James: What Does Mature Faith Require? (1:1-18)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel centered church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

The second lesson this morning is from the book of James, chapter 1, verses 1 to 18.

James 1:1–18

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

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 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.

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.

Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away.

For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls and its beauty perishes.

So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

Let no one say, when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

The word of the Lord.

And we know that you are generous and gracious towards us.

And so, Lord, would you supply what our often fledgling faith requires?

Would you strengthen us?

Would you encourage us?

Would you fill us with your love and fill us with your grace that we may move forward in mission and in confidence in your word by your Holy Spirit?

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, I'd like to tell you about the day that I finally gave up the dream of any sort of professional hockey career.

It'll be good for me.

It's like therapy.

I have very little experience playing hockey.

I need to just put that right up front.

I never played hockey competitively.

I never played it really recreationally, aside from, you know, a couple ice ponds and stuff like that.

Truth is, when I was very young, I was uh so polite my skating instructor would excuse me from lessons and let me go sit on the bench because I was just so, I don't know, polite and unmotivated, something like that.

Anyway, it's very frustrating for my parents when they found out they'd been paying for six weeks of skating lessons, and that's all I'd been doing, sit on the bench by my own choice.

Anyway.

But even if I had no practical skills for hockey, I learned as an adolescent the thing I can do is talk a pretty good game.

And so as a teenager, as you do, I could give just enough information to give the impression that I knew what I was doing.

And I had some can, you know, not maybe not the best skills on the alley on the ice, but you know, reasonably good skills.

And all that changed when a buddy of mine called me one wintry morning and he says, Hey, grab your stick, grab your skates, we're gonna go play some shitty hockey near my house.

And I thought to myself, well, I don't really have an excuse to say no.

And besides, you know, confidence is 90% of the battle, right?

So I'm gonna get out there and I'm gonna show my natural abilities on the ice.

And you can imagine what happened.

I got on the ice and I got trounced.

I got trounced by children who came up to my waist.

Got skated around, and at one point when I took a admittedly very ambitious slap shot, I ended up flat on my back, sprawled out like a starfish.

And as I was lying there, I was contemplating my choices.

There was a few, well, there's a few things I could choose to blame in that moment.

I could choose to blame my friend who was very well practiced and played hockey for many years.

I could choose to blame him for embarrassing me.

I could choose to blame the ice conditions for being poor and not lending themselves to my natural talent.

I could blame these children around me who must be on some kind of performance-enhancing something.

But the truth is I'm lying there thinking, I can't talk a good game anymore.

The truth is I just haven't practiced.

Truth is I never showed up at 4 a.m.

like my friend did and ran my drills and listened to the coach.

So when the phone call came and said, grab your stick and grab your skates, I was completely unprepared for it.

And I landed completely on my back.

So where am I going with all this?

The truth is, I wonder if something like what happened to me on the ice can happen to us as we live the Christian life.

I wonder if there are times where trial calls and we don't know when it's gonna call, but we know that it's gonna call.

And if we find that we haven't practiced, we can find ourselves flat on our back, contemplating our choices.

In fact, trials might be enough to ruin our faith entirely, can't they?

I mean, we know the kind of trials I'm talking about, the kind of hardships and challenges and strenuous circumstances that life so often has to offer.

Whether that's losing a job or hearing that diagnosis or finding your home life is imploded, or finding your financial situation is just so strained.

Whatever that might be, life has plenty of trials to offer, doesn't it?

And sometimes they can make us feel like that's enough to put us out entirely flat on our back.

James knows trials like this very well, and he writes to Christians facing trials.

James is the author of this letter that bears his name.

We're going to be looking at his letter together for the next several weeks through Epiphany and Lent.

James is writing probably 15 or so years after Jesus' crucifixion, his resurrection.

This is a very early letter.

James is the lead pastor, or we might say something like a bishop of the church in Jerusalem for the very first generation of Christians there.

James is very likely a close relative of Jesus, maybe even Jesus' own brother.

So Jesus is, or pardon me, James has been very close to the gospel action.

And James writes to, he says, the twelve tribes in the dispersion, which is his very Jewish way of saying, I'm writing to all Christians, all of God's people, everywhere.

Because the thing we all have in common, and James doesn't need to meet us to know this, is that we all face trials.

And what does James have to say to Christians who face trials?

