How Disciples Meet Trouble

Well, we're going to turn to God's word now.

I'm going to ask our ministry apprentice, Jemima Allen,

!

And let steadfastness have its full effect,

that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God,

who gives generously to all without reproach,

and it will be given him.

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting,

for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea

that is driven and tossed by the wind.

For that person must not suppose

that he will receive anything from the Lord.

He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

We're starting together today

in a new series on the letter of James.

And a lot of people, if you read on the letter of James,

oftentimes people will say

that it's the New Testament Proverbs,

that it's aphoristic,

so it's got different topics one after another.

So even in our reading today,

James talks about suffering,

then he talks about wisdom,

then he talks about doubting.

But now scholars and commentators,

and I think rightly so,

they see that it's far less the style of Proverbs

and far more a coherent vision

with a coherent background,

one big idea that James is trying to communicate

to his listeners.

And so to see that,

you've got to ask the question,

who is James writing to?

And we read right there in the first verse

that he's writing to the twelve tribes in the dispersion.

So who are these folks?

The dispersion, I think,

with lots of commentators and scholars recently,

that the dispersion is referring there

to what happened in the earliest moments in the church.

Think about the book of Acts,

Acts chapter 8,

Acts 8 · chapter mention

where Stephen was stolen to death,

and then the next thing we read is

the church was scattered, dispersed.

And so primarily he is writing to Jewish Christians

from Jerusalem

that have been dispersed all over the Roman Empire

because of early persecutions.

And not only them,

but then we read,

it's the twelve tribes of the dispersion.

So why twelve tribes?

And one of the keys to know

is that the name James in Greek

has a Hebrew name equivalent to it,

and that's the name Jacob.

So a Jewish person would read the name James

and think Jacob.

And you might remember from the Old Testament,

from Genesis,

Jacob is Israel,

and Israel had twelve sons.

And so he writes here,

not as James in our minds,

but think more as Jacob, Israel,

writing to the twelve tribes of the dispersion.

So this is one of the early apostles,

Father Israel, Father Jacob,

writing to the whole church.

So this is not just to people

who were scattered by the persecutions,

but to the new covenant church.

So the twelve tribes of Israel

find their fulfillment

in all believers, Jews and Gentiles,

in the new covenant.

And so he's writing to the whole church,

but very specifically

to people that were scattered

because of persecution

in the first century

all over the Roman Empire.

And the book has this coherent argument,

if you will,

this vision.

And the vision is effectively

for James to answer the question,

how does a follower of Jesus

live holistically as a disciple

in the midst of being scattered

all across the world?

So the church is not all together.

We're not yet in the new Jerusalem.

So really similar to the book of Daniel

that we've just looked at,

the church is,

we are scattered all across the world,

all empires.

And how do we live as followers of Jesus

consistently, coherently?

And he's going to address different issues

that that brings,

especially when faith is being tested

constantly in all of those contexts.

So you're going to find,

as we work through this book,

that this letter is very plain spoken.

It's very hard hitting.

James cuts through appearances.

And this letter will change your life.

It really will,

if you will let it.

And it will shake you up

from your soul outward.

And so let's let it this semester.

And let's see today

the first thing he wants to tell us about,

about what it means to be a disciple

all across the world.

And he's going to teach us first,

the nature of a disciple.

Second, the reality of trouble.

Third, the good trouble can bring.

And lastly,

the pathway to see it that way.

All right, so first,

let's think about the very first verse,

the nature of a disciple.

That's what he teaches us first.

Now, we said who he's writing it to,

but who is he?

Who is this James?

And very probably,

by tradition and by all the evidence,

this is James,

the biological brother of Jesus Christ,

James the Just.

He's technically the half-brother of Jesus.

And he was the most prominent pastor

in Jerusalem in the book of Acts.

And he presided even over

the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15,

which was a really big deal.

The first great church council.

But notice in verse one,

how he introduces himself.

He doesn't point to any of that.

Instead, he says,

servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, when he says servant of God,

that sounds very polite,

but the Greek word is the word slave.

So he says,

slave of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then for Jesus' name,

he attaches a title, Lord.

