James | The Path To Perfection (May 26th, 2019) - Mike Armstrong

And if you want to turn in your Bibles right now, we're going to begin that series in the book of James.

Now, this book has long been beloved by Christians everywhere and for a long time again because of just how immensely practical it is, right?

It's just, it's so to the point and kind of hits us where we are.

I mean, James, he doesn't, he doesn't beat around the bush at all in this.

He doesn't give us like copious amounts of detail that we need to, you know, kind of sift through when he writes.

No, he just kind of jumps in and he and he gets after it and he addresses the kinds of issues that, I mean, we all deal with on any given day.

And I mean, we just see it so clearly in how he opens up this letter, and he does it by just launching, you know, headfirst, really, just straight into the topic of trials.

Like, all right, like right into the deep end, here we go.

Right?

And and so we, you know, we we understand here, like, I mean, if you're sitting here today and uh and you're a person, you've experienced trials.

Right?

You you have.

You know, trials are those those hardships and those troubles and and afflictions and the suffering that we we all come up against throughout our lives.

In fact, if we were to you know define uh hardships and trials broadly enough and and understand them as as not just those extreme examples of suffering that that humans face and endure, and I mean that's true, they we do, right?

And and those are brutal and they're difficult and and they're extremely difficult.

But you know, if we allow our definition to include, you know, you know, those those more minor examples of difficulty, those those ones that can crop up and you know kind of hit us again on any on any day, then it's probably safe to say that everyone in this room is dealing with some kind of trial right now.

Like, I don't know that any one of us would be like, you know, no, my life's perfect, and I can't think of the last time I you know never had a challenge or or a difficulty.

If that is you, then you're in heaven, right?

And I'm pretty sure that this isn't heaven.

All right.

I mean, if that is all true, and you know, we're all dealing with you know different trials and stuff, and I think it's very important, you know, if we're Christians, and that's what I know we claim we are, it's very important for us to learn how to handle trials in the way that God desires.

Makes sense, right?

And so this is really what we're gonna be talking about today.

All right, we're gonna jump in.

We've got a lot of ground to cover.

I want to pray.

I want to give this time over uh to the Lord, and of course, I know Jeremy mentioned it, but we want to pray for uh Hope uh Toronto North, and as they uh launch their core group today, kind of a soft launch, they're doing a bunch of them before their official uh public launch, uh, beyond that.

But if you know people that are down uh in that area of Yorkdale, uh let them know and they can start attending anytime.

But let's pray, let's bring all this to the Lord, Lord.

We come before you right now, and even as we uh think about this brand new church that's starting, Lord, we love that your heart is to see churches planted.

That is that is how you get the message of Jesus Christ out there and how we build these strong communities centered on the scriptures in different towns and villages and cities.

And Lord, we pray that uh you would bless uh Pastor Marv right now as he will be delivering your word and as the people gather for the first time.

We remember what that was like here four years ago or so, Lord.

And so, God, we pray that you would strengthen them, that you would encourage them, that you would build a strong community of faith down there, a healthy church, a strong church.

And so, Lord, we're excited for them as they begin.

And God, as we, you know, open up and start a new series in the book of James today, Lord, I pray that, you know, as we consider the idea of trials and just the the extreme difficulty of them, Lord, I pray that you would teach us today, that you would instruct our hearts, that you would get our hearts and minds on you, and that we would, that we would see what you uh purpose to do in them and through them in our lives.

Lord, I pray that we would get on board with you in this, Lord.

I pray that we would not run in the opposite direction.

I pray that we would not fear, I pray that we would trust our good God.

And so, Lord, we know that we are weak, we know that we are frail, we are we know that we are prone to wander, and so Lord, grab hold of us here today, Lord.

We ask you to do this, Lord, punch through whether it's our fear or our pride or whatever it might be.

God, show us your goodness, show us your strength.

Lord, I pray for anybody who is particularly suffering right now and struggling through something that is so overwhelming and so immense, Lord.

I pray that you would just lovingly touch their lives today.

I pray that you would show them that you are real, that you are there, and that you would remind them of your goodness again and the overarching purpose of what you are accomplishing.

And so, Lord, as we unpack this, Lord, bless us, fill this room with your glory.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

All right, well, if there is uh an overall uh theme or truth that that Christians really must, you know, accept and and learn to wrap our minds around when it comes to trials, it's it's this.

We're gonna have it on the screen.

It's that God is committed to perfecting me through trials.

Right?

How does that settle on you?

Right?

That's that's really the big idea today of our passage and our outline.

It's what it's what this scripture reveals.

I mean, it's the the consistent and constant narrative that we see, you know, all through the entire Bible.

But uh but listen, here's the thing.

Uh we hate that, don't we?

