Speaker 1: But that was the idea. I was able to persevere because I knew what I was going to produce. It was going to be a gift of a frosty. But in our Christian life, when we go through trials, if we consider it pure joy, if we can remain under the weight with a sense of joyfulness, it's going to produce maturity and completeness in us.
Speaker 2: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Life Tabernacle Church podcast. It's an honor to be with you today. This podcast serves as our church's weekly sermon archive. Tune in each week to hear what God is speaking in our community.
Be sure to follow and share with a friend. We hope you enjoy today's message.
Speaker 1: So last week, as you're going there, me say a few things. Last week, we started a sermon series through the book of James. This was requested actually by a couple people here at the church. I asked them a question. Hey.
What would you really love to dig into this year as a church family? And they said, we would love to dig into the book of James. I said, sounds great. So it took a few months to get everything ready, and now we're gonna start trekking through the entire book of James, almost line by line, word by word. And so if you're like me and you like details and you like things to be broken down for you so that you can understand exactly what they say or what it means, this is for you.
And so we're gonna take probably three months, and we're gonna dig deep into the book of James. And remember, like I said last week, James is interested in something. He's interested in something very specific. He's interested in helping us walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Raise your hand if you know people who talk the talk but don't walk the walk.
Right? They got a big mouth. They might talk about something, and they might talk a big game, but when it comes and the rubber meets the road, they can't walk the walk or play the game. Right? And so so the goal of the book of James, the letter of James is to help us to walk the walk so that our faith is on par with works and works is on par with our faith.
And that remember what we said last week is that we don't do all these works. We don't do all these good things in life so that we can be saved. How are we saved? Through the precious blood of Jesus and our belief in him for the forgiveness of our sins. That's how we are saved.
But as a response to that, we have good works and we walk in obedience in Christ. And so that's what this book is going to try to help us accomplish. And remember we got to know the author a little bit. His name is James. He's the half brother of Jesus.
And he didn't even like or believe in Jesus during his earthly ministry, but sometime after the resurrection, he became one of the most important leaders in the early church after coming to faith in his older brother, but more than his brother, in his Lord and his savior and his God, Jesus Christ. Last week, we looked at one verse. We looked at the opening verse, James one one, greetings. The greetings from James. And what James really shows us is that he's not just Jesus' brother.
He's not just a leader in the church, but he is a servant. Look at your neighbor and say servant. And we are all servants just like James and just like Jesus was. We are servants enslaved to the will of God. And I don't know about you.
I want to be obedient to God in everything that I do and everything that I say. I wanna walk faithfully with him, and that's what James is telling us that he has done and hopes that we do as well. The the the key verse of the book of James, just to remind you, is found in James one twenty two. James one twenty two says, Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves, do what it says. Look at your neighbor and say, Do what it says.
And so, we're going to hop right in today and we're gonna start digging out the beauties of scripture in James one two through four. We got three verses to deal with today, so let's get into it. If you have your bibles, get ready. If not, look on the screen behind you. James one two through four.
My friends, this is the word of the Lord. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. My friends, this is the word of the Lord to us today. Let us pray over the word.
Lord, we love you and we thank you for your word. Even though this was written two thousand years ago, Lord, this was also written for us. It was written to them, but it was written for us. So help us to hear your word in our hearts and help us to walk faithfully in doing or putting into practice whatever you've said. The name of Jesus, everybody said, amen.
Amen. I wanna draw your attention to something. He says, consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters. Growing up, I always wondered why we call everybody brother and sister when we're not related because I have two older sisters who are wonderful, and they're my sisters, and I never had any brothers. So I only had sisters.
And I would come to church and I'm like, why is everybody my brother and why is everybody my sister even though Glenn and I don't look alike. Right? How he's my brother. Right? Right?
Because in God's family, when we come to know Christ, we become brothers and sisters in Christ. And there's coming a day when Jesus returns and we're all standing before the throne, where every nation and every tongue and every skin color will bow down at the name of the Lord Jesus and will worship him forever and ever and amen. This is the scene we get in the book of Revelation. We have brothers and sisters all around the world. Today, it's us here.