And the readers that are scattered

all across the Roman Empire

would know that the word Lord

is a very particular word.

It's a Greek word,

kyrgios.

And when,

before Jesus came,

some folks translated the Old Testament

into Greek,

every single time the name of God,

Yahweh,

was used,

they chose to translate that as kyrgios,

the word Lord you read in the New Testament.

And so when you see Lord Jesus Christ,

that is Jacob,

James saying Yahweh Jesus Christ.

And that would be an absolute astonishment

for a Jew in the first century

who did not believe at all

that God could become a human being.

And so he's saying Yahweh,

the creator of the world,

Jesus Christ,

when he says this.

Now, the second reason that's so shocking

is because James is his biological brother,

the brother of Jesus himself.

Now, imagine the person you grew up with

if you have,

if you're a person in this room

who has siblings,

maybe a brother, in fact,

or a sister.

You grew up with them,

bunk beds,

messy rooms,

drooling on the pillow,

nothing glamorous about it,

no pretense.

You can't hide anything from your siblings.

Nothing.

And you know that

when you were maybe in high school

and people would come along

and praise your sibling

and they would say,

oh, your brother, your sister,

they're so sweet.

They're so kind.

They're so generous.

They're such a great young man,

young woman.

You would have that inner eye roll

or that outward eye roll.

And you're thinking,

oh, yeah, yeah,

you don't live with them.

And you know that nobody knows you

like your brother or sister knows you

and you cannot hide your vices.

Not at all.

And that's what makes this

an absolute shock

that the brother of Jesus Christ

who shared toys,

who undoubtedly slept in the same bedroom,

who undoubtedly lived life together

holistically in every way,

would say,

I am his slave.

He is my brother

who I played with.

As a little boy,

I see him

and I will consider you

that's the creator of the universe.

And you've got to be taken back by that today

as we begin this letter.

And we know,

even more than that,

we know that James did not always follow Jesus.

So John chapter 7 verse 5 says,

John 7:5

the biological brothers of Jesus Christ

did not believe in him.

John tells us that explicitly.

So what happened to him?

You can imagine James as a 15-year-old

struggling with this idea

that Mary has been teaching him

that your brother is God incarnate.

And he was a skeptic,

as he would be,

especially as a teenager.

And then all of a sudden here,

he's saying,

this is my master.

I am his disciple.

What happened?

And at least this,

in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 7,

1 Corinthians 15:7

Paul tells us

that when Jesus Christ rose from the dead,

he appeared specifically to James.

Can you imagine?

So Paul lists all the people

that Jesus appeared to,

but Paul goes out of his way

to reserve one clause

for one specific person,

and that's James,

his brother.

Jesus Christ,

the resurrected Savior,

showing up and meeting one-on-one

with his own brother

that he grew up with.

And James' life went from skeptic

to servant,

right in that moment.

Now that's a disciple.

That's how you become a disciple.

You look at the cross,

you look at the resurrection,

and you move from skeptic to servant.

And that's exactly what happens here

in James' life.

This is, you know,

we're reading his testimony

in verse 1.

And we learn what a disciple really is.

A disciple is a servant,

a slave of the Creator,

the Lord Jesus Christ,

and one who says,

I want to follow him,

I want to be with him,

relationally,

not just follow his teachings,

but I want to follow him.

And one who wants to become like him,

and one who says,

I'm his servant,

I want to go and do

as he goes,

as he tells me,

where he tells me to go,

and what he sends me to do.

That's a disciple.

We're learning right here

the nature of a disciple.

And it's striking that James didn't say,

hello, hey, my name is James.

I am the pillar of the church.

That's what Paul called James,

pillar of the church.

And he doesn't say,

I am the top pastor in Jerusalem.

You know, my books sell the most

in Jerusalem when I write books.

No, he says,

slave of the Lord Jesus.

That's all I want to be known as.

That's the nature of a disciple.

And you've got to ask yourself

as we begin this series,

is that me?

Do I want to be with him

and become like him

and go where he tells me to go

and do what he tells me to do

and say,

I am servant.

That's what I want to be known as.

Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yahweh, Jesus Christ.

Now, secondly,

the very first thing

that then James wants us to learn

about how to be disciples

is how to face trouble.

So the first thing he teaches us here

in verse two

is the reality of trouble.

Now, it's interesting that,

you know, it's not,

he doesn't turn and say,

okay, here's the manual for discipleship

and talk about the details of theology

or how to gather as a church,

a church government,

when you're scattered all across

the Roman Empire.

The first thing he wants to say

is talk to you about how you suffer

and how you face suffering.

And so you can see right there

in verse two,

he says,

count it all joy,

my brothers and sisters,

when you meet trials of various kinds.

Now, the word that he uses

for meeting trials

is only found one other place

in the Bible connected to suffering,

and that's in Luke 10,

the parable of the Good Samaritan.

And so it's a word for walking.

So it could be translated like,

count it various,

count it all joy,

I should say,

my brothers and sisters,

when you walk upon,

when you walk up on trials and suffering.

Now, press pause there for just a moment.

And I'll try to mention a few things

along the way

that will help us

to all read James together as we go.

And one of them is this,

scholars will come and say,

the book of James,

the letter of James

is not Christ-centric.

It's not Christ-centered.

It's theocentric.

It's just God-centered.

Why?

Because he only mentions Jesus

two times in the whole letter.

So the one we just saw

and then one other time later.

But the reason they're so wrong about that

is because what he's doing

is he's constantly teaching you

Jesus' teaching.

So he's drip-feeding

the words of Jesus all throughout.

So when he uses this Greek verb

for walking upon suffering,

that's only used one other place,

and that's in Luke 10,

when Jesus said that

a man once walked up upon

suffering, trial,

a robber

in the Good Samaritan parable.

In a moment,

he's going to say,

suffering can make you perfect.

That's probably a quote

from Matthew 5, 48,

where Jesus says,

you must become perfect

as your heavenly Father is perfect.

So he's drip-feeding

Jesus' teaching all throughout.

And so in this instance,

he says,

you're going to fall upon trouble.

And what is he trying to tell us?

He's trying to tell us here

that even as a disciple

of Jesus Christ,

who says,

I'm willing to take up my cross

and follow Jesus,

you don't go looking for trouble.

Trouble finds you.

Trials find you.

Suffering finds you.

You don't have to go looking for it.

He's saying that Christians

are not masochistic.

No, no.

But trouble is coming.

Trials are coming.

Suffering is coming.

It's inevitable

for every single human being.

So he's talking to us here

about the inevitable reality

that suffering

is absolutely going to come

into our lives.

It's a guarantee.

Suffering,

as all of you know better than me,

does not make appointments.

It finds you

on ordinary roads.

It comes upon you.

And he says here

that it's suffering

of various kinds,

meaning there's big suffering,

life-shattering suffering

that some of you

are walking through right now

that's going to come

for all of us at some point.

And then there's small suffering

that's every single day,

little annoyances.

And he's saying,

I'm talking about all of it.

I'm talking about every bit,

every kind of suffering

there can be.

It's going to find you.

Now, I think we all have

an internal monologue

going on in our souls.

Maybe we've made it explicit.

Maybe it's only been implicit.

But the internal monologue

is something like this.

We say to ourselves,

when I can get fill-in-the-blank,

life will be better.

When I can finally get

a relationship,

life will be better and easier.

When I can finally get rid

of this relationship,

life will be better.

Life will be easier.

When I get a job better,

when I get rid of this job

that I hate,

life will be better.

And we could say

about a thousand things.

When I retire,

life will be so much better.

When I finish my degree

at university,

life will finally get easier.

And I think what happens,

actually,

and as we age

and get older every decade,

we learn this more and more,

that living for the horizon

only seems to prove

over and over again

that we encounter

different types of hard.

We get the thing we want,

what we said life would be.

It will be better when.

And then the when comes,

and it can be a beautiful thing,

but it also brings

just a different type of hard,

a different set of trials

and suffering.

Every road we walk down,

it still meets us,

no matter what,

even if we think

it was the greatest thing

we could imagine.

