Untitled Sermon (5)

James was the half-brother of Jesus--I say half-brother because they shared Mary as a mother, but Jesus’ father was God, of course, since he was immaculately conceived, and for Mary’s other children Joseph would have been the father.

John 7:5 tells us that when Jesus began his ministry, James--along with Jesus’ other brothers, did not believe in him.

John 7:5 ESV

For not even his brothers believed in him.

That was probably the result of a jealousy mixed with a little skepticism: I mean, how could the guy who snored in the bunk next to me and smelled weird in the morning just like the other boys be the God who created the universe?

1 Corinthians 15:7 ESV

Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

But, then James met the resurrected Jesus--Paul tells us in 1 Cor 15--and he came not only to believe in Jesus and worship him as God, he also became the leader of the early church in Jerusalem and one of its first martyrs.

Acts 21:17–18 ESV

When we had come to Jerusalem, the brothers received us gladly. On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.

BTW, James’ conversion is one of the reasons I find the evidence for Jesus’ claims so compelling. Think about it: How many of you had an older brother? What would it take for you to start regarding your older brother as God and worship him? James had every reason not to believe in Jesus, but the Resurrection changed his mind.

James’ book takes the practical wisdom of Jesus and codifies it into punchy, application-ready, bite-sized chunks. It is straightforward and in your face. I love it. It’s like the New Testament’s book of Proverbs.

James offers concrete counsel on an array of issues that confront Christians every day: trials, poverty and riches, favoritism, social justice, the tongue, worldliness, boasting, planning, prayer, illness, and more

James 1:1 ESV

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings.

This is what really matters. He has come to know God through the work of Jesus, and finds himself now living wholly for them both. Though James is the younger brother of Jesus, far more important than that biological connection is the spiritual one he enjoys. More significant than being the younger brother of Jesus is being one of his people. And the sign of being one of his people is that we devote ourselves to his service.

Though Jewish Christians of the first century were the primary audience James was writing to, the letter is not restricted to them. It has been preserved in Scripture to bless and nourish Christian believers in all times and places. As we understand what James’ words would have meant for them, we can quickly discern what they mean for us. In this secondary sense, then, we find the letter is very much for us as well.

Notice too that James talks of trials of “many kinds”. There is a whole range of trials that James has in mind. As we read through the letter, we get a feel for some of the trials James’ readers were facing at this point in time—poverty, injustice, conflict, sickness and grief. But James deliberately keeps his language general, and it is great that he does. It is easy when undergoing hardship to think that our particular situation is different to everybody else’s, that the normal rules don’t apply, and that we are the exception to the rest. But by keeping his language broad, James is showing us that what he is about to say applies to us all. If he had specified a particular trial he had in mind, it would be too easy for the rest of us facing different situations to excuse ourselves from what he is saying. But James’ advice is not just for one or two specific situations; it is for trials of “many kinds”.

Whatever yours might be, this applies to you. James says there is a way to think about it that can bring joy. We will actually be robbing ourselves of joy if we ignore what he is about to say.

The key here is to see that James says “when”. Not if, but when. Trials are unavoidable because they are normal. They are not unexpected or freak occurrences. They are, sadly, part and parcel of the regular Christian life.

Joy is not what I typically feel in a trial. Typically, I feel anger, especially if my suffering feels unjust. What did I do to deserve this? Why was this person able to get away with that? God, where are you?

Or, I feel despair--Are things ever going to change? Will the pain ever go away? Will this relationship ever heal? Maybe this weekend you are asking, “When will my big break come? Will these fertility treatments ever work? When am I going to find my soulmate?”

And what feels the hardest in these trials is when heaven seems silent. You pray, and it’s like nothing changes. In you, or the situation. Am I talking to somebody out there? It would be one thing if I got a “no” to my request. That might be disappointing, but at least I knew someone up there was listening. But silence feels like God is unmoved and unconcerned, like he’s ignoring me--if he’s even there.

To quote pastor Tyler Staton, whose book Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools has a great chapter on the silence of God:

“Silence makes me feel like the only One with the power to stop the disease that is ravaging my mother from the inside out can’t be bothered. Or the only One with the power to open my stubborn womb is too distracted to care. Or the One I’ve held my desire for companionship in front of for decades yawns in the face of my loneliness.”

But James says to ‘count it joy,’ because God is using the test to produce steadfastness in us.

He’s testing whether or not you actually trust God. Whether or not you’ll lean on God’s character even when you’re surrounded by chaos and confusion--or silence.

I will tell you from experience that this is one of the hardest things to do in the Christian life. It’s what I’ve called trusting God in the “blank spaces” of your life. Those spaces in your life when it feels like God is absent.

