James 1:2-4
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to the New Testament book of James. Our reading today
is James chapter one, verses two through four. Many weeks
back after we finished our study of the book of Titus, we started
a little series, which will last maybe into the middle of the
summer months, a little series on the means of grace, the means
whereby or the means that God uses to communicate his grace
to us. We looked at the word of God.
We looked at the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament
of baptism. We’ve looked at prayer. We’ve
looked together at fellowship. And today we look at the strange
means of grace, suffering. And in the coming weeks, we’ll
think on family worship and the Lord’s Day. But today we want
to consider from God’s word, how he uses suffering or trials
and tribulations as a means of grace. And so we hear from God’s
word together, James chapter one, verses two through four. So James, the half brother of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the presbyter of the early church writes this
counted 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 nothing. Pray with me. Our Lord and God, we come before
you today as your people, and we ask as was just sung before
us, that you would speak, O Lord, as we come to you to receive
the food of your holy word. Take your truth and plant it
deep in us. Shape us and fashion us in your
likeness, that the light of Christ might be seen today in our acts
of love and deeds of faith. Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in
us all your purposes for your glory. Teach us, Lord, full obedience. Holy reverence, true humility.
Test our thoughts and our attitudes in the radiance of your purity.
Cause our faith to rise, cause our eyes to see your majestic
love and authority. May your words of power that
can never fail, let their truth prevail over our unbelief. Speak, oh Lord, and renew our
minds. Help us to grasp the heights of your plans for us. Truths
unchanged from the dawn of time that will echo down through eternity. By your grace, may we stand on
your promises. And by faith, may we walk as
you walk with us. Speak, oh Lord, till your church
is built and the earth is filled with your glory. We pray for
this in the name of Christ, our great prophet who speaks to us
now. And it’s in his name we pray, amen. If you know your
Bibles, if you know your stories of the Old Testament, you know
well the early chapters of the book of Genesis. You know that
God made the heavens and the earth. He formed the earth, he
fashioned it, and he filled it. And at the end of his creation,
or what we might believe is the end of his creation, he says,
there’s something missing. And so he makes man, he fashions
man in his own likeness, and he makes Adam out of the dust
of the earth. He puts Adam on the earth to
rule it, to subdue it. He puts Adam on the earth to
name all the animals and to bring organization and blessing and
profit from her. In time, God says it is not good
for the man to be alone. A helper suitable for him is
needed. And so he puts Adam into a deep
sleep. He removes a rib from Adam’s body. He makes Eve and
Adam proclaims at last, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.
He rejoices in this wonderful marriage. Now, God made Adam
and put him on the earth to rule it. He put him in the garden
to work it, to make it prosperous. He gave him Eve, a help me to
make it go even better. Adam was busy at work. Adam was
busy fellowshipping with God. Adam was busy enjoying marriage
with Eve. And God told Adam and Eve, He
gave them what we call a divine probation. In chapter 2, 17 of
Genesis, we remember those words that echo down the halls of history. Adam, you may eat freely of all
the trees of the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge
of the good and evil. And in the day you eat of that
tree, you shall surely die. Well, we come to chapter three
of Genesis, which begins in a very dark and sinister way. Some of
you read stories that began this way. It was a dark and stormy
night. Chapter three of Genesis begins
this way. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other of
the beast of the field. And the serpent, well, he didn’t
slither up to Eve because he still had legs at this point
in time. They were taken away after the curse. But he walks
up to Eve, we might say, and he says, did God really say?
And he begins to put holes and questions in the authority of
God’s word. God doesn’t want you to have
fun. He doesn’t want you to enjoy life. And so Eve, after a time
of being beaten down by the serpent, by believing his lies and not
relying on the promises of God, sees that the fruit of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil is a delight to her eye.