There's a wonderful book

by the author Cormac McCarthy,

The Road.

And in McCarthy's book,

The Road,

it's a post-apocalyptic landscape,

probably from nuclear war

in the southern United States.

And it is a raw,

bleak, dark book.

So you should go read it.

And in it,

it's about walking

through this land of ash

in Tennessee.

And the whole book

is focused on the fierce love

between this one father

and this one son.

They're all each other have.

And they're pushing

a shopping cart

through these old

busted up roads.

And there's this refrain,

I mean,

just trying to survive,

just trying to hold on

to something.

And there's this refrain

that the father

always tells the son.

And it's a metaphor,

a theme throughout

the whole book.

And he tells the son,

son, you must learn

to carry the fire.

And in it,

in the book,

fire is a metaphor

for purpose,

for a sense of a reason.

In other words,

it's a metaphor for saying,

does my suffering

have any purpose at all?

And he's telling his son,

you've got to carry the fire.

Don't let the fire go out.

In your heart,

you have to realize

that there is some light,

some reason,

some hope,

some purpose

in the midst

of this horrible thing

you're walking through.

And James is telling you today

that Christians

have a reason

to learn

to carry the fire.

That you can have,

you can face suffering

and suffering

cannot extinguish

your purpose.

And in fact,

suffering even more

can give you a purpose.

What is it?

You see,

the question of this book

really is

not if trouble is coming,

but who are you

going to become

when it does?

That's the question

that he's posing to us.

So thirdly,

what's the purpose?

James tells us here

that there is good

in trouble,

good in suffering

for a disciple

of Jesus Christ.

And he tells us that,

especially in verse 2,

he says,

count it all joy,

brothers and sisters,

when you face trials

and tribulations.

Now,

is that toxic positivity,

you know,

the kind of positivity

that some of us display

and others get frustrated by?

No,

he is not saying there,

feel good about your suffering

because the word count

is an accounting verb.

It's a command of thinking.

It's a cognitive verb.

And so he's saying,

think about it as joy.

He's saying,

mind,

Christian mind,

tell your Christian heart

that it is joy

because you don't feel that way.

Count it joy.

Let your mind tell your heart

that it is.

In other words,

it's when you say,

heart,

you talk to your heart

and you say,

heart,

look at the ledger

of this event in your life

in red drying ink,

this suffering,

and you've got to transfer it

merely from the column of misery

to the column of joy.

You've got to write it

and say,

this is joy to me.

And the question becomes,

in this cognitive reframe,

how could you say that?

How could he possibly tell us

to do something that?

And the answer is in verse three

when he says,

suffering,

test your faith

and can lead to steadfastness.

So here's how.

He says,

for a disciple of Jesus,

you can take suffering

and you can account it as joy.

Your mind can tell your heart,

put it in the column of joy.

How?

Because it is an opportunity

to test your faith

so that your faith

might grow and deepen.

In other words,

he's saying,

suffering for the believer

has a fire to it,

a purpose,

and it's that you might change.

And the way he puts it

is that you might become

complete, perfect,

lacking in nothing.

And the idea here

of perfect

is not sinlessness.

That's not what he means.

It's the word telos,

which means

that you would reach

your full purpose

in this life.

Same way that the Old Testament

uses the word blameless.

Job was blameless.

Jonah was blameless.

It's not sinlessness.

No, no.

It's complete,

whole,

that God is taking

the chisel of suffering

and hammering away at you

to form you into something.

In other words,

he's telling us

what the purpose

of discipleship is,

of being a disciple of Jesus

in your suffering.

It's to become mature.

It's to grow.

It's that every single event

and annoyance

and bit of suffering

in your life

can be approached

in a way

where you treat it

as an opportunity

to mature,

to become,

what is a disciple?

One who says,

I will follow him.

I want to be with him

so that I can become like him.

And this is telling us

that suffering

is the pathway

to becoming like him.

Now,

the word he uses,

steadfastness,

it can make you

into a person

who perseveres.

It's a gymnasium term

in the Greek,

Greco-Roman context.

It's an athletic term.

So you can produce

steadfastness over time.

