James 1:2-18
In our study of the book of James,
I’m trying to decide whether to go fast or go slow, and I
think I’m gonna pick up the pace a little bit. So in your bulletin,
it says James 1, 2-4, but we’re actually gonna zip on through
2-18. And I think the faster we go
through this, I think it may benefit us more instead of getting
bogged down. So turn there, if you will, to
James 1, verses two through 18. This is James, the half-brother
of the Lord Jesus, same mom. James, of course, not conceived
by the Holy Ghost, but by Joseph, his earthly father. And he says
this, also the same James at our Jerusalem council this morning
in Acts. So he says these words, 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, for 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 are 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 firstfruits of his creation. Amen. This is the word of the living
God. Um, if I was to, um, go back to Monday night and change
the bulletin information, I would change this from suffering a
means of grace to, uh, faring the rough seas. Uh, these little
snippets of wisdom from the book of James probably shouldn’t call
them snippets cause they’re big, deep and wide, but they all pertain
to living life under the sun. How do we deal with trials? How
do we deal with temptation? How do we deal with lacking wisdom? Well, God gives these all to
us here in the book of James. And so maybe this whole picture
would be better titled, Faring the Rough Seas. If you were to
find a box of family letters, and you were to dig through and
read them, because you know your family, you would probably understand
everything in them. You would understand the language,
the nuances, the turn of phrase. You would understand the innuendos
and the different features of that loved one’s writings. But
if you were to take that same box and hand it to a stranger
and say, here, read my family letters, they would probably
be of little interest. They would not know who was being
spoken of the setting or the situation. And so sometimes when
we read family letters, they mean nothing to us. And that’s
the danger we could fall in in reading the book of James. James
would have been very familiar to the people of God to whom
he was writing. Remember, these are exiles from
Jerusalem scattered because of the persecution. that came on
early Christians. That’s why he wrote the letter
to the 12 tribes in the diaspora or the dispersion. But they understand
immediately what he’s speaking of, what he’s saying. They understand
his Old Testament references, his Old Testament allusions and
all the rest. Now remember James, the half-brother
of Jesus, he’s seen a lot of suffering. He’s seen a lot of
hardship. He’s witnessed his own brother’s
arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Likely was there with the stoning
of Stephen. He’s seen the early church persecuted
and he moderated the great debate that we looked at today in Acts
chapter 15. And so this is a man whose words
come to us I think with a lot of street credit, we might say. He’s got the rights to speak
of the things he’s going to tell us of. And the first thing he’s
gonna tell us, we find it in verses two, three, and four,
and then again in verse 12. He’s gonna tell us how to live
under trials. In verses two, three, and four,
he 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 and complete, lacking in nothing. And then
skip down to verse 12. 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. What’s he saying here when he
says you’re going to face trials of all kinds? It could be a trial
at the workplace. It could be a trial of your ethics. Do I commit this grievous error
or do I stand fast to the word and the principles and the values
of God? It could be a trial with your children. It could be some
crisis in your life. It could be the sins of others
committed against you, and it could be your own sins. I think
that’s what’s coming in verses 12 and following when he talks
about temptation. But we go through all kinds of
trials in life. It can be health related, financially
related. It can be sin. It can be, you
name it, but we go through it. High pressure, high pressure
world we live in. Lots of things coming at us because
of the fall, because of brokenness and sin. And scripture even affirms
this to us. You read Matthew chapter five,
for example, Jesus says, blessed are you when you are persecuted
and endure all kinds of hardships for my name. Romans chapter five,
verse three, speaks of our trials and our hardships and how God
is working out his purpose in them. First Peter chapter one,
Peter is writing to the scattered Christians throughout Asia Minor
under the great persecution. And he says, why do you think
it’s strange when you face fiery trials? This is what our master
said would come our way. And so we can argue from our
own lives, trials come. We can prove from the scriptures
that it’s part of the Christian life. But how we live under these
trials is the critical thing that James is after here. And this is really where your
theology comes into play. You know, some time ago there
was a famous book, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? And you can just hear R.C. Sproul’s
critique, well, there are no good people. So bad things don’t
happen to good people because there are no good people. So
he’s got his doctrine of man there. But then we got to work
out our doctrine of sin, our doctrine of a hardship. And our
theology says a lot about God. Is God aloof? Is he there but
unable or unwilling to help us? Or As Jesus affirms when he says
to the disciples, consider the lilies of the field, consider
the birds of the air. Are they not of great value to
God? How much more does he love and care for you? That’s where
our theology lands us, in hardships. In hardships, we think of God
and all that he is. I remember probably 25 years
ago, the first time I really considered this passage, a man
came to our church and was speaking about his missionary efforts
in Russia. And he had flown in a small airplane
from somewhere in Alaska over the Bering Sea and into Russia
to do ministry. And they were coming back. They
were coming back and their plane went down in the Bering Sea,
freezing cold water. And he said, there we were swimming,
holding onto ice, hoping someone would rescue us. And he said,
this passage, count it all joy, came to mind. And he wrote a
little song with a catchy little tune about count it all joy.
