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Collierville First Baptist Church
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Your faith will be tested.
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Count on it.
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Now think about it.
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If your faith can't be tested, can it be trusted?
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We live in a broken world
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where bad things happen to good people, even Christ honoring Christian people.
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How do we handle life's tough times? We all have them, don't we?
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Just think back just a moment at some of the times in your life where you've gone through real serious trials. It could have been a physical trial, your physical health. It could have been a relational trial, a time when your marriage was really in trouble. It could have been a time when your child was doing things that they should not have been doing. It was breaking your heart. It could have been a career thing and your job was in jeopardy and you had more month than you had money and those kind of trials really test our faith. I'm talking about those times when our hearts are broken,
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when our dreams are crushed,
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our heart is gripped by despair, our hope is fading. We've all been there.
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When life is hard, what do we do?
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Well, I would suggest that the smartest thing for us to do is to turn to God, not away from God. I've seen people in moments of deep despair and heartache and trials turn away from God.
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That's not what we need to do.
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We need to turn to God, so important.
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Listen, in particular, there's a book in the Bible we need to turn to when we're going through trials and it's the book of James. Today I'm starting a series. I'm gonna preach verse by verse through the book of James. It's a little epistle tucked away in the New Testament. It's designed to help us understand how to handle tough times in our life. It consists of 108 verses. It's a small little book. It is saturated, get this now, it is saturated with 54 commands.
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It's the most practical book in the New Testament. Some have called it the Proverbs of the New Testament. One man called it a handbook for hard times. O.S. Hawkins comments on the book of James are both insightful and helpful. He said, and I quote, "Today we are 2000 years removed "from James' writing, yet his letter remains "as relevant to us as the internet's morning news." Why?
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Because in these 108 verses, it's sort of a code, a James code that outlines how we can put our faith into action in the normal traffic patterns of everyday life. If you're like me, O.S. Hawkins said, your challenge is not knowing what Christ calls us to do, but actually doing it.
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The challenge is practicing with our lives, what we know in our minds and proclaim with our lips. James challenged us to put shoe leather to what we believe.
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Have you received Jesus as your savior and your Lord?
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If you have, you are a new person in Christ. The old things have passed away, behold, new things have come.
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He's given you the gift of eternal life and abundant life.
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Listen, listen to me very carefully. How you live your life after, underline the word after, after you are saved is crucial in determining whether your faith is real or not.
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That's the point James is driving home in this letter.
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In fact, if James were here today,
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he wouldn't ask you to give your profession of faith.
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He would look at your life at the practice of your faith
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because that would tell him all he needs to know
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about your profession of faith, whether it was real or whether it was fake.
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Or are you ready to join me on this journey through the fast moving blunt in your face letter of James?
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Coach, I'm calling him Coach James. He's Coach James. He's got a whistle in his mouth
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and he's going to be barking out commands that we desperately need to pay attention to, 54 commands.
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So let's begin with an important introduction to this little letter. Look at verse one.
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James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ
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to the 12 tribes who were dispersed abroad, greetings.
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Now James, in this particular time of first century, Judaism was a popular name.
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It was a form of the great Old Testament name Jacob.
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There were several men in the New Testament who bore this name.
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Two of them were well known and they had tremendous influence in the church. The first one was James, a son of Zebedee, the brother of John. James and John were apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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But this particular James, James the brother of John
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was executed before this letter was written. So it cannot be that James.
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But the other James, the one that wrote the letter was the son of Joseph and Mary and the brother of Jesus. You understand, that's who wrote this letter.
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So what do we know about him?
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Well in Matthew 13.55 we learn based upon the words of our Lord, the words of people talking about Jesus and talking about who he was. It says, "Is not this the carpenter's son?
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"Is not his mother called Mary?
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"And his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas."
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So I want you to understand that right here in the New Testament the Bible says that this James who wrote this letter was the son of Joseph and Mary
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and he was the brother, we might say to be very particular, he was the half brother of Jesus. Had the same mother but a different father. His father was God, right?
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Now, so he's the brother of Jesus.
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And this is what they're saying to Jesus later on as he begins his ministry.
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"Leave here and go into Judea so that your disciples "also may see your works which you are doing.
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"For no one does anything in secret "when himself seeks to be known publicly.
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"If you do these things, show yourself to the world."
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Listen to this, verse five. "For not anything is done to you, "listen to this, verse five. "For not even his brothers were believing in him.
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"James, Jude, the rest of the brothers "did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ."
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In fact, the Bible says that there was a moment in time
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when the whole family including Mary
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came to Galilee to take Jesus home because they thought he had lost his mind.
