The Book of James

You tonight, some of these you're just going to have to

write down and kind of go back and look at them later.

We don't have enough time to look at every passage or we'll

be here all night. But Matthew chapter 20 and verse

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

#27 says, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your

servant. What a great example that James

is showing here. James is showing the true heart

of a pastor or a minister and exactly what that ought to be.

A servant is a bondman or a slave.

Being a servant of God through Jesus Christ really is the

Christian life in a nutshell. And James by just calling

himself a servant boy, he he puts himself on the same level

as everybody else. The ground is level at the foot

of the cross, right? Doesn't matter who you are,

doesn't matter what title you have or whatever else.

We're all servants of Jesus Christ.

That's how we approach him. That's how we are able to do

things for Jesus Christ. But Paul often described himself

as a servant of Jesus Christ in the same way.

So did Peter. So did Jude.

You can read through their epistols.

You can read through the those books that Paul wrote.

They they they just simply saw themselves as servants of Jesus

Christ and and honestly that's the basic meaning of the term

disciple. It's just somebody who submits

to a master. The term disciple is used many

times in the New Testament to describe a believer.

We are just to submit to our master.

We are servants of Jesus Christ, and Christ said that a true

disciple continues in His word. We find that in John chapter 8

John 8 · chapter mention

and verse #31. But no one has the right to

claim to be a Christian if he does not claim also to be a

servant of Jesus Christ. That's who we are.

We're servants, and that's what our responsibility is, is to do

nothing but be a disciple and a servant of our master.

But I think also here we noticed that James just exhibits a

wonderful humility. Think of all the things that

James had to his name that he could have claimed, right?

But no mention of. I'm the brother of Jesus Christ.

No mention of. I'm an apostle.

No mention of by the way, I'm the pastor of the largest and

most influential church in all of Jerusalem, and really

probably in all of that area. No mention of any of those

things. He's simply a servant.

And as we close out looking at this introductory verse here,

it's no small thing to notice who James said that he was a

servant of. Look what he says there in verse

#1, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now that's he was a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that's a very significant phrase, and it's significant for

two reasons. Number one, this speaks of the

deity of Jesus Christ. If Jesus were not God, it would

be idolatrous for James to say that he was a servant of God and

also of Jesus Christ. Right.

There's a lot of verses that we can look at in the rest of the

Bible that prove the deity of Jesus Christ, that prove that

Jesus is God. But that's exactly what this is

doing here. And remember with James being

the first book of the New Testament that was written and

very early on in the in the in the early church, this book is

getting out there and James is making it very clear exactly

where he stands on who Jesus this is.

Remember most of the Jews rejected Jesus Christ as the

Messiah. And why did they kill him?

They killed him because he was being a blasphemer, saying that

he was God, right. And James establishes very early

on, I'm a servant of God and I'm a servant of Jesus Christ

because they're one and the same.

Anytime God and Jesus Christ are included together like this in

the Bible. The Bible is telling us that

they are the same, that they are equal of course is nothing left

to the imagination in Philippians when when Paul tells

us that that who being in the form of God thought it not

robbery to be equal with God. Jesus Christ was God and it's

not blasphemous to say that no man could be spoken of in direct

connection with God the way that Jesus Christ was.

Add to that the fact that all the way throughout the New

Testament, Jesus claimed to be God, and there's a lot of people

out there that would try to say that Jesus was a good man, he

was a good teacher, he was a rabbi, he was, he was all this,

but he just he wasn't God. Well, either Jesus is the

biggest fraud that ever lived or he was God because he claimed to

be God. And if you're going to claim to

be God, you're not a good person if you're not God, right?

And that's exactly who Jesus Christ was.

He was God in the flesh, but he was all God.

At the same time, Jesus accepted a worship of as God, which we

see many times in the Gospels and in the epistles.

Jesus is called God many times. So this speaks of the deity of

Jesus Christ, for James to say, a servant of God and of the Lord

Jesus Christ. But the second reason that

phrase is important is because it speaks of the Trinity.

Now, James doesn't specifically use that term.

He doesn't use the term Son for Jesus Christ.

He uses the term Father for God. And he actually does that no

less than three times in the book of James calling God the

Father. But we know by comparing

scripture with Scripture as is, as is a wise method of

interpretation of the Bible. Compare scripture to Scripture

that the mystery, quote, UN quote of Jesus being described

as equal to God is explained by the Trinity.