I take the term from the life of David… In 1 Samuel 16:13, Samuel has anointed David to be the next King of Israel, and as the oil of anointing is still wet on David’s head, Samuel gets up and leaves.

And then, the narrative on David’s life stops, and there’s a blank space.

Scholars say the narrative on David’s life doesn’t pick up again for about 7 years. All that is represented by this little blank space in your Bibles.

I have to ask: What were those 7 years like? What’s it like to be anointed King of Israel but then go back to the pasture for 7 years? David didn’t run down to the palace to start trying on robes; he didn't go on a speaking tour to explain his vision for Israel. He went back to the pasture where he followed sheep around… for 7 yrs. Imagine the boredom; the tedium, the confusion: “God, I thought you wanted me to be King.” These 7 yrs were a blank space where God’s writing in David’s life seemed to stop.

And yet, we learn later that during that season was when God was actually doing some of his best writing in David. It was there, in the pasture, that David developed the courage and skill with the slingshot to fight Goliath. It was there he learned the themes that would one day emerge as Psalm 23. This was David’s time of trial, and it was where God produced ‘steadfastness’ in David, which he couldn’t have learned any other way.

David, as we know him, became David in that little blank space in your Bibles between 1 Samuel 16:13-14.

“Count it joy”--because there is a good and sovereign God that is at work in you in the trial. This is important: Joy is not a feeling that overcomes you. Many people are waiting on a feeling of God giddiness and Holy Ghost Hallelujahs to take them over. That’s likely not going to happen. Joy is a byproduct of believing the promises of God in the midst of great pain. You may FEEL the same, but in the promises of God your heart and mind elevate to a peace and joy above your feelings. You are overcoming the world. God has called you not to a joy in the world, but to a joy that overcomes the world.

THEY ARE VALUABLE

James 1:3–4 ESV

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.

Listen: Trials don’t automatically produce good in you. It was Nietzsche who said, “What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.” He was not a Christian, and that statement is not true. There are a lot of things that do not kill you that make you weaker and much worse as a person. Trials do not automatically produce good in you. For many, unexplained pain produces bitterness and doubt and despair.

You have to choose whether you are going to trust and hold onto God’s character and let him work his good in you. But that transformation is not automatic.

Listen: As Charles Spurgeon used to say,

Times of doubt are like a foot poised to go forwards or backwards in faith. This trial can indeed take you further in with God; but it can also drive you backwards into unbelief.

There’s times you just need to be still. You don’t need an answer. You won’t get an answer. You have to just rest in the character of your heavenly Father.

Every great Bible hero had a moment where they had to choose: Am I going to trust in the good character of God--the character I see demonstrated in the cross and resurrection--or am I going to let this chaos push me into disbelief and despair?

Are you going to anchor your soul in God’s character and let God do his work, and let steadfastness have its full effect? Only then will you be (vs 4) “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Did you get that? ONLY through perseverance in suffering can you be perfect and complete.

Trials give us the opportunity to mature in our faith. Faith needs the pushback of trials for us to grow spiritually. Trials and difficulties are an opportunity to cling on to the promises of God more tightly.

James says, “There are dimensions of God that you will only know from the heart when you suffer.”

There is a part of Christian maturity that can only come through pain, darkness, and unanswered questions.

This is a humbling lesson for us, for it reminds us that we need maturing as Christians. We all have further to grow up and move on in the Christian life. There is no room for being smug. God is not after just a little bit of change in our lives. And if all we pursue is comfort, we will never become truly mature in our faith.

Martin Luther said: 3 things make a great Christian: Prayer, Bible Study, and Suffering.

None of us want pain. The question is do you want to know God more than you want to avoid pain. If so, then you’ll “count it joy” when you go through trials and patiently “let steadfastness have its full effect.”

Yet as well as humbling us, this is also a great encouragement for us. It assures us that there is a purpose for our trials. They are not for nothing, and they are never wasted experiences. Why? Because God is achieving something in us as we persevere through them. He is investing in our faith. The British pastor and friend of D.L. Moody, F.B. Meyer, once said that

Trials are God’s vote of confidence in us.

None of this means they are not painful. We are not to pretend trials and grief do not hurt us; it is natural and normal that they do, and it would be a denial of our humanity to think we should be immune to the pains of hardship in our lives and in the lives of others. Pain is our reflex reaction to trials, and it is entirely legitimate. Nor is James saying we should go out looking for hardship: that we should deliberately create situations in which we will suffer. No—suffering in and of itself is not a good thing. James is saying that it is what God can accomplish through suffering that is good, not the suffering itself. It is an opportunity to gain the most valuable thing on earth: a faith that is complete and lacking nothing; maturity and depth in our relationship with God.