I mean, don't we just like when we when we think about this, we we even just kind of kind of consider the idea of struggle and suffering and hardship and difficulty, I mean, all of it in our in our fallen, in our in our sinful flesh, we so want to run in the opposite direction of this.

We want to flee.

We try to do that, and I mean we just have such a kind of a natural aversion to trials.

We we recoil, we kind of have that like inner kind of twitch that goes on when we just you know think about this topic.

Because I think for all of us, I mean, we long for ease.

We long for things like comfort and you know, inner tranquility and the path of least resistance and nothing but good times and good vibes, right?

That's what we want.

And and those desires, do we understand this?

Those desires run so, so deep in the fabric of our hearts, right?

We we want that so badly.

But at the same time, we can't escape trials, right?

There are there's a certain inevitability about them.

Okay, so what are we gonna do about this?

I mean, this is a predicament for us.

Trials are a reality, uh, yet we hate them, we do not like them, and we want to flee.

So, what do we do?

Well, for starters, we need to understand, we need to wrap our minds around the fact that trials serve a vital purpose in our lives, and that the Lord uses them to forge spiritual maturity in us.

Okay, and that that's really the kind of the theme of the entire book of James and our series.

See, we need to understand this that that as Christians, from day one that you commit your life to the Lord Jesus Christ, you realize that your sin is separated you from God and that Jesus paid the price for your sins so that the wrath of God could be satisfied.

The day that you realize that and you bow your heart to Christ, the Lord starts the work of overhauling your heart.

That's that's what he does.

It's he he just he just gets to work.

What he does is he uproots our our sinful tendencies and and the way that we always go in those directions.

He's he's working to heal our pain, even when we don't want him to, and we want to kind of cling to it and hold to it, or we don't trust him yet.

He destroys our idols, those things that our hearts long for and want to replace Christ in our hearts and in our lives.

He does all of those things, he changes our hearts right down to the very bedrock of our of our motives, of why we do uh what we do, so that Christ's character and his perfection can become ours in the sense that we're living according to that.

It becomes how we operate and how we function in this life.

Right?

Where he teaches us to think like Jesus.

He teaches us to act like him, to love like him, to live like Jesus in every single way imaginable.

Now listen, trials are how he gets the job done.

Right?

It's and you read the scriptures, and that's that's just what we see.

Right?

And it's because trials are just, you know, they're the most effective way of accomplishing all of those goals.

Okay, through trials, he just he just cuts down right into the roots, and he just gets right after everything that is kind of warped and faulty and and and broken and messed up within us.

Right again, God is committed to perfecting me through trial.

All right, so then how should how should I respond?

How should we respond as Christians and as the church?

Well, here's the first thing of five here today.

First of all, by embracing a greater vision of what he's working to achieve in me.

All right, embracing this vision.

Now, take a look at this here from uh starting in verse one of chapter one.

Here's what James says in his introduction here.

He says, James, he introduces himself, as a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion.

Greetings.

And now it's widely held by most that this is this James is there's a few of them in the Bible, but this James writing this is the was the brother of James.

This is he was the guy who was the leader of the early church in in Jerusalem.

And we see his name pop up at multiple points in the scriptures, particularly in the book of Acts, which is how the church began and how the church launched.

Now, when James addresses his letter there to the, you see, it the twelve tribes in the dispersion, it's uh it's a reference to how the Jews had all descended from the twelve patriarchs.

And from in those twelve patriarchs, they became twelve tribes.

You read about that in the Old Testament.

But what had also happened is they had they had gotten to the point where they were they were dispersed, they were scattered, they were they were spread out among the nations, and this happened following the Assyrian and Babylonian uh persecutions.

Okay, and so it's a little bit of a different letter in the sense.

It's not like, you know, when when Paul was writing to the church at Colossae or the church in Ephesus or in Philippi, he's writing to uh James's, he's writing to a wide range of people who lived outside of Jerusalem, and they were dealing with you know a number of challenges, and we're gonna look at the the specifics of that and the context of that and what their way of life uh was like.

And so to them now, he just simply says, greetings, right?

Just short, like straight to the point.

He's not like, hey, how's the family?

You know, like what are your summer plans?

No, he's because again, he's he's writing to a large group of people, he's like, greetings, and then he jumps straight in.

Look at verse two, right into the topic at hand.

He says, Count it all joy, my brothers, when, so you notice it's not if, okay, when you meet trials of various kinds.

Okay, various kinds there you know, teaches us that there's a wide range of trials, right?

Each with their own degree of difficulty.

So trials are kind of like on a spectrum.

Some of them are gonna be you know more minor, and some of them will be major, and we've probably experienced a wide range, even ourselves individually as people.