Drema, you're my sister. Jeff, you're my brother. We're brothers and sisters. And James is writing his book to his brothers and sisters. What a beautiful thing.
He's not writing to a generic audience. He's writing to what he's calling his brothers and sisters in Christ. And what's interesting is is he goes from his greeting in verse one where he says, James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes dispersed greetings. And then he immediately goes into verse two. Consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters.
If you recall, in a lot of New Testament books, there's usually a long introduction. Right? It will say something like, Paul, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, greetings to you. And then there will be this long introduction that's a doxology that talks about the beauty of God and and how Paul is thankful for this specific church and this thing that they have done. And it's usually a whole chapter, just introduction, but James goes right into it.
He doesn't even take time to say, I wanna thank you for this. I wanna thank you for this. He goes right into his exhortation. He goes immediately says, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds. And I think the reason is pretty obvious.
These brothers and sisters are going through a hard time and they need help right now. He wastes no time and gets right into the word. These people, these brothers and sisters in Christ are facing trials and sufferings, and that brings up a lot of questions. But before I begin to answer some of those questions, I want to tell you about my week because the Lord was sure to give me some fresh material to preach on this week. Alright?
So it was Monday. My family and I were on our way to Lowe's to run a couple errands for the church to get a few things. And on our way there, our beautiful two year old Marcella began complaining about her nose. Now we've all been struggling with allergies. I don't know about you.
So we thought her nose was running, and I have a problem with nosebleeds, and I'm like, man, maybe she's having a nosebleed and she's freaking out, but something evidently was really wrong. So Emily's like, you need to pull the car over right now. So I pulled the car over and I started thinking, what has she shoved in her nose? Right? And we've been there before.
Semi's done this twice, one with toilet paper and one with something else. I don't remember. It was a blur. And so Emily hops into the back of the van and she begins looking up Marcella's nose. And Marcella, who has a fascination with little trinkets, she loves little things, whatever it is, she had taken a little seashell that she had found with her grandmother somewhere, I believe, and she had shoved it way up her nose to the point where we couldn't get it out.
We tried. We tried to use a pair of tweezers, you know, you're trying to do what you can, and it was way too far up there. And I was like, well, I guess we're not gonna go to Lowe's. Let's go to the ER instead. So we made our way to the ER and we got in and it didn't take too long and they were able to extract the seashell pretty quickly and she was immediately herself.
And then after that, because of such a terrible day it was, we went to Chick fil got chicken nuggets and ice cream. It was a really great day, honestly. But it was scary. I mean, your daughter's flipping out and she has the beach in her nose. Maybe she's telling me she wants her daddy to take her to the beach.
I don't know. And so just that's how we started the week, you know, a trip to the ER and a seashell up the nose. And that would be enough for the week. Right? Like that's enough, you know, entertainment for the week.
But let me tell you what happened on Tuesday. All right? Now on Tuesday in the evening, my daughters and I were on our way to our favorite store called Earth Fare. This is over on Franklin Road. They've got some of the best things in the valley, it's my favorite store.
And and when we're on our way there, we're sitting on the corner of 4th And And Elm Street. You know what I'm talking about. You're getting ready to hop on five eighty one. You've been there many times. And the girls and I are just hanging out, listening to music, and all of a sudden, we felt a a massive jolt of energy from behind.
And I'm sitting there confused. I'm like, did we just get hit? You know, you when you get hit and you're in an accident, you're like, what just happened? Right? And so I finally realized, I'm like, we just got rear ended right here.
And so I look back at the girls. I'm like, are you okay? And they're like, yeah. We're okay. And that's kind of the fake okay.
Like, I'm okay. And they, you know, they're beginning to cry. I'm like, oh my goodness. We're in a wreck right here. What's going on?
