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Collierville First Baptist Church
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I am so blessed tonight that pastor extended to me the invitation to teach for him tonight and that's always a special blessing to get to teach in my home church.
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I'm this church's biggest fan. I'm not ever here, but I'm your fan club. Everywhere I go, I brag on my pastor and my home church. It's such a blessing, thank you. To have the support of my home church for our ministry as we're out preaching most Sundays and so I'm grateful for that.
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Looks like I'm not gonna get to preach Sunday
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because of snow.
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And I've been studying all week to preach Sunday. (Congregation Laughing) So I'm just gonna dump it all on you tonight, okay?
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I have to drive to Walnut, Mississippi and then turn south about four miles to a little church called Tiplersville. That's where I am interim now, have been for the last two weeks. A church of precious people, about 80 people and we just love them. And but it looks like it might be tough getting there this Sunday. But so I'm gonna practice on you tonight, all right? I've been filling my mind and my heart. I preached a series on James a number of years ago and it's kind of resonated with me and that's the series I wanted to start at Tiplersville because it addresses so many incredibly important issues for the Christian life. So I want you to open your Bible to the epistle of James and we're gonna look tonight at James chapter one and I'm gonna do my best to get through 12 verses.
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And if I don't, then you've got the outline on your table. So that'll tell you what I meant to say if I don't get to it, okay?
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The outline is not like our pastor's manuscript. He's so much smarter than I am and I just, because I don't ever know what I'm gonna say that exact.
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I just get my major points down and I'm like the fellow said, the way he prepared to preach, he just,
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he read himself full, he prayed himself hot
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and then he just opened his mouth and let it go. So that's kind of, that's where I am. I've tried to pray myself full, study my heart full and then we'll go from there.
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Know what that is?
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I know you carpenters do.
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That's a way to measure something.
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I wonder what kind of instrument would it take
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to measure your Christian maturity?
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When I was a kid, I was small growing up through about the sixth grade, skinny, played on the 100 pound team in basketball till I was in the eighth grade.
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I could turn sideways at the other end of the floor and you couldn't see me hardly.
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I could stand under a clothesline and a downpour and not get wet. That's about how skinny I was.
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And I wanted to play basketball so badly
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where I went to school, basketball was the thing. If the basketball went flat, we canceled school. You know how that was in Mississippi.
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But I was never growing. I didn't have much prospect.
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And I would measure myself every few months to see if I was growing.
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My two brothers are five, five each.
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So I didn't have a whole lot of hope.
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My sister was four 11, that added to the problem.
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But you know what something happened in about the summer of between my eighth and ninth grade,
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I shot up to six foot two.
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I remember when I first touched the backboard,
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then I touched the net.
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Then when I was a ninth grader, I touched the rim.
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I was maturing.
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Finally came the day when I reached my goal,
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physical maturity. How do you gauge your maturity physically? Well, that's none of my business. But how do you measure your maturity academically
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when you graduated from high school?
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When you finished college,
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maybe when you took your oral for your PhD,
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pass the bar exam, that's a measurement of maturity.
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But how do you measure spiritual maturity?
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We really don't have one of these.
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To work, measuring our spiritual maturity. What do you think are some of the ways we commonly measure spiritual maturity?
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I think one of the ways that comes to mind that would be an answer that a lot of people would give would be church attendance.
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If I come 60% of the time, I get a C minus.
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If I come 70% of the time, I get a C plus. If I'm there 80% of the time, I get a B.
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90% of the time, I'm an A.
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I'm really maturing.
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Really?
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I've been pastoring half a century.
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Some of the meanest people I've ever met in my life attend church every Sunday.
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Church attendance is not an accurate barometer
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for measuring maturity.
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But you know that 70% of our teenagers,
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once they leave high school, enter college,
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and are faced with that first professor that questions their faith,
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70% of them drop out of church.
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They were in a Juantas.
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They went to Sunday school every Sunday.
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They lived in a Christian home.
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They've been taught what to believe,
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but they don't and are unable to articulate why they believe it.