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There was a time when James was a scoffer. He didn't believe in Jesus.
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But we learn in 1 Corinthians 15, verses six and seven, something very important.
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After that, the Bible says, "He appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, "most of whom remain until now.
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"But some have fallen asleep." They've died.
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Then he appeared to James,
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then to all the apostles.
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James became a believer after an encounter with the risen Christ. I guess if you've been denying him and scoffing at him and thinking that he's lost his mind and you see the resurrected Christ and you have an encounter with him and he speaks into your heart,
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I guess I'd believe in him too, wouldn't you?
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Well, James believed in Jesus. He became a believer after he encountered the risen Lord.
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Acts 12, verse 17.
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Peter's been in prison
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and God supernaturally delivers him from prison. And the Bible says in Acts 12, 17, but motioning, he went back to the place where the church was gathered to pray, but motioned to them with his hand to be silent. He described to them how the Lord had led him out of prison.
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And he said, "Report these things to James "and the brethren."
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Then he left and went to another place. So we learned here in Acts 12, that James has ascended to the place where he is the leader of the church in Jerusalem.
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So we see James as the brother of Jesus. We see him as a scoffer.
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We see him as a believer after the encounter with the risen Christ and we see him here in Acts 12, 17, as the leader, the spiritual leader of the church in Jerusalem. Not Peter, not John, but James, the brother of Jesus. James never wavered.
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He was steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.
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Many people called him old camel knees. You know why they call him old camel knees? Because he was fervent in prayer. He was known to spend a great deal of time on his knees praying, praying for God to forgive those who had sinned, for God to save those who needed to be saved, for God to grow his church and for the gospel to expand across the world.
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He was old camel knees. But he was also called James the Just.
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James the Just. You say, well, why was he called James the Just?
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Because he was known for his righteousness. Do you know what the word righteousness means? It means doing the right thing.
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Doing the right thing. He was known for doing the right thing, the thing that pleased the Lord.
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Now James wrote this epistle that we're gonna be studying in the next several weeks, around 45 A.D.,
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around 45 A.D., just a few years after Jesus was crucified and resurrected.
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This makes the book of James the first of the New Testament books to be written.
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We might look at our Bibles and we see Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and we say, well, Matthew must have been written first. No, no, no.
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James was the first book of the New Testament to be written.
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Now James was martyred around 62 A.D.
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That's how steadfast he was. That's how committed to Christ he was. He was willing not only to live for Christ, but he was willing to die for Christ.
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Tradition says that the religious leaders of Judaism took him up on top of the temple and they threw him off and they had people stationed below with clubs in their hands. And if he didn't die from the fall, they were to take the clubs and beat him to death. And that's exactly what happened.
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Tradition says that as he was dying,
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he prayed to God and asked him to forgive the people who were killing him.
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That's why he's called James the Just.
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Now, look at verse one again.
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Now, I want you to notice what he calls himself. He could have played the I'm a big guy, I'm an important guy type of trump card here. He could have said, I'm the brother of Jesus.
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He said, I'm the spiritual leader of the church in Jerusalem. He could have said that.
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But I want you to notice what he says about himself.
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James, a bondservant of God
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and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Now James was a godly man
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and he was a humble man.
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He doesn't describe himself as the son of Joseph and Mary
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or the Lord's brother
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or the leader of the church in Jerusalem.
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He describes himself as the bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. That and is very important.
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The words here are a powerful testimony
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to the deity of Jesus Christ.
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You see that word connects God and Jesus as equal. They're equal.
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In John's gospel chapter 10, Jesus said, I and the father are one.
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We're one.
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Jesus is just as much God as God the father and just as much God as God the Holy Spirit. He was fully God
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and he was fully man at the same time.
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Now this word bondservant here refers to being a slave.
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Here's what James would say.
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I'm a slave of Jesus.
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He considered himself to be the property of Jesus. You see in the New Testament, a bond slave had no rights whatsoever.
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The master said, jump, he would have to say, how high do you want me to jump?
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So he saw himself as a bond slave of Jesus. Let me ask you a question.
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Shouldn't we?
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Shouldn't every born again believer in this room and every born again believer watching live stream, should we not consider ourselves bond slaves of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ?
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Here's what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter six, verses 19 to 20.
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Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have from God and that you are not your own?
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For you have been bought with a price. What is that price, church? It's the blood of Christ. For you've been bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.
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To get the most out of this study through the book of James, you must realize that you belong to Jesus. You don't call the shots. He gets to call all the shots in your life.
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He gets to call the financial shots in your life.
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He gets to call the shots in your marriage.
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He gets to call the shots in your parenting.