She takes it and eats of it and gives also to her husband who
is standing there with her. God comes looking in the garden
for Adam and Eve. God comes looking for them and
they’re hiding. They’ve sown fig leaves. They’ve
covered themselves up. And the first gospel words in
the Bible are, where are you? We’re hiding. We’re naked. We’re
ashamed. We are afraid. And God calls
Adam and Eve and the serpent to account. Some of you maybe
experienced this as a child. Your parents say, come downstairs,
get in here. And you, you line up in front
of your parents and they say, you’ve done this. And so, and
the punishment, the consequences are meted out. Well, that’s what
takes place at the end of Genesis chapter three. God says to the
serpent, curse it. Are you above all livestock?
He says to Adam, your work will be difficult. He says to Eve,
there will be pain in your childbearing. There will be misery in your
domestic life, your marriage, and those promises. become exasperated,
as God promises, there will be a continuing cosmic battle, a
continuing cosmic battle between the seed of the woman, ultimately
Jesus, and the seed of the serpent, Satan. And we see throughout
the whole of the Bible, We see throughout the whole of the Bible
that God is at work redeeming us from the effects of sin and
its curses. But there are some harsh realities
that land in our laps in chapter three of Genesis. Adam and Eve
have sinned against God. Adam and Eve or Adam, because
he represents all humankind after him, has caused all of us, each
of us, every one of us who come from him through ordinary generation
by our parents. He’s caused us to fall in sin. We have this doctrine of radical
corruption or total depravity where we believe that everything
is bent and bruised and broken and maimed by the fall. We have this theology that teaches
us, we find it in Romans chapter eight, that all of creation,
not just humankind who sinned, but all of creation is subjected
to futility and is in bondage to corruption. In fact, in that
wonderful chapter of Romans chapter eight, where we read, all things
work out for the good of those who love God and are called according
to his purposes. There is also that wonderful
verse in chapter eight that says, all of creation is groaning.
It’s groaning under the futility to which it has been subjected
by sin in the fall of Adam. It is groaning and it is eagerly
awaiting the adoption of the sons and daughters of God. You
see, there is something. And the new creation that is
coming that not only gives us new bodies, it not only gives
us freedom from sin and pain and sorrow and joy forever in
the presence of God, all of creation will be made new. You see, we
believe in the new heavens and the new earth, and we long for
that day when it will be so. But friends, until then. Until
then, we’re stuck. We’re stuck under the curses
of life in this world. We’re stuck under the bondage
of this world into decay. We’re stuck under all of the
effects of sin. Though we’re tasting grace, though
we are experiencing some wonderful things from faith in Jesus and
the realities and glories of salvation, we still suffer. And I want us to understand today
that God uses our suffering as a means of grace. God uses our
suffering to shape us. God uses our trials and our hardships. It is a tool in his toolkit for
making us more like the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. I want
us to understand this whole matter of suffering as a means of grace
from James chapter one, verses two through four. And we’ll do
it under four headings. The first, the problem. What
is the problem? Well, we read in James chapter
one, verses two through four, that we endure trials of various
kinds and that they are a testing of our faith. We just explained
how Trials and suffering and testing is a result of sin. It’s a result of the curse. The
circumstances we experience in this life are a direct result
of sin and that this world has fallen. Now we can distinguish
trials and sufferings in two ways. Ones we’re most familiar
with, outward hardships. Outward hardships, a tree fell
on the house. I wrecked the car today. A fire
broke out and took everything. There was an accident on the
way to work. Lives were lost. And we could go on and on and
on with the list of outward hardships. You’ve been to the doctor. You’ve
received a diagnosis. The medicine has gone down your
throat and into your body and it’s not working. So there are
outward hardships and you name it. We’ve been through it in
this church. But there’s also inward temptations. We live under the tyranny in
some ways, a limited way of the devil. We live under the tyranny
of the world in its ways. We live under the tyranny in