God is 1 God in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and

God the Holy Spirit. So First off we see that James

is one of the general epistles and his introduction there lets

us know exactly where he stands on who he is and who he believes

Jesus Christ is. He's just a simple servant of

Jesus Christ. But then he jumps right in and

we find #2, the blessing of trials.

James, chapter one and verse #2, my brethren.

And by the way, we mentioned that.

But over and over and over and over, you see James talking to

them as brethren. We're we're equal.

We're equal. Before God, my brethren counted

all joy when you fall into divers temptations.

Now what's he talking about? First of all, we see the nature

and the extent of trials. James is going to differentiate.

In fact, in this first chapter, we're not going to get to it

tonight. But he's going to differentiate

between trials and testing from God and temptation from the

devil. That word, temptation is used

two different ways in the New Testament and of course, the way

that we always think of it. I was, you know, I'm tempted.

I can't handle the temptation, right.

That's the way. That's one of the ways that we

that we think of it. It refers to being tempted with

evil. And we're going to see that in

verse 13 through 15. In fact, let's just read it now

so you can see what I'm talking about.

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God.

For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempted he, any

man. But every man is tempted when he

is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.

So we see that is, and that's a perfect example.

A perfect example of that would be Christ's temptation when when

he when the devil came and tempted him those three times.

That's that's the evil side of that temptation.

But it also refers to trials and sufferings in general.

We see a great example of that in this passage, which we're

going to read in just a second. But we also see it in in First

Peter. Peter talked a lot about trials

and tribulations and going through those different things.

In First Peter, chapter one of verse six, he said you are in

heaviness through manifold temptations.

Verse Peter, chapter 4, verse 12, he called it the fiery

trial. And that's exactly what James is

referring to here. In this passage.

He's referring to troubles and sufferings that are not brought

upon ourselves by sin. Sometimes we do that, but but

sometimes a temptation, a trial. Suffering is just brought on

because we're human and because God has things that he's trying

to accomplish through that, which is exactly what we're

going to see tonight. Temptation in this sense simply

means testing. Now here's another thing that I

think is very interesting or or or or worth pointing out here in

in that second verse is James is saying that there will be

trials, there will be trials, You're going to face them.

Nobody who is a Christian is going to be able to skate

through without ever having to face a trial or temptation in

their life. Nobody's going to make it

through without suffering. Nobody's going to make it

through living on easy street, right?

It's it's wonderful being a Christian.

Christian life is an absolute joy to live.

There's no other way that I would want to live.

But it does not mean that you're going to go through life with no

hurt, with no trials, with no temptations.

Notice, he says. My brother encountered all joy

when you fall into divers. Temptations.

Not if. If there was a possibility that

we could get through life without it, then he would have

said count on all joy. If you fall into diverse

temptations, he says when because he's saying it's going

to happen, you're going to fall into those temptations.

It's it is God's will to allow his people to be subject to

troubles in this present life. We're going to go through those

trials to every child of God. What he's saying here is don't

be surprised by trouble. You're going to go through it.

Don't be confused. Don't be angry at God.

Don't be swayed, don't faint. Under the trial, don't be turned

aside. You're going to go through those

things, so you might as well turn and face them.

Notice that James also says that we fall into trials.

I think that gives us the idea that we fall in the trials

unexpectedly. Well, you could be smooth sail

and you can go right along and boom, the next thing you know

you're in the middle of something that you never saw

coming, right. It's like walking along in a

path and all the sudden you the bottom drops out and you

disappear into a pit. Right when we were, I was

working on the, the addition on our house actually is putting

the porch on the front of it. We had a bunch of holes dug over

there and my wife was walking along one day and stepped on one

of the boards that was supposed to be solid and it wasn't.

And she fell down into that hole and cut her leg on the way down.

It's and that's a lot of times the way that we fall into divers

temptations, right. We're not expecting it.

We don't know that it's coming or we would avoid it, right?

But we fall into those temptations, which means it's

it's like I'm walking along and suddenly I fall into this hole.

But God is in control. God knows that it's going to

happen. God allows it to happen and

we're going to fall into those trials.

And I and I think we see lastly when it comes to the extent of

our trials that there are divers temptations.