And so I hop out of the car. I kinda evaluate the the damage, and I go to the lady behind me. I ask her, are you okay? And she's like, I'm fine. I'm so sorry.
Are you okay? I'm like, yes. Yes. My kids are a little shaken up, and she's like, I'm so sorry. I'm like, it's all good.
You know, we're gonna figure this out. And so we're able to call the police, and they were able to come evaluate, write up a report and all that. But it wasn't really fun because this happened at 05:00. And if you've ever been on Elm And Forth at 05:00, it is literally the worst place in the entire city to be. And I have 40 cars beeping at me behind, you know, but my dad always taught me, hey, if you're ever in a wreck, you stay put until they tell you to leave.
So I just stayed put and everybody else was mad about it. We pulled over. They wrote out the report. I'm probably gonna have to get a new bumper. There's some some some little bit of damage to the the bumper.
And then that night, I went to buy popsicles for the girls to make it all better. So Chick fil A one day with ice cream and popsicles the next. And then on Wednesday I'm just kidding. Nothing happened on Wednesday. It kinda chilled out after that.
And so I shared those stories with you, not for sympathy. I'm not asking you to feel bad for me, but because this week, I knew I was going to be preaching on the topic of trials, the topic of tests, the topic of suffering, and God made sure I had some fresh illustrations to give you. And here's the thing though, I know I'm not alone because it's not just my family that went through hard stuff this week. There's other families in this church and in this city who went through hard things. Like I mentioned, the Townley families suffered a horrendous unexpected loss this week.
The Palmer and Maciel family are experiencing suffering as they're still contending for Bruce as he's battling cancer. Right? And there's people here, there's some of you all today, you've encountered something this week, some type of trial came up and it's been a hard week. Can you resonate with that? Maybe your daughter didn't shove a seashell up her nose, but you went through something, and if you didn't go through something this week, you're probably gonna go through something next week or next month or next year because this is what happens in life.
We go through hard things. As Jesus once said, in this world, you will have suffering. He saves us but doesn't take us immediately away with him to heaven. We're here on this earth, we're gonna go through trials. We're gonna go through suffering.
We can't avoid them as much as we want to avoid them. Right? I mean, no one likes to go through a hard time. I don't like having to go to the ER. I don't like having to call an insurance adjuster to get a new bumper that these are just inconvenient things in our lives, but they happen.
And so we have a choice. We can either decide how to face them with faithfulness knowing that every trial, every type of suffering has the potential to produce something of eternal value in us, or we can just complain and murmur our way through it. And according to James, he has a very specific way that he wants us to endure through every single trial that we go through. And so today, that's what we're gonna get into. So let's look back at our text.
Let's let's look at verse two of James chapter one. James one two again says this, Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds. What is a trial? When you think the word trial, you might think of a courtroom scene, of being on trial. That's not necessarily the best picture even though you could be on a trial and a trial in a courtroom.
A trial can simply denote an outward trial or a process of testing or it can don't can denote the inner enticement to sin or temptation, an outward thing that you can't control and then maybe an inward thing that you're struggling with that you have some control over. Either or, they are something that test you. James says you're gonna face trials of what? Many kinds. Can you say many kinds?
And we know the many kinds can be what? Health problems, financial issues, persecution of one's faith, circumstances falling apart. Trials can be physical, emotional, relational, financial, but each testing, each testing tests different dimensions of our character and our faith. So if a trial is like a wait. Right?
A trial is like a wait of some sort, whether it's a physical or financial need on you, weighing on you, then what James wants us to do accordingly or apparently is to persevere, which perseverance if the weight is the trial on you, perseverance is being able to walk through the trial while the trial is still on you. And that connection's important because James isn't just telling us what you're going to face, he's telling you that you're built for this if you do this a certain way. So he says we're gonna face trials of many kinds which moves us right into verse three. Look at verse three with me. Verse three says, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
Can you look at your neighbor and say perseverance? Perseverance. Perseverance. All these trials are to help us to grow in the ability to persevere. What is perseverance?
