Do Not Be Deceived - James 1:12-18
Notes
Transcript
Welcome:
We come to worship the one true and living God —
the Father who loved us,
the Son who gave Himself for us,
and the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.
One God, blessed forever —
He who calls us out of darkness into His marvelous light welcomes you.
Announcements:
Help for Her gift cards. $25 denominations. Either to Uber or from a gas station.
The session is going to go ahead and give 20 cards.
Can we also get a volunteer to deliver these cards? Build a relationship with the clinic - they have asked for prayer before. Maybe a group of ladies could drop the cards off, take a tour, and pray for the staff.
Prayer on Tuesday
Shower for Amy Today @ 3pm — Daphne Mulner’s house
Hymn of Preparation: #
†CALL TO WORSHIP based on Hebrews 4:14-16
Pastor Austin Prince
Minister: We have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens: Jesus, the Son of God. He is able to sympathize with our weaknesses; in every respect he has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Congregation: We hold fast our confession.
Minister: Therefore, draw near to the throne of grace with confidence, that you may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Congregation: Let us worship God, who invites us to draw near.
†PRAYER OF ADORATION AND INVOCATION
O Lord our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You alone are worthy of our worship for you are the one true and living God. Your purpose will be established and you accomplished all your good pleasure. Your mercies are great. You are compassionate and gracious; you so loved the world that you sent your only begotten son that whoever believes should not perish. Remember your promise to meet with your people when they have gathered in your name. Draw near to us as we draw near to you. We praise your unfailing love Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
†OPENING HYMN OF PRAISE #244
“A Mighty Fortress is Our God”
†CONFESSION OF SIN AND ASSURANCE OF PARDON based on 1 John 1:8; Isa. 1:18
We confess our sins because one of the great dangers in the Christian life is self-deception. This is one of the ways God teaches us to walk in the truth: we come honestly before him, naming our sin, not excusing it, and trusting his mercy in Christ.
Minister: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Let us confess our sins to the Lord our God.
Congregation: Almighty and most merciful Father, we have strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have followed the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against your holy laws. We have left undone those things we ought to have done, and we have done those things we ought not to have done. Have mercy upon us, O God. Spare those who confess their faults. Restore those who are penitent, according to your promises - declared to us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Grant, O merciful Father, for his sake, that we may live godly, righteous, and self-controlled lives, to the glory of your holy name. Amen.
Minister: Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Christians, your sins are forgiven.
Congregation: Thanks be to God!
CONTINUAL READING OF SCRIPTURE Ephesians 6
Elder Paul Mulner
THE OFFERING OF TITHES AND OUR GIFTS
PASTORAL PRAYER & THE LORD’S PRAYER
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
†HYMN OF PREPARATION #397
“Breathe on Me, Breath of God”
SERMON James 1:12-18 // Do Not Be Deceived
PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION
Lord, thou hast given us thy Word for a light to shine upon our path; grant us so to meditate on that word, and to follow its teaching. That we may find in it the light that shines more and more until the perfect day through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
TEXT James 1:12-18
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. 13 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. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
AFTER SCRIPTURE
The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.
Intro
When I was very young, one of my closest friends went through an incredibly difficult trial. He had two siblings: a younger brother, and a baby sister. One day we learned that his baby sister had a very aggressive form of cancer. It was one of my first real encounters with suffering, loss, and death. Not long after that, cancer took his mother as well.
I stayed close to those two brothers for many years after that, and over time it became clear that the same suffering had not shaped them in the same way.
For my friend, there seemed to be a growing distance between himself and God. He rarely spoke about Him anymore. He stopped going to church. It was as though he kept God at arm’s length so that he would not be hurt again.
But for his younger brother, his heart seemed tenderized by it all. He spoke often of God’s love, his sovereignty, and his comforting goodness. He leaned in for help rather than away in self-protection.
The same situation. The same trial. But two very different responses.
And I do want to say this carefully: God is not finished with my friend and his life. I have not spoken to him in many years, but I must still believe that God is able to bring life where there has been distance and doubt.
But that early experience taught me something important: the same trial can be interpreted and seen in very different ways.
And that is very close to what James is helping us understand here. Trials come for all of us. We must be able to think rightly about how to respond.
James has already been teaching us in vv. 1-11 that trials test our faith and produce steadfastness. But now he shows us that the same pressure that comes upon us from the outside as a trial can become, through the corruption that remains within us, an inward temptation to sin.
