James: Transforming Toward Wholeness through Trials

Well, good morning.

We're going to be spending now until December studying the book of James.

So our goal today is to intro the book of James and then spend time in the first four verses.

At the end of the service, we're also going to try to reserve some time for a church update and what's next for our church in the last section of our service.

So a bit of a shorter sermon this morning, more of a meditation.

Still going to get you three points.

You know, so I know my job as a preacher is to get you three points, and so we'll definitely do that.

Now, James was most likely written by Jesus' brother, James, and he wrote it to Jewish believers who had been scattered due to persecution.

Honestly, I've never really liked the book of James.

I don't know if you're allowed to say you don't like a book of the Bible, but I've never really connected to the book of James.

I don't spend a lot of time in the book of James.

One reason why I wanted us to study the book of James.

James just feels blunt.

He feels bossy.

This is the exact reason some of you love the book of James.

That's, I mean, you love it.

James can't be more clear.

He is so on point.

He's just gonna tell it like it is.

There's actually more commands of what we should do in the book of James than any other New Testament book.

So, of course, James can feel like a list of things we should do to be Christians or to be good Christians, a list of demands.

It's easy for it to feel that way.

Get your act together and do more.

This is actually why Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, said he called the book of James the Epistle of Straw.

He didn't like the book of James.

It's easy for us to ask how do we reconcile James with Paul's limitless grace?

But remember, we read any book of the Bible in light of the whole Bible.

Right?

So we read James in light of the biblical narrative, that meta-narrative of God's loving rescue of us through Jesus alone.

Now, given that Paul wrote most of the New Testament, Paul wrote about a third of the New Testament.

James is one little book of that New Testament.

It's going to be fair of us, or at least we are going to read James through the lens of Paul's doctrines of grace, not the other way around.

Last Friday morning I was hiking up the back of Kinesaw Mountain.

I was moving pretty good.

I was going a pretty good clip as my morning exercise hike, and I'm passing some people, so I'm feeling pretty good about myself.

I'm feeling a little self-righteous and all my hiking abilities.

And so I get up to the switchbacks, and as I'm going up the first switchback, I hear two voices, a couple, a man and a woman, behind me.

And my first thought is, how?

How are they behind me?

How can I even hear their voices?

Because I am moving.

How are they there?

So I get up to the next switchback and I do the look back to kind of see, you know, who are these characters.

And young couple, late 20s, that's all I see.

And I'm like, no, no, uh-uh.

I am 44, but I still got it in me, and I kick it into high gear, I pick up my speed, they are not passing me up this mountain.

And sure enough, their voices are getting closer and closer, and they never seem out of breath, which was not encouraging to me, because I am huffing and puffing at this point.

And finally, finally, they crushed me.

I just have to step aside.

And it's just that humble.

But I catch a look at them.

They were the two most beautiful human beings that I have seen in years.

I mean, unbelievable.

I mean, really gorgeous human beings, both of them, the man and the woman.

I mean, unbelievable, unbelievable.

Took me back.

I mean, I was like, I mean, they were tall and thin, just the right amount of muscles.

Not too much where you're like, you need to calm down.

It's just the right, just the right, their skin, their skin was smooth.

I don't know if you remember that.

Skin was smooth.

And they hiked in front of me for a little bit, and they didn't have on a lot of clothing, so I could see everything, and everything was looking great.

It was, I mean, it was, it was glorious.

It was like glorious human beings.

And I'm sure they had no emotional baggage in their life or childhood wounds, or I'm sure he didn't wake up at night to pee in the middle of the night like I did.

I mean, this was like, these people were amazing.

They were the ideal.

They hiked in front of me for about two minutes and then they were just gone.

I couldn't I couldn't keep up.

They were gone.

It's easy for that ideal to just all of a sudden make you just feel horrible.

Like, oh, to be like that.

Right?

James can feel like that.

Right?

All this ideal of Christian living, which is glorious and good.

It's good.

It's who we should be.

It can feel like a list to do that's glorious and good, and yet it's sort of like slowly chasing you down, like crushing you because you're not as perfect as you should be.

So I say all that to say that we can either read James void of the rest of the New Testament and become self-righteous and exhausted Pharisees.

Or we can read James in light of the New Testament.

And we can discover how free we are in Jesus and how free God desires us to be in our heart and our actions.

Now, as much as James is all about that, he actually begins somewhere else.

So James 1, 1 through 4.

James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes and the dispersion, greetings.

Count it all joy, my brothers, and we say, brothers and sisters, when you meet trials of various kinds.

We are two verses in.

He gave us one verse of warm-up.

This is how blunt James is.

I mean, one verse.

Paul gives you all these flowery, gracious verses, warms you up, and then he hits you.

Like James is right at you, verse two.

Count all the suffering is joy, verse three, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Well, let's make some sense of this.

Point number one: part of our transformation will be our trials.

You see the progression in the verses?

He lays it out pretty clearly.

Trials, testing of faith, steadfastness, wholeness.

And James says, because of that, count trials as joy.

That's tough.

I mean, just in the past year in our church, we've had cancer, seizures, physical and mental disabilities, adults have passed away, children have passed away.

We have loneliness, addiction, rejection, financial stress.

Well, I'm not willing to count that hurt, joy.

Maybe you can get there.

I'm happy to be angry for a little bit, sad for a little bit, and then hopefully heal.

So what are we counting as joy?

What can we count as joy?

Well, I think we can count the process that James, right?