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So church attendance is not a good barometer for physical, for spiritual maturity. What about giftedness?
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Giftedness.
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Oh man, he's a gifted teacher.
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She's such a gifted singer. She must be such a great Christian.
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You know the most gifted church in the New Testament?
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It was the church at Corinth. Read 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14. You'll discover that they were gifted, but they were taking one another to courts of law. One man was living in adultery with his deaf mother.
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Not exactly a good barometer for spiritual maturity. I've been around long enough to see some young preachers.
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Hands were laid upon them too quickly.
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I'm thinking of a young black preacher that went to instant fame because his ability to preach.
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Dr. Jerry Falwell put him on television and his ministry took off and he preached all across this country.
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Gave the story of being raised under a bridge.
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Come to find out it was all a lie.
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He was living a lie of serial adultery while pastoring a mega church. Giftedness is no measurement of maturity.
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How do you measure your maturity? Well, James gives us a series of tests
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and they are powerful tests.
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His book is somewhat of a spiritual polygraph.
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He hooks us up to the spiritual polygraph and he gives us a series of tests that will measure the authenticity
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of our spiritual maturity. Let me just, I'm only gonna do one of those tests tonight so I don't want you to get scared to think I'm gonna try to do them all. But let me just list those tests for you and let you get a feel for what James is doing. The one we're gonna deal with tonight, the first one he gives, and I think there's a reason why it's number one, is how do I react to my trials?
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Test number two, how do I resist temptation?
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The first one, how do I react to my trials? That's verses one through 12 of chapter one. How do I resist temptation? That's verses 13 through 18 of chapter one. And then there's the third one, how do I respond to the truth? That's verse 19 through the end of the chapter. I could go on because he gives a number of other tests, and he'll tell me how to restrain my tongue. That's one of them. I'm not gonna do that when you'll be glad I didn't, and I will too. That was not fun, it's in chapter two. But these are all powerful barometers for the authenticity of our maturity.
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So let's delve into the first 12 chapters of James,
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chapter one, and let me just give you a little background which comes out of the very first verse. If you have your Bible open there, James chapter one and verse one says, "James, a bondservant of God." Now let me remind you of something. There is a servant, a slave in the Bible, and then there's a bond slave, and there's a difference. A slave was a slave because of obligation. They had no choice. A bond slave was a slave out of choice.
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After they had served for seven years, they were given the choice. If they loved their master and he had treated them kindly and loved him, then they would bore a hole in his ear and he would become a bond slave. In other words, a slave out of love, and that's the word used here. James is a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes who were dispersed abroad greetings. Now let me just unpackage that verse for you.
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In the New Testament, they did it different from us. The author of the letter put his name first. That makes sense to me. And he opens up by telling us that it's James who's writing this letter. In the New Testament, there are four men named James. Two of them we can immediately exclude as the possible author of this book. You might want to say it was James the Apostle, the brother of John. But the problem with that is he was martyred too early, AD 48, 49, before this letter was probably pinned. Most scholars believe the book of James was written somewhere around 80, 50 or 51. That leaves one option for the author of this book. And that is James, the half brother
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of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that surprises some people. When I say that Jesus had a half brother, would it surprise you even more if I told you he had four half brothers? And would it surprise you even more? And those of you who may have come from a Catholic background, and there may be some here, and you were taught as you were growing up the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary, which simply meant that after she had Jesus, from that point on, she was a perpetual virgin.
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That doctrine is found nowhere in scripture.
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Now James, if you want to look at that, look it up for yourself, is in Mark chapter six and verse four. It tells us in Mark chapter six is not this, the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon. See that word Judas? That's also his half brother, he's also known as Jude.
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So Jesus had two brothers that wrote epistles in the New Testament.
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James, the half brother of Jesus wrote this. Now I want you to notice something. It says James, a bond servant of God
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and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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I am amazed at that.
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If I had been James, you know what I think I would have put?
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I'm James, the half brother of Jesus.
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(Laughs) I know him better than anybody else in the world. And what I'm about to tell you come from personal experience.
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But that's not what he does.