And it’s stuck in my head all these years. Why does God have
me in the icy waters? Why does God have me in a hospital
bed? Why does God prosper others and
not me? We think of these things. Well,
remember I told you that the book of James has over 50 imperatives
and we’re going to hit about seven or eight of them tonight.
And this is the first one, count it all joy or it’s, The word
consider, consider it all joy. That’s the first imperative. And I have a little funny note
here. Count it all joy, don’t whine, right? We like to whine. We’re no different than the little
ones. We like to put our foot down and drop our shoulders and
we just like to whine. And God is saying, no, count
it all joy, I’m up to something. Count it all joy, I’m doing something
in your lives for this testing produces steadfastness. This testing does great things
for your spiritual muscles. How does the old saying go? Good
sailors are made on rough seas. And you could say good Christians
are made, strong Christians are made in hardship. Now I think of how we like to
rush things. In our generation, we’ve got
the microwave oven. You can take a chicken that used
to take two hours to cook, and I suppose you could microwave
it in lesser time. Is that how it works? We like
instant, instant coffee, instant meals, microwave meals. We like
the red light to turn green. We like to step on it. We like
to go fast. And when we want something, we
want it now. We get on Amazon and we order it and we’d rather
it be here tomorrow than in two days. Because who can wait two
days, right? You go to the store and they
don’t have it and what do we do? We put that foot down, we drop
our shoulders and we whine. We like it now. How would you
like just suppose you could order any kind of car you wanted and
it could come you know these days and But suppose you could
order any kind of automobile that you wanted. You could pick
out all the bells and the whistles, the colors, the seats, the options,
the noisemakers, the phone gadgets, all the rest, and just think,
you could ride up to the plants, Michigan or Ohio or wherever
it’s made, and you could see it roll off the assembly line,
and you could be handed the keys, you could crank the thing up,
and you could drive it home all proudly. But suppose you got
a little anxious. I want it now. Would you take
it off the assembly line early? No, you wouldn’t. It’d be missing
parts, right? It’d be missing wheels or transmissions
or some of those bells and whistles that you so meticulously placed
on your order form. And so the thought comes to mind,
why would you want God to stop working in your life? Why would
you not want the steadfastness that testing produces to be worked
out in you. Lord, sanctify me, but just don’t
let it hurt. Lord, change me, but no needles,
no knives, no cutting, no surgeries. The work of redemption that God
is working in each of us is gonna be painful, it’s gonna hurt,
and there’s not gonna be pain meds or anesthesia along the
way. But notice the pathway. Testing
produces steadfastness, and when it has its full effect, that’s,
by the way, the second imperative, count it all joy, let it have
its full effect. So you can’t say, God, I’m yanking
myself off your assembly line. He says, no, sit tight. Let it
have its full effect, And there’s two things. God wants you to
be mature and he wants you to be complete. He wants you to
be complete. He wants you to be mature, complete. He who began a good work in you
will be faithful to complete it. Ephesians four tells us the
point of the ministry of the church. is to bring us into the
measure of the full stature of Jesus Christ. When we were born
in Adam and that was in sin and brokenness, we are born again
into Christ and we want to leave Adam behind and come to live
out of the full measure of our Savior, Jesus Christ. It is into
the second Adam’s image that we are being conformed. And so
we want our trials, our suffering, our hardships to get us to that
place of completion, but also maturity. Now, I think of here
of maybe carrying a baby to term. We talk about a baby that comes
too early. It’s premature, right? And depending on whether it’s
a boy or girl, can it live on its own? And that’s the whole
abortion debate now, isn’t it? When does a baby become a person
and is it able to live by itself outside the womb? Well, those
aren’t even arguments, right? If it’s a baby, it’s a baby.