Now, some of us read that verse, and it's you know a very well-known one to us.

Many of us have read that, we've heard messages on it, maybe we've even memorized it and you know it well, but some of us read that first part especially there, and we're thinking, uh, yeah, right, buddy.

Right?

Like I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna count it all joy?

That that kind of strikes me as weird, right?

Like, you mean I'm supposed to just have like happy feelings when life is difficult?

So you mean when when when life is brutal and it's excruciating at times, I'm supposed to just kind of you know, kind of push all of that aside and just kind of whistle a happy tune and and just kind of think happy thoughts and paint a smile on my face and you know, kind of neglect the the painful side of that.

Am I supposed to be like a kind of like a masochist where I enjoy the pain and you know bring it, bring it on?

I want more of that.

Well, as you can maybe imagine where I'm going with this, that's not what he's getting at.

Right?

It's not.

When he says, count it all joy, it's not to say that we should only have good feelings, you know, when we experience those heartaches and that turmoil and the pain and the disappointments that that trials bring.

He's saying that we should count it or consider it all joy when we meet trials because of what he says next in the next verse, right?

And we gotta remember to see this in context here, right?

So he says in verse 3, take a look, he says, count a joy be or for, or because you know that the testing of your faith, referring to what what trials do and are there tests, right?

They test us.

You for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

Now, steadfastness isn't exactly a common word we necessarily use all the time today, but it just means endurance.

Right?

It means strength.

He's producing this endurance, this strength in you.

And then he keeps going, keep going there.

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

All right, so we see here in these verses that there is absolutely uh a purpose here to what God is doing.

When God brings trials and hardships into our lives in the various, it's the word that it uses there, in the various ways that he does that, we're not to be, you know, joyful for for no reason.

We're not just supposed to think happy thoughts and all of that.

We're supposed to be joyful because we're being perfected through the process of this testing.

Right?

You and I must must embrace, when we think about trials here, you and I must embrace that God is in the work of completing us.

He's making us spiritually whole.

He's making us mature by by way of trials.

He's using them to forge the endurance, the steadfastness in us that we we, you and I, we don't naturally possess, but but it's absolutely crucial to have in order to properly handle what God has called us to in this life in a way that glorifies Him.

I put simply here.

Trials are to be seen as tests which sharpen us spiritually.

That's really what they are.

Now I heard somebody, I can't remember, somebody said once that that God's love is not a pampering love, it's a perfecting love.

Maybe you heard that before.

But here's the thing the challenging thing about that for us is that you know, deep inside, I think, you know, most of us, all of us maybe, we we kind of have that like inner, you know, two-year-old child who throws a fit.

Right?

You know what I'm talking about?

You're like, yeah, I've I've got lots of them at home.

Right?

But you but you but you know the two-year-old child who he throws the fit because he or she doesn't, you know, not getting what they want the second that they want it.

And so they kind of they lose it and they throw themselves down on the floor and and and they throw it, they have a temper tantrum.

I think sometimes, if we're honest, we're a little like that uh spiritually, maybe especially at first, as we're we're new baby Christians, right?

We we want to be pampered.

You know, isn't isn't the doesn't the Lord exist to just make my life smooth and comfortable?

Isn't life really about my glory and about my ease and about my comfort?

And I think all of us have that that that desire inside where we just want everything to go our way.

And so at the first sign of trial, you and I will like we kind of naturally instinctively kind of kind of chafe against what what God intends to do with it.

Okay, and in that inner chafing that we have, you and I will react in any number of ways.

A couple of examples of how we might react.

One might be just be anger.

You ever responded to the Lord in the Lord's trials that he's brought into your life in anger?

Like, I I I I don't like that he's done this.

I I you know I'm angry.

I'm upset, this shouldn't be happening, this is this is wrong.

And maybe you you know you you've even charged God with with wrongdoing and all of that, and and as you give into anger, you you you go from that into into bitterness.

And you're holding it against him, or or you look at other people's lives.

And you kind of wrongly assume that they've got it all going on, and maybe because they're not suffering in the exact same way that you are, that that that they aren't suffering at all.

And I would never talk to them about this because they must not know what I'm going through because they haven't gone through it exactly.

And so that that bitterness starts to starts to creep up, and pretty soon through all of that, we're distancing ourselves from God, we're distancing ourselves from other people that that God has put into our life to help us and bless us and encourage us during those times.

It's because we're chafing.

We don't like the we don't like the trials.

Another way that we respond is maybe just in fear.

Right?

I've gone through trials in my life, and I don't know about you, but it has rattled my cage, right?

Where I see what the Lord has done, and as appreciative as I have been about how he has, you know, kind of held me down and done his work, and I, you know, I didn't like it, but I started to see that the fruit of that and the gr and and his goodness in all of that, you know, as that kind of passed, I'm kind of like, yeah, I'm not exactly super pumped about going through the next one.