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He gets to call the shots in every aspect of your life. If you wanna get the most out of this study,
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if you really wanna see your life ascend to where God wants it to ascend, you've got to realize that Jesus owns you.
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You are his bond slave.
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You don't have the right to do what you wanna do.
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Look at verse one again. Who did he write to? He wrote to the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad.
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What does this mean? Well, he wrote to Jewish Christians
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who had been driven out of Jerusalem because of persecution. You read about that persecution in Acts chapter eight, verse one.
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And they were driven into Judea and Sumerian to the other most parts of the world.
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Think about it.
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These Jewish Christians that received this letter were facing hard times, tough times.
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Why? It was because of their faith and commitment to Jesus.
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They had to leave their home.
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They had to leave their jobs.
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They had to leave everything that they had spent a lifetime building there in Jerusalem.
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They were hated both by Jews and Greeks alike.
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Why? Because of their bold faith in Jesus Christ.
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Talk about tough times.
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They faced it every single day. That's who's receiving this letter.
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Now let's get down to the nitty gritty
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and answer the question.
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How do we in the 21st century
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handle life's tough times?
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I tell you, there's a powerful truth that emerges
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as you work your way through verses one to four and really even the entire book of James.
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And here's that truth.
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If I could go to every person in this room
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and if you are a born again believer, this doesn't work if you're not a believer.
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But if you're a born again believer, I can tell you on the authority of the inalienable and inspired and infallible word of the living God that no matter what trial you may have to go through in your life, no matter what trial you're going through at this moment, you can be an overcomer.
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You can be an overcomer.
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Not by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, no.
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But by surrendering to the Lord Jesus Christ as your master
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as your king, as your Lord and your savior,
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you can be an overcomer.
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So, Coach James has his whistle out.
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He's got it in his mouth
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and he's about to bark out the first two commands in this epistle.
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And we're gonna look at him today. Before we do, let me pray. I pray to Jesus
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that you would help all of us to understand the relevance about what we're about to read.
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And I pray, Lord, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you would take the truth of your word and you would implant it in our heart. And I pray that every person within the sound of my voice
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would be not only a hearer of the word, but a doer of the word as James emphasizes over and over again in this little epistle.
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So, Lord, give us ears to hear
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and give us a heart that desires above all else
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to obey you because you are our Lord and our master. In Jesus' name, amen.
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So the first command we find in the book of James, remember there's 54 of them.
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The first command deals, number one, with the believer's perspective.
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The believer's perspective.
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In James chapter one, verse two,
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the Bible says, "Consider it all joy, my brethren,
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"when you encounter various trials."
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Now, this text reveals several important aspects that we need to pay close attention to.
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First, it deals with the aspect of the reality of trials. Now, notice the Bible here, James didn't write if you encounter various trials. He said, when you encounter various trials. That every person in this room, if you're not in a trial right now, you're about to be in one.
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You're gonna face trials.
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But remember this, there's one word that you can write over every trial that you ever face no matter how difficult it is.
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The word is permitted.
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Permitted by who?
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Permitted by the sovereign God.
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Listen, in Job chapter five, verse seven,
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the Bible says, "For man is born for trouble "as sparks fly upward."
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Now, Job was a man who knew about trials, right?
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And he said, every man, every human being,
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is born for trouble as sparks fly upward.
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Look at John 1633, the gospel of John. Jesus said, "These things I've spoken to you "so that in me you may have peace." In the world you have, listen to church, in the world, Jesus said you have tribulation.
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You got trouble. You have trials that you will have to face. But Jesus said, "Take courage.
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"I have overcome the world." You go over to Revelation chapter two and three, the letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor.
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And in every one of those letters, Jesus talks about them being overcomers.
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That's why I tell you that you can overcome the trial you're facing today, the trial you will face tomorrow, the trial you will face next week and next month and next year, you can overcome.
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But let's look not only at the reality of trials, but the range of trials. Notice the word encounter.
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Look at it, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, "when you encounter various trials."
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Now, that word encounter in the Greek language means to be surrounded, surrounded by trouble.
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This same Greek word was used in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
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In Luke chapter 10, verse 30, Jesus telling that parable and he said, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell," that's the same word we find in our text today in James one, verse two, "and fell among robbers, "and they stripped him and beat him "and went away leaving him half dead."
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Now, do you know what those robbers did? They ambushed him.
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He didn't know they were there.
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They were hidden.
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And all of a sudden, they came out of the shadows
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and they beat him half to death and took everything he had.
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Listen, these trials that we face in our lives,
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they come out of nowhere sometime. We're not talking about trials that are the result of our own sinfulness, our own selfishness, our own rebellion, our own worldliness.