some respects of our remaining sin, our flesh, as the Apostle
Paul calls it. And so our hardships, yes, are
outward. but they’re also inward. We fight daily against the world
and the flesh and the devil. And so our problem is we have
these trials of various kinds. We have these testings of our
faith. Some of you may be able to say,
my life is like a country song. There’s hardship, there’s battle,
there’s losses, there’s crosses. And you say, I didn’t sign up
for this. I thought if I came to Christ and if I repented of
my sins, life would get easy. But let me tell you, dear brothers
and sisters, sin and curses and trials and tribulations and suffering
and hardship, they are a reality of life in a fallen world. They are a reality of life in
a world that is bruised and broken and marred and mangled by sin. You’ve probably heard the saying
before that good sailors are not made on smooth seas. Good sailors are made on rough
seas. And dear friends, the saints
of God, we sang of them in the hymn for all the saints a little
while ago. The saints of God who look the most like Christ
have been through hell and back. Yet they have remained in the
arms of Jesus and they have suffered. And it has not been without purpose
because God is always at work. Now, I want you to understand
there are various views of suffering in the life of the church. And
a wonderful example of this popped up a few weeks ago. Many of you
participated in the class that we had on the whole Christ. And
in the last lesson a few weeks back, Sinclair Ferguson, our
teacher, mentioned that God uses suffering. He tailor makes suffering
for each Christian. And that when we go through trials
and hardships, it’s to shape us, it’s to change us. It’s not
that God is not control. Oh no, he is in control and he
knows exactly what he’s doing. And he is the refiner and he
sends us sometimes through the fire, our dross to remove and
our gold to refine. But one of our members went down
the street to another congregation and they were told just the exact
opposite. That if you’re suffering, you don’t have faith. And I say
that to encourage all in this way. We believe the Bible teaches
that God uses suffering. Oh, it’s a problem. It’s for
sure a problem, but it’s God’s problem and he is using it. He
is using it to shape your life. And so there’s the problem of
our passage, trials, testing. The second thing we want to consider
in addition to this problem, secondly, is perspective. Who
goes up to a sick and suffering person and whacks them on the
back and says, count it all joy, my brother. When you’ve got cancer, when
you’ve lost everything, when your unemployment has lasted
so long that you’re in a fit of depression and you don’t believe
that anyone thinks you’re a man and can provide. Count it all
joy, my brothers. Our passage tells us this, count
it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,
for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. It’s all about perspective, brothers
and sisters. Count it all joy, consider it,
consider it a joy, consider it a grace of God, consider it a
means of grace for you know that trials and testing produce steadfastness. Some of you may be runners. I
don’t understand running. I drive by people out running
through the neighborhood and I see them. They look like they’re
in agony. My brother-in-law just had his hip replaced at age 40
something. Part of it was genetic, but he’s
a runner. And you look at all the aches and the pains that
people are going through, but why do they run? They run for
endurance. They run for strength. No pain,
no gain. It’s all about perspective. Consider
it all joy, my brothers, when you find yourselves in trials
and testing, for you know that perseverance or steadfastness
is produced. I want to read to you from the
Heidelberg Catechism. We asked the question and answer
earlier this morning in our time of creed and belief. This is
question 27. What do you understand by the
providence of God? Or you could put this into James
chapter one, two to four. What do you know about suffering,
about trials that help you count it all joy? Providence is the
almighty and ever present power of God, by which God upholds
us as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures. And
he so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful
and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity
and poverty, all things in fact, come to us not by chance, but
by his fatherly hand. And then question 27, how does
the knowledge of God’s creation and providence help us? We can
be patient in adversity. We can be thankful in prosperity.
And for the future, we can have good confidence in our faithful
God and father that no creature will separate us from his love.