Now divers doesn't mean that you're going to be tempted by

somebody that's diving, right? Divers literally means diverse

or diversity, different kinds of temptations, and there's a lot

of different types of temptations that we're going to

face in our life. When it comes to suffering and

trials, there's certainly persecution, but there's also

sickness, there's poverty, there's grief over the loss of

some loved one. There's there's slander, there's

false accusations. There's all kinds of different

types of trials that we're going to face.

And we see in multiple places in Matthew and John and Acts and

1st Thessalonians and Second Timothy and Hebrews and first

Peter that faithfulness in those trials is a major theme of the

entire New Testament. Now, obviously James makes that

one of the major themes in his book, but we see that theme

throughout the entire New Testament.

Faithfulness in the middle of those trials.

Boy, there the there. There wouldn't be so much of an

emphasis on it in the New Testament if it only happened

every so often. If only a few Christians here

and there fell into those temptations, the sufferings,

those trials. No, we all face it, and we all

face it multiple times in our life.

And our faithfulness in the middle of those temptations and

those trials is what this focus on.

So this temptation that He's Speaking of in this passage is

testing that is ordained by God and designed to be a blessing to

us. Now nobody ever looks at it as a

blessing. Oh, what a wonderful thing.

I can't wait till the next time I go through something

difficult. Nobody says that.

But God designed it. Why did?

Why would he, say, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall

into diverse temptations. By the way, we're going to talk

about this next week. It doesn't mean that you got to

be happy and Getty through the temptation counted all joy.

Doesn't mean that you have to say yay, I love temptations.

This is wonderful. That's not what he's talking

about in that passage. But we'll get to that next week.

We looked at then the nature and the extent of trials.

But I also want you to see this in the next verse.

And that is the purpose of those trials.

James chapter one and verse #3 says, knowing this, that the

trying of your faith worketh patience.

Now turn over. Keep your finger there in James

chapter One, but turn over, if you will, the first Peter

Chapter one. First Peter, chapter one.

I'm going to give you a few purposes in our trials, if you

will, that we find in this passage here.

But the first one is that suffering is a trying of the

faith. Suffering is a trying of the

faith. First, Peter chapter one in

verse #7 says this, that the trial of your faith, being much

more precious than of gold that perishes though it be tried with

fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the at

the appearing of Jesus Christ. Faith is purified by suffering,

the same way that gold is purified by the fire.

Gold that's never been through the fire is not worth a whole

lot. It's impure.

It's got it's it's it's it's not.

It's not very clear. It's not worth a whole lot.

But gold that has been refined because it's been through that

fire process is gold that's valuable.

It's gold that's worth something.

It's gold that's pure. And the same is true of our

faith. The trying of faith is a main

reason why the believer has troubles.

It's a main reason why we have to wait for the fulfillment of

God's promises. It's a main reason why we as

believers are subject to all sorts of difficulties and

struggles and and lacks, if you will, and frustrating

circumstances in this present life.

It's main reason why God does not answer our prayers

immediately, right? God has the ability to do that,

doesn't he? If we could pray today and he

can answer it in the next 10 seconds if he wanted to, no

matter how big the request is. But why does God let our prayer

request linger sometimes? Why does it seem that God is

slow to answer our request sometimes?

It's because it's the trying of our faith.

And the trying of our faith is what produces that that

purification, if you will. And there's a number of reasons

that the Bible gives us for suffering.

I, I, I'm only going to look at one of these verses.

There's a there's a good number of them here if you want to and

if you can write these verses down and use it as a as

something to study through in your devotions this week.

But there's a number of reasons why the Bible says that we are

going to suffer #1. We suffer because we live in a

cursed world. We find that in Roman chapter 8,

in verse 22 and 23, everything we do in this world is tainted

by sin. Had there been no sin, there

would be no taint, right? Had there been no sin,

everything would still be perfect.

Adam and Eve sinned and passed on to us.

We sin. We're no different than they

are. We have the choice in whether we

sin or not. We could be perfect.

We're just not right. And it's it's impossible for us

to be perfect because we have that sin nature and because

we're humans and we're going to sin.

But we ought to be trying not to be sinning all the time.

We ought to be trying to be holy, as God is holy.