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He does not fall back on his physical credentials. He says, I'm James, I'm a slave of God
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and of the brother of Jesus Christ, no, of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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That's a great expression of the deity of Christ.
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When he calls him Lord, he's saying he's God. When he calls him Jesus, he's saying that's his human name. But when he says Christ, he's saying he is the Jewish Messiah.
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What an incredible endorsement.
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And especially if you read the New Testament in John 7, verse five, it says, for not even his brothers were believing in him.
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There was a period of time in those early days of ministry, in fact, for all of the three years of his ministry, his family did not accept him as being the son of God. In fact, you'll find on one particular occasion where they tried actually to capture him, take him away from the crowd. You know why? Because they thought he was having a nervous breakdown and they wanted to get him out of the crowd. And something amazing happened.
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In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, read it with me.
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This is a post resurrection appearance of Jesus.
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He said, for I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. And that he was buried. And that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. And that he appeared to Cephas, now that's Simon Peter. Then to the 12.
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And after that, he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now. But some have fallen asleep. Are you ready for this? Then he appeared to James.
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Then to all the apostles.
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Isn't it interesting that Jesus took the time to have a personal interview with his half brother. Now I say half brother, you know what I mean. They had the same mother but a different father, amen? They had, Jesus had God as his father.
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Mary was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. It was in Mary's womb that Jesus came from. But his four brothers and his sisters all came from the relationship of Joseph and Mary.
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That's why I call him half brothers.
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Same mother, different father. And so Jesus went to James and apparently, I don't know about you, but that would convince me. Wouldn't it convince you? I mean, if your brother came to you and he had been dead and he rose from the dead, it convinced James. I tell you how we know because the very first church in the Bible was first church Jerusalem.
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I started to say first Baptist church, but I decided not to. It was the first organized church in Jerusalem.
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Guess who became the pastor?
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Let me tell you, it starts with a J, James.
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Our Lord's half brother became the pastor of the very first church. Now that tells you something about the impact that that interview with Jesus made on his life. Now James was a good pastor.
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He led the early church through some significant conflicts.
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Racial conflicts.
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It was a Jewish church and when they started receiving Gentiles, it wasn't fun.
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They had to go through some real heart feeling deals to work that problem out. James was at the head of that. They had a group of baptismal regenerationists that came and said, hey, it's all right what Paul said, but you gotta be baptized, you gotta be circumcised to be saved.
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And James stood up, faced that head on, and said in his best Spanish, no way Jose.
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We're not gonna do that. And he sent a letter out to all the churches encouraging the Gentiles to commit their life to Christ and they would not make the Gentiles become Jews.
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And so James led them through all of that till we get to Acts chapter eight.
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And Stephen preached a sermon that was so politically incorrect that they stoned him. Remember that?
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And when they stoned him, the church dispersed.
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Christians left. It's interesting, Acts says everybody left except the apostles.
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Now some would think that's a compliment to the apostles.
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I don't think so.
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I think the apostles were still Jewish enough
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that they were safe.
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They were broadening their horizon, they were welcoming Gentiles, but they weren't all in at that particular point. And so as the church was dispersed, James had a problem.
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How do I disciple my church now that they're gone?
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That's why you have the book of James.
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Listen to what he says.
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James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, notice this, to the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad.
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Greetings.
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Now that term 12 tribes often does not refer
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just to 12 individual tribes, but it was a metaphor to describe the entire Jewish people.
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And so James is writing a letter to his people from a pastor's heart. Now James is concerned.
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He lived in the house with Jesus for 30 years.
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He ate with him. He slept in the same house with him. He heard every sermon that Jesus ever taught,
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but he was lost.
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And James was concerned that new Christians be able to authenticate that their faith
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was real.
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And so he writes to his church out of a pastor's love and he gently encourages them to consider their faith because he doesn't want the persecution to cause them to abandon their faith.