You know, and so you sense that you know that it's coming though.

And I remember I've kind of lived as I'm you know, life is going along pretty well, and I'm the kind of person, this is so so wrong of me, but I'm kind of a person who's just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

My life is like too good right now.

I'm sure God wants to like you know put me in a ditch somewhere over here to teach me some more things, right?

This is the kind of the mentality that I've had.

And so I've I've feared him.

I haven't realized that that it's it's his loving hand that he puts me, and the reason why he puts me through it.

And so I've kept him at uh at arm's length, and and and because we all know how to quote unquote look like Christians, we we kind of don't look like we're you know keeping him away, and we still come to church and we still you know own a Bible and we still you know listen to Christian music, maybe, and we do all of those things, but but inside we've distanced ourselves from God because of fear.

Another way that we chafe against God in a way that this all kind of comes out is is that we just straight up run to idols.

You know, in my in my spiritual walk, I'm you know, I'm just I'm uncomfortable and I'm not I'm not finding the pleasure that I want in my relationship with God.

So so I'm just gonna start looking for it in other things.

I'm gonna throw myself headlong into work and try and squeeze every ounce of pleasure out of that.

And I'm gonna just immerse myself in it's often good things, right?

Family, and and all of my focus and all of my attention is in that too much so, where that it's become an idol for me because I'm looking for pleasure there.

Some of us we run to sinful, sinful pleasure.

And right, I I I desperately want good feelings, and so I'm gonna engage in in pornography because I I like the the pleasure, I just want to feel good.

I'm so desperate for that.

I'm not sensing that in coming from the Lord, and so I will run, and in so doing, as we run to these things and as we chafe against what the Lord wants to do, what we reveal really is just how desperately we need maturing, right?

How desperately we need perfecting.

And on top of that, in our attempts to run away from trials that that God has wisely brought into our lives, we we we actually even reveal just how sad our understanding is of what of what the Christian life is supposed to be about.

Right?

We reveal that we just we we don't really get it.

See, so many Christians.

Can I just be real straight up with you?

We waste golden opportunities to grow in maturity because we do not have a big enough vision.

We don't have it.

Right?

If the overall vision of your life is that God exists to make you happy and to serve at your every beck and call and every whim of desire that you have, then listen, trials will only and ever be a pain and a nuisance to you.

They will only ever be viewed as standing in the way of what I really, really want.

But listen, if if we could we could learn to embrace a bigger version, a greater vision, a truer vision, God's vision, that he's working to achieve maturity in me through this, okay, then I can count it all joy.

Do you see that?

Because as as uncomfortable and downright, again, excruciating as as my trials are and the circumstances of my life can get, I know that there is a greater purpose uh happening here.

There's a greater purpose behind what's happening.

I know that that God is at work.

It's where he does his deepest work, actually.

It's in trials.

Listen, church, it's I mean what we're talking about here.

This is this is fundamental stuff that we have to come to grips with as believers.

Right?

Trials are they're not to be seen as merely a hassle in my life.

Here we go again.

More difficulty from the hand of God.

Awesome, love this.

So glad I'm a Christian, right?

Like that's that's how we that's kind of how we act though in in certain times, don't we?

We're not supposed to see trials as a hindrance to my well-being.

It's actually the opposite.

Wait a second, it's painful though.

Yeah, it's painful for a moment, but the Lord is working out things for you.

This is actually for your good in the long term.

God is not harming you through this, even though it's painful and it's difficult.

Neither are trials to be seen as punishment.

I wonder how many of us see the difficulties that we go through as, you know, there's God, you know, stomping on me again.

I I, you know, it's because of my sin, it's because of my wrongdoing.

God is constantly slapping me down and hitting me.

This is this is punishment.

No.

There are consequences for sin that we're gonna have to deal with, absolutely, but but trials are not that.

Trials are there, you know, out of God's love to to to sharpen us.

Okay, it's not punishment, neither is it a sign of God's hatred.

God doesn't hate you, he loves you.

If he hated you, he you know, he wouldn't do anything.

Neither are our trials to be avoided and run away from.

Okay, some of us though, here, and I want to say this carefully, but some of us have been handling trials in these kinds of ways for for way too long.

Some of us have been in the church for decades, and yet we still haven't even grasped these crucial realities to the Christian walk.

And listen, it is because of that, it's severely stunted your spiritual growth.

It's halted your walk with the Lord, it's it's it's blocked your effectiveness in in the mission, and it's limited your ability to enjoy the community of church that God has has given you.

And then here's the biggest thing, and I think this should sting.