So we have the choice. We just often make the wrong

choice. And because we live in a cursed

world, everything we do is tainted by that curse that came

about because of the man's fall. So that's one of the reasons for

suffering. Another reason we suffer is so

that we can help others. We find that in Second

Corinthians chapter one and verse three through verse seven.

It's it's through that suffering that we learn the lessons that

God teaches us that we can use to then help somebody else who

is going through the same thing or something similar to what

we're going through, right. God allows us to go through

those things so that we can be a help to others who are going to

go through those things as well. It could be somebody in your own

family. It could be somebody in your

church. It could be it could be somebody

anywhere that you can help through those things.

But that's one of the reasons why God allows us to go through

the suffering #3. We suffer so that we're not

trust ourselves. We find that in Second

Corinthians chapter one, verse 8:00 and 9:00.

It's it's through suffering that God takes away that

self-confidence. Right.

If I could just plow my way through it and make it out the

other side without any assistance, without God, without

any of those things, well, then I could trust in my flesh.

I could trust in myself. But God allows us to go through

those difficult times to prove to us that we need Him, Helps us

keep our eyes on Him. That's a necessary part of why

we have to suffer sometimes. And honestly, the harder the

harder headed we are, the the the longer and more difficult

the suffering is a lot of times because of that.

Look, you you allow yourself to be pliable and soft and

moldable. Sometimes we don't have to go

through as difficult of things. That doesn't mean that that our

life is going to be easy either, but the but the we we make it

easy on ourselves. When we realize the the earlier

we realized that God is in control and that we need him

that we can't. We don't have everything under

control. And here's another reason why #4

We suffer to keep us humble. Kind of goes right along the

same thing. But in Second Corinthians

2 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

chapter 12. That's the whole story of the

Apostle Paul, right? He was.

He had the thorn in the flesh, and he begged God to take that

thorn in the flesh away from him.

Three times he asked God to take that away from him.

God said no, it's necessary for you, right?

Charles Spurgeon said that one of his greatest spiritual

battles was with pride. He said it's a part of the old

flesh and and Paul prayed to ask God to remove that.

But God said that it was necessary to keep him humble.

And that's why we need trials, boy.

We get to thinking that we're something.

A lot of times God has to humble us sometimes by sending us

through those trials. The fifth reason why God allows

us to suffer is because of persecution.

We find that in Second Timothy chapter three, we live in the

enemy's territory. And since the devil and his

people hate God and they hate Jesus Christ, we can we can be

sure that they hate those who represent God and those who

represent Jesus Christ, right? Why do you think it is that

they're trying to take the 10 commandments down out of every

courthouse? Why do they want the Manger seem

to be removed from the public squares?

Why do they want no mention of Jesus name in a prayer or

anything else? Because they hate him and they

hate anybody that represents him.

So you can bet that you're going to be persecuted for that.

And that's that just comes from being being a Christian.

And sometimes that's suffering that we have to endure.

Number six, we suffered to correct sin and to mature us in

Jesus Christ. We find that in Hebrews chapter

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

12. But that passage teaches us a

few things. Number one, that God is a good

father and he corrects his children.

And that's exactly what a good father does, right.

A good father is going to correct his children.

How? How horrible of a father would I

have to be to allow my kids to go run out in the street and not

say anything to them because, well, I don't want to hurt their

feelings or I don't want them to not like me.

So I'm, I'm not going to correct them.

And I I just hope that a car doesn't hit him someday, right.

What kind of father would I be if I didn't say, get out of the

road, you're going to get hurt. And if he doesn't get out of the

road, he gets spanked. He's got to know that there's

consequences for that disobedience, right.

And. And what kind of father would

God be if he didn't discipline us when we needed that

discipline and when we needed that maturity, Right.

I would hope that a that a 10 year old kid would know better

than to go run out and play in the street, right?

Because with that, with that maturity comes a greater

understanding of what's harmful for you.

But a 2 year old kid doesn't know any different.

It looks fun to him. He's just going to go running

out into the street. So with maturity comes the

understanding of what we need to do as Christians and that's

where God's trying to get us. He's trying to trying to mature

us as Christians. Discipline is not a pleasant

thing, and we are often tempted to despise that discipline and

to hate the one who brings that discipline in our lives.

I can't stand it. Why would God do that to me?