The external battle of trial can become the internal battle of temptation.
In fact, James is playing on that very point in this passage. The same word is being used for both trial and temptation. The difference can only be told by the context. And that’s the same here with how we interpret not just the word but the trials themselves. The pressure may be the same, but the spiritual direction is not. A trial, rightly received, becomes an occasion for steadfastness and life. That same pressure, answered wrongly, interpreted wrongly, can become a temptation that leads toward sin and death.
So everything depends on whether we interpret what is going on rightly.
If we misread what is happening, we will not move forward into maturity; we will drift backward into deception. And one of the places where self-deception shows up most quickly is in times of pressure and trial.
That is why the burden of this section is found in verse 16: Do not be deceived.
Trials do not only hurt us. They expose us. They reveal how we interpret suffering, how we think about sin, and what we truly believe about God.
So under pressure, James says we are prone to make three serious mistakes. We can misread the trial itself. We can misplace the blame for our sin. And we can mistrust the Father whose character never changes.
Those will be the three movements we will follow through the text today:
Don’t misread the trial.
Don’t misplace the blame.
Don’t mistrust the Father.
1. Don’t misread the trial – v.12
James begins with a blessing because the one who does this right is truly blessed.
In verse 12, James says that the blessed man is the one who remains steadfast under trial. He begins with beatitude (In a way that his brother, Jesus, often spoke). He begins with blessing. He begins by showing us what it looks like when pressure is answered rightly.
A trial is not meaningless but the proving ground of steadfast love, and its end is life.
When James says “blessed,” he is not talking about sentimental, shallow happiness. He is not describing the light, cheerful feeling that comes when everything in life is easy and pleasant. He is speaking of true blessedness before God. He is speaking covenantally. He is speaking of the person whom God regards with favor, the one whose life ends not in ruin but in life.
Think about a person’s goals – their ambitions. If your goal is to have a peaceful life, to just get by with the least amount of resistance and pain and difficulty as possible, then you will see any trial as a burden, and as an irritant, and as an annoyance, and as if something has gone wrong, perhaps wrong with God, or perhaps wrong with you. You may end up like Job’s wife who says “curse God and die.” But if your goal is to grow in Christ likeness. If your goal is to grow in steadfastness and holiness. If your goal is to grow into a mature and holy person, then you will see trials a different way. You’ll end up like Job who says “the Lord gives and takes away, but blessed be the name of the Lord”. The dynamic here is not to see them with a flippancy that says this is going to be enjoyable, but do not be deceived by what they truly are. And this is where this text speaks to us, we really can be deceived by what is happening in a trial.
Trials test faith and produce steadfastness. And after the test has been endured, after one has been proven through it, there is the crown of life.
That phrase, “crown of life,” should not be heard as though James were promising some extra reward for a spiritual elite. He is not speaking to a special tier of Christians. He is speaking of life itself in its fullness and consummation. The crown that is life. Not just our salvation, but abundant life and eternal life with God. Trusting God to life. The end of the story is not trial, not just pain, not just stripping you down, but life.
When we are told that we will receive rewards like this. How are we to think about them? How does the Christian think about rewards?
C.S. Lewis gives an illustration of two men. One man buys the company of a woman. And the other man courts a young woman, saves to buy a ring and to support her, and joins with her in one flesh in marriage. The rewards here are different. One is so cheap, it is a shallow transaction, the other is the culmination of devotion and love. Rewards for the Christian are like the latter. Enduring a trial is not just a cheap exchange to get things from God. We must not see them that way. Endurance and steadfastness, the very areas for trial and pressure, are acts of love and devotion, they are not meaningless and shallow, they are not just in the way. They are part of our life that till the tough soil of the heart and produce love and real, meaningful life. And our lives culminate in the eternal crown of life. We seek the reward of our relationship with God.
James does not call the believer to denythe sorrow of affliction, but to interpret affliction in light of God’s promises.
That is one of the great pastoral needs in the Christian life: learning not merely to feel pain, but to read pain rightly. Hardship is not automatically evidence of divine displeasure.
Whatever trial you may be in, and there are many varieties, in those moments, the temptation is to say, “Because this is painful, it must be pointless.” Or, “Because this is hasn’t stopped yet, it must be punishment.” Or, “Because I cannot yet see the good, there can be no good.”
But James says no. Do not misread the trial.