For all creatures are so completely in his hand that without his
will, they can neither move nor be moved. Count it all joy, my
brothers. For you know the sovereign power
and providence and good will of Almighty God, that whatever
is going on in your life, whatever trials and temptations and hardships
and suffering, it is from his hand, it is for his glory, and
it is for your good. Dear brothers and sisters, you
cannot have this perspective of this problem apart from Christ. And apart from the living and
true word of God, because otherwise you will become cynical, skeptical,
faithless, and you will be depressed. I don’t know if you noticed in
the headlines this week, but maybe the statistics didn’t change,
but there were a number of notable suicides. People took their own
lives because they could take it no more. We’re living in a
culture that sees a lot more PTSD. We’re seeing a lot more
clinical diagnoses of mental issues. This is probably one
of the most medicated societies we’ve ever lived in. And dear
friends, you have to have perspective. You have to understand God is
always at work. He never leaves or forsakes his
children. I don’t often do this, but I
want to. read to you from the words of
a hymn. This hymn was written in the 1770s. It’s called God
Moves in a Mysterious Way. God moves in a mysterious way
his wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the
sea and he rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable minds of
never failing skill, he treasures up his bright designs and he
works his sovereign will. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage
take. The clouds ye so much dread are
big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head. Judge
not the Lord by feeble sense. but trust him for his grace.
Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face. His
purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour. The bud may have
a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief
is sure to err and scan his work in vain. God is his own interpreter
and he will make it plain. Dear friends, you have to have
perspective in suffering. God is in control. He is in it
and he is using it. And so there’s the problem, pain,
trial, suffering. There’s the perspective, count
it all joy for you know God is in this. The third thing we ought
to understand is the process. He speaks of trials of various
kinds of the testing of your faith. What does he mean by trials
and testing? Well, it’s like an examination. You go to school and the teacher
tells you on thus and such a date, there will be an examination
to see if you’ve read the books. If you’ve been listening to the
lectures in class, if you understand the material, there will be a
proving. It’s also a fashioning, a shapening,
it’s a finishing work of Almighty God. You remember well in the
early chapters of Genesis, well, chapter 22. We read about Abraham,
the patriarch. And it says that one day God
put a test to Abraham. Abraham, here I am. Take your only son. the son whom
you love, Isaac, and go to a mountain that I will show you, and there
on that mountain, you offer him as a sacrifice to me.” And it
says, of the next day, Abraham arose early. He saddled his donkey,
he gathered the wood, and he took some servants with him and
Isaac, and they made a three days journey. Can you imagine
that journey? God, there’s a different way.
God, you could do it somehow, some other way. Isaac, he’s the
child of promise. If you take his life, there will
be no offspring that outnumber the sand on the seashore. There
will be no offspring that outnumber the stars of the heavens. But
Abraham continued and he made his way to Mount Moriah. He told
his servants, the boy and I will go worship. You stay here and
we will return. And as they make their way up
the mountain with the wood and the fire and the knife, the little
one says to his father, behold, father, the fire. The knife. Where is the offering? And Abraham,
in faith, says to his boy. On the mountain, God will provide.
And so they got up to the mountain, they built the altar, he bound
his only son, the son whom he loved, Isaac, he laid him on
the altar, he was about to plunge the knife into his body to take
his life. And God hollered, as you will,
from the heavens and said, stop. For Abraham, now I know that
you can pass the test. And friends, that is what we
go through in our trials and suffering. Certainly we don’t
experience things like Abraham. I mean, which of you has ever
had to put your own son on the altar? I know some of you have
lost your own children. I know some of you have been
through pain and heartache, but which of you have ever been called
by God to plunge a knife into their heart. And to offer them
as a burnt offering is an act of worship and is a test of faith.
Not a one of us has, but certainly we go through hardships and the
process of testing, of examination, of proving is painful. We sing that wonderful hymn,
How Firm a Foundation. How Firm a Foundation You saints
of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent word.
What more can he say than to you he has said to you who for
refuge to Jesus have fled. Fear not, I am with you. Be not dismayed, I am your God
and will still give you aid. I’ll strengthen you, I’ll help
you, I’ll cause you to stand and I’ll uphold you by my righteous
omnipotent hand. You see friends, when you go
through the process of suffering, Jesus is right there with you.
