Joy In Trials

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Well, welcome to our first in a series that I have entitled Wisdom for Our Walk.
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This is a study of the Epistle of James, and it is to me a very important study because I find that oftentimes when I'm having conversations with people who do not necessarily share my theological convictions, particularly in the area of Reformed theology, they will often pit the Apostle Paul against the writer of the book of James.
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And oftentimes you might even hear there is conflict between Paul and James.
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And possibly you've even heard someone from the different churches who might say, well, yes, Paul teaches that you are justified by faith and not of works, but James tells us we're justified by our works.
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And so we're going to go with James and trust James, and we're not going to trust what Paul said.
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And so they make these works the part of their salvation.
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You say, well, I don't know if I've ever heard that.
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I've had it happen right at the back of our church door.
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I was preaching one day on the parable that Jesus told of the two men who went to the temple.
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One man went into the temple to pray, and he said, thank God that I am not like all others men.
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I give a tithe of all my income.
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I do this.
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I do that.
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And the other man who was a tax collector stood outside, and he beat his breast, and he said, what? Have mercy on me, O God, a sinner.
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And Jesus said, and that man went home justified, and not the other.
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That man was justified.
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And I use that to simply illustrate the idea of justification by faith alone and not of works.
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Well, on the way out, as I was leaving that day, a man had visited our church.
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He was not reformed in his theology.
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He was actually from the, trying to say it the proper way, he would be from the movement that really spawned the Churches of Christ movement, the Stonite movement, or what we call the Campbell Stone movement, which is called the Restoration movement.
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They believe in baptismal remission, which is that you have to be baptized to have your sins forgiven.
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And if you're not baptized by immersion in the name of Jesus Christ, your sins have not been forgiven.
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And so they take a very hard line on that.
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And thus they see James.
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And he came to me at the end of the church.
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He said, you forgot to mention James 224.
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And at that moment, I had a little bit of a brain.
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You don't know what it's like to preach, most of you.
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Some of you do.
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But after you get done preaching, sometimes your brain feels just a little bit like cotton candy.
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It's a little mushy.
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And the guy said, you didn't say James 224.
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And I kind of thought for a minute, because it didn't register with me what he was challenging me with.
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And I said, what? And he said, you are justified by works and not by faith alone.
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And that is what James 224 says.
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And we will get to it and understand it when we get there.
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But I just stopped.
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And I said, wait a minute, sir.
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You misunderstood that text.
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It speaks of us seeing faith.
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Faith is not seen outside of works.
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And I tried to explain to him what we understand about James 224.
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But he would not give me the time of day.
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He just kept going.
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He didn't really want to hear my explanation or any kind of reasonable response.
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He just simply wanted to yell, James 224, and run.
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So I have experienced firsthand people who try to pit Paul against James or Jesus against James.
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And it's really an unfair thing.
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Because when we understand James in his fullness, when we understand the book in its fullness, we will see here a great piece of wisdom literature in the New Testament, which is given for believers almost like, not exactly like, and please don't say I'm saying it's the exact same thing, but almost like the Proverbs, which were given to Israel.
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James is given to the church as a guide to wise Christian living.
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James is not intending to be a very thorough explanation of the doctrines of the faith, as is the book of Romans, which tells us in the first 11 chapters about the great doctrines of the faith, such as man's depravity in chapters one, two, and man's justification in chapters three and four and original sin and the relationship of Adam to sin in chapter five.
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And the idea of sanctification in chapter six and seven and God's elected purpose in chapters eight and nine.
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And then, of course, God's purpose for Israel in 10 and 11.
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So we see in Romans this expansive theological doctrinal treatise.
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But in James, what we see is the wisdom for our walk.
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You see, with doctrine, we do have truth that we stand upon, but we still have to know how to walk forward in this truth.
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And James, not confronting Paul, not disagreeing with Paul, but in full accord with Paul, teaches us how to walk this walk of faith.
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And so that's where we are tonight.
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We are beginning our examination of the study, the Epistle of James.
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Now, I've entitled it Wisdom for the Walk.
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You see now why.
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And I've called it an interactive study.
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The reason why I'm calling it an interactive study is not because we're all going to plug into the matrix and all go in together in some type of a interactive computer or something like that.
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It's interactive because I'm providing for you material which usually does not come in a standard Bible study.
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Normally, the teacher doesn't give you all the Greek and doesn't give you an interlinear text to look at.
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He normally doesn't give you three or four different versions of the text.
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The reason for this is because I want this to be a time not only when you learn about James, but also when you learn about how to study.
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You see, there's a process to actually getting to the truth of what the Scripture says.
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If you can apply the principles that we use in this study interactively, you'll be able to use it to study other parts of Scripture as well.
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So that's the part of the interaction.
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You're going to be able to ask questions as we go.
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We're going to be able to talk about why we would think one translation makes a better use of the English language than maybe another.