It's very puzzling, isn't it?

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

Don't they feel joyful?

Count it all joy, he says.

For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

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

The idea is when trials come and they will come, there's a testing involved, like a refining process.

And while trials we are unprepared to meet can flatten us, trials that our faith is ready to meet can strengthen us.

They can produce steadfastness.

And ultimately, steadfastness can make us perfect and complete.

That's the language of maturity.

I want a mature faith, don't you?

I want a faith that is ready to meet the challenges and trials of life and not be flattened by them.

And James wants that kind of faith, and James wants that kind of faith for us, because if our Christian faith cannot meet the trials at hand, then what's our faith really worth?

Count it all joy, he says.

Because ultimately these trials can produce a mature faith.

So what does mature faith require?

That's the question.

And James has at least three things he wants to tell us.

What does mature faith require?

Mature faith requires wisdom, humility, and perseverance.

Mature faith requires wisdom, humility, and perseverance.

And these just so happen to be major themes in James's letter that he's just riffing on right now and will walk us through in more detail as we journey through this very important letter.

Mature faith, steadfast, strong, rooted, is the sort of faith that is ready to count trials as joy.

So let's discover what that means together.

What does mature faith require?

First, it requires wisdom.

Let's open up our Bibles, let's open up our order of service, let's go to James chapter 1 here.

James 1 · chapter mention

I'm going to pick it up at verse 5.

What might faith lack in the midst of trials?

James has an answer for us.

If any of you lacks wisdom, verse 5, let him ask God, who gives generously to all, without reproach, and it will be given to him.

If you lack wisdom, James says, ask God for it.

So maybe the first thing we want to ask is, well, what is wisdom?

We talked a lot about wisdom in the fall, didn't we, as we walked through the book of Proverbs, and James is borrowing or drawing from the book of Proverbs in no small way through his whole letter.

One definition of wisdom that I'm particularly like is from Gerhard von Rad, and I like the definition not just because the name is great, but I love the definition as well.

He says wisdom is becoming competent with regards to the realities of life.

It is competency towards the realities of life.

Maybe a little bit more detailed of a definition we read last fall is from Bruce Waltke, a Bible scholar.

He says wisdom is a totalizing concept that seeks to bring all of life's activities into harmony with God's created order.

At its core is the belief that God has made the world in, with, and by wisdom.

The wise, therefore, seek to orient all their being and actions to conform to this wisdom.

And with regards to James in particular, another scholar named Douglas Mu writes that wisdom is the means by which the godly can both discern and carry out the will of God.

What's wisdom?

Wisdom is better living by God's design in accordance with God's will.

It's something like that.

It's understanding how God has designed the creation that we live in, and how we live into the grain of that creation for what God desires for us.

And we read in Proverbs last fall that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

That's Proverbs 9, 1.

And we learned that the fear of the Lord is not a sense of uh, well, it's not, it doesn't make us run away from God, rather, it's being rightly related in reverence to the one who is the source of all goodness, truth, and beauty.

It's a reverential relationship with the one who's the source of all the wisdom that we require.

So no wonder James says, ask God.

He knows that God is the source of the wisdom that we need to navigate the trials of life.

But James gives us a warning, doesn't he?

He warns us, ask in the right way, and not with doubt or double-mindedness.

Did you notice that?

Verse 6.

Let him ask in faith, with no doubting.

For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that's driven and tossed by the wind, right?

It's unpredictable, it's in and out.

For that person must not suppose that he receives anything from the Lord.

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

So for someone like me who desires wisdom to meet the trials in my life, and yet always finds that there is doubt creeping along, this seems like bad news, doesn't it?

Because it seems like what James is really saying here is unless you're willing to reconcile all of your doubts, quash them completely, then you'll be ready to ask God for wisdom, which is basically saying you'll never be ready to ask God for wisdom, will you?

So what help is that really?

Now I wonder if the way we think about doubt often is a very intellectual way.

It's those unanswered questions, right?

And that's a very real part of doubt, and I don't want to diminish that.

But I wonder if there's another dimension of doubt for James.

James is thinking about doubt and its opposite faith in very relational terms.

Having faith is to trust, right?

If I have faith in Rachel, or Rachel has faith in me to get something done, that's trusting one another, right?

And so faith in God is trusting God to follow through on what he said.