Right? Perseverance literally means remaining under. Alright? In this case, the etymology of the word points us in the right direction. It's the picture of a person successfully carrying a heavy load for a long time.
As I told you last week, I played football at Salem ten years ago now. And every day after school, I would walk from the high school up to the locker room, up to the weight room where I would begin to do things to my body that I hated. My coaches would begin yelling at me and telling me, Dallas, it's time to squat. It's time to bench press. It's time to do sprints.
And I remember this one particular time. I was actually working out with my dad. I was doing bench press. And I was remaining under a lot of weight. And I was sitting on the bench press flat.
I had, like, 300 pounds on the bar. It's remain and I'm remaining under it, but I'm persevering through it because I'm pushing the weight off. And I told my dad, don't think I can do it. I don't think I can persevere. And what my dad did in that moment, I've never forgiven him for.
And I'm telling you now, my dad reached down, he slapped me in the face and I pushed the weight up and I said, don't ever do that again. And I was no longer remaining under the weight because I had persevered and pushed it off me. Dad, I forgive you now. Love you. But that idea, you're remaining under a heavy weight, and perseverance is being able to do that over a long period of time, and you're growing in endurance.
Right? And you're being able to stay under that weight for a longer period of time each time. And what James is suggesting is that we're gonna go through trials of many, many kinds, But we shouldn't be, you know, upset about it because the testing of our faith is producing this thing called perseverance, which is a very godly trait that according to Romans eventually produces hope in us. And one of the only ways though that you can learn to remain faithful to God for a long period of time is when we face difficulty and endure it. Right?
Raise your hand if you've ever been through something and you just said, I can't wait till this is done. Right? You go to the DMV and you stand in the line, you're like, I just can't wait. I'm persevering through this line. I just can't wait for it to be done.
And and and in the words of my dad and my football coaches, when it comes to persevering persevering and building our faith, we can't be soft. We got a lot of soft Christians. Y'all ever heard that term we're soft? We experience a little bit of suffering and like, oh, goodness, Lord. Help me.
And the Lord's like, I I gave you the second parking spot closest to the door, not the first. Are you serious? Right? Right? We've become soft and and we must develop some type of stick to it ness to us, the ability to remain under the pressure for long periods of time.
This is the testimony of Jesus in Matthew twenty four thirteen which says, Jesus says, but the one who endures to the end will be saved. It doesn't matter how you start a race. It matters how you walk faithfully through it and finish And I'm not saying that you might not stumble along the way. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, but we must have the ability to endure to the end. We must have the ability, the perseverance, and the endurance to walk the mile.
And so here's the cool part. When we're able to persevere, when we're able to endure the testing of our faith, James says it's going to produce something else. Look at James one four with me. James one four says this, let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. That's the result.
To be mature and complete, that we can become all that we possibly can in Christ Jesus, our Lord. There's nothing more sad when you look at someone's life and you say, wow. They had a lot of potential. Whether it's a good athlete or a loved one of doing something in a job, whatever it is, when someone doesn't live up to their potential, it breaks your heart because you you know that in their life, you could have experienced so much more if you would have just pushed through. And the reason why is because it's hard.
And but James is reminding us, if we persevere through these many trials of different kinds, it's going to help us become mature and complete. We must treat these trials and sufferings as how the Lord is refining us. You see this right here. See if I can get it off. You see this right here.
This is my gold wedding band that I got seven years ago, almost. It's almost my anniversary. Come on, somebody. Alright. This is the ring that my wife gave me, and this is pure gold.
When I picked out my ring, I made sure it was pure beautiful gold. But this didn't get to look the way it is just by finding it on the ground. There was gold found in the earth, and someone dug it up, and someone took it to a refiner, and they threw it in a hot, hot, hot fire. And they were able to refine and get all the impurities out of this gold so that you can make this beautiful, pure, golden ring. And that's the idea of what James is giving us, that all the trials that we're going through, they are refining our character.