So Paul takes you

into this metaphor

of the gym

and working out.

And you go to the gym,

you think about

what it takes

to reach your goals,

what it takes

to grow.

And what it takes

is resistance,

right?

You've got to

pick something up

that is heavier

than you want it to be.

And what happens

when you do that?

When you go to the gym

and you pick up

that barbell,

you pick up those dumbbells

and they're heavier

than you want,

than your body likes,

you feel pain.

You don't feel good.

You feel pain.

But then it actually

tears your muscles.

And then your muscles

grow back stronger.

And you see,

he takes that metaphor

to say that is exactly

what happens

for the believer

who approaches

their suffering

with the mindset

of theology,

who counts it all joy,

who lets the mind

say to the heart,

see it the way

God is telling you

to see it.

It's resistance.

It's strength building.

It's maturing.

It's making you complete.

Not sinlessness,

but well-rounded,

mature, virtuous.

Think about it.

How in the world

can we become

humble like Jesus is humble?

How in the world

can we become compassionate

like Jesus is compassionate?

You cannot go read

a book about humility

and then be a humble person.

You can't read a book

about compassion

and become a compassionate person.

No, not at all.

He's saying that the only way

to become humble

like James,

like Jesus,

like his elder brother

is to actually walk

through the crucible

of suffering

and to have the dross

smelted away,

to have your heart

chiseled away,

to truly put on

the humility of Christ.

And that's why Paul tells us

over and over again

we must complete

or put on the sufferings

of Christ in our life

in order to become like him.

And you all know

those who,

those people

who have especially

walked through

certain types of grief

are the best counselors

to those walking

through that type of grief.

Those people

who have faced addiction

in their life

are the absolute best counselors

to come and walk

alongside those of you

who are walking

through addiction.

Grace grows best in winter

as it's often said.

Grace grows best in winter.

It's the only way

to truly put on

the compassion of Jesus,

the humility of Jesus.

How about the freedom

from idols?

How can you be free

from idols in your life

unless you've actually

had to have them

ripped away from you

in suffering?

And Paul is telling,

James is telling us here

that we need,

we need the scars

to become like the one

who was scarred for us.

There's a moment

in Paul's letters

where he says it

almost identically

in Paul's own language.

Listen to the mouth

of Paul here

from the book of Corinthians.

He says,

the God of all comfort

comforts us

in all our afflictions

so that we may be able

to comfort those

who are in any affliction

with the comfort

with which we ourselves

are comforted by God.

He said,

God brings you comfort

in your affliction

so you can turn around

and give that away to others.

How else do you become perfect,

well-rounded,

complete,

lacking in nothing?

See,

I think one of the

most important takeaways

at the beginning

of this book

is to see

that the goal

of the Christian life

is not comfort

but maturity

and that suffering

is the pathway.

Now fourth,

finally,

the path.

How do we really

take this into our hearts

and our lives today?

Of course,

this is not automatic.

So even for Christians,

this is not automatic.

We can face suffering,

trials and tribulations

that are going to meet us

on the road

and they'll do

one of two things for us.

They'll either make us,

grow us,

or they'll break us.

And it depends

on how we face them.

So let me give you

a few things

as we conclude,

just very practical

to do to take up

this vision

that James is giving us.

The first thing is

we need a biblical vision

for facing suffering.

We've been talking about it

and it really is framed up

in that line,

count it all joy.

So we've got to take

that vision

into our hearts and lives.

And the reason

we want to reiterate that

is because the commentators,

the sociologists,

the philosophers,

they all tell us

the same thing

and that's that

we're always being surrounded

by a cultural consciousness

that does the exact opposite

of that.

So in the contemporary world,

many authors

have pointed this out.

We do,

as modern Western people,

we do not suffer well.

We are collectively

the worst sufferers

in human history.

We expect to be comfortable.

We expect to have life easy.

We talk about rights

and rights all the time

give us a framework

of entitlement.

And so suffering

comes as the biggest surprise

to modern Western people.

And so Jamie Smith

says that

in the modern consumerist mindset,

the question everyone

is asking in their soul is,

how do I change

the world around me

to fit my desires?