I know that I haven't been exactly what I need to be, but

why would he do that to me? Why would he allow that to

happen? We're tempted to faint, to stop

serving and stop praying to turn away, but God's chastening is

evidence of salvation. And let me add here that some

argue against the doctrine of eternal security by claiming

that if this doctrine were true, then a believer could live

however he wants to live. If eternal security is true,

then we can live however we want.

But those who make that argument don't understand that salvation

is a new birth, and those who continue to live as they please

have never been born again. If you can live the exact same

way after you are saved as you did before you were saved, then

I would highly doubt that you were ever saved in the 1st

place. You are a new creature in

Christ, and if you are not a new creature in Christ, then you're

still an old creature in sin. Jesus Christ changes your life.

The new birth gives a person a love for God and he no longer

wants to live that life. That's contrary to God's will.

If a person can live as he pleases and not be chasing by

God, I would argue that he is not God's child and that's why

God doesn't chasing him. We suffer because we have to

have that sin corrected and we have to be matured in Jesus

Christ. Now turn over to First Peter

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2. I told you I was going to have

you look at one passage and this is it.

First Peter chapter 2. And this is the last reason why.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

And there's more. But but these are the ones that

I chose to focus on tonight. Reasons why the Scriptures give

us for suffering. First, Peter chapter 2 and verse

#19 says this. For this is thankworthy If a man

for conscience toward God, endure grief, suffering

wrongfully, For what glory is it if when you be buffeted for your

fault, you shall take it patiently, but if when you do

well and suffer for it, you take it patiently.

This is acceptable with God. For even here, on to where you

call because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an

example that she should follow his steps.

That whole context is talking about suffering, and we're

called to be like Christ in the way that he suffered.

So sometimes we are allowed to suffer so that we can follow in

Christ's footsteps. He was hated, He was mocked, He

was doubted, He was lied about, He was rejected, He was beaten,

He was crucified. And his people should not expect

anything different in this world.

So #2, I want you to see this. Trials work The blessing of

patience. Trials work The blessing of

patience. Turn over to Romans chapter 3.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

We're talking about the purpose of trials, and we said that

suffering is a trying of the faith.

But #2 trials work. The blessing of patience.

Romans chapter 3 and verse #3. And I think this is a great

Romans 3 · chapter mention

explanation of just exactly what James is trying to get across

here in this passage. He says in in Roman chapter 5

and verse #3 and not only so, but we glory and tribulations

also. Knowing that tribulation work is

patience and patience, experience and experience, hope

and hope maketh not a shame because the love of God is shed

abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us.

Back in James chapter one, verse #3, he says knowing this, that

the trying of your faith work as patients.

The word knowing is not an instinctive knowledge, but it's

knowledge that's gradually obtained through the school of

Hard Knocks, if you will, or through long experience trying.

Knowing this first at the trying of your faith, trying refers to

a sufficiently difficult experience that pushes us beyond

our previously known limits. And I hate to remind the kids

about school because it's right around the corner, but you've

ever remember taking a test in school?

Was that test there to teach you something new?

Hopefully it wasn't. No, the test wasn't there to

teach you something new. The test was there to reveal

what you already knew or what new things you had learned,

right? That's what a test is for.

And that's exactly what he's talking about.

It's the idea behind the trying of your faith.

Faith is mentioned here as the first of 16 times in the book of

James. Again, as we already discussed,

one of the themes of the book is active faith, not just passive

faith, right? And then we see worketh knowing

this first, that the trying of your faith worketh patients.

And this is actually the first of the links between faith and

works that we find in the book of James.

And here he is already talking about it there in just the first

couple verses. But faith is rest and trust.

But it has to be accompanied by labor.

Faith is not labor. Faith is not work, but it's

evidence or revealed to others by work.

And as a tool, it only accomplishes something when we

exercise that faith right. It only accomplishes something

when we use it as the tool that is supposed to, that is supposed

to be used as so in this particular application, Faith is

tested and tried by our response to difficulty and our patient

perseverance in that difficulty is the work that accompanies our

faith. They work hand in hand.

You can't have one without the other, which brings us to the

patience that he's talking about here.

Patience is that endurance under suffering.

He says, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh

patience. Patience is mentioned seven

times in the epistle of James. Obviously that's something that

he's putting the focus on if he mentioned something 7 times, but

this is absolutely necessary to Christians serving and praying

to a God who has a whole different concept of time than

we do. Hebrews chapter 12 and verse

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

one. Wherefore seeing we also are

compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay

aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us,

and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.