REMEMBER THAT TRIALS SHOULD ENGENDER PRAYER.

ASK FOR WISDOM FROM THE FATHER

James 1:5 ESV

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

Good news! God will help you! He will give you the wisdom, the direction, the insight, and whatever other resources your soul needs for this to make you better.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously (In Greek it says literally, “the giving God." If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask the giving God who gives generously) to all without reproach… (without reproach, which means condemnation or shame or disapproval--he doesn’t wag his finger and lecture you about all the ways you got yourself in this mess.

He responds with tenderness and generosity like I do one of my kids when they are hurt. This is what God does when we come to him in our pain and mess). He gives TO ALL! No matter who you are or what you’ve done.

The giving Father radiates with openness and love and willingness to help. Is this how you think about God when you pray to him?

One of the old Christian mystics named ‘Julian of Norwich’ used to ask, “When you pray, what expression do you see on God’s face?”

Is it an expression that is stern and serious--angry? Condemning? Maybe when you pray you see a God aloof and uninterested, looking the other direction as you try to get his attention?

Or, when you pray, do you see his expression as that of a friend--full of inviting and happiness and peace and comfort? When you pray, see the God that is presented here in James 1:5, because seeing God that way will enable you to persevere through this trial with patience, and even count it all joy.

ASK FOR WISDOM IN FAITH

James 1:6–8 ESV

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.

When James says, “with no doubting,” he doesn’t mean you never have questions, and you live at all times with absolute certainty about what God is doing and feelings of peace. Every Christian I know struggles at times with doubts and confusion. What James is saying is that as you go through trials, you can’t hedge your bets. The word "doubt" is literally di-psychos—(di) two (psychos) minds. Your loyalties are divided.

On Sunday you are praying to God asking him to fix your problems, but on Monday, you take matters into your own hands.

On Sunday, you say, “God, I need you to work in my marriage.” But on Monday, you are punishing your spouse or trying to manipulate them or feeling justified in being unfaithful to them.

On Sunday, you say, “God, I need you to work in my finances” but on Monday you switch to plan-B which is to cheat on your taxes or overcharge your customers or stop giving your tithe. You are hedging your bets. You are asking God to work, but you are not really leaning all your confidence on him.

Many of us have a mutual-fund approach to God, and here’s what he means by that: If you’ve invested in the stock market, you know a mutual fund is a way of spreading out your investment risk. Instead of putting all your money into one company, a mutual fund spreads your investment out over 100’s of companies, so if one fails, you make it up with the others.

That’s fine as an investment strategy, but it won’t work in our relationship to God. If you are going to receive any help from God, you have to lean all your confidence in him and do things his way. You say, “God is not helping me in my situation.” Well, have you leaned all your hope into him? If not, “that person should not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.” You are DI-PSYCHOS. With God, it’s full trust or it’s nothing.

Now, when I say leaning all your weight on God, do I mean that you are doing nothing at all to fix your problem? Like--if you pray for healing, then don’t go to the doctor? No, God expects us to be active in solving our problems--but there is a way of being active that is still dependent on God--and it shows up in two ways--you leave the ultimate outcome of the situation to God, and you refuse to step outside of God’s will in getting things done.

James says, “It’s only when you lean all your confidence onto him that you will get any help from him.”

James says that the only kind of faith that will get you through a severe trial--the only kind of faith that gets heaven’s help--is the faith that leans all of its weight on God.

Is that what you are doing?

Listen, Jesus repeatedly warned that there will be times where it feels like God isn’t responding to our prayers. Jesus told a parable because we all feel this way. Luke 18:1 says that,

Luke 18:1 ESV

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

He knew sometimes we would pray and we would lose heart because it feels like nothing is happening. And then the story he told was about a woman who wanted justice from this old, crooked, uncaring judge but she kept asking and asking and through her relentless requests the Judge finally gave her what she asked for. The point of that parable, of course, is not to compare God to an unjust judge and imply that he is crooked or uncaring, but to contrast him with one: If even a corrupt Judge gave this woman justice because of her persistence, how much more will God see that our persistent prayers get answered?

I said it before, let me say it again: All biblical heroes, in the midst of what felt like God’s absence and silence, came to a point where they defiantly and boldly said, I choose trust.

I choose trust because this God to whom I am praying is not one who looked down loftily and apathetically on my pain from heaven; he’s a God who entered into it. He suffered with me in it so that he could redeem me from it. Nor is he a God powerless in the face of disease or death or defeat; he’s a God who was driven by those things into the grave, but then 3 days later burst out of that grave victoriously with a promise to do the same for me. I choose trust