James
1:2-3
“Consider it Pure
Joy…”
Today, we begin a new Sermon Series on the New Testament Epistle of
James. I am calling this series,
“Where the Rubber Hits the Road”.
And I believe that’s a great title for a series on the Book of James,
because James doesn’t deal with lofty theological ideas like the Apostle Paul or
John do. Of course, there is
theology woven into all James talks about, but it is primarily dealing with
“Where the Rubber Hits the Road”.
It has practical application for every single one of us, because it’s
about how we are meant to live our lives as Christians. And this is part of the joy in reading
this book.
Now, when you read any of the Epistles in the New Testament, what you are
actually reading is somebody’s letter.
And in the case of James, we may very well be reading the earliest
document in our New Testament. The
Gospel of Mark is believed to be the earliest Gospel that was written. It was written around A.D. 65. Some scholars believe that James’ letter
may have been written 20 years earlier.
If so, that would make it the earliest letter or document that we have
written by a Christian.
And James is writing this letter to a group of Christians, hoping that it
would be read out loud. Most people
in that day could not read, so someone would read it out loud to others who were
Christians, perhaps in the context of a church service. And, as with all the Epistles in our New
Testament, it would be passed on to other churches to be read and circulated on
to others.
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn to the Book of James to the
very first verse of chapter 1. For
this is all that James tells us about himself. He says, “James, a servant of God and of the Lord
Jesus Christ.” That’s it. So, part of what scholars have wondered
is, “Who was this James who wrote this
letter?” And since it was
included in our New Testament, we assume that this James was very important …
probably a leader in the Early Christian Church.
If you look in the New
Testament, you will see that four James’ are mentioned. There is a James who was the father of
an Apostle, but we don’t think that he was the one who wrote this letter.
Then, there is James, the son
of Alphaeus, who was one of the 12 Disciples. But not much is known about this James
outside of the Gospels. He is also
referred to as “James, the Less” and
some Catholic scholars believe that it was James the Less who wrote this letter,
but most scholars do not believe that this was the case.
Then, there was James, the son
of Zebedee and his brother was John … the one who is considered to be the author
of the Gospel of John, the Book of Revelation, and the Epistles of John. James, John, and Peter were the three
closest disciples of Jesus.
Everywhere that Jesus went, there was always Peter, John &
James. And so, one might think that
this letter would have been written by this James. He was clearly one of the leading
Apostles. However, in Acts 12 we
learn that this James was put to death by King Herod very early in the life of
the Church. And so, most scholars
do not consider him to be the author of this letter.
There was one other James. And we find this James first mentioned
in the Gospel of Mark 6, where we are told that “Jesus had brothers and among them was a man
named James.” And then, we read
about this James again in the 15th chapter of Acts where he has
become the leader of the
James was the leader of the
Jewish Christians there in
This James died in A.D. 62, so
that means the letter would have been written before that. Most scholars believe that it represents
the very earliest stages of the Christian Church … so it was probably written
around 45 A.D.
Well, that’s a little
background on the Epistle of James.
And one of the things that I find interesting about this, is that when
James introduces himself at the beginning of the letter, he doesn’t say, “This is James, the brother of Jesus, so
you’d better take notice.” He
doesn’t say, “This is James, the Bishop
of the
And as I said, James is not a
book of lofty or abstract ideas, but rather it is filled with practical wisdom
and teachings about “Where the Rubber Hits the Road” when it comes to living the
Christian faith. And in our
scripture lesson for today, we are given the first of these teachings. As you see it on the screen and at the
top of your Sermon Notes, I invite you to say it with me: “Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many
kinds, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
What
this tells us, is that the Early Christians faced “trials of many kinds”. The very first bit of advice James gives
is about “trials”, because this is what people in his day were facing. And I want you to notice a couple of
things about this verse. He says,
“Whenever you face
trials.” The word there in
Greek means, “to fall into”. And
the idea is that there are trials and temptations all around us and we are going
“to fall into” them on a regular
basis. Notice that he says, “Whenever you face trials of many
kinds…” He doesn’t say, “If you face trials”, he says “Whenever you face trials.”
And the
word “trials” here is the Greek word,
“perasmos”. And “perasmos” is used in 3 meanings and the
meanings are all intertwined. “Perasmos” can mean “trial” or “test” or “temptation”. When Jesus teaches the disciples the
Lord’s Prayer, at the end of that prayer he says, “Lead us not into temptation”, the Greek
word there is “perasmos”. It is the same word used here for “trials”. And the “trials” and “temptations” are all “tests”. Notice how he says that “the trials of many kinds are a
testing of your faith.”
