job doing the same monotonous tasks day in and day out.

You’re at work all day. You get home at night and what do you do at night? Perhaps you crack a beer and you sit on the couch and you watch TV. Maybe you go out with your friends once a week. Maybe you see a movie at the theater. You’re pretty much just going through life and that is it.

And you’re sitting there like, “What am I doing? What does this life mean? Is there a purpose?” You’re like James. You’re just going through life and you don’t know what is up, what is down. You just day in and day out, nine to five.

You get a weekend, you say, “Great, let me go fishing. Great, let me go out and sit on the deck. Let me have some drinks. Let me stop at the bar. Let me do whatever.” You’re just day in and day out.

Well, guess what? During your day in and day out, Jesus is calling you. He’s calling you. He’s saying, “Hey, come on. Let’s go! Get out of this monotonous situation. Stop being a robot. Don’t live like a zombie.”

You’re so tired. You’re so boring and monotonous and you think your life is boring. Guess what? It is! Because He wants to make it interesting. He is calling to you. Get up! Get up, and follow Him.

He wants you. Follow Him like James did. You say “You know what? My life, my day in and day out life of this — this is my life.” You say, “You know what? I work. I pay bills.

And I work and I pay bills and the only reason I’m working is so I can pay the bills and I’m not happy at my job, but I have to keep it so I can pay the bills and the only reason I live here is because I’m working here.”

And so it’s like this cycle. This vicious cycle of, “Okay I got rent. I got this. I got food. I got this, and then I gotta go work to pay for that.” But guess what? If you didn’t work, you couldn’t live here to do that.

Well, maybe you should just move somewhere else and not have to work there to pay for those bills. But then wherever you move you’d have to pay for the bills there just the same. And you would have to get a job that you might not like in order to do that too.

You say, “It’s hopeless. This world is hopeless.” But guess what? Jesus has overcome this world. And, like James, you can step into the calling and you can live a more adventurous life. Maybe that means traveling around like James did.

Being a missionary. Telling others about Jesus. Relying on God to provide for you. People will give you stuff. People will have you in their homes. Churches will have you speak. You will raise money. You will be able to do that because God will allow it.

You just have to step into that calling. You have to live by faith just like James did. James was willing to do whatever Jesus wanted him to do. Are you willing? Are you willing? Maybe sometimes that is all.

God told Abraham, “Sacrifice your son. Your one and only son,” and Abraham said, “Alright Lord, I’m willing,” and he took him up there. People say, “Why would God tell someone to sacrifice their son?” It’s a test of obedience. A test of faith.

Abraham was willing, but guess what? No. God would not let him go through with it. So he didn’t. He stopped him, and then later, God was willing to sacrifice His own son for us. Jesus died and rose again. God brought Him up from death. Jesus conquered the grave for us.

Are you willing? Sometimes that’s all God wants to know. He may say, “Hey, you need to go sell your car. You need to sell your house. You need to walk away from everything. Are you willing?”

Maybe you get so far as the deal is about to go through and the other party backs out because God says, “I didn’t really want you to sell your house, I just wanted to know if you were willing to live for me.”

He might say, “Are you willing to go get a second job to provide for your family? Are you willing to be the responsible one? Are you willing to get less sleep?

To pick up the slack around the house so your family has clean clothes, cooked food, a stocked fridge, and they’re well taken care of.” Even though you’re running on five hours of sleep and six shots of espresso a day?

Are you willing to make the sacrifice like James did? Are you willing? That’s all God wants to know. Sometimes He will see that you’re willing, and He will see that you’re able, and He will say, “I will reward you for that. You no longer have to do this.”

Or He’ll say, “I’m so glad you’re willing. I’m gonna give you the energy to do it.” Just like James. He gave James the ability and the energy to go out and preach the gospel to all nations. You can do it. Step into your calling.

Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for James. We’re, we’re sad that we don’t know more about him, but thank you for the little we do know. Lord, thank you so much that we know that he was a man of great faith and a man of willingness to follow you no matter where you wanted him to go. He died for you.

Lord, we want to live for you. I pray that each and every person watching and listening would have an intense desire to live for you. That they would hear your calling and that they would get up and follow you. That they would step into the calling.

And Lord, that they would receive from you. Receive the energy. That they would be willing. That if you want to know if they are willing. That you would either stop them before they have to go through with whatever it is that could be undesirable.

Or that you would give them the energy and the persistence and the joy to continue to go through whatever it is you want them to be willing to go through. Lord, I ask that they would be a light and touch those around them with you. That they would bring you to more people than they ever thought possible. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hey, I hope you have a great week. I hope you’re willing to do what God wants you to do. How do you know? Simply talk to Him. Pray to Jesus.

Ask Him to be the leader of your life, and tell Him you are willing. You gotta be willing. These disciples left everything and followed Jesus. Are you willing to do the same?

Join us next week. We have got more apostles to talk about. We’re talking about a great one next week, it’s Judas Thaddaeus so I hope you come back. Stay tuned and we will see you next week. God bless.