Listen, when we when we handle trials like this and we we run away and we don't see them properly, it robs God of glory.

The Lord longs to get glory through you.

And so listen, it is time for you and I to embrace a greater, a bigger, a more biblical version here, uh vision here.

Allow your trials to produce steadfastness, as the verse says.

And let steadfastness have its have its full effect.

Right?

Right, don't don't don't pull the chute too early on this here.

Right?

I remember uh hearing years ago how Pastor John MacArthur, who who pastors a church in California, he was you know talking at his, I think it was his 45th anniversary as the pastor of this church, amazing.

He was sharing the story about how at year five they were going through some real challenges as a church, and he had an opportunity to quit and to leave and to go and and become a pastor of another church somewhere else and kind of run away from his problems.

And he said that the Lord impressed on him and showed him, listen, if you run away from what I'm trying to teach you here in this moment, guess what?

You're just gonna have to learn it again later.

And so for him, it was like, I got I gotta just bear down here.

I gotta remain under this, right?

I I've gotta I've gotta allow the trial to have its full effect in me.

And because he did that, he was able to celebrate like 40 more years of faithful ministry.

We need to have that kind of long-term vision here.

Allow the trials to produce this steadfastness and allow that to have its full effect, that you and I may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Right?

That's what we count as all joy.

Here's the second thing, and these ones will go a little more quickly here.

God is committed to perfecting me through trials, so I will courageously ask for wisdom as I resist the urge to doubt.

Take a look at verse five.

It says this if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach.

That word reproach there is, you know, kind of synonymous with like disappointment.

Right?

When you come to the Lord and you ask him for wisdom, he's not like, Man, again?

Like, haven't you kind of learned this already?

Like you asked for this like yesterday.

He's like, No, I want to give to you generously.

I'm not disappointed when you come to me.

I'm I am your father, you are my children.

Like, come to me and ask me for these things.

It says there that and it will be given to him.

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting.

Look how it describes the doubt, the doubter.

It says, For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the winds.

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

He is a double-minded, literally, that word double-minded means double-souled.

You got two souls within you, double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

And here's where we begin to see, and we're gonna see this throughout the rest of this passage here, uh, some of the specific threats that you and I are gonna have to watch for and and kind of deal with as God works to perfect us through trials.

Okay, the first one here is that as we endure these kinds of hardships and difficulties, and as we're working to embrace God's vision and God's purpose in them, uh, we're gonna need wisdom.

Have you sensed this in your life?

You're going through this, it's hard, and you're like, I don't know, uh, up from the down.

Right?

Especially as there's turmoil in your life and you're trying to figure out how to make decisions and how to live and how to manage your emotions and how to maybe lead your family and kind of you know handle all of this stuff, you're you're gonna need it.

Listen, we're all gonna have that urge to doubt what God is really doing here.

We have that.

Just think about again, the you know, the emotional and the mental and the physical even roller coaster that that we go through any time we suffer.

It's it's it's exhausting, honestly, isn't it?

It can be an immense amount of angst and just misery and pain and and and fear and confusion that all comes up to the surface and and out of us and in the heat of these battles.

So again, it'll it's gonna require serious wisdom as you'll be tempted to give into that fear and start to you know run down that path.

You're you're gonna be tempted to allow that fear to just dominate your thinking and and overwhelm your emotions.

You're gonna be tempted, like we've said, to run to pleasure no matter the cost, no matter the consequence.

And you're gonna fall headlong into sin and maybe into addictions and all of that.

As you go through trials, you're gonna be tempted to question God's goodness.

Question His His sovereignty.

And are you sure this is the plan?

Like, this is awful.

And we feel these things at various points along the way.

So God says again, like, ask me for wisdom.

Like I'm here to help you.

And when he says, ask in faith with no doubting, and and then describes the doubting person as you know, that wave getting tossed in every direction by the wind, it's like churning and and all over, and then he says that that person won't receive anything from me because they're double-minded and they're unstable.

Listen, he he's he's not saying, okay, hear me on this.

He's not saying that, you know, if you have even an ounce of doubt, don't come crawling to me.

Right?

He's not saying that here.

Okay.

Literally, that word doubt in the original language, it means having a dispute with oneself.

Again, you're divided.

You say you believe one thing one second, and then show that you believe another thing the next second.

Okay, Douglas Mu is a well-known commentator.

He he says that this describes a deeply conflicted and divided person who's shown over time that they don't have even a basic consistency of purpose and intent and spiritual integrity in their walk with God.

That's the double-minded, unstable person.

Okay, the the person of faith, on the other hand, is the person who is overall committed to the Lord.

Right?

Not perfect.

Right?

That doesn't mean you you never waver at all, but working through that stuff, right?