The blessed man is not the man who escapes the trial, but the man who remains steadfast under it.
The first question, then, is not, “How do I escape this?” The first question is, “How do I remain steadfast here? How do I endure here? How do I trust and obey here?”
And then James adds a phrase that should search our hearts. He says the promise is given to those who love God.
He does not say merely those who endure God. Not those who tolerate God. Not those who still keep up some outward form of religion while inwardly withdrawing from him. He says those who love him. He is speaking of Christians.
Trials are not meant to cool our love for God, but to deepen and prove it.
Trial asks whether we still love the Lord when lesser things are shaken. Trial reveals whether we merely wanted God’s gifts or whether we love God himself. Trial uncovers whether our faith was built on comfort and predictability, or on the Lord himself.
That does not mean the believer responds perfectly. It does not mean there are no tears, no confusion. But it does mean that underneath the groaning there remains a true attachment to God. The believer remains because he belongs to God, and because the God who promised life is faithful.
So do not misread the trial.
The trial is real, but it is not ultimate.
But James knows that outward pressure often awakens inward corruption. The trial outside you can become the occasion for temptation inside you. The same pressure that can refine faith can also expose desire.
So the next question is this: when trial becomes temptation, who is to blame?
2. Don’t misplace the blame
James now moves from verse 12 into verses 13 through 15, and here the tone sharpens. When pressure becomes temptation, the blame does not lie in God’s providence but in our own disordered desires.
And James begins very directly: let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God.”
That is a reflex instinct James forbids.
When we are under pressure, and especially when that pressure exposes sinful responses in us, we begin looking for somewhere to relocate responsibility. We want to trace the line of blame away from ourselves.
But James shuts that down immediately.
God may ordain the testing, but he never authors the evil.
This is not a denial of sovereignty. James is not saying that God is absent from providence. He is not saying that the Lord has no rule over the circumstances in which his people live. He is saying something much more precise: God’s sovereign decree does not usurp your responsibility or stain his moral character.
It is impossible for God to intend wickedness for you. He cannot ever deal with you in a corrupted way.
James says God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. There is no corruption in God to which evil can appeal. There is no moral instability in him. No darkness in him. No hidden inclination toward sin. And because evil cannot gain traction in him, he never solicits anyone toward evil.
God tests his people, but he never seduces them into sin.
But right here is where our sinful instinct toward blame-shifting needs to be exposed. From the garden onward, sinners have wanted to shift guilt sideways and upward.
Adam did it in Genesis 3. When confronted, he does not simply say, “I sinned.” He says, in effect, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit.” He blames Eve, and more subtly, he blames God: “the woman whom you gave.”
And that pattern is alive in us still. [Excuses]
“God gave me bad providence.”
“God gave me bad circumstances.”
“God gave me this temperament.”
“Given what I’ve been handed, what came out of me was inevitable.”
“God hasn’t changed this so maybe God is at fault.”
James says no. Don’t be duped.
Providence is not to be blamed for your wickedness. God’s holiness forbids that conclusion.
Now that is not to deny that some providences are very hard. Some are crushing. Some involve real injustice, deep wounds, severe losses, and long sorrows. But none of that gives us the right to trace our sin back to a defect in God.
So if God is not the source of temptation, what is?
James answers in verse 14: each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
The deepest danger in temptation is not first outside us but inside us.
The temptation catches because the desire is there. The hook lands because the heart still contains corruption.
James says each person. That makes the point universal. No one is exempt. Temptation is not the special problem of unusually weak Christians. It is not limited to scandalous sinners. Each person is tempted.
And then he says by his own desire. That makes the point personal. Temptation is not generic. It is fitted to the sinner’s own desires. One person is lured by sensuality, another by resentment, another by fear, another by control—but the common source is the same: our own disordered desires.
Sin does not only attack us from the outside; it finds an ally in the heart.
That is why the same trial can produce different responses in different people. The outward pressure may be similar, but the inward desires stirred by that pressure can differ, and the way those desires are answered before God can differ.
The forms vary. The source does not.
And then James presses even further in verse 15. He gives what we might call a genealogy of ruin. [2ndimage – that of giving birth]
Desire conceives, sin is born, sin matures, and death follows.
There is a real and immense danger of small, indulged sin and desire.