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These trials ambush us, they come. They come at times we don't expect them to come.
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And they come in waves. Have you ever noticed?
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There are times that you're going through trials and it seems like it's one after the other, like a machine gun, like a staccato machine gun.
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Just comes and comes and comes and you wonder, is this ever gonna come to an end?
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That's what the word encounter means. He talks about encounter various trials. Many of you have green thumbs and you can grow flowers and you can grow vegetables and you just got a green thumb.
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And this word, various here, means multicolored. It means variegated. Now I know you know what that means. See, what's a trial for me may not be a trial for you.
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And just because you have a trial like this today, you may have a totally different trial tomorrow.
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Multicolored, various trial, the range of trials.
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And then the response to trials.
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Now in light of the trials we face,
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it's hard to see this command
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and not feel like this is some kind of paradox, right?
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Listen, let me share it with you. Consider it all joy, my brethren,
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when everything's going great in your life. Is that what the Bible says?
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Nope.
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Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, when these trials come out of the bushes and they just hit you from every direction
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and James is commanded, the Holy Spirit of God is commanding us to have joy in those moments.
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The word consider means to carefully develop a logical conclusion so you can avoid an emotional response.
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I want you to understand what the Holy Spirit is saying to us right now is we need to decide beforehand how we're gonna handle the trials of life.
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Don't wait until you're caught up in the moment.
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Don't wait until those trials are coming at you with lightning speed from all different directions to decide how you're gonna respond, decide how you're gonna respond before the trials ever come.
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Now the word joy is not the jump up and down kind of joy or happiness, it's not.
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This joy that's mentioned here is an inner sense of wellbeing that nothing in this life can touch.
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It's a supernatural delight
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in the person and the purpose of God.
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See, if you're born again believer,
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you are eternally secure.
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In fact, and a good illustration of this is Psalm 55.22 where the Bible says, "Cast your burden upon the Lord
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"and he will sustain you." You hear me?
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He says right here that if you take this trial that's causing a burden in your life and is ripping you to shred, if you take it and you cast it upon the Lord, he will sustain you.
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He won't turn his back on you, he will help you.
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And look, it goes on to say in verse 22 of Psalm 55, and he will never allow the righteous to be shaken.
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Isn't that good news?
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See, I want you to understand that you can consider it all joy when you encounter various trials, when you understand that God has your back,
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that that God himself will sustain you and he will never allow you to be shaken.
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In Nehemiah chapter eight verse 10,
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Nehemiah make this statement to the people who were rebuilding the wall. "The joy of the Lord is your strength."
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"The joy of the Lord is your strength."
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Now listen, you can't consider it joy when you encounter various trials, when you are filling your time with entertainment
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or when you are consumed with anger and unforgiveness, you can't consider it all joy.
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You can't consider it all joy when you encounter various trials, when you're giving in to an addiction.
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So let me ask you, what's your perspective in light of the trials you are facing or you will face in the future?
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You really got two options.
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You can take the trials you face
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and you can face them as a victim, a victim.
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But when you take your trials and you face them as a victim, if that's your perspective,
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then you're gonna be saying stuff like this,
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how could God do this to me?
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How could God allow this in my life?
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I've been loving the Lord and serve the Lord. I've been tithing, I've been doing the things I'm supposed to do. How could God allow this in my life?
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You say that, you're playing the victim.
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But there's another way you can approach, there's another perspective you can take.
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It's the perspective of a student, a student.
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Now when you're in the midst of a trial
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and they're coming at you from all directions,
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you can look at that trial as a student and you can say, Lord, what are you trying to teach me?
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Lord, how can you use this for your glory and my good? Romans 8.28, how?
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Now we're gonna discover next week
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as we get into verses five through eight, we're gonna discover that God will give us wisdom to understand the trials that we face if we approach it as a student.
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Oswald Chambers made this statement,
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every humiliation, everything that tries and vexes us is God's way of cutting a deeper channel in us through which the life of Christ can flow.
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But then there's the reason for trials.
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Look at verse three, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
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God has a reason for allowing you to go through trials in your life. Can I tell you this? God never waste anything, never.
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Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. The word endurance in the Greek language literally means to remain under, to remain under. It's a picture of triumphant tenacity. It's a picture of steadfastness.
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It means to keep on keeping on.
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Too many Christians short circuit what God wants to do in their lives by cutting and running.
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We quit our job when we're mistreated.
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We divorce because we're not satisfied.
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We leave the church because somebody offended us.
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That's not what the Bible says here, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, stick-to-ativeness, tenacity, courage.