Like working through the doubts as they arise, with a, you know, I'm determined to follow Jesus kind of mindset here.

You know, I will in courageous and and bold faith ask for wisdom as needed, because my my wise God provides it.

That that's the attitude of the person of faith.

And clearly here, what this verse points us to and is is highlighting is really the significance of prayer.

Right?

We we know this prayer is is obviously an area that we can be quite weak in.

Right?

And and our prayers are kind of surfacey and they're sporadic, and they're once in a while, and maybe only if we're in trouble, and I would say that to grow mature, you need a strong prayer life.

And so trials will help you grow in that area, right?

They really will.

Provide us an opportunity to strengthen those prayer muscles as we cry out for wisdom and as we're we're seeking him constantly, and again, wrestling through those doubts and the midst of our weakness and pain and and disappointments.

And again, don't miss that opportunity.

That's what it is.

It's an opportunity to grow, it's a huge component of God's plan to perfect you and present you mature, which is what Colossians 1.28 talks about.

Here's the third thing.

God is committed to perfecting me through trials, so I will look beyond my financial status to the status I have in Christ.

You might be thinking, hmm, he's going in that direction, is he?

Look at verse 9.

He says, Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and let 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.

Now these verses here suggest that this is James' way of saying that how Christians handle and approach our, you know, both poverty and our wealth and the whole concept of money might just be one of the most challenging trials and tests that we're to face in this life.

Okay, both having money and not having money or not having enough can absolutely dominate our hearts.

Right?

Our the focus of our life, our time, all of it.

And so James says here, he says, let the let the lowly brother, the the one struggling financially, okay, and again, keep in mind the context here.

Keep in mind, you know, that that James is writing to Jewish believers, again, who had been had been spread out across the land because of because of persecution.

Right?

And just kind of imagine what that would have been like.

You know, like like things are getting hard and we're you know, people are coming after us, and you know, are they threatened with death?

Are they threatened with beatings?

Are they are they threatened with prison?

We we gotta leave, we gotta get away.

Like, did they have time to sell the house?

Did they have time to get rid of the extra car in the garage and sell that and get some money?

Or did they just did they have to flee that?

I mean, it probably would have been different depending on the people.

They would have had to go, you know, start all over again in a foreign and distant land.

Would they have been able to do what their livelihood was all about before, where they had to kind of learn a new trade?

Can you imagine the burden of all of this?

And then they're in, again, they're in a foreign land, and they probably would have been oppressed there, and who knows if they would have had equal opportunity there?

I mean, this would have undoubtedly caused an immense amount of strain on them in general, but certainly financially.

And so what is he doing here?

He's actually encouraging the readers here, he's telling the low, the lowly brother, the one who's struggling uh to make ends meet, to boast in his exaltation.

Okay?

So he's so he's saying, take take pride, not not like not like sinful pride, like not arrogance, but like legitimate pride, legitimate boasting, like you'd be so how uh like how you'd be so proud of your kids when when they get a great mark on a test.

Right?

You're proud of them.

There's nothing wrong with that, it's a great thing.

He's saying, take pride, boast, boast in your in your exaltation, in the fact that in Christ you've been exalted.

Right?

Meaning that your financial status might be that you're that you're poor by the world standards, okay?

But but spiritually and in Christ, your status is that you're immensely wealthy.

Right?

You are rich in him.

Right?

And then he just kind of gives us the flip side of this, the other side of the coin.

He says, let the rich, like the rich brother, the rich Christian, some of them would have had means, right?

He said, let him boast in his humiliation.

Right?

If your financial status is that you're, you know, you're you're wealthy and you've got some some comfort in all of that, you're wealthy in the world's eyes, you should boast in the fact that that in Christ you identify now with a humble savior.

Right?

A savior who was despised and rejected, scorned by men and and and sacrificed on a cross for your salvation.

You're identify with him, man, lower yourself.

So what he's getting at here, James, is that having money or or not having it, both of these things can be legitimate threats to our spiritual maturity if we're not careful and we're not very intentional about this.

Learning how to be godly Christ followers in either one of these circumstances is something that will present a formidable task, a formidable trial and test for believers.

Right?

So let's just think about it for us here today.

If you are on the, let's just say more the the poor side of the scale, okay?

Now I I kind of get it.

Like this is all, again, this is all sort of relative, right?

Especially when we consider that we live in like obscenely wealthy North America, right?

We're in the we're in the GTA, we kind of have everything.

Generally speaking, it's like we have way more.

The idea of uh like being poor to a lot of people in our area is you know, I I don't have uh an iPhone with enough gigs on it for all my selfies.

Right?

I I need a new one, like I'm poor, I I can only afford a cheaper thousand dollar phone or whatever, right?