He’s been through it. He’s endured it, he’s made it
to the other side, and he is with you. When through the deep
waters I call you to go, the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow,
for I will be with you, your troubles to bless and sanctify
to you. your deepest distress. When through
fiery trials your pathway shall lie, my grace all sufficient
shall be your supply. The flame shall not hurt you.
I only design your dross to consume and your gold to refine. Friends, there is a process under
which God is causing you great pain. And I want you to think
of it this way. If you took a raw piece of marble
And you looked at that piece of marble, you would see nothing
beautiful in it, maybe in the variations of the rock and the
striations that pass through it. But a sculptor took it and
he put it in his workshop and he hammered and he chiseled and
he shaped it. Over time, it would be wonderful
and beautiful. Now a rock does not have feelings,
you understand that, despite what people say. But God’s chisels
hurt. God’s strikes of his hammers
are painful. But in the end of this process,
we are conformed into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. And friends, the pain is worth
it. The pain is worth every bit of the glory that comes through
this process. And it leads us to our final
P, our final heading, product. We’ve looked at the problem,
the perspective, the process, now the product. It’s steadfastness. That’s a word that appears twice.
James says, 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, complete, lacking in nothing. What is the
word of God mean here by steadfastness? It means faithful endurance.
Some of you may have run a marathon, a half marathon. And when you
get done, you announce to the whole world, which you should
do, I ran a half marathon. I ran a full marathon. It’s saying
I made it to the end. I didn’t quit. I didn’t hit the
wall, as we might say. I didn’t get in the doldrums
and talk myself out of this crazy feat, which I took on in a moment
of insanity, which is what that is. I made it. I was steadfast. I faithfully
endured. I bared up under the pain and
I ran to the finish. You know, so many people say
of suffering. They say what the Stoics of old
said, you just grin and bear it. You just grit your teeth
and you get through it. No view of God is using it. No view of eternity. Just grin
and bear it. Others, when they have pain enter
their lives, they cover it with substance abuse. They drink. They smoke something, they snort
something, they become addicted to something that covers the
pain and mask it. We run after other things when
marriage gets hard. run after other sexual exploits. We get in school and we can’t
make the grade and so we cheat. We do all kinds of things that
aren’t the right thing. But what does God call us to
do? He says, endure it for there is a wonderful product. Let it
have its work. I’ll strengthen thee. I’ll help
thee. I’ll cause thee to stand. You’ll be upheld by my righteous
and omnipotent hand. Maybe some of you young people
at a point in time in your life, some of you who are older, you
went to a little finishing school, you went to cotillion, you went
to what is it social graces classes. When I was a freshman in college,
we had what was called the dinner by the book. And there was a
persnickety lady who walked around the dining hall. You had to be
in your coat and tie and look all just right. And you had to
use the right fork, the right spoon, put the napkin in the
right place. She walked around with a microphone. And if you
were out of order, you weren’t eating dinner by the book. You got publicly
acknowledged. But they were teaching us. how
to have manners. And some of you have been to
finishing school. Some of you have learned to dance. Some of you have learned
to act right in the proper company. And it’s a wonderful thing to
learn those. It treats other human beings made in the image
of God. Yes, sometimes it’s snooty and whatever else, but we should
treat other people well and we should learn how to do that.
But we go to finishing school. Friends, the church for you as
a Christian is like a finishing school. It’s the place where
you are gathered because you’re the church called out of the
world. And as the word of God says, you are perfected. What
does Ephesians chapter four say the job of the minister is? It’s
to gather the saints and to perfect them. And it’s to perfect them
by the ministry of the word of God. It’s to help you interpret
your suffering. It’s to help you make it steadfastly,
still standing on your feet through your trials and your hardships,
for the product is steadfastness. In the word of God, it says,
you have heard of the steadfastness of Job. Friends, Job was put
to the test. Job endured. It was painful, but he came out
on the other side, looking and gazing at the wonder and the
beauty of almighty God. Let me ask you a little test
question. Would you trade any of your past
suffering and the growth that came with it for some quiet days of peace
instead? If you’re a saint of God, living in Jesus by faith,
attuned to what the spirit is doing, know what the word says,
you would say no. I am so glad I went through that
unemployment. I am so glad God gave me a cancer. I am so glad God did what he
did in my life, though it was painful and hard and miserable,
and I would have traded anything for it not to have taken place.