Doubt might be the opposite of that.

It's like withdrawing our trust.

It's like withdrawing our faith, right?

So maybe we can think about it this way.

What does it mean to ask in faith as opposed to doubt and double-mindedness?

I knew a uh a pastor friend of mine whose young daughter was very, very sick for many years.

And she was in and out of the emergency room so often that they were on a first name basis with all of the ER doctors there.

Now, very miraculously, thanks be to God, she was healed of her kind of undetermined chronic illness after many years.

But nevertheless, in the middle of this, it was a trial that my friend had, and my friend and his wife and his family had to learn to navigate.

They had to ask God for much wisdom to navigate to this trial.

And in the midst of it, he was asked to speak often uh, how do we navigate trials with wisdom depending on God?

One of the things that I remember he said to me as he, it gave him like a framework for processing this trial and moving forward, even in the midst of it, without any guarantees.

He said, Often our prayers in the middle of trials sound, our prayers should sound like this.

Lord, would you increase my faith to meet the challenge, the trial at hand?

Increase what's lacking in my faith to meet the trial.

And yet he says, so often my prayers and our prayers sound more like this.

Lord, would you decrease the challenge to meet my lack of faith?

Do you see the difference there?

See, I think my friend there is onto something very, very important.

And I think that's what James has in mind when he talks about the difference of asking in faith and asking with doubt and double-mindedness.

Right?

We can toss God a prayer because it's a polite thing to do, but really trust in our own abilities, our own capabilities to navigate life and trials and things around us.

The question is, what do we trust the most?

Do we trust that God can supply us with the wisdom that we lack?

Can we trust that God will actually follow through on us?

Can we ask that God will increase our faith and increase our wisdom such that through his leadership we can actually navigate the trial at hand?

That's asking in faith.

It doesn't mean we don't have unanswered questions in our mind.

Of course we do.

But our heart is there, our faith is there, our trust is there, and we're willing to go to God and even hand over those doubts that we have.

Because we know that we can pray, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief, right?

That's asking with that relational trust.

So we can ask God for wisdom.

And we can ask God for wisdom with confidence in the midst of trial because God gives wisdom generously and without reproach.

God is not miserly, he doesn't toss us nickels of wisdom.

He wants to write checks with multiple zeros of wisdom.

And he gives without reproach.

There's no tut-tut-tutting with God.

God is ready and eager to give us the wisdom that he's ready to supply, but he also gives on his terms.

We should notice that it's God who gives and we receive.

So sometimes I feel like in the midst of trial, I just want God to flick the wisdom switch and give me that answer that I lack.

Now, maybe that happens sometimes, thanks be to God, but that's not generally been my experience.

I suspect it's not been yours either.

Instead, when we pray for wisdom, we find God can do interesting things.

We find that God can actually use the trial at hand to mature us.

We also find that God can use the scripture that we meditate on to form our thinking and form our character and form our words such that we are more inclined towards His will than away from His will.

And we find that God can bring Christian brothers and sisters around us in fellowship to offer us words of counsel and words of wisdom we might otherwise have.

And God can use all of these means and more to help give us the wisdom that we require, but that can be a very patient process.

And so we have to be willing to be patient sometimes, don't we?

That's a hard thing.

Mature faith requires wisdom, because a reverential and right relationship with the Lord, the source of all wisdom, is the source of our competence in living, especially in the midst of trial.

Mature faith requires wisdom, it also requires humility.

I'm going to read verses 9 to 11 here, and then we're going to break it down a little bit.

James says, Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away.

For the sun rises and its scorching heat, with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls and its beauty perishes, so also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

Let's break it down a little bit there.

We see the word humiliation there, and we know that that word is related to the word humility.

Humiliation is like what happens to you.

Humility is the attitude, right?

It's the frame of mind, it's the commitment of the soul.

And sometimes I think we uh trip up on what Christian humility looks like.

I wonder if sometimes we sort of fall into the trap of thinking humility is something like, you know, just generating a lot of low self-esteem or something, just thinking very poorly and very little of ourselves, or something like that.

Now it's true that humility opposes pride, but humility is not the same thing as having a low self-regard.

Humility is not thinking too much of ourselves, it's not thinking too little of ourselves, it's more like seeing ourselves rightly, the way that God sees us, and operating out of that frame of mind.