I had a professor who used to say “you need to be killing sin at the level of desire”. Not only when I was in the thick of temptation, but when the slightest flicker of soured wants would raise its head. This is often the place where we give ourselves a pass, where we say that we haven’t done anything yet. But this is still sin. Our desires, even the earliest of them must be taken captive, because as James so helpfully reminds us, they grow up to death.
James wants us to see that what is indulged inwardly never stays small; it grows toward death.
Desire conceives. Sin is born. Sin matures. Death follows.
Sinclair Fergusons’ scheme
Attraction/Enticement: The individual is lured by their own inner desires (lusts). Deception: A false perspective sets in where the heart is deceived about the true nature of the desire. Preoccupation: The mind becomes focused on the temptation. Conception: Desire "conceives" and gives birth to the act of sin. Subjection/Birth: Sin is fully grown and brings forth death. Desperation: The ultimate consequence of this cycle.
Sin does not remain where we put it. It does not politely stop at the line we drew for it. What begins as tolerated desire becomes a clinging corruption. The lie of sin is that indulgence will satisfy it (I’ll just satisfy my desire and try again – it will go away). James says indulgence matures it.
Sin must be fought early.
Name it honestly. Do not romanticize it. Do not relabel it.
If James stopped here, we would leave warned but not yet steadied. Once your sin is exposed, the enemy will tempt you to mistrust the Father. So James turns from the corruption within us to the goodness that is in God.
3. Don’t mistrust the Father
Now we come to verses 16 through 18. And here James gives us the needed correction. God is not mixed, unstable, or morally ambiguous; he is the unchanging giver of every good gift, supremely new birth through the gospel.
Verse 16 is the hinge: do not be deceived.
The battlefield here is theological perception.
Under pressure, sinners become bad theologians. Satan does not only tempt you to sin; he tempts you to reinterpret God. He attacks the goodness of God because mistrust of God is fertile soil for further sin.
So James answers deception with truth.
In verse 17 he tells us that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.
That is James’s answer to the lie.
God is not the source of sin; he is the source of good. Stop squinting at God. Stop trying to see Him in a trial way out on the horizon. Open your eyes and look at Christ. Look Him full in the face. “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6, ESV)
He is not mixed. He is not generous one day and dark the next. He is not morally ambiguous. He is not partly light and partly shadow. He is the Father of lights, the maker of the heavenly bodies, the Creator himself.
And James says there is in him no variation or shadow due to change.
That means the instability is in the world and in us, not in him.
When the shadows lengthen in your life, do not conclude that God has become shadowed in himself. When providence is dark, do not conclude that God is dark. He remains what he is.
We can look around us in this world and see shifting shadows and changing light. We can easily assume that the source of light itself has changed. But often it is our own position that has changed. Just as the earth moves and the shadows change. It’s not the Sun moving. It’s our own perspective, our own condition that has changed. So too here: God is not waxing and waning in goodness; the shifting is with us, not with him.
That is an immensely important word for suffering Christians.
When prayer seems unanswered, do not measure God’s character by your most recent feeling.
When providence is dark, do not measure God’s character by your confusion.
Do not conclude that the Father has changed.
He has not.
And then James reaches the summit of the passage in verse 18. The greatest proof of his goodness is new birth.
The clearest proof of God’s goodness is not ease of circumstance, but that he brought us forth by the word of truth.
Notice the contrast James sets before us.
Our desires birth ruin; God births life.
In verse 15, desire gives birth to sin, and sin gives birth to death. But in verse 18, God brings his people forth by the word of truth.
The God whom sinners are tempted to suspect is the God who brought them forth.
James says this happened of his own will. His sovereign initiative. The new birth did not begin in our wisdom, our strength, our sincerity, or our moral effort. It began in the will of God.
And it came by the word of truth. God uses his word not to deceive us, but to bring us into life. He did not lure you to ruin; he brought you forth into life.
That word of truth is the gospel. The message of Christ crucified and risen. The saving announcement that sinners who deserved death may receive life through the Son of God.
And that is why the clearest proof of the Father’s goodness is not that your life has been painless, but that he gave you new birth through the gospel.
Don’t be deceived or duped by sin and the way it works, what it is telling you in a trial, about God, about yourself.
He has never brought sin or ill. He has only brought good. Do not be duped and thinking that he is not for you or does not love you, do not be duped and thinking that a trial is beyond his repair, do not be duped and naïve as a young child thinking that you’re not accountable to God or that he does not care for you -- look at the cross. Do not be duped and thinking that in the midst of terrible loss that God has abandoned you. Look at the gospel where Jesus is our resurrection in our life. Do not be duped and thinking that life is unfair, and that there is only injustice, look at the cross and the trial of Jesus who was unjustly condemned to death. See rightly.
