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Lafayette Church of Christ
The Real Thing Costs Something
Sunday Bible Class & Morning Sermon · August 9, 2026
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Two lessons pressing the same question from different sides: a Bible class on why faith with nothing to show for it is no faith at all, and the sermon on the day Jesus overturned the tables of people who had made worship cheap.
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At a Glance
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Scripture
James 2:14–26 (class) & Matthew 21:12–13, Isaiah 56 (sermon)
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Speakers
This week's Bible class teacher & Cameron Miller
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Theme
Real faith shows itself, and real worship is never a shortcut.
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Part One · Sunday Bible Class
Faith With Something to Show for It
James 2:14–26
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You Can't Call It a Goal Without a Net |
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First, our teacher drew a careful line: this passage is about faith and works, not salvation and works. We are saved by grace through faith, "not as a result of work, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8–9). James is not teaching that we earn our salvation. |
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"What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?" (v14). To picture it, James points to a brother who is cold and hungry, and a believer who tells him, "Go in peace, be warm and filled," but does nothing about it. An empty promise with no relief in it. |
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He held up the soccer goals the team ordered that arrived with no nets, just big metal frames you can't even be sure a ball passed through. "You can't even call faith faith without works." Works are what make faith faith. |
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Then the sharp turn: even the demons believe there is one God (v19). So if we believe the same fact a demon believes, what sets us apart? Our actions. Our actions show the world, and show God, who we are really pursuing. |
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Ask Yourself
If someone measured your faith only by what you actually did this week, not by what you say you believe, what would they conclude? Where is there a "go in peace, be warm and filled" in your life, a good wish you have never once backed up with action?
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| 02 |
The Faith Jesus Could See |
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In Mark 1, a leper, an outcast who had to cry "unclean" and watch every crowd scatter, kneels at Jesus' feet and says, "If you will, you can make me clean." The text says Jesus was "moved with pity" after He saw that faith, and He reached out and touched him. |
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In Mark 2, four friends tear open a roof to lower a paralyzed man to Jesus. "And when Jesus saw their faith," He forgave and healed him. Our teacher asked us not to rush past those two words: Jesus saw their faith. How? Through what they did. |
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It is not only the people around us who read our faith by our actions. Jesus notices it too. He saw their faith as a result of what they were willing to do, and that same thing is asked of us. |
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He closed where the passage does: "For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead" (v26). Along the way came a heartfelt aside from the eldership, that if you know of anyone in need, please tell them, because they don't want anyone in the church to go without. |
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Ask Yourself
The leper and the four friends all put their faith into motion at some cost to themselves. Is there someone you already know is hurting or in need whom you have been meaning to help, and what would it look like to actually do it this week instead of just wishing them well?
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Key Quotes · Bible Class
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This week's Bible class teacher · on faith and works
“You can't even call faith faith without works.”
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This week's Bible class teacher · from the eldership
“If you all know of people that need help, please tell us. As elders, we beg you.”
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Part Two · Morning Sermon
This Is Not What I Intended
Matthew 21:12–13 · Isaiah 56 · preached by Cameron Miller
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The House That Became a Marketplace |
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Actions speak louder than words, and in Matthew 21 Jesus is about to act. He enters the temple, drives out the money changers, overturns their tables, and declares, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers." |
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Cameron walked us through what had gone wrong. Worshipers who worked in trades came with cash instead of livestock, so the temple set up a "purified" currency, controlled the exchange rate, and turned sacrifice into a coordinated money-making venture. People left frustrated and disconnected before they ever made their offering. |
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Isaiah 56 shows what God had promised instead: a house of prayer "for all peoples," from the most hopeful stretch at the end of Isaiah. Jesus looks around the temple and, in effect, says, this is not what God intended. |
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We all know "this is not what I intended" moments, Cameron said, from the yard-sale stop that fills your trunk to the family trip where nobody is having fun by the time the car pulls out of the driveway. It is a feeling we recognize. This time it is God's. |
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Ask Yourself
The temple crowd could go through the whole motion of worship and still walk away having missed the point. Is there a place in your own walk with God where you are still going through the motions, but the heart of it has quietly turned into something He never intended?
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Before You Flip a Table |
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"Jesus flipped tables" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for rage, Cameron warned. This was not a Jesus out of control, but a Jesus moved by justice. Christians have done real damage to the kingdom "in their rightness" by being so glad to be right that they stopped caring how they were right. |
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Yet the answer is not silence either. He told of a friend who asked a weekend sports camp to keep Sunday morning free for worship, and the director's reply: "No one has ever asked that before." The church needs less silence and more boldness, so that in fifteen years someone is still thinking to ask. |
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And notice where Jesus flipped tables: in a spiritual context, among God's own people, not at Pilate's or Caesar's table. Boldness has to come from loving people, not just hating sin. If you are only ever moved by a hatred of anything, even a hatred of sin, "you lost." |
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Cameron's favorite part: those offerings were supposed to cost something, supposed to hurt, like a calf you raised by hand rather than one you bought and dropped off. The temple had commercialized their connection with the Lord, and we can too. There is no shortcut, no streamlining a real relationship with Jesus. The closing question: what tables might Jesus flip among us? |
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Ask Yourself
Cameron asked us to search our own hearts for the tables that need flipping, the shortcuts and comfortable compromises we have let sit too long. What is one thing you already know God never intended for your life, and are you willing to upend it rather than keep coasting past it?
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Key Quotes · Sermon
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Cameron Miller · on a real relationship with God
“There's no shortcut on a narrow road in life and a relationship with Jesus.”
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Cameron Miller · on boldness
“No one's asking you to be a jerk. They're asking you to stand up for what you said you believed in for a half a second.”
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Last week: Peter left everything to follow Jesus, and Jesus warned a people who honored God with their lips while their hearts stayed far off.
Lafayette Church of Christ · August 9, 2026
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