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And if their faith is going to last through persecution, it's going to have to be authentic faith. And so what he's trying to do is to help them find authentic faith if they don't ever have it and to inventory their hearts to make sure their faith is real. Now I took a lot of time to unpackage that one verse, but I think it's important to see why this letter was written, who wrote it and the purpose of it. It's coming from a pastor's heart. So we want to look at the first 12 verses here and I want to say this as we begin, have you already, have you recognized that God always has to work in us before he can work through us?
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God spent 25 years working in Abraham before he could give him his promised son.
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God worked 13 years in Joseph's life before putting him in his, through various testings, that's the word of James, before he could put him on the throne of Egypt.
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He spent 80 years preparing Moses for 40 years of service.
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You see, God has to work in us before he can work through us. Now, Paul warned the early church not to place a novice into a place of spiritual leadership.
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That's in 1 Timothy chapter three verse six. And there's a reason for that, because that young novice would get proud, like just what I described that young man that was so famous, but he was put on the stage too quick, too fast, and he was inauthentic in his testimony. It's no wonder that he failed. Paul warned us against that. That should never have happened.
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I read a biography every Christmas, you know that, I've told you that. Several years ago, I read the biography of a man named Malcolm Muggeridge. I'd heard so many preachers refer to him. I wanted to see what it was. He was a Catholic that later in life became a born again believer. He was a well-respected British journalist all over the world, he reported. But when he came to the end of his life, this is what he said. It's an interesting quote. Let me share it with you. He says, contrary to what may be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, everything I have learned and everything that is truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has been through affliction and not through happiness.
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Isn't that amazing?
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You know, I can amen that. I've learned a lot more in the valleys that God has walked me through than in the mountaintops I've been on.
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Martin Luther called adversity the very best book in my library. That's interesting.
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God tells us in our text here, he tells us that we are to expect trials. It's not if you fall into various testings church, but it's when you fall in to various testings. Now, I said the name of our first test is how I react to my trials.
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You know, the person who thinks that when they came to Christ, now I got it made. I'm not gonna have any more trials. You know, I'm gonna always have money in the bank. I'm gonna drive a nice car. My kids are never gonna get sick. They're all gonna grow up to be prosperous and have great jobs. Hey, if you think that, you're in for a big surprise.
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This is what Jesus said. "In the world, you shall have tribulation,
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"but be of good cheer.
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"I've overcome the world." Amen.
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He said for us to expect it, Spurgeon said, "The most hard-hearted person is the one "who has little trouble, the most empathetic "and caring of those who have had much trouble."
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Now, I want us to look at this test and we're gonna look at it from several different perspectives. Number one, I want us to look at the reason God allows us to go through trials. If I am maturing in my faith, it's going to be evident because of how I am responding to my trials.
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But I need to understand, first of all, why am I going through the trial? What's the reason for it? You know, I think the hardest thing about a trial is when it seems random, but I can't figure out why. You know, when the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a freight train coming your way. Sometimes we wonder why, and oftentimes, I've been asked that question over and over again. Why am I going through this? Well, I think there's at least four reasons that we see here in this text. Number one is to mature us, maturation.
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God uses trials to mature us spiritually.
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I think Peter helps us here. Let's read what Peter had to say, very similar to what James said. In 1 Peter chapter one, verses three through six, this is what he says. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and that will not fade away reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith unto salvation."
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Now, if he stopped right there, it would really be nice. But listen to this next verse. In this, what God has just told us, you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been distressed by various trials. Now, let me just define that word various. James and Peter both use it. It's the Greek word from which we get our English word. It looks a lot like this in English, polka dot.
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It means very multi-colored.
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And so it means that these trials come in various ways.
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It may be a physical trial, it may be a financial trial, it may be a domestic trial in the home, it may be a friend that's betrayed you, it may be a child that's walked away from your values. It could be any number of things. But he's saying that there are various trials. He said, "If necessary, you've been distressed by various trials." Why? "So that the proof of your faith, being much more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though it is tried by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
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Now, what he's saying here is this, that God allows the trials in order to grow us up and mature us in our faith. "If I never had a problem," Andrei Kraut said, "then how could I ever know that God would solve them?" And in these verses, he gives us four reasons. Number one, trials come to give us patience.
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Anybody here need patience?