It’s made in God’s image. But we have to wonder, you know,
should we encourage a mama to make it as far as she can because
the safest place for a immature baby is in the womb, right? At
least it used to be. but we want full gestation. We want God to work the steadfastness
in each of us to make us complete and Christ to make us mature.
fully grown, and then verse 12 told us we get to the crown of
life when we stand firm in our trials. There’s a second thing
that pops up in this passage, and it’s in verses five through
eight. If any of you lacks wisdom, anybody wanna raise their hands?
That’s all of us. We should ask for it. God gives
generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him, but
let him ask in faith. Don’t ask with doubting for the
one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and
tossed by the wind. That person must not suppose that he will
receive anything from the Lord. He is double minded, unstable
in all his ways. So you need wisdom. Of course
you do. Um, I have, I have Mr. T in mind, right? I pity the
fool, right? Um, that that’s hard to get out
of your memory when you grew up in the eighties, Mr. T. Um,
so we need wisdom. Now, what is the difference between
knowledge and wisdom? Well, simply put, knowledge is
knowing facts. Wisdom is knowing how to judge
the right course of action based on knowledge and experience and
whatever. But we need wisdom that is from
above, not wisdom that is of this age. God makes that distinction
over and over in the Bible. You can get wisdom of this age.
What do the wise men of this world say? What do the wise men
of this age say? Well, they say things that are
limited by sin and they’re limited by human knowledge. But when
we get God’s wisdom, it’s from above and it reaches into every
category. Man’s wisdom is limited. It’s
finite. It’s, well, it’s not wisdom,
it’s foolishness. But God’s wisdom is the best
wisdom. It’s the superlative wisdom.
It’s the greatest wisdom. And if you don’t have it, God
says, ask for it. And guess what I’ll give. So
need wisdom on how to raise my kids. I need wisdom on whether
to take this job. I need wisdom on, do I, do I
take this medical procedure? Need wisdom on this life or death
decision. that must be made. I need wisdom
on how to invest for the future. I need wisdom on how to speak
to a friend who’s caught in a sin. I need wisdom for navigating
this scenario or that. We need wisdom in every aspect
of life. I think of the elders, we need
wisdom in how we lead the church. And it best be wisdom from above
in spiritual matters. So where do we get wisdom? Well,
imperative number three, um, not only counted all joy, not
only is there let, uh, steadfastness produce its work, but here’s
the third imperative. Ask God. I love these imperatives. They make it really clear. Where
do you get wisdom from? You get it from God. So how do you get
wisdom? Ask God. It’s just that clear, right?
Um, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t
know what to do. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? That’s
what people say all the time. Ask God. That’s as simple as
it gets. James, the half brother of Jesus,
just puts it in plain terms. You need wisdom. You ain’t got
it. Ask for it. Ask God for it. And how do you
ask? This is imperative number four
in the book of James. You ask God in faith. You can’t just say, God, give
me wisdom. Sit in Santa’s lap. Here’s my Christmas list. You’ve
got to ask God, yes, but you must, it’s the imperative number
four, ask him in faith without doubting, because you can’t suppose
God will give if you don’t ask in faith. You can’t suppose that
he just reads your mind. No, it’s part of the process,
isn’t it? We approach him in faith. We approach him. and boldness,
believing that he can provide far more than we ask or imagine. Now what of this doubt business?
Well, he’s pretty clear. If you’re a doubter, you’re a
double-minded person. Now what’s double-minded? That’s
looking this way and that way and this way. It’s like the squirrel
trying to cross the street. If you notice the squirrels,
they love this Indian summer we’re in because the acorns are
dropping like crazy and they’re everywhere. Try walking your
dog in the morning with these squirrels, it’s insane. Jerks my arm off. The squirrels
are everywhere and he wants to chase all of them all at once.
And you see these squirrels when you’re driving, they’re this
way, that way, this way. And when you see a poor squirrel
squashed in the road, what do you say? Oh, he misjudged it,
right? Don’t be like a squirrel. Look
to God. What do I do, God? Give me wisdom.