We have to be patient in fruit bearing, patient in prayer,

patient in our expectation of His return, patient in seeing

the scriptures proven true, patient in receiving promises,

patience in running this earthly race right.

There's patience is necessary for every aspect of the

Christian life, and as I've said before, our culture, more than

at any other time in in human history, is geared toward

impatience. Give it to me and give it to me

now. And if I can't get it right now,

then I'm gonna go somewhere else, right?

How many times have you you pulled up to a I don't know any

number of things where it wouldn't have been hard for you

to get out and go in. Let's just say a drive through,

right? And the screen is down.

All you got to do is pull around to get out and walk into the

store. And you're already there, right?

But how many times have you said, well, forget this, I'm

going somewhere else and you drive 20 minutes up the road to

go to another drive through. That's working, right?

Because we want it now and we don't care how long we have to

wait to get it now, but we just want it now, right?

And that's, that's that's why we have to learn patience in our

Christian life, because we as a people are trained to be

impatient. We want it, right?

We want it and we want it right now.

And that's that's what our world is giving us at the moment,

right. I mentioned that on Sunday about

Amazon, right? If I can't get it in two days,

I'm going to order it from somewhere else.

I'm not going to get it from there, man.

That's that's going to take three or four days to get here.

Forget that. I'll I'll pay $10 more to get it

somewhere else if I can get it tomorrow, right.

That's how that's how we are. And that's how our culture is

training us. That's not how the Christian

life works. And so when we go through these

difficulties and when we go through these trials, we have to

learn that patience because that's how God operates.

What we find here is that patience and faith go hand in

hand with all that patience does for a spiritually.

We should look at the trials and the testings as being a thing of

joy because they bring patience, which in turn eventually brings

everything else. If you have faith, then you have

patience in trials, and if you have patience, it's because you

have faith #3. I want you to see this.

Suffering produces spiritual growth Back in James chapter one

and verse #4, This is what we're going to end with tonight.

Suffering produces spiritual growth, but let patience he

says. So back to verse 3.

Knowing this, that the trying of your faith work is patience.

But let patience have her perfect work, that she may be

perfect and entire wanting nothing.

Without this, Patience will never become mature Christians,

which I told you. The overriding theme of the

entire book of James is maturing us as Christians, right?

He talks about perfect, he mentions it in that verse.

Patience has to be allowed to have her perfect work, her work

of completing and maturing us and making us complete or

mature. So even well meaning and

spiritual people who are serving God will mess spiritual service

up by being impatient. We can get out in front of God

even when even when we're trying to do God's things, even when

we're trying to serve God, Even when we're trying to live for

God, we have that impatience we get in front of him and we can

mess a lot of things up spiritually.

We can actually resist God's work by refusing to accept the

trials that He's designed for us.

Listen, God is giving us those trials as a way to teach us

patience and as a way to refine us.

And when we block at those trials and say, I'm not going to

go through that, then essentially what we're doing is

blocking at God's desire to refine us into exactly who He

wants us to be. It's also possible to let the

trials have some benefit, but not all of the benefit that God

wants us to get out of it. Let patients have her perfect

work, her complete work, worrying about our

circumstances. We're resisting the God who said

that all things work together for good to them that love God,

and to them who are the called according to His purpose.

Do you believe that or not? That includes the good things,

but it also includes the bad things and includes the

wonderful times, but it also includes the difficult times.

All things work together for good.

To them who love God, to them who are called according to His

purpose. See, Israel did that in the

wilderness when they were thirsty, walked against God.

God want to do great things and show the miracles they pushed

against it. They did the same thing when

they they lusted for Egypt's food, right?

They they did the same thing when they were afraid of the

giants. God's not near as interested in

the quantity of your service for him as he is in the quality of

your service for him, because you can do a whole lot of things

for God. That's not really accomplishing

a whole lot for God because you're doing it in your own

flesh, because you're doing it without that patience.

You're doing without in the way that you want to do instead of

doing it the way that God wants you to do it.

Testing responded to in faith brings patience.

Patience brings that perfection or that maturity in all sorts of

areas of our Christian life. Suffering brings that spiritual

growth because it produces patience, and patience produces

that spiritual maturity. And we see that.