The process is James laying out there.

When you meet the trial, like what's gonna happen?

We're counting God's transformative process of the hurt as joy.

We don't have to count the darkness as joy, but what God will do.

Counselor and author Chip Dodd says God's the ultimate garbage man.

He takes all the mess, all our mess, all our trash, all this stuff that just feels helpless and takes it all supernaturally, grinds it up, composts it, and he can grow flowers.

We don't take joy in the garbage, but we can take joy in the ultimate garbage man, and we can take joy in the transformation that can happen to us in hurt.

Point number two, God will use your trials to move you toward wholeness of heart.

That's where James is leading us in this progression, pretty logically.

Trials always tap into what you really rest in for security and meaning.

What actually is real in the core of who you are?

Well, a trial will reveal that.

Are you just the accumulation of good circumstances?

Or are you something much more profound and rooted and secure?

Are you just what you can accumulate and accomplish and perform?

Or are you rested in something more secure than any circumstance?

Are you the beloved son and daughter of loving Abba?

Steadfast is this word hupamani, meaning patience or constant endurance.

So steadfastness is a it's a stickability that we cling.

We cling to Christ through the trial.

Do you remember the 1994 emotional profound movie, Dumb and Dumber?

It was the movie of my high school.

If you were my age, you knew it, you watched it, you rewatched it, you got dumber every time you watched it.

Jeff Daniels' character Harry, as dumb as they get, he's on a ski lift.

He thought it'd be a great idea.

He saw frost on the ski lift.

Great idea to lick the frost, right?

Then you remember they couldn't get Harry off the ski lift.

Stickability.

Very high culture illustration for us educated people here, but true.

We stick to Christ.

Not because we are strong and we are sticky, but because he is sticky.

That's why we can stick.

That's why we clean.

Paul says when we're weak, he is strong.

That's why we can be strong.

We can be strong because when we're weak, he is strong.

That we are loved in our mess.

That was what empowers us to be able to be steadfast.

Because he is steadfast to us.

He is loyal to us, absolutely perfectly committed to you in all things.

And let steadfastness, verse 4, have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Perfect and complete means mature, whole.

Now we know in the gospel that in Christ we're already fully righteous, fully forgiven, fully whole.

We are deemed whole in Christ.

We're given this, put upon us.

And yet we're still all on a journey of discovering how amazing that wholeness is for us as we become more astonished of the gift of our identity in Christ.

Okay, so we read these verses, it's easy to say.

So I'm supposed to be steadfast, endure, constant, in trial.

The problem is, that feels like really bad news because when a trial hits me, all I can do is fall apart.

Right?

You're under it, you feel under it.

I mean, all you want to do is fall apart.

That's just true.

The question is, is where do you fall?

When you fall apart, where do you fall apart?

Are you clinging to him?

Are you steadfast to him when you fall apart?

Where does your heart find its comfort, security, and meaning?

James gives one little hint here of grace as he calls us brothers.

We say brothers and sisters.

Because to be a brother and sister, you have to be a son or daughter.

James is acknowledging family.

That we are the family of God.

And nobody earns their way into a family.

Point number three.

We said this in the book of Titus the last month.

We don't have to live as orphans in the world when we are beloved children of the Abba Father.

Paul explained this clearly for us.

Romans 8, 15.

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons.

And we say, sons and daughters by whom we cry, Abba Father.

I saw this cartoon this week, thought of our sermon and what we're talking about.

There's a little delay there.

You can start to kind of amuse yourself.

The problem is we don't laugh too much because we actually know the feeling.

And it's a horrible feeling.

So you don't quite know, should you cry right now or should you laugh?

Because you've felt like what it feels to drown.

Like to be under something, like under the stress, the pressure, the letdown, the disappointment.

And then the person you thought might help you just says, quit drowning?

Right?

You're unable to do something, and the one who should help you tells you to get better at the thing that you can't do.

And this is how the worldly saviors work.

All of our worldly saviors that we go to to try to save us and relieve us and comfort us and forgive us and love us, they all promise a whole lot and they just stay on the lifeguard stand.

They can't really love us in our need.

Fortunately, Jesus does not teach a parable of the apathetic lifeguard.

Can't find it.

It's not there.

The image Jesus gives us is he tells us the story of a loving Abba who welcomes home the worn-out, beat down, broken, exhausted, rebellious, guilty and ashamed child.

And he actually comes off the porch to move toward him.

And as the self-righteous older brother is there being self-righteous and arrogant, the father communicates and moves toward him in love.

The loving Abba comes off the porch to move in love toward both of them.

The reason James can call us brothers and sisters is because we are sons and daughters.

God's love to you is limitless and is not conditioned upon any of your performance.

That's the gospel we bring in to James.

And then James has some very clear points to make to us about the fruit of the gospel in our lives, in trials, and in our actions.

And this saving love, this is what we know about the gospel, is so powerful that it can heal the heart of the rebellious and it can heal the heart of the self-righteous.

And it can sustain us in all trials.

Beloved, God is actively pursuing your heart in all your rebellion, all your arrogance, and all your trials.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your love to us.

While we have not always loved you, and certainly we have not loved you perfectly, nor have we lived even close to perfect, you were perfect for us in your son, Christ.

Thank you that we are fully loved, fully accepted, fully forgiven, fully righteous, whole in Jesus for us.

May we grow more astonished of this great gift of our identity as your sons and your daughters.

And may we honor you with our lives.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.