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Little boy prayed, "Lord, give me patience." And I want it right now.
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That's kind of the way we are. But patience here is the Greek word hupomone, and it means to abide under. And what it means in this context is God is wanting to teach us the ability to not run away when the trial comes, to abide under the trial, to stay there until God does his perfect work. The reason some people never grow up is they always are running away from God's test. When he tests them, they try to get out from under it. They preoccupate, they do everything they can to get their mind off of what God's trying to do in their life.
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Hey, I don't want to discourage you, but I want to tell you something. Ron Dunn taught me years ago.
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You never fail one of God's tests.
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You just keep taking it till you pass it.
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So the easiest thing to do is go ahead and get it passed.
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Pass it the first time. So God is trying to teach us patience. The second thing we see here in 1 Peter 1 and in James 1, 2, and 3, is trials are meant to purify our faith.
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You know, he talked about purifying the gold. And the way they purified gold was putting fire to it. And as they put fire to the gold, the impurities would rise to the surface.
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They'd wipe off those impurities and keep wiping them off. And when did they know they had pure gold? When they could see their image in the gold.
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And God keeps purifying us through the fiery trials until he can see his son in us.
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They're meant to purify our faith. You see, God doesn't test us in order to prove that we will fall, but he tests us to show us that we don't have to fall.
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Somebody said when Chevrolet tests Ford pickup trucks, they do it to prove that the Ford trucks won't pass the test.
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But when the Chevrolet tests its own trucks, they do it to prove that their trucks will pass the same test. You see, God sends us tests. He's not trying to hurt us. He's trying to encourage us. You see, James is writing to these churches that have been dispersed by persecution. He's encouraging them that your faith is strong enough to pass the test.
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I've been trying to memorize a poem. I thought I'd try to quote it for you, but I didn't wanna mess up. So I wrote it down.
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When God wants to drill a man and thrill a man
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to play the noblest part, when he earns with all of his heart to create so great and bold a man
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that all the world is amazed, watch his methods,
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watch his ways, how ruthlessly he perfects
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those he loyally elects, how he hammers him and hurts him.
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And with every blow converts him
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into the wrong shapes of play, which only God understands. And he's trying to get us to the point where God understands.
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How he bends but never breaks when his good he undertakes.
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How he uses whom he chooses.
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And with every purpose fuses him,
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and every act induces him to try his splendor out.
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God knows what he's about.
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God uses trials to chip away everything about us that's not like Jesus.
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Trials cause us to rely on God's power, not just patience, not just to purify us, but to push us into appropriating God's power. When do I need God's power the most?
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When I'm going through a trial. Remember when Paul was going through that thorn in the flesh and he prays for God to give him, take away the thorn, take away the thorn, he prays three times. What did God say to him? Paul, I'm not gonna take away the thorn. My grace, this is 2 Corinthians 12, nine and 10. Paul said, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in what church?
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Say it, weakness.
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His power is revealed through our weakness. Therefore, I am well content with weakness, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions and difficulties. For Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong. And there's a principle that rises out of those two verses and it's this, God uses our weakness as the stage upon which to display his power.
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God in 1 Corinthians chapter one doesn't call the gifted, not very many of them, but he calls the ungifted so that he might gift them, he might fill them with the Holy Spirit and he might use them. He doesn't use a six foot six Solomon, he uses a teenage boy named David to bring down the giant.
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If Solomon had done it, the soldiers would have put him on their shoulder and said, what a great king we have.
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But when David did it, they couldn't help but say,
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what a great God we have.
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God uses it for power.
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Then he uses them to correct us.
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God uses trials to correct us. The Psalmist said, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I've kept your word. And then three verses over, two verses over, he said, it's a good thing for me that I've been afflicted that I might learn your statutes.