Let patients have her perfect work.

Remember that we said perfect means complete or mature.

I hope that the men that are in the institute class will sound

will think this sounds familiar, but Bible words have to be

defined by their context right? And James defines perfect as

entire and wanting nothing. And Second Timothy chapter 3 and

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

verse 17. Perfect is to be throughly

furnished into all good works in Colossian chapter 4.

Perfect is to be complete in all the will of God and Hebrew.

Chapter 13 verse 21. Perfect is to do every good work

according to God's will. First Peter 510.

Perfect is to be established, strengthened, settled.

The Bible defines these things right?

What is perfect mean? While James says that let

patients have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and

entire wanting nothing. well-rounded, balanced.

Mature Christians take a lot of testing, a lot of faith, a lot

of work and a lot of time to produce.

So you can't. You can't take shortcuts, can't

take shortcuts on the spiritual path to maturity.

By definition, if you take a shortcut, you're no longer on

the path, right? And we want that.

We want those shortcuts all the time.

You have to follow that. The trail that's laid out in

front of you and all its windings.

Never get discouraged, never get to the point where you're

despairing and all the woe is me when it seems that you're going

in the opposite direction from where you'd like to be.

Just keep patiently putting 1 foot in front of the other,

working at it diligently in faith.

Allowing God to lead your life how he will.

That's how we are going to end up in a place where God can use

us, in fact, be happy and everything seems to be going

wrong. Because the patience that it

teaches you is God maturing you into exactly what he wants you

to be when things are going wrong.

And you you look inside and you're like, I don't.

I don't think I have any sin in my life that God's trying to

root out. I don't think that there's any

reason why that would be. Going through this.

God is saying hey, I mean counted all joy.

When you fall into divers temptations, it's God maturing

you. It's God bringing you about in

that patience that you need. That's the only way to access a

well-rounded Christianity and a maturity in Jesus Christ.

So the purpose of trials, and honestly it's to have blessings

in the middle of those trials doesn't sound fun.

It's not fun when you're going through it.

But you look back and you see what God did through those

trials and you realize that, man, I needed that.

I needed that trial so that I could produce patience.

And I needed that patience so that I could continue to be

mature in Jesus Christ. When we get back together next

week, we're going to look at the rest of this passage here up

through verse #12 and talk about the way that we can have victory

in trials. There's some amazing things that

James gives us here that says, hey, do this, do this, do this.

This is how you can have victory when you're going through the

middle of those things. But we'll stop there for

tonight. We'll have a word of prayer and

then we'll be done. Father, we love you.

Can we thank you so much for your goodness to us.

Thank you for an opportunity. We have to read through these

scripture passages to study your Word and God.

I'll pray that it would help it. You'd help it to be convicting

in our own hearts. I pray that you'd help us to be

convicted of our need for maturity in Jesus Christ and for

the the sufferings and the trials and the temptations in

that aspect that we go through, so that we can be patient and so

that we can be mature in Jesus Christ.

And again we thank you for all that you do for us.

In Jesus name. Amen.

If you would stand at your seats with your head spot and your

eyes closed, I wanna give you an opportunity tonight.

And we're not gonna have a long invitation, but as we go through

this book, I'm gonna do more preaching than teaching.

But perhaps you are in the middle of something.

Perhaps you're going through something right now that you

don't understand, or maybe you just came out of something, Or

maybe you're facing something head on that you know you're

coming into and it is going to be a trial.

It's going to be a difficulty. Let God do that work.

Let God do the work that he wants to do of maturing and

completing you so you can be used to the full capacity

everybody wants to accomplish. We'll have a short time of

invitation as the piano plays. Invitations open.

You come on Sunday, then grab one of

these little booklets there. They're on the back table right

there. And make sure you have one of

those. Use it.

It's a it's a great little study tool and help.

All right, let's pray we'll be dismissed.

Let me remind the men real quick that we'll just have a quick

meeting down here in the front to just discuss a couple of

things for the camp out on Friday and Saturday.

Father, we love you again. We thank you for an opportunity

to be here tonight. For that, you just continue to

use the message in our hearts. Pray that you would help us to

be the witness in the testimony for you this week that you need

us to be and want us to be so that we can be the most

effective in your service. Thank you for all that you do

for us. In Jesus name, Amen.