How do I engineer

my environment

for maximum comfort?

That's the modern question

in our hearts.

We're trained

for that question.

But the biblical question

is exactly the opposite.

It's how do I conform

my heart

to what God wants for me?

So not how do I engineer

my environment

to maximize my comforts,

but how do I engage

in my environment

to have my heart change

to desire

what God wants me to desire?

See, really,

the prayer of James

is this.

I hope this doesn't sound

too tricky,

but it's to say,

Lord, help me

to want what I should want.

Teach me in my suffering

to want what you want me to want.

And that's the call,

the real call of maturity,

to be shaped

by our suffering holistically.

Now secondly,

what can we do about that?

How can we take that up?

Verse 5 tells us,

here's how you do it.

You've got to ask

for wisdom from God.

So he tells you outright,

ask for this vision.

Now this is where

some commentators

and scholars

will talk about

the disjointed nature

of James.

You see,

James goes from

telling you who he is

to telling you

about suffering,

and now he's turning

to a different topic,

wisdom.

But not at all.

Instead,

what is he telling us?

This is the same topic,

the same idea.

He's saying,

before suffering ever comes,

you've got to ask

for wisdom.

And what is this wisdom?

It's the wisdom

to see your suffering

the way God

is telling you to see it.

It's the wisdom saying,

Lord,

help me to count

my suffering joy

today

before it ever even

comes into my life.

So he's saying,

you've got to pray

and you've got to ask for it,

and it's got to be

something that you're doing

before suffering

actually ever comes.

It's a vision

to say,

only the Lord

knows the secret plan.

Only the Lord

knows why

he's putting us

through the trial,

the suffering

that we've come upon

on this road.

But I know,

Lord,

give me the wisdom

to believe

that I am growing

because of this.

That somehow,

some way,

you are going to mature me

in the midst of this.

Ask for that.

Ask before it ever comes.

Third of four things here

to conclude.

But then he gives you

a condition,

and that's in verses

six to eight.

And the condition

is,

don't be a doubter,

don't be double-minded.

Now,

the Greek text

very literally says,

don't be double-souled.

So it's not a mind term,

but a soul term.

Don't be double-hearted

is what the text says.

And he's telling us there,

these are parallels.

Doubting and double-mindedness.

Is he telling you

that means

if you have doubts,

then there's no way

you're a follower of Jesus.

There's no way

you're a disciple of Jesus.

And not at all.

He's talking here

in the context.

Think about the context.

There's Christians

who have been scattered

by persecution

all over the Roman Empire,

and they're being confronted

wherever they are

and saying,

do you really believe in Jesus?

And many of them

are defecting.

Many of them are saying no.

In other words,

he's saying you can't

have it both ways.

That when the persecution

and the trial comes,

you'll say,

Jesus isn't making my life

comfortable in this situation,

so I'll deny even knowing him,

the path of Peter

before he returned to Christ.

And he's saying

you can't have it both ways.

Be single-minded.

That no matter

what suffering comes,

and even if it's going

to bring you great suffering,

you say,

I'm single-minded,

single-souled

for Jesus Christ.

There's a letter

from a man,

a Roman governor

named Pliny the Younger.

It was written

in the year,

about 112 A.D.,

something like that.

And Pliny,

this governor,

he writes to the emperor

of the time

of the Roman Empire,

Trajan,

and he talks about

exactly this,

single-minded Christians

and double-minded Christians.

And this is what he wrote

to Trajan.

He said,

he describes

capturing believers,

interrogating them,

and then he says,

even under the threat of death,

many of them

would not deny

Jesus Christ.

I asked them

whether they were Christians,

and if they confessed,

I told them

that I would give them

a second try

and a third try.

And if they continued

to confess knowing Jesus,

I threatened them

with further punishments.

Those who persisted,

I then ordered

publicly executed.

I did not doubt

that whatever it was

that they admitted,

their stubbornness

and their inflexible obstinacy

deserved to be punished.

Now, Pliny

and the Romans

of the first century

and many others

looked out

at the single-minded Christian

that said,

confessing Christ

is causing great suffering

in my life.