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God uses trials sometimes to point us, to get us away from the wrong direction and point us in the right direction. I remembered this this afternoon, I looked it up, Ephraim is another name for the Northern Kingdom. And in Hosea chapter two, listen to verses six and seven, the Lord says this about the Northern Kingdom. He says, therefore, Hosea the prophet says, therefore behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns. See, she's going away from the Lord and God puts thorns in their path. How many of you know that the backslider is filled with his own ways? Backsliding is often his own worst punishment. And God puts thorns in the path of the backslider to drive him back to us. And that's what he says. And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her past. She will pursue her lovers, she will not overtake them, she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, I will go back to my first husband.
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That's coming back to God. That's what he's saying. I'm using this correction, this discipline to turn you back to God.
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Hey, I've seen it in my ministry so many times. I've seen it. The prodigal son, when did he find out that he needed to get back to his father when he was in the hog pen?
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When did Jonah find out he needed to go to Nineveh when he was in the belly of the whale?
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God uses correction. There's another thing, direction.
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God uses trials to redirect us.
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My soul, Joseph, young man, nothing said bad about him, wearing his coat of many colors, minding his own business, goes down to check on his brothers. They threatened to kill him, but instead throw him in a pit.
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Took his coat, dipped it in blood. Along came a caravan. They sold him as a slave to Egypt. When he got to Egypt, he was taking care of the house of one of the leaders in Potiphar, and his wife lied against him, accused him of rape, threw him in jail. While he was in jail, he interpreted some dreams. They said they'd help him, but they never did. They forgot about it. I imagine about that time he's saying,
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"Lord Jesus, oh Lord, Jesus hadn't come yet." But don't you know by then he's saying, "God, what's going on?
[01:38:40;56 - 01:38:45;44]
"What's going on?" And then Pharaoh had a dream.
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Somebody said, "There's a prisoner "that's been interpreting dreams. "You might check with him."
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Lo and behold, Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's dream, and what happened as a result of that?
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He was catapulted to the second in command
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of the largest and most powerful nation in the world. How did he get from the pit to the palace?
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It's called trials.
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Trials.
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Well,
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y'all are not listening fast enough. I gotta talk a little quicker.
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There's one other reason for the trials,
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and that's declaration.
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I started not to use this one, but I think it's too powerful.
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Trials are for a very specific person.
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Let me say this, you may disagree with it, but think about it.
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Trials are our greatest platform for witness.
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Think about it.
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I think God walks us through trials because it is through our trials that we have the opportunity to address a lost and dying world and show them the authenticity of a life lived in fellowship with God.
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Listen to what Paul said, Philippians 1, 12, and 13. Now, I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances, he's writing from prison, that's his circumstances, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel. What Paul's saying, if I hadn't been in prison, I wouldn't have the witness of God.
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So that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else, and that most of the brethren trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear.
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All right, so that's the reason, okay? I won't spend near as much time on the next one. Okay, here, secondly, here's the second thing. How do I measure my maturity? If I am maturing in my faith, it'll be reflected in the reaction I give to my trials. Now, notice what the reaction is. Look at verse two. "Consider it all joy, my brethren, "when you encounter various trials."
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Has James lost his mind?
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He's saying, "My reaction to my trial should be joy." Now, I want you to notice I use that word reaction very intentionally.
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You see, it's not my actions that show my maturity. It's my reactions.
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If you want to know what you're filled with,
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just see what spills out when you're jostled.
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How we respond, react to trials.
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Now, this seems a strange piece of advice. Other translations say, "Be very glad."
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Another one says, "Consider yourself fortunate."
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But the very best one, I think, that really gives the sense of what this verse means and what it meant to James's people when he was writing it is the paraphrase by J.B. Phillips. I just want to read it for you.
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I don't know if you have a copy of Phillips. If you can find one, I don't even know if they're still in print. It's a great New Testament paraphrase. Listen to it. He says, "When all kinds of trials and temptations "crowd into your lives, my brothers," get this, "don't resent them as intruders,
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"but welcome them as friends."
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Wow.
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When trials come, he says, "Don't resent them as intruders,
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"but welcome them as friends." You know, the word trial and the word joy
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just don't seem to go in the same sentence, do they? Yeah, it's kind of like military intelligence,
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you know, or Microsoft works, you know. They don't go in the same sentence.
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Usually we think of this.