Which means we have to be very mindful of the status that God gives us as Christians.

We are his children, we are his beloved, we are his new creation.

He is drawing us into his kingdom, and he has promised that he will dwell with us forever.

Amen?

What better promises can we have to hold on to?

What could be more valuable than the status we have been freely afforded by grace in Christ?

And yet, we know that the world assigns us a lot of status, doesn't it?

The world is constantly assigning status.

The world we live in will say things like, well, she's successful, and he's a real loser.

He's really good looking.

Her not so much.

You know what I mean?

We're constantly assigning statuses.

This person's an influencer, this person's not, whatever that might be.

The world is constantly assigning us those statuses out of which we operate, out of which we understand our identity and our value.

And ultimately, James says these statuses fall short of what God intends for us.

So in James's context, there's very clearly a division between the rich and the poor.

We're gonna see this uh throughout his letter as he's dealing with some of these difficult pastoral issues.

Of course, this is all ancient stuff, right?

There's no status issues around, you know, wealth and you know, poverty and things like that, right?

Then that's not a thing in.

Anymore, right?

I'm making sure you're still awake, guys.

Come on.

Of course it is.

Of course, what's in our bank account affords us status and power and influence and all sorts of things.

Ultimately, James says, what we take pride in, our worldly status, will ultimately afford us humiliation.

And ultimately, the lowliness of genuine humility and faith will afford us exaltation.

And the difference is when the Lord finally inaugurates his kingdom, on that day when the judgment is laid out, we will find that only by faith will we share in that exaltation.

But everything we prided ourselves in, apart from God's grace in Christ, will wither away like the flower of the grass.

So the question is, do we understand our true status?

What do we take pride in?

And do we recognize that all things apart from God's grace in Christ are impermanent?

They're like grass that withers and falls.

Only God affords us the status that is truly eternal, the only thing that we will take with us and that lasts.

Shelley has a great little poem called Ozymandias, who was an Egyptian ruler way back in the old days.

I know like three poems, and this is one of them.

The poem describes a traveler who's been going through kind of desert wastelands and comes across ruins and two enormous pillars, and on one of these pillars it says, on one of the pedestal, these words appear My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Then the poet says this Nothing beside remains.

Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

You see what Shelley's saying, right?

There was a time where Ozzimendias was the most powerful, influential, wealthy person in the world and could boast in that status.

And yet we know that the sands sweep all things away.

Time will take that away.

What is truly permanent is that is the only thing that, pardon me, God can is the only one who can give us that status which is truly impermanent.

And therefore is the source of our true boasting.

Because that's what James is saying to us, right?

He's telling us what we need to boast in.

Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation.

Why?

Because the thing they both share in common is a humble trust in God.

Regardless of our external circumstances, regardless of our worldly status, the most important thing we share is this identity that God has afforded us in Christ.

And that is what will make the difference in the sands of time.

That's the only thing that will last.

So we boast in our loneliness because it will result in our exaltation.

We boast in our true status.

We boast in how God sees us and how we rightly see ourselves because that is our eternal hope.

Mature faith, our trial-tested faith requires humility because only seeing ourselves rightly as God sees us keeps us from fading away in the midst of trial.

Mature faith requires wisdom, it requires humility, and finally it requires perseverance.

Verse 12 Blessed is the man, James says, who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

Yeah, let me pause there.

Perseverance means understanding two things.

Here's the first thing we see in verse 12.

It means understanding the goal.

Our Christian life has a goal, by the way.

There's a goal in practicing hockey, right?

The goal is probably to score goals, but the goal might be, you know, to make a career out of this or whatever your aspiration might be.

The Christian life has a goal to it.

It has a telos.

It has that thing to which we are working towards.

And James describes it as the crown of life, this symbol that signifies that we are meant to reign and live with Christ forever.

The crown of life, which is sharing in God's royal glory and sharing with one another in his royal priesthood.

That's the goal of the Christian life.

It's shining like the sun in the kingdom.

Something like that.

The Christian life has a goal, and in the midst of trial, we need to understand that goal.

Because unless we have the goal in mind, the trial seems, well, just that much more difficult, doesn't it?

Let me think about practically trials fixing things around the house.

You've got to have the goal in mind if you're going to endeavor to work through the difficulties.

And life has plenty of difficulties to work through.