I want
to pause here for just a moment and reflect upon this idea of “testing”. Life is a test. You know that. Every day that you wake up is a
test. This morning, your alarm
clock went off and there was a test.
You could have turned off the alarm and come up with a number of reasons
to say, “I think we’ll just skip church
today.” That was a test. Some of us had those thoughts, but we
passed the test … we came to church today.
As you look around and see the empty seats, you’ll notice that some
people didn’t pass the test this morning.
But you chose to do what is right!
And those kinds of tests are all around us.
Those
of you who are in school know that teachers give out tests. And the reason that they give tests is
not to be mean to you … but to measure how much you’re learning. If you fail the test, then it tells the
teacher that you need some help with this.
You might need a tutor, or special study time, or additional resources to
help you catch up or get back on track.
Tests aren’t meant to hurt you, they’re meant to help
you.
And so
it is in our daily lives. These “tests” that come in the form of “temptations” and “trials” are meant to help us, to
strengthen us, and move us in the right direction. When we fail one of these tests, we’re
not kicked out of God’s Kingdom, just like you’re not kicked out school for
failing a test. But rather, when we
fail a test, we’re supposed to say, “Hmm,
maybe I need to work on that a bit more.”
And
just like when you got an A+ on your test or a “Super Job” sticker, how did you
feel? You felt motivated and
inspired to work harder the next time, because you did really well. Well, when we pass the tests, in terms
of our faith, that creates in us a desire to pursue God even
more.
And so,
“trials” and “temptations” are important parts of
life. This is part of the reason
that James says we are “to consider it
joy” when we face trials and temptations in this life. Because in every one of them, there is a
“test” … there is an opportunity for
us to grow in our life and faith.
So,
what I want to do in our time remaining, is talk about three broad categories of
trials that we experience in life and how we might face them with “joy” as James talks
about.
You
know, trials come in all different ways and in different magnitudes. Some trials are very serious and we
don’t know how we are going to make it through them. Some trials seem really hard at the
time, but later on, we look back and see that they really weren’t that bad. We often look back and see how good came
out them and we become grateful for those kinds of trials. But there are those trials in life that
are genuinely tragic and devastating.
And we can’t see how James could be including them when he says, “Consider it pure joy when you face trials
of many kinds”, but let’s be open to what James is trying to teach
us.
Let’s
talk about three kinds of tragedies and trials that we experience in life. The first kind is when others do
something wrong or evil to us. This
is when someone does something, not by accident, but by intention to hurt
us. They lied about us and got us
fired from our job. They stole
something from us. They hurt us
through abuse or hurt someone that we love.
And you
know, Jesus told us that these things were going to happen. We sometimes have this idea that if
we’re Christians, God is going to protect us from everything bad. Yet, how could we believe that, when
God’s own Son was crucified on a Cross?
Jesus said that there are going to be people who are going to hurt you “for my namesake”. “You will be persecuted and some will even
be killed for your faith,” he warned us.
Now,
most of us are not persecuted for our faith in those ways, but we do experience
the evil through others that hurts us and affects our lives deeply. And Jesus has something to say about how
we deal with these kinds of trials.
He said, “When others hurt you, I
want you to turn the other cheek.”
“I want you to love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you.”
The
Apostle Paul says it this way, “When your
enemy does something that hurts you, don’t return curses for curses, but
blessings instead. And in this way,
you pour heaping coals upon their head.” The idea is that you bring about their
own conviction of the wrong they did.
Scripture teaches us that every time trials like this
happen to us, it is “a test”. And
it is a hard test to pass. When you
first start the Christian journey, it is almost impossible to forgive people who
hurt you. But over time, you learn
that when you return evil for evil, it never gets better … it gets worse. And over time, we realize that maybe
Jesus knew something about how life is supposed to work when he teaches us these
things.
We look
around in the world today, at the conflict and the pain we see. In the
Again,
it’s hard to live as Jesus teaches us, but it’s not impossible. Hegesippus, an
I remember visiting with a man whose son had been murdered. It had been several years ago, but I
knew that the pain was still there.
So, I asked him, “How are you
doing?” As we talked, he said,
“God has been working in my heart to
allow me to forgive and to let go of the anger and the hate that I
felt.” He wasn’t excusing what
the other man had done to his son.
He was saying that he had begun to see that other man as a person in need
of God’s redemption and he was beginning to let go of that which was destroying
him.
And
that is where you find joy … when you pass the test and you follow the teachings
of Jesus. It’s not easy. I don’t know if I could do what that man
is doing. Sometimes the hurt is so
deep. But with God working in our
lives, we can overcome such trials in life and come to the place of joy that
James is talking about.