And he said,

that is obstinacy.

That is crazy.

And he gave them

a second chance

and a third chance.

But the Christian said,

that's single-mindedness.

That's single-souledness.

That even if following Jesus

makes my life harder,

I will not deny him.

I won't be double-minded.

I won't be double-souled

in the bottom of my soul.

My soul belongs

to Jesus Christ.

Now, lastly,

how could we become

people like that?

How could we face

suffering like that

and be able to be

single-souled,

single-minded,

to have a vision

for suffering

that that's grand?

History tells us

that James,

the author of this letter,

was murdered

in the 60s.

So he was

very probably

beaten

and then taken

to the top

of the temple

in Jerusalem

where he was a pastor

and thrown off

the top of the temple.

And the history

tells us

that he faced

the same thing

that we read about

with Pliny,

the question after question,

and then he refused

to deny

worship of his elder brother,

Jesus Christ,

and he was murdered for it.

How could you,

we think,

I don't think I could do that.

How can anybody

ever face

that kind of suffering

that the first century

Christians,

that James is writing

to,

was facing?

And the answer

is simple,

and the answer

is back

to what's underneath

this letter,

and that's that

James,

Jacob,

never took his eye

off his elder brother.

He looked to his elder brother

throughout the whole

of his ministry,

the whole of his Christian life.

Now Jesus,

Jesus was literally

older than James,

truly elder,

biologically,

by age.

But of course,

you know that

Jesus Christ

was also James'

elder brother

in another way.

And remember

that the book of James

gives you drip feeds

for you the teaching

of Jesus all throughout.

And you'll remember

in Luke 15,

the prodigal son story,

where there was

a younger brother

and an elder brother,

and the younger brother

went into the far country

and squandered everything.

He hated his own father,

but in the story,

you start to get the picture

that the elder brother

doesn't love his little brother.

And you long for the elder brother

to go out into the far country

and get his little brother

and bring him home.

You long for that in the story,

and he never does.

And the story ends

with an elder brother

basically just wanting

material possessions

and hating his family.

And we don't know

all that happened to James,

but what we do know

is that Jesus Christ

in 1 Corinthians 15, 7,

the elder brother

came to his little brother.

The resurrected Jesus,

he came to him.

You know,

I think what James realized

in that moment

is that Jesus Christ,

the true and better elder brother,

came into the far country

of this life.

And he came,

he came to be crushed

for our iniquities,

to suffer to the uttermost,

to walk through every trial

you will ever walk through

and know that

when you face suffering

and trial,

it is not the final word.

You can say,

brothers and sisters,

as James puts it,

Jesus Christ is also

my elder brother.

And that means that

every single thing

I walk through in this life,

I know that he has

walked before me.

You know,

he faced the cross

so I can face my cross.

He faced the cross

and even more,

what happened

when he was on the cross,

it says that the joy

was set before him.

What did he do?

He counted it all joy,

brothers and sisters.

When he faced the cross,

you were his joy.

So you can say,

because I was his joy

when he faced the cross,

I can face my suffering

and count it

in the ledger

of joy for him.

You see,

the gospel gives you

every reason,

the true elder brother

gives you every reason

to say today

that God is a master craftsman

chiseling away at me

and it's the power

of the gospel

that I can endure,

that I can face

the trials in my life.

When you walk

through the valley,

you're not alone,

you've got your elder brother

and that means

he is there

to be with you

and to grow you

so you can be with him

and become like him

and that's the call

of a disciple.

Let us pray.

Father,

we want to become like him,

our true and better

elder brother

and so we think

and thank you

for this word

that's really hard

to receive

that we have to face

suffering with a mind

that says we can change,

we can grow,

we can become mature,

complete,

lacking in nothing

so Lord,

reset our vision,

help us to want

what you want,

teach us how to desire

in ways that we do not today

and so we repent

before you

of our bad desires,

Lord,

we don't want

the things that you call us

to desire

so change us

as we work through this epistle

we pray,

oh Lord,

we thank you for your word

and as we sing

we ask that the Holy Spirit

would do a great work

in our lives

and we pray that

in Jesus' name,

Amen.