So what's the goal here?

The goal is to share in Christ's life and his reign forever.

We understand the goal, and it inspires us to persevere.

And yet we also, James would say, need to understand a second thing.

We need to understand temptation.

Let no one say when he is tempted, verse 13, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin.

And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

Understand the goal and understand temptations along the way towards that goal.

James is trying to warn us against that thinking that says, I did that wrong thing, you know, I sinned, basically because God put that in my path.

And really that's God's fault, isn't it?

If God controls everything, if God could take away that temptation yet didn't, really, that's ultimately on him, isn't it?

And James wants to say we need to understand where temptation comes from.

Temptation does not come from what's external.

Trials are external to us, and trials will come.

And trials can do one of two things.

Trials can either test our faith and refine it, or they can present our interior, sinful, disordered desires an opportunity to indulge our own self, to indulge our own disordered, enticed desires.

So trials can either be tests that mature our faith towards the crown of life, or trials can be tempt present temptations, which ultimately lead away from what God wills for us, which is ultimately verse 15, death.

I think one of the most vivid illustrations of this, just in practical terms, if you've ever known someone struggling through addiction, if you've ever walked with someone through a length, a period of their life where they are working through addiction, then you have seen this played out in real time.

I don't know what better definition there could be for addiction than this compulsive, compulsively being lured and enticed by one's own desire.

Whether that's desire for alcohol or narcotics or sex or what have you, addiction is that compulsion towards one's own interior desires, being enticed by them.

And in my pastoral ministry in my Christian life, I have seen many succumb to temptation.

I've also seen many recover from temptation or from addiction.

And the amazing thing about those who recover from addiction is many end up saying something like this I am thankful that God put this trial in my life.

Not because I'm thankful of the destruction and devastation it made in my life or the lives of those around me, but because God has used this trial as a means of testing and refining my trust in Him.

And ultimately, without this trial in my life, and it's not that God's taken the trial away, that's not what recovery is.

Recovery is taking a temptation and turning it into a test that matures our faith.

This trial refines and matures and strengthens my faith.

Without this trial in my life, I might not trust God the way I do today.

And it's surprising how often I hear that from folks who've experienced and walked through addiction.

Trials can be temptations to which we succumb, or trials can be tests which by God's grace we can pass and be strengthened by.

And our faith can be matured.

Mature faith requires perseverance, understanding the goal, and refusing to yield to temptations because we are pressing on towards what matters, the crown of life.

So here I am, sprawled out on my back like a starfish, considering my life choices on the ice.

I was not ready for that moment when trial called.

And yet God does not leave us without practice, does he?

God does not leave us without the things we need to rise to trial when it calls.

Mature faith requires wisdom and humility and perseverance, and God is eager to provide us with these things.

So I could end the sermon right here by saying this: be more wise, be more humble, be more persevering.

I could end the sermon right there, and some of you are thinking, please do.

I could end the sermon right there, but basically that's me saying, so here's what you need to do this week and risk failing at, like me.

Because I fail to be wise and humble and persevere very often.

That's not good news, right?

That's just me tossing you back on yourself to try harder this week.

We need good news if we're going to press into the mature faith that God desires for us, and there is good news for us.

Let's look at verses 16 to 18 to briefly conclude here.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers and sisters, James says.

Let's make no mistake here.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change, of his own, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

There is good news, friends.

James wants us to understand, every good gift comes from above, from our Heavenly Father, the Father of lights.

And wisdom, humility, and perseverance, you better believe it, are gifts from God.

Gifts that he is ready to give if we are willing to ask.

And we can ask with confidence because, one, God is unchanging.

There is no shadow or variation due to change in him.

Right?

Great is thy faithfulness.

We can trust God with confidence because he is unchanging.

We can trust him because he is saving us.

Of his own, he brought us forth by the word of truth.

James is talking about the gospel.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

That's what God has done for us, the God who desires us to mature in our faith, and God is renewing us towards his kingdom.

We should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

James knows there is no assurance of mature faith if we look inside for the resources.

We don't have them, but we have every assurance that through life's trials we will mature in our faith with the gifts of God's grace that he eagerly supplies in Christ.

So, brothers and sisters, don't look inside for the wisdom and humility and perseverance that you need.

Look to the cross, find it in Jesus.

He wants it to be yours.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's Word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.