Well,
that’s the first kind of trial, the second kind of trials come as a result of
the consequences of our own actions.
It is when we do something wrong and we find ourselves in trouble because
of it. And sometimes, we see such
consequences as being God’s punishment upon us.
Now, I
want to talk about this for just a moment.
The Bible says that God does discipline his children. We discipline our own children. But we need to be very careful when we
attribute actions that are hurtful and evil as coming from God. What you need to realize, is that God is
more loving than you are as a parent.
God is more just than you are as a parent. What you would not do to your children
to discipline them, God would not do to you. God’s discipline is always in keeping
with His love and his justice for us and it is always aimed at bringing us to
repentance, in order to bring about blessing in our lives.
Just
like when your parents disciplined you and they said, “This hurts me more than it hurts
you.” We didn’t believe that,
but later we came to realize that as parents, it’s true. When God disciplines us, it is always
going to be out of his love for us.
And it’s not going to be many of the terrible things that people often
attribute to God’s discipline.
Nevertheless, our actions do have consequences. And most times, God’s discipline comes
in allowing the consequences to take their natural course when we’ve done
something wrong. Listen to these
words from the Writer of the Book of Hebrews as he gives his interpretation of
the discipline of God. "My child, do not regard lightly the
discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; for the Lord
disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts. Endure trials for the sake of
discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a
parent does not discipline? He
disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful
rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of
righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”
So, if we understand this, it is possible to approach the consequences of
our own actions with a sense of
“joy”, if we understand that the consequences are God’s way of moving us
toward repentance and the path that God has for us. Again, God is like a loving parent and
his desire is to lead us to the path that leads to life, not to destroy
us.
So, when we experience consequences because of something we have done,
how do we respond to “the test”?
Some people don’t want to take responsibility and they want to blame
others for the consequences of their own actions. That’s not passing the test. Passing the test is humbling ourselves
and saying, “You know, I did the wrong
thing here. I wish that I hadn’t of
done that thing that hurt you and now I am paying the price for that. I’m really sorry, please forgive
me.” This is what we do with
God. We repent and we humble
ourselves before him. We ask for
his forgiveness and we go in a different direction.
I have experienced it and I’m sure that you have, when consequences to
our actions come, at the time, it seems dark and it’s painful … but in
hindsight, it is experienced as a blessing. We grow from those experiences and our
lives are forever changed, for the good.
And this is God’s intention.
When you know that God has your life in his hands and that whatever you
are going through, God is going to walk through it with you and that if we will
repent and humble ourselves before God, we can count on the fact that God will
see us through to the other side.
This is how we can “consider it
pure joy” when we face these kinds of trials.
There
is one more category of trials that we face in life. These are “the tragedies, challenges,
infirmities and disappointments” that just happen in life. They are not the result of somebody
wanting to do evil to us. They are
not the result of your doing the wrong thing and being punished. It’s just the stuff that happens in the
midst of life. These are the
ordinary potholes, finder benders, the sicknesses, and the tragedies that are
outside of your control.
We
know, from the time we are born, that these kinds of things are going to happen
to us in life. Yet, when they
happen, our natural tendency is to look for someone to blame. But sometimes there is no one else to
blame. And when we can’t find
anyone else to blame and we can’t even blame ourselves … there’s only one person
left to blame. And that’s God. And so, we blame God. We cry out to God. We become angry with God. Or maybe we try to punish God by saying,
“I don’t believe in you
anymore.” And God is big enough
to deal with our anger and our disappointment. But God gets blamed for a whole
lot of things that God has nothing to do with.
Some
Christians believe that God has scripted out your entire life. That God has
predetermined everything that is going to happen in your life. God predetermined
that you would be in church today.
God predetermined what
clothes you were going to wear today and where you are going to eat lunch. God has predetermined every single
action of our lives and we just living out this drama of life that God created
in advance.
If
that’s the case, then every tragedy, trial, and bad thing that happens in your
life, God wrote into the script and we are right to blame God for them. But most Christians don’t believe
this. We believe that God has given
us the freedom to live and to choose.
And we live in a world where there are dangers, challenges, risks, and
people make bad choices.
And God
has not promised to deliver us from all of those things, but rather to walk with
us, to guide us with His Holy Spirit, through Scripture, and through the Church.
God has promised to surround us with the Body of Christ in difficult times. And He’s promised that when this life is
over there will be a Crown of Life that will be given to those who endure to the
end.