If you want to know what God is like, do not look first at the most confusing moment in your week. Look at the gospel. Look at what he has done in Christ. Look at the fact that he has spoken life into dead sinners and brought them into his family.
And then James says that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
The redeemed are first fruits. Your life in Christ is part of God’s harvest of new creation.
When someone gave their first fruits for a sacrifice, they gave the best that they had and they were to give it joyfully. And here we are as the redeemed of God and are giving our lives joyfully and giving the best part of our lives.
Think about that. Some of the best parts of our lives are where trials and temptations are turned into glory. Where we would have been tempted to grow into bitterness, but instead, we see grace and we give grace. Where we are tempted to shrink back from the difficulty of forgiving others, but instead you pressed in. When the weight of loss would calcify doubt and anger, but you lean more of your weight on Christ and bless His name.
This is what first fruits living looks like in a fallen world.
First fruits living means answering old temptations with new-creation obedience.
So do not mistrust the Father.
The God you are tempted to suspect is the very God who gave you life.
He is not the author of your corruption. He is the giver of every good and perfect gift. He is not drawing you toward death. He has brought you forth into life.
Conclusion
So James has corrected all three distortions: the trial, the blame, and the Father.
James has taught us how to read pressure rightly.
Do not misread the trial. A trial is not meaningless misery. It is the proving ground of steadfast love, and its end is life.
Do not misplace the blame. When pressure becomes temptation, the blame does not lie in God’s providence but in our own disordered desires.
Do not mistrust the Father. God is not mixed, unstable, or morally ambiguous. He is the unchanging giver of every good gift, supremely new birth through the gospel.
The same pressure can be a trial from without and a temptation from within. Everything depends on whether we interpret the moment rightly.
†HYMN OF RESPONSE Songbook
“Christ, The Sure and Steady Anchor”
THE MINISTRY OF THE LORD’S SUPPER
Minister: Lift up your hearts!
Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord.
Minister: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
Congregation: It is right for us to give thanks and praise!
CONFESSION OF FAITH
Nicene Creed p. 852
Congregation is seated.
INVITATION TO THE LORD’S TABLE
This Table is God’s visible answer to our deception. Here the Lord tells us not to misread our suffering, because Christ himself suffered and entered glory. Here he tells us not to misplace the blame, because our sins are ours and Christ died for them. And here he tells us not to mistrust the Father, because the Father who did not spare his own Son is not against his people now. So come not excusing yourself, and not accusing God, but trusting Christ. Come repentant. Come in faith. Come and feed on the One who was given for you.
This table welcomes all who belong to Christ through repentance, faith, baptism, and continuing union with his Church. If you do not repent of your sin, you must not come. If you do not trust in Christ alone for your salvation, you must not come. But if you confess your sin and rest in Christ, this table is for you. Come, taste and see that the Lord is good.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE ELEMENTS
//once all elements are received//
[motion to partake]
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
PRAYER
†OUR RESPONSE
“Come, Thou Almighty King”
To the great one in three
eternal praises be,
hence evermore.
His sovereign majesty
may we in glory see,
and to eternity
love and adore.
†BENEDICTION: GOD’S BLESSING FOR HIS PEOPLE
“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.” (James 1:12, ESV)
Grace Notes Reflection
Trials not only put pressure on the outside circumstances of our lives, they also bring with them an internal confusion. Here in James 1:12-18, James reminds us not to be deceived about this. The truth is, trials and pressures in our lives are the quickest way to become bad theologians - we don’t understand that there may be any purpose in a trial, or we blame others for the temptations that they bring. Or worse still, we can begin to call into question the very goodness of God. So James’s call is to not be deceived. To see our trials rightly. They are the places where God stabilizes our frailties and trains us to endure. We are to see ourselves rightly. That temptation comes because of our own twisted appetites. We cleave to other comforts and vices in times of trial because we are weak, not because anyone or anything made us do that. And we are to see God rightly. It can never be said of God that He deals with evil. He does not tempt us and anything that He gives (and what has HE not given?) will only ever be good.
So,
Where are you most tempted to misread a current trial?
What sinful responses are you tempted to justify or excuse?
In what ways are you tempted to quietly mistrust God’s goodness?