And and and like even kind of thinking through all of that, does that make you kind of want to puke a little bit when you think about just how much we have and yet how we sometimes complain and think we've got it so rough?

I mean, imagine preaching this sermon in some of the poorer parts of the world.

But listen, he's saying, and I think we need to think about this from our context, you know, I don't think we necessarily need to feel guilty for the blessing that God has given us.

We just need to think through how to how to handle all of that.

And what he's saying here is if you know maybe you are struggling to pay the bills, you know, and you're you would love to be as comfortable as living from paycheck to paycheck, but things are a struggle, and maybe it's you know you've just lost a job and things were pretty comfortable, and now it's you know not so much.

And maybe you hang out with a lot of friends who, you know, they can go out for dinner all the time and they have all these opulent vacations, and you're like, I gotta, you know, stay home and I can't go do all of these things, and I've gotta, you know, be real strict in the budget and all of it.

And listen, if that's any of us, it means that here that we we need to get our eyes off of our circumstances because they get overwhelming and they dominate us, uh, you know, those financial predicaments.

Right?

Look, learn to look beyond them.

Get your eyes on your true status and focus on that.

That you've been exalted in Christ.

Right?

We we we gotta be impacted by that.

You and I, we've been risen to the status of an adopted child of God, right?

How awesome is that! We're we're in his family now, right?

And all the other components of our identity that we just talked about in our last series.

Likewise, if you're on the wealthier side of the scale, don't pride yourself in that.

Those things, remember, as James says here, they pass away.

Right?

You notice that the words that he uses, they they wither, they fall, they they perish, they fade away.

Instead, revel in your humiliation.

Super counterintuitive, isn't it?

Revel in your low position, meaning have the perspective here that compared to the greatness of Christ, you're nothing.

You're nothing.

Don't hope in earthly riches that amount to precisely zilch in eternity.

Look beyond that to Christ, who who he is and who you are under him.

Listen, the pressure that we all feel to find our security and our comfort and our satisfaction and our and our meaning and our hope and money is a huge pull for us, right?

It's it's a big test, it's a trial.

We overcome that through Christ as our identity is reinforced, as we come stronger in who he says we are, and as our feeble hearts begin to stabilize in that.

Fourth thing.

God's committed to perfecting me through trials, so I'll realize that testing comes from him, but temptation to sin does not.

Look at verse 12, kind of reiterate, uh, reiterates the overall theme here.

He says, Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial.

For when he has stood the test, he didn't quit, didn't back out, didn't run away, when he stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

Okay, so this is an encouragement to us as we endure trials.

Again, remain steadfast, stand the test.

You'll receive the crown of life.

Now, James doesn't specify exactly what that blessing is.

We know that you know the crown was what that, you know, that was kind of like a wreath that they would give to the winner of a of a race.

Like picture like an Olympic wreath.

That's the idea.

You'll be.

You'll be blessed.

Or we can trust that God delivers on his promises.

This is a promise here.

Now, verse 13.

Let no one say when he is tempted, I'm being tempted by God.

For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

Praise the Lord.

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

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

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

Listen, it can be very easy for us in the heat of those fiery trials that we go through to blame God.

Right?

Blame God for the temptation to sin that we feel inside.

What James makes explicitly clear here, though, again, in this verse here, is that while the external trial, right, you know, while that does come from God's sovereign hand, okay, the internal temptation to sin that we feel, that does not come from God.

That comes from us, it's on us.

He says that desire is our is our own.

That's the word he uses.

It's a product of our sinful fallen flesh.

Okay, so so when he's saying here, what he's saying is that with every trial that we face, alongside it will come the temptation to give into sin.

Okay, so kind of think of this like two rails on a train track.

You've got the trial here, that's from God, you've got the temptation, that's coming from you.

They'll be running like parallel throughout your life.

They really will.

Okay, so what so like when money is is tight, for example, or maybe just like I just gotta get ahead.

I'm so sick of living paycheck to paycheck.

Maybe maybe what you'll you'll you'll have and you'll experience you'll feel tempted to fudge on your taxes.

I'm gonna cheat so that I have more money at the end of tax season.

Maybe for you, when you're lonely, desire a relationship, and maybe it's as a single person, or maybe you're in a marriage that's going sideways or it's just difficult, you might feel tempted to run to sexual immorality.

You don't want to run after that.

Or maybe it's that when you get you know stressed out at home and your kids are going psycho and they're crazy and disobedient and they will not listen, and it's just the you know, the it's brutal.

I mean, you might you might feel tempted to lash out in anger and snap on them.

That's the only way to get through, is if I freak out.

Maybe for the for you, and in the stress of all of that, and you know your frayed nerves, you're gonna be tempted to run to too much alcohol to calm you.

