James is speaking about wisdom and a believer’s longing for spiritual wisdom. Spiritual wisdom is the practical and experiential application of spiritual truth. Every believer seeks to know Christ better and to experience His grace more so as to deal better with the trials and challenges of life, what James calls ‘divers temptations’. Though they differ, person to person, we all feel these trials as members of Christ’s body. When the Holy Spirit quickens a dead sinner He creates spiritual life and initiates a process of spiritual development. 

The Epistle of James is a practical book. It deals with everyday matters of our faith and addresses experiences of a believer’s life. It appears to have been written by the Apostle James, one of ‘the twelve’ who is sometimes called James, the Son of Alpheus, or James the Less, to distinguish him from James, the son of Zebedee and brother of John. The epistle is addressed to ‘the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad’. This may suggest a primarily Jewish audience but it may also refer to ‘spiritual Israel’, a title suitable for all the elect, the chosen people of God, both amongst Jews and Gentiles.

Our Christian faith must be built upon a solid foundation of scriptural understanding if it is to be real, personal and useful to us in our life’s experience and fit us for eternal life. As we have seen, the Lord graciously condescended to identify Himself to His church in a series of beautiful ‘I am’ statements. What have they taught us about our Lord? 

This ‘I am’ statement from our Lord Jesus serves again as a clear testimony of both our Saviour’s divine nature and His human nature. In these final verses of our Bible the Lord Jesus announces His certain and imminent return to earth and we are given a closing glimpse of Christ’s glory. Our Saviour tells us, ‘I am the root and the offspring of David’, then He declares, ‘I am the bright and morning star’. Finally, we are told, ‘Surely I come quickly’. Christ is coming back and that right soon. Eagerly the church awaits His return and the dawn of a new day.

Having spent some weeks upon the Lord’s seven ‘I am’ sayings in John’s Gospel, I felt it suitable to add a further two ‘I am’ titles provided for us by John in his ‘Revelation of Jesus Christ’, the final book in our Bible. Here the Lord Jesus Christ tells us, ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last’. Then He says, ‘I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star’. We shall come to this latter saying next week, God willing.

Following the Passover supper the Lord spoke to His disciples about the fruit of the vine and instituted the communion or remembrance service for the Church which we continue to observe. He likened bread and wine to Christ’s own broken body and shed blood. Now, as the Lord and His disciples leave Jerusalem for the Mount of Olives the time is fast approaching when He will be parted from His disciples, taken to the cross and made a sacrifice for the sin of His people.