Don’t be double-minded. Don’t be a hypocrite. Don’t be
like the waves of the sea that just float and they float and
they float. You’ve got to pray. You’ve got
to come in faith and simply ask God for wisdom. Well, the next
little section that pops up that James teaches us about is in
verses nine through 11. So he’s talked to us about our
trials, he’s talked to us about the need for wisdom. Now he’s
gonna talk to us about our position in the kingdom of God. Remember,
these folks are scattered around the Roman Empire because of persecution.
They’ve left homeland, they’ve left their jobs, their people,
they’ve left their, their livelihoods and they’ve left their heritage,
their culture. And he’s going to speak to them
about their position of kingdom in verses nine through 11. Let
the lowly brother boast in his exaltation. Let the rich boast
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, its beauty perishes, so also
will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. This is beginning to sound like
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, isn’t it? It’s beginning to sound like
the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. It’s backwards,
isn’t it, to say, let the lowly boast in his exaltation. He’s not exalted, he’s humiliated.
And then he says, let the rich, boast in his humiliation. Well,
this is kingdom economy. Just think of Jesus, the Sermon
on the Mount. Think of all his kingdom parables,
all his kingdom teaching. The lowly get to boast, and this
is imperative number six, sort of skipped over number five.
I’ll tell you what it is later if you ask me. But boasting in
your lowliness and your exaltation is, Imperative number five in
the book of James. Why does the lowly get the boast?
Because you are made in the image of God. You are a child of the
king and you are being raised by God. Yes, you’re scattered
in this dispersion of the Jewish people, the Christian people.
Yes, you are poor. Yes, you are oppressed. And yes,
indeed, you are an outcast. But God hasn’t let you go. Maybe
in the eyes of the world, you are lowly. but in your position
with God, you are a child of the king and you are on your
way to the heavenly palace. But however, the rich. The rich
need to look at their humiliation. God raises up the lowly and he
lowers those who have exalted themselves. This is a kingdom
of equals. Remember what Paul says in Galatians chapter three,
in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free. We’re all one in Christ. This
is a kingdom of equals. This is a kingdom of position. We are in Christ or we are not
in Christ. That’s it. Dignity comes because
God gives it to us in our bearing his image, but he also gives
it as he makes us new again in the great rebirth. So our position
in the kingdom is important. One last little section here,
verses 12 through 18. He’s gonna speak to us about
temptations. And this is our daily struggle.
Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial. Blessed is the one who, when
steadfast under trial, has stood the test, he’ll 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. Sin, when it is fully grown,
brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved
brother. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, coming
down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation,
no shadow due to change. So we wanna think of temptations. They get at all of us. It comes
to our eyes, it gets to our hearts. We wrestle with it, we justify
it, and we do it. Greatest example of this is King
David, 2 Samuel chapter 11. David was not at war with his
army. No, he was at home in the hot
tub. right up on the rooftop in the hot tub, had the jets
going, was cool and comfortable while his army was off at war. And he looks across the rooftops,
and what does he see? He sees Bathsheba. And what does
he do? He wants Bathsheba. His eyes
saw, his heart desired, and so he wrestles with it, he sins
for her, he justifies it, and he does it. And then he makes
matters worse. She’s with child. Let’s see if
we can knock the husband off through what looks like war.
Have y’all been watching this whole thing in South Carolina,
this prominent attorney and family and all that? I think they did
the Dateline the other night and there’s something else on it.
Boy, you make a mess. Don’t make it worse. This guy’s
life is unraveling with national attention. And that’s what happened
with David. Um, he, he saw, he desired, he wanted, he wrestled
with it. He justified it. He’d done it
right. And then he covers it up and
he makes matters worse. And Nathan, the prophet comes
to him one day and says, Nathan, uh, or says, David, there was
a man who had a sheep. He loved the sheep, took it in
his house as his own. He raised it like a child. Uh,
the sheep was special to him. A rich man came to town, needed
something to eat. And though he had plenty to, uh, choose
from in his flock to kill, he said, well, I’ll take this man’s
one. special lamb and let’s cook that one for supper. What ought
to be done? Well, David was angry. Remember
he said, Oh, that, that, that’s, that’s wrong. And what did Nathan
say? You’re that man. And what James
is telling us is you’re that man. You get tempted, you get
lured, you get enticed, you get the desires. And I love how,
um, Andy Griffiths says it when he’s talking about Romeo and
Juliet. He says it’s not about being or not being, it’s about
doing or not doing, right? And that’s what it comes down
to with us. Sometimes we get so caught up in our flesh, so
caught up in the world, so caught up under Satan’s temptations
that we are hell-bent on doing that which will displease God.