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In Hebrew chapter 12 verses one and two,
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the Bible says, "Therefore, since we have so great "a cloud of witnesses surrounding us,
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"let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin "which so easily entangles us.
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"And let us run with endurance," there's that word, same word, "let us run with endurance "the race that is set before us,
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"fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter "of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross." See that word endure? See that word joy?
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Think about that Jesus, the Son of God, crucified,
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hanging just by a sliver between life and death,
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and he endured the cross,
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despising the shame for the joy set before him. What was that joy?
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Providing redemption for you and me.
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So that we could be forgiven,
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so that we could become part of the family of God,
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so that we could have the assurance
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that when we die, we go to heaven.
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And it says that he sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
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I'll tell you, you can be an overcomer.
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The first command deals with our perspective.
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We've examined out of that perspective, the reality of trial, the range of trial, the response to trials and the reason for trials. And that brings us to the second command,
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right here in verse four. And that's the believer's perfection.
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I know what you're saying.
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"Pastor, have you lost your mind?
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"Nobody can be perfect in this world."
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Well, you don't understand this word perfection.
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If you'll give me just a minute, I will explain it, okay? Second command deals with the believer's perfection. Look at verse four. "And let endurance have its perfect result
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"so that you may be perfect and complete,
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"lacking in nothing."
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I tell you, the Lord is not glorified by hollow endurance
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that does not result in spiritual maturity.
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You take that word perfection or perfect right there and you write spiritual maturity above it. That's what it means, spiritual maturity. That's God's plan, that's his process.
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His process is to allow you to go through trials
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so that you can learn to endure
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so that he can help you become spiritually mature believers.
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The Lord permits trials in our lives
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so he can grow us up spiritually.
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And he uses this process for his glory and our good. Paul picked up on this, by the way, in Romans chapter five, verses three to five, same process. Look at Romans three, five, three through five. Paul wrote, "And not only this, "but we also exalt in our tribulations."
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In other words, we consider it joy
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when we encounter various trials, same way of saying it.
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We exalt in our tribulation knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance or endurance and perseverance, proven character and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
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I'll tell you, this is God's will for your life as a believer.
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Don't settle for less when God expects more.
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He wants every believer in this room, every believer watching live stream.
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He wants you to become spiritually mature and fruitful for his namesake.
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See, James calls for real faith in a real world.
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He presents a Christianity in blue jeans and work boots.
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He wants you to know,
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some of you are facing real trials right now. He wants you to know you can be an overcomer.
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Some of you are not in a trial right now, but you got one coming up next week.
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God already knows what it is. You don't.
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But I'm telling you ahead of time, you can be an overcomer.
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So I close today by asking four questions.
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Number one, are you a believer in the true sense of the word?
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Now remember, James is not asking you if you've made a profession of faith.
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He's looking at the practice of your faith.
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Because if you're really saved, there'll be a change in your life.
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So I'm asking you, are you a believer in the true sense of the word? If not, will you today turn from your sin in repentance
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and receive Jesus as your Savior and your Lord? And would you bow the knee to Jesus?
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And would you surrender to Him as His bond slave?
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You ready to do that today?
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I'm gonna ask our staff to come, our worship team to come.
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And we wanna give you an opportunity to answer these questions in a tangible way today. So the first question, are you a believer in the true sense of the word? If you wanna make sure, if you wanna receive Jesus as your Savior and Lord and bow your knee to Him as His bond slave, you come to one of our staff members and we'll help you. Second question, if you're a believer,
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are you living as a bond slave of the Lord Jesus?
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Is that the way you're living your life?
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Are you calling the shots or is He calling the shots?
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Does He have first place in your life?
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Commit your life to Him.
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Third question, do you have a church on?
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You know, I got to think about this. James and these early apostles,
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they wrote these letters to these Christians who've been scattered across the world.
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And those Christians gathered into churches, some of those were house churches,
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but they were a part of a church, a group of believers who gathered to worship the Lord and to serve Him.
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They would not have any concept of being a born again believer and not being a part of a church.
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So I'm gonna invite you, if you're not a part of a church,
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come to one of our staff members and we'll help you with that decision.
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The final question is this,
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do you have a trial in your life today
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that you want somebody to pray for you?
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That's what the church is all about.
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I'm gonna ask you to come to one of our staff members
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and just tell them that you want them to pray over you concerning your specific trial, or you can come to the altar and bow the knee and pray to the Lord, the King of glory yourself as his bond slave.
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Hey, listen, just do what the Lord wants you to do. In Christ's name, Lord, I pray for you to move with power.
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Open our hearts.
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Give us a desire to obey you, King Jesus. We love you in Jesus name, amen. Let's stand and worship and you come.
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