They're refining what's in us so that we can become mature and complete. And I don't know about you. Again, I want to be mature and complete. Like I said, we have a lot of soft Christians. We have a lot of immature Christians across this nation and across this world that we're still on milk when we should be on meat by now.
That we're still barely being able to pray over our food when we should be praying the prayer of faith for people to be healed. We set the bar way too low. We have to grow up and be mature and complete. Christ is our goal. And I look at Christ, he was mature and complete.
I want to be mature and complete like him. And it's not just Jesus. I can think of plenty of mature believers who went through many, many trials. And when I look at the scriptures, I see that Adam and Eve went through trials. Right?
I see that Noah went through trials. I see that Abraham went through trials. I see that Moses went through trials. I see that David went through trials. I see that Jesus went through trials.
I see that Paul went through trials. I see that Peter went through trials. I see that James and John went through trials. I've been through trials. You'll be through trials, and we're all going to experience more and more trials.
The question is, are we gonna allow our trials to help us become mature and complete or not? No one in God's story has ever been exempt from trials and tribulation. Not the heroes, not the apostles, not the savior himself. So if you're in a in a trial right now, you're in good company. So the question has never been whether the trial's coming.
The question is what are you going to do when a trial arrives? Because we know that if we're able to embrace the trial in a certain way, it's going to produce perseverance in us and it's going to produce maturity and completeness. So then the question becomes, Keaton, as you make your way up here, how are we going to consistently persevere through trials so that we become mature in Christ? And thankfully, James told us the secret sauce of how to do this. I skipped it on purpose, so let's go back to it.
Look at James one two with me again. James one two. James says, consider it pure joy. Look at your neighbor and say pure joy. Pure He says the answer to how you're going to do this is joy.
The Greek word here for joy is kara. The Hebrew word for joy is simcha, and that's where we get our daughter's name from. It means joy or gladness or mirth. In the New Testament, the word kara denotes a response to the reception of God's saving work. For example, when you got saved, it produced a type of inexpressible joy in you.
Right? The type of joy that no matter what happens to you, you're saying, you know what? I'm saved. I'm gonna I'm gonna be with the Lord forever. I have this sense of joy and lightness to myself that no matter what happens to me, I'm filled with joy as a response or a byproduct of Holy Spirit living in me.
It comes often as a result of people experiencing God's presence by the Holy Spirit. When you're in a worship service or you've been praying for something and God answers that prayer, what are you filled with? Joy. Back last November, I I was praying with a family, and I watched joy explode in the room when someone said, hey. I wanna get saved.
It was just like this joy burst open. We prayed, and the Lord just filled that room with lightness and gladness and joy. And this is what James is talking about. He's talking about pure joy or all joy. What James is suggesting is not that we're just not just trying to get through something.
We're not just trying to go through the motions. We're not just trying to get the trial over with, which is the disposition of many of us because we're soft and we're immature. But James is suggesting that the very presence of the trials in our lives should be the cause of great joy. That when you have another trial come into your life, he's saying considerate joy. And you're like, what?
James, have you ever been through something? He had. James would eventually be killed for his faith, and I guarantee he went to his death with the feeling of joy. He said consider it pure joy. We can consider it pure joy because of our kingdom minded eternal perspective, sister dreamer, which we should be able to consider that whatever we're going through in life in some way can be a joyful experience because we know that God who loves us, who is joy himself, is thrilled to see us becoming more and more like him.
He is pleased to see us becoming less like the world and more like his son. Therefore, we should consider it a blessing when we go through something difficult, brother Lewis, because we know what we can get out of it if we're willing to remain under the weight. It's going to produce maturity and completeness in us. I love how the message version of the Bible says this. The message version says, consider it a sheer gift.
When I think of a gift, I don't think of a trial. But James remember, James is all about giving you wisdom. This is a wisdom thing that doesn't make sense in the world's eyes. He's saying consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. Now listen to me closely here, and I don't wanna lose you.
James does not suggest that Christians facing trials will have no response other than joy. Because even though we go through a trial, it's sad. It hurts. You cry. It breaks you down.