And we might have a moment of sanity in our brain that says,
don’t do it, don’t go there. but it’s gonna get done. Nothing
will stop us. Paul says the spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak. And we get a little bit of our
theology of temptation here, a little bit of our theology
of suffering, and we can’t help but remember Jesus in the wilderness,
40 days and 40 nights, no food. Jesus comes to him. He didn’t
come to him in the garden of paradise like he did Adam. He
came to him in the wilderness. Adam had all the riches of the
garden. Jesus has nothing. And he says, if you are the son
of God, do this. If you’re the son of God, do
that. If you are. Three times Jesus answers him with scripture.
Jesus passes the probation test. Adam failed in the garden. Jesus
passes in the wilderness. And we understand God allows
temptation. He sinlessly uses sin. God is not the author of evil,
nor does he, create evil or do evil. God is
holy, he cannot sin, but sin exists in the world and God sinlessly
uses it for his glory. And he uses it in our lives to
show us how radically corrupt we are. He uses it in our lives
to show us how much we need Christ. He uses it in our lives to show
how desperately we need the Holy Spirit. And just a word of encouragement. Sometimes we say to ourselves,
as Christians and as people in the church, I would never do
that. Wrong. Second thing we often
say is, well, so-and-so is caught in a really particularly bad
sin. You know, they’re in adultery. Or today, oh, they’re in homosexuality. And we would say, I would never
do either of those things. Oh, you would, if it weren’t
for the restraining power of God Almighty. And so then we
begin to be uncompassionate towards those that we biblically and
theologically know are saved, redeemed, but still have remaining
sin. And so we look at others with
remaining sin in them, and sometimes we say, what a horrible person
you are. And I think we ought to be pastoral sometimes and
more comforting to others, realizing what others are under. They’re
under the temptations of this world. They’re under the weight
of the flesh or remaining sin. They’re under Satan’s tyranny. And so we should pray with and
for one another. What do our eyes see? What do
our hearts ponder? What do we wrestle with? What
do we want to justify? Sin grabs hold of us. And sometimes
we let it because we don’t want to ask for help. We’re happy
to follow it wherever it leads. And one of the reasons we’re
reading the book of Proverbs is Proverbs says, sin will always
lead to death. Always. It may look beautiful
under the temptress or the seductress. It may look appealing and getting
rich quick with the young men that rob. It may look like fun,
but in the end, it always leads to shield, to death. That’s why
Galatians chapter six is such a helpful passage for Christians.
If any of you are caught in a sin, let those of you who are strong
restore them. and bring them back to a place
of good standing. And so James here, imperative
number seven, let no one say temptations are from God. Test,
yes. Temptations, no. God wants to work out all things
for his glory and for your good. Well, a little comfort here at
the end of the passage, verse 17. It’s sort of tacked on there,
if you will. Of his own will, he brought us
forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first
fruits of his creation. I can’t help but wonder if in
this little verse, God is reminding us of all that has been done
for us in Jesus Christ. You are the first fruits. You
have been born again. You are a down payment on the
new heavens and the new earth. If any man is in Christ, he’s
a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. We look for
a new heaven and a new earth, and in a sense, we are God’s
down payment on this new heavens and new earth. The new birth
is the earnest money, you might say. But this also reminds us,
when we go through trials, you’re born again. When you go through
temptations, you’re born again. When you need wisdom, you’re
born again. When you go through, oppression and hardship. You’re
a born again person and born again people have the resources
of heaven for wisdom, for steadfastness, for exaltation when humiliated,
and for standing up under the trials of Satan’s temptations. And so we keep our eyes on the
creator redeemer as we live life. He gives wisdom and he gives
help through all these things. Let’s go to God in prayer. Lord,
we ask for your help tonight. We want to live the new life,
the new birth, the new obedience. We remember that of your own
will, you brought us forth by the word of truth that we should
be a kind of first fruits of creation. So, Lord, help us to
live out of these great realities that you have already made possible
for us through Christ our Savior. We pray all in his name. Amen.