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We think that joy comes when trials are over.
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James goes totally against that.
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We say the best way to have joy is to get rid of trials.
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If I wanna have joy, I've gotta get rid of this stuff that's bothering me. James says no.
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The pathway, you know, trial and trail, there's only one letter missing.
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Trials are trails.
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They're pathways that lead us to real joy. Now, if your definition of joy is the same as happiness, then I can understand why you say this could never happen because happiness depends on what's happening to you.
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Why can he say, "Consider it all joy?" One reason, because you are viewing your trial from God's perspective.
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His thoughts, Isaiah 55, 89, "His thoughts are not our thoughts, "His ways are not our ways, "for as the heavens are higher than the earth, "so are His thoughts higher than our ways, "His thoughts than our thoughts." The only way you can have joy in trial is when you view your trial the way God sees it. And when your joy comes, I mean, we're not masochists. James is not saying grin and bear it. He's not saying, "Oh, just deny the pain." That's not at all what he's saying. He's saying, "Have joy in your heart "because you see the outcome. "God is working all things together "for good to them that love Him "and that the long range goal is going to be wonderful."
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You look at the storm and it brings fear.
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But if you look through the storm, it brings hope.
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And so that's what James is saying.
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That's what he's saying. He says, "Count it." See that word, "Count it all joy." That's a economic term. It means, he's not saying, "Feel joyful."
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That's not what he's saying.
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He's saying, the word "count it" here means to consider it so.
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It's important to note
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that we're not to be joyous for trials.
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A sick person would do that.
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That's not what he's saying.
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He's saying we're to be joyous in the midst of trials. Here we go to the next one. Ready?
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If I am maturing in my faith, I will avail myself of the resources during the trial.
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Trials seem to remind us of the resources God provides.
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The riches of this world cannot sustain us in the midst of trials.
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They will leave us empty.
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Money cannot solve your trials. Things of this world can't provide what only God can provide. What are the resources? Number one, notice verse five. If any of you like wisdom, let him do what? Ask of God. Prayer.
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The first resources we have in trials is to pray. Do you know James had a nickname? Anybody know it? Probably some of you have. You studied the book of James. What was it? Anybody?
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Old camel knees. That's exactly right. You know why? Because James spent so much time in prayer that his knees were calloused. And he had that name. Old camel knees.
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And so he's saying here, if you want to have God's wisdom, then you need to go to God and ask him for that because that's the only way wisdom is going to come is when we humble ourselves and go to him in prayer.
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That's why this prayer for wisdom is an imperative. It's not an option. James has over 50 imperatives.
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You know what an imperative in the Greek language means? It's not a suggestion. It's a command. And in the book of James, James is not too high on suggestions.
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He has over 50 commands. And this is one of them. He's not saying pray if you feel like it, pray if you want to. He's saying pray. As a Christian, you're to pray.
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And then the second resource he says here is wisdom. What are you praying for? Wisdom. Wisdom helps you is the resource God gives you when you walk through the trial.
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Knowledge is not wisdom.
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Knowledge is the ability to take things apart. Wisdom is the ability to put them back together.
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One can have knowledge without wisdom.
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Through knowledge, mankind has learned to travel faster than sound,
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but he shows his lack of wisdom by going faster in the wrong direction.
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Knowledge can teach you how to make a living, but wisdom teaches you how to live.
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In other words, the wisdom provided is to show us how to face our trials.
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And then he gives us this interesting little, what appears to be an interlude. It really, when I first read it, I thought,
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what is this? It looks like it's out of place. Look at verses nine and following. But let the brother of humble circumstance glory in his high position, and let the rich man glory in his humiliation, because like flowering grass, he will pass away. For the sun rises with a scorching wind and withers the grass, and its flower falls off, and the beauty of its appearance is destroyed. And he talks about the poor and the rich. And he says it is only wisdom that will help the poor realize he is really rich in Christ. And even though he may be poor as what they used to say, Job's turkey, that he's rich in Christ. And then the rich man, through wisdom, sees that his wealth can be gone in a day, in a night, in a moment. And that if he builds his life on wealth, he's building it on false security. He too is rich, but not in physical riches, but in Christ. So I think that's the reason that it's there.