I'm not saying that, hey. Just be joyful when, you know, you lose a loved one. You're gonna feel an array of emotions. But at the end of the day, his point is that the trial should be an occasion for genuine rejoicing because we know what the suffering can produce in the end. Perseverance, maturity, and completeness.
Let me tell you a story to kinda paint this together and pull it all together. As a kid, I absolutely hated going to the dentist. I still hate going to the dentist. I don't like it. And every time I would go to the dentist, I would sit in doctor Hoy's chair right there in Salem, and he would get his little tool out and start poking around my teeth, and he would always say, hey, Dallas.
You got a cavity again. And I would say, rats. Right? I got another cavity. But I was able to sit in that chair uncomfortable with him working on my mouth for an hour, him drilling out my teeth and that suffering of that trial produces.
Right? Because I know when I went to see doctor Hoy at the end of the appointment, he would give me a little voucher to go to Wendy's and get a free Frosty right at the end. So while he was digging in my teeth, I was just sitting there thinking, if I just endure this, if I just persevere to the end, I'm gonna go get a free Frosty right after this. And that was a good business plan on his model because I would go get a Frosty, it would start the process of another cavity. It was a good way to, you know, stay in business.
Right? Just kidding. But that was the idea. I was able to persevere because I knew what I was going to produce. It was going to be a gift of a frosty.
But in our Christian life, when we go through trials, if we consider it pure joy, if we can remain under the weight with a sense of joyfulness, it's going to produce maturity and completeness in us. And we should learn to do the same. You know, I love communion Sunday is like my favorite Sunday to be honest with you. And and what I love about this, this represents his broken body. Yes?
I love what the scripture say. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. He considered it joyful to have his body broken for us. We see him crying in the garden of Gethsemane knowing how hard it was going to be, but he consider it all joy because he knew what it was going to produce. And it is in the very heart of Christ and the Christians of the old for us to remain faithful no matter what happens, but because we've experienced the greatest joy of all.
And we know that no matter what we go through, it's going to produce Christ likeness likeness in us. In our joyful demeanor, this is another big thing you need to see, our joyful demeanor is a way in which we are witnesses to the world. You've been at the hospital before. You've seen somebody get terrible news, and they're just broken to pieces, and rightly so. But I've also seen people walking through things which would crumble me, and they're walking through it with the type of strength I can't understand.
You know what I'm talking about? And you ask those people, how are you getting through this? And they might have a slight grin on their face and they say it's easy. I know a man who's walking with me every step of the way. And so the way in which we persevere through trials is a way in which we witness to the world.
So if we're immature and we're complaining and we're like, don't wanna remain under this weight, people hear that. Like, well, I don't want anything to do with that Christ. He's not he doesn't seem like a strong guy to get me through this. Now when we can persevere, we represent Christ well. We are witnesses to the world of his power in us and moving through us.
So if Christ suffered, we're gonna suffer. I love this quote. Let me read this quote to you from the Pentecostal theologian Gordon Fee. Gordon Fee writes, knowing Christ involves participation in his sufferings and is a cause for constant joy, not because suffering is enjoyable, but because it is certain evidence of his intimate relationship with the Lord. The fact that you're going through something hard is an indication that he's with you and you're moving in the right direction.
The Lord wants to produce a new maturity and completeness. So if you're going through something hard, you can say good. I can do this with a joyful demeanor because he's with me right here and he's gonna walk with me every single day through it. And so with your eyes closed, so we have a moment of response to what the Lord's speaking in our hearts and doing, I want us to fill our minds with the Lord. Because there's another quote by a guy named brother Lawrence that really resonates with this sermon.
Brother Lawrence once wrote, when our minds are filled with God, suffering will become full of sweetness and quiet joy. And so today, fill your mind with God. Fill your mind with Christ. Look to him in your heart of hearts and you will begin to sense a sweet presence of joy in it. Consider it pure joy, my friends.