Listen, listen, it's clear we're lured and we are enticed by our own desire.

That's that's on us.

Like, don't be blaming God for that.

Okay, that is that is not from Him.

If you've gotten yourself into the place where temptation's overtaking you, and you know you've been giving into it and all of that.

If you've somehow justified that this is God's fault and you're right to go down this road, listen, stop here.

Let's pause, hit the pause button.

Okay, take take stock of what's happening here, read these verses, believe these verses.

Right, confess what you've been doing to your to your gracious God, right?

He loves you, he's gonna forgive you.

Right?

Ask him for wisdom.

Again, that's back to point two.

Let somebody in, someone godly in on what's been going on.

Don't try and hide all of this.

And once again, realize that trials and challenges in your life are from God and they're from his good hand to make you mature.

You can fight against that as much as you will.

And sadly, some of us will leave here and continue to do that.

But it's gonna turn into shipwrecking your faith.

Or listen, you can agree with God about this, and you can confess the sin that is there and repent of it and turn from it and invite him into the problem and the mess and ask him to heal it and fix it and get going in the right direction and allow the Lord to do what he has set out to do.

Can you tell which way is the better way?

Last thing.

God's committed to perfecting me through trials, so I will remember that he gives good gifts which flow from his good nature.

Verse 16, look what he says.

He says, Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.

I love the heart of James there.

Do not be deceived.

Now, this is definitely connected to what he's just said in you know, in verses 13 to 15, right?

Temptation and sin that comes from us from within.

Whereas good things, good gifts, that that comes from God.

Right?

Don't be deceived about this.

Okay, and then he kind of rolls it out in in verse 17.

He says, Every good and and perfect gift is from above, from him, right?

Coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

It's kind of an interesting phrasing and interesting use of words.

But what James is doing here is he's encouraging trial-weary Christians like you and I that good gifts come from the Lord, like the sin and the temptation part, that's that's not from him.

For he is the father of lights.

That's actually the only place in the whole Bible that it uses that term, that phrase.

And when we think about that, it kind of naturally draws our minds to the great lights of creation, right?

Like the sun and the moon and and the stars.

And you know, we kind of think about this a little bit and how they how they they move and they they they cast shadows, and shadows that do what?

Move, right?

They they they shift and and and they they change throughout a day.

And so so what James is trying to get our minds on here and help us understand is that even though creation, even though these these lights change, God does not.

He does not, right?

His his his nature is is fixed, right?

It is constant, it is it is immovable.

He gives good and perfect gifts, and we can count on him to be unchangeable in that way, as much as we can count on the lights and shadows to do the opposite, right?

To move and change.

Amazing.

Now, verse 18.

Take a look.

This is an example here of the good gifts.

What James does, he points us to the ultimate gift.

He says, of his own will, he brought us forth.

There's like new birth imagery here.

He brought us forth by the word of truth, the gospel, right?

That we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

Okay, all of this is redemptive language.

The ultimate expression of God's good gift to us is seen in the redemptive work of Christ on the cross.

Right?

Our salvation.

We're the firstfruits in the sense that our salvation is like a foretaste of the total culmination of God's redemptive plan for the entire universe that you and I are gonna see come to completion at his second coming.

Right?

That's that right there, that is the exact perspective and mentality and vision that you and I are supposed to have as we face trials.

Right?

That's what we gotta hold on to.

That's what we gotta cling to.

It's it's it's what we need injected into our veins.

God is God is at work here, He's doing something that's much greater than little O U.

He's actually redeeming all of creation.

We we have the the pleasure of being a part of all of that.

Big vision.

We gotta remember God, God saved you, man.

Right?

Your sins are forgiven.

You don't have the wrath of God aimed at you like an intimidating cannon anymore with the with the fuse lit ready to go off.

Jesus took all of that.

No more wrath for you.

That's amazing.

Hell, not your future.

We'll be with God forever someday, as in a fully redeemed new heavens and new earth.

Right?

That's where all of this is is headed.

Right?

That's what we gotta cling to.

Keep that in mind today as you go through what you're going through.

As I was thinking about this and trying to apply this to my own heart, I thought about 2 Corinthians chapter 4, and it's Paul and how he encourages the Corinthian church in these things.

2 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

And I want to close by reading this.

He says this, talking about trials, he says, so we do not lose heart.

Though our outer self is wasting away.

Our inner self is being renewed day by day.

For this light momentary affliction.

Doesn't feel like that in the moment, does it?

But in light of eternity and what God is doing, that's exactly what it is.

This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

As we look not to the things that are seen, the things of our life, but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient.

They pass away, just like wealth, right?

All of that transient.

But the things that are seen are unseen are eternal.