And so,
even when we’re angry with God and doubting God, we hold on to our faith …
because where else will we turn for hope in the midst of dark times? Like the Psalmists who cried out to God,
we cry out. As in Psalm 22 … words
that Jesus cried out on the Cross, “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Do you really believe that Jesus thought
God had forsaken him? Or was he
expressing what any person feels when they are going through such dark
times? God had not forsaken
Jesus. But at that moment, Jesus
couldn’t see God’s care for him.
That Psalm captured what he was feeling. And if you read the rest of Psalm 22,
you will see how even in spite of feeling forsaken by God, he says, “Yet will I trust in your unfailing
love.”
The
writer of Lamentations, after the City of Jerusalem had been burned to the
ground and all the people had been taken away into exile, he walks down what was
left of the city streets and he says, “My
heart is empty and in pain like wormwood and gall. But this I remember and therefore I have
hope. The steadfast love of the
Lord never fails. His mercy never
comes to an end. It is new every
morning.”
So, we
continue to hope in God. We
continue to trust in Him and believe that when this life is over, we will have a
Crown of Life with God. When we
can’t see the light at the other side, we hold on … knowing that God is with us
and will lead us to the place he wants to be. God sustains us through His Holy Spirit
and through others who come alongside of us. Even when it is painful, we trust that
God will use whatever the circumstance is to shape us into the people that he
want us to be. And therefore, we
can “consider it pure joy when we face
trials of many kinds”.
Dr.
David Osborn of Denver Seminary captured it well when he said, “Too often we try to use God to change our
circumstances, while God is using our circumstances to change us.” This is what we learn in the midst of
suffering. It is not that God sends
the suffering in our lives, but when we hold on tight to God in the midst of our
suffering, God can use those circumstances to bring about good.
In
verses 3 & 4, James says it this way, “The testing of your faith produces
endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and
complete, lacking in nothing.”
The
Apostle Paul says it this way in Romans 5:3-5, “We boast in our sufferings, knowing that
suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character
produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been
poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to
us.”
This is what we come to learn as Christians regarding suffering. In the New Testament, Jesus consistently
said, “Blessed are you when you
suffer.” When the Apostle Paul
and Silas were beaten and placed in a prison cell, they begin to sing hymns of
praise to God. When the disciples
were beaten before the Sanhedrin, they walked out praising God that they were
counted worthy enough to suffer for the sake of Jesus. As James is lying there dying on the
concrete next to the
As Christians, in the midst of trials, we look for how God is going to
redeem the suffering in our lives and bring about something good. It’s a test. And we are strengthened by the tests in
life when we hold on tight and don’t let go.
So it was with Fannie Crosby.
Fannie Crosby was the most prolific hymn writer that has ever lived. Charles Wesley wrote several thousand
hymns. Fannie Crosby wrote 8000
hymns. But you may not know that
Fannie Crosby was born with perfect eyesight, yet when she was 6 weeks old her
mother noticed that Fannie had a cold in one eye. So she called a doctor. Unfortunately, this doctor was a
fraud. He had never been trained as
a doctor. He took their money and
prescribed that they pack Fannie’s eyes with mustard. As a result, she went blind. After those first 6 weeks, Fannie Crosby
would never again see.
Later
in life, as she reflected upon her blindness, she said, “I thank God for this dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered to
me tomorrow, I would not accept it.
I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted
by the beautiful and interesting things all around
me.”
How much poorer our worship would be, if Fannie Crosby had not written
hymns such as, “Christ the Lord Has Risen Today” … “Pass Me Not, O Gentle
Savior” … “I Am Thine, O Lord” … or “To God Be the Glory”.
I can picture this blind woman, seeing in her mind’s eye, as she wrote
the words to perhaps her best loved hymn, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born
of his Spirit, washed in his blood.
This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long;”
Try to imagine what blind Fannie Crosby is seeing as she writes these
words: “Perfect submission, perfect
delight, visions of rapture now burst on my sight; angels descending bring from
above echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day
long.”
And finally, that 3rd stanza, which captures the peace she
had: “Perfect submission, all is at rest;
I in my Savior am happy and blest, watching and waiting, looking above, filled
with his goodness, lost in his love.”
Join me in the refrain, you know it: “This is my story, this is my song, praising
my Savior all the day long. This is
my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day
long.”
So, James tells us that we are going to be tested. There are trials and temptations all
around us. Some are overwhelming
and others are not so bad when we look back. But every one of them is a test. But as we hold on tight with our faith …
as we persevere and endure, God uses these things to shape character in our
lives and to shape us into the person God wants us to be. And one day, those who endure will
receive the Crown of Life. And in
this sense, we can “consider it pure
joy”.