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All right, now the last thing is perseverance. Verses three through 12, that's a resource. God gives us perseverance.
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The ability to stay under, to stay in the battle, to not give up.
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I told this probably 10 years ago here, but I'm gonna tell it again tonight, I love the story. My best friend in high school, we took every class together from seventh grade through graduation, named Kelly Fergus.
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He was in the rodeo, and we used to ride Junior Brahma Bull Riding, can you imagine that? And I had a horse named Dixie.
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It was a saddle horse. He had an Appaloosa Quarter Horse named Buck.
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And we used to ride in the rodeos, not the grand entry and all that. Well, Kelly's Appaloosa was incredibly fast.
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And that quarter horse outran everything in Lee County when he would just race it. So we decided we were gonna give it a trial.
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If I can put it into context. We were gonna test Buck. How fast are you?
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And so we entered Buck in a race,
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but it was a race with thoroughbreds.
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And it wasn't a quarter of a mile, it was a whole mile.
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And when the gate came up and Buck came out, I felt embarrassed for those other horses.
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He went out in front of them so fast, he was kicking dirt up in their face. I mean, I really did. I thought, man, this is something else. We discovered the fastest horse in the world right here.
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But you know something happened when he got to that first curb.
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He went completely off the track
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in spite of everything my friend could do. You know what?
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He didn't pass the test.
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He didn't pass the test.
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You see, he wasn't a thoroughbred.
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He hadn't been born with the nature to pass the test.
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You can't possibly pass this test
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unless you're born again.
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Now, let me close and I'm through. Y'all have listened so well. I didn't mean to take pastors a whole hour tonight, but hey, I don't ever get to do this. I'm doing it tonight. Got a captive audience. I'll be through in four or five minutes, okay? Here's the last thing I wanna say.
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If I am maturing in my faith, I will live in light of the reward after the trial.
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In other words, maturity helps me to look beyond the test.
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You know, we're saved by trusting in Christ for salvation, but the crowns come after we have been tested by fire, and we have remained faithful and continued to love Him. Did you see what it says in verse 12? "Blessed is the man who perseveres, "who stays under the trial. "For once he has been approved, "he will receive the crown of life, "which the Lord has promised to those that love him." How would he say those that love him rather than those that trust him or those that obey him? I'll tell you why. Because the ones that are really gonna pass the test
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are the ones that love Jesus.
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Peter said, "Whom having not seen," verse Peter 1.8,
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"Whom having not seen you love,
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"in whom though now you see him not, yet believing, "you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." So what is the reward?
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The reward is life.
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You see, it's the life, eternal life. That's the ultimate reward.
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Do you know James died a martyr?
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You know how they killed him?
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They took him up, tradition says, they took him up to the high point of the temple,
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and they pushed him off.
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And when he fell and hit the hard surface, he didn't die.
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And they took clubs and they finished him off.
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They beat him to death.
[01:54:47;37 - 01:54:48;39]
But James wasn't dead.
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You know that, don't you?
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Because he had received what verse 12 talks about.
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"Blessed is the man that endures test,
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"for when he is tried,
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"he shall receive the crown of life."
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Well, it's not until the loom is silent and the shuttle cease to fly.
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Will God unroll the pattern and explain the reason why? The dark threads are as needful in the weaver's skillful hand as the threads of gold and silver
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in the life that he has planned.
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There are some dark threads and some light threads. But the end result is,
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he's making us into the image of his son, amen.
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Father, thank you for the opportunity, the privilege tonight to teach these 12 verses from your word.
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Lord, help us as we take inventory and measure our own maturity.
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Father, I have to admit tonight,
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I have failed far too many times. When I go through the test, sometimes I grumble,
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sometimes I don't respond with joy like I should. But God, my heart desires to do that. Because I know that you will not allow anything to touch me that is not working for your glory and my ultimate good.
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So we thank you for that, Father, in Jesus' name, amen. God bless you, thank you.