Because now I look back and I see what he was doing in the problem
and in the process, because I will never be like I once was. I am forever changed. Friends, scripture points to
suffering all day long. It doesn’t matter what these
prosperity preachers are telling you. It doesn’t matter what someone
is speaking or writing in our newspapers. It doesn’t matter
what your friends are telling you. Suffering is a part of the
everyday Christian life and God uses it to change you. It doesn’t
mean your faith is weak. It doesn’t mean you’ve done something
wrong. It’s just a fact of life. And thanks be to God that his
sovereign hand is in it and he is using it. For think on Christ,
who left the riches of heaven. He was conceived by the Holy
Ghost. He was born of the Virgin Mary. He was born, not at Cone
Health System. Or at Duke Medical Center or
at UNC hospitals or MD Anderson or whatever one of the best places
in the world might be. He was born in a stable because
there was no room for him in the end. He was born to poor
parents. He lived in poverty. He went without food. He was
a man of sorrows, Isaiah tells us. He was acquainted with grief. Tell Jesus you have little faith.
Tell Jesus the real Christians don’t suffer that you should
be prosperous. Tell him that. But he suffered. And he died so that we might
have salvation. But even more than that, you
know what the book of Hebrews tells us, you know it. When we
go through our temptations, when we go through our trials, when
we go through our hardships, we have a high priest. who has
passed through these waters and God has been faithful. The sovereign
hand of God, let the hair fall from his head. The good hand
of God, the wise hand of God, let those thorns enter his brow,
those nails into his hands and his feet. And we have a high
priest who can sympathize with us. And so when you get on your
knees or you’re crying on your pillow and say, oh God, I can’t
do this. He says, yes, you can, because
I’ve done it. And the Father will sustain you.
And besides that, I will never leave you or forsake you. Some years ago, there was a book
written by John Piper. He’s a reformed pastor, theologian. He wrote a book called Don’t
Waste Your Cancer. He got through cancer and he
went through treatment and he had this very perspective. Count
it all joy, my brothers. When you go through cancer, Or
you fill in the blank with your trial or your spiritual temptation. For God is at work shaping you. What’s the advice we need as
Christians? What’s the marching order that
we need? Well, friends, it’s simply this.
When adversity comes, you press on. You keep the faith. And you count it all joy for
you know that God is at work in you. And it doesn’t matter
what the world tells you. It doesn’t matter even what other
preachers and other churches are telling you. You count it
all joy for God is at work in you. And you let the process
take place. You let the word and suffering
do its work. For then you will be complete. You will be perfect. and you
will be lacking nothing, pray with me. Our Lord and God, we
thank you for this, your perspective on suffering and how you use
it. Lord, we don’t like it. It’s miserable, it’s painful,
it’s hard, it’s devastating. It can nearly kill us. It can
kill us. But oh, we’d rather have the
glory that comes because your hand, the sculptor’s hand, is
doing a mighty work in our life to make us more and more into
the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s what we want, Lord.
We want to reflect His glory. Lord, help us to give up comfort.
Help us to give up keeping the stiff upper lip. Help us to give
up our cynicism, our depression, and help us to understand the
perspective of suffering from the word of God that says our
good and sovereign God is up to something. Help us to see
that and to believe it and to live it. Lord, and help us when
we do suffer. It is no fun. But give us a church
that loves us and loves one another so much that we care well in
hardship and we strengthen and help one another as Christ would.
We ask for this in the name of Jesus, we pray, amen. Let us
respond to God’s word as we sing together from our hymnal, a wonderful
hymn, Be Still My Soul, that helps us Think on these things
as we sing a little more. Stand and sing with me.