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You notice I didn't put the King James on here.
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That's going to upset some people and that's okay.
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I know I put on here three English translations and the Greek text.
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Now, how many of you can read the Greek text? Okay, good.
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That's fine.
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You don't have to be able to read the Greek text.
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I didn't put it there so you could read it.
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I put it there so you'd see what it looks like.
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And then I'm going to show you a few things about it, how words relate to one another when we get to certain parts that are going to help us to understand what all this means.
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But in the beginning, I want to address a few things before we even read that part of the text.
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Because as is always the case, when you start a new book, you have to at least know who the writer is, who he's writing to, and why.
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Isn't that what we always should do? In fact, let's go ahead and we will read.
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I said we're going to read it.
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I was wrong.
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We are going to read from the ESV.
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It's right there in your notes.
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If you don't have an ESV, you can read right along with us.
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We're going to read the first four verses.
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And really, we're going to focus on the first verse in regard to who and why and to whom it's written.
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It says in James 1, 1, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings.
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Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet various trials of various kinds.
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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.
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I really thought that tonight we'd go further than that.
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But as I began to read and read and think about what I wanted to say, I said, you know what? Four verses is going to be enough for the time that we allow ourselves.
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Four verses might may even be too much.
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But let's begin just simply with the very first word.
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If you take a look over at the Greek text there to the right, I just want to show you something that I thought might interest you.
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You see that the very first word in the Greek text begins with what looks like the letter I.
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Everyone see that? After that, it looks like our letter A and our letter K.
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Then the next letter is the letter W in English.
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But in Greek, that is the omega.
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So that's the long O sound.
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The next letter is B.
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It's the same as our B.
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It's beta.
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And then omicron, which is the same as our O.
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And the sigma, which is the last letter, is our S.
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So in Greek, this is Iacob.
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I'm sorry, Iacobas.
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Iacobas is the way that it is said.
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That sounds really weird when you think that we call him what? James.
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The name of this person is not James.
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The name of this person would be closer to the name Jacob.
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This is the same name, you know, in the Old Testament when you go back and you read about Jacob and he had the stairway to heaven.
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Not the song, but the rock and roll people loving that.
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You see, you know, you remember the story of Jacob, right? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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Jacob's other name was Israel, right? He was given that name by God.
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Israel means to wrestle with God or to wrestle with the Almighty.
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So we know who Jacob is.
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Well, this is the same name in Greek as what that would be in Hebrew.
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So you say, why do we call him James? Well, James is the way that it has traditionally come down to us.
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And you understand that the Bible came first in Greek, New Testament, then in Latin.
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And Latin really changed a lot of the ways that we said certain things.
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And then later, of course, was translated from that into English.
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But then they went back and translated from the Greek directly into English.
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But the phraseology of names like James, which is not the way he would have said his name.
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No one around the time of the first century would have called him James.
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They would have called him Yacobas, which is Jacob, which is the way we would have said it.
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They would have said Jacob either, by the way.
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You know, Jesus was never called Jesus.
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You know why? Because there's no J-J-J sound in Hebrew.
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There is no J.
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Iesu.
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Iesu would have been the Greek.
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Yeshua in Hebrew.
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Yeshua, Iesu, never Jesus.
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Jesus is a Germanic change, adding the J-J sound.
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This is why I know the Jehovah Witnesses are wrong.
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Jehovah was never called Jehovah back in that time because they didn't use that sound in the language.
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Yahweh was the way that the sacred name was pronounced.
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Yahweh, or we might say Yahweh if you say it more in the vernacular.
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Never was Jehovah because it just wasn't part of the vernacular.
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There was no Jehovah.
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There was no Jesus.
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It was Yahweh.
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It was Iesu or Yahshua.
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Yahshua, by the way, Jesus is the same name as Joshua.
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You knew that, right? Jesus and Joshua in Hebrew are the same name.
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Now blow on your minds, right? Not that any of this really matters except to say when you look at it in the Greek, it doesn't look like it does in the English.
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There are some things that we have adapted simply because it's the way that we understand.
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It doesn't change who this person is, but we often think of Peter, James, and John, right? There's Petras, Iacobas, and Ianu.
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Peter, James, Iacobas, and Ianu, which is why Yohan is the derivative where we get the word John.
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And it's why you have the letter H in the name John, right? Because it comes from Yohan.
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We're still in the first word.
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There's a lot here, but the question is not what did they call him? Because at the end of the day, we're still going to call him James because that's what we've called him for a long time.
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And it doesn't make a difference.
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And I don't want you going home saying, oh, we're studying the book of Iacobas because everybody's going to say, oh, you guys are weird at that Sovereign Grace Church.
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Just say we're studying James.
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That's fine.
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But what is, or sorry, who is this James? Half-brother of Jesus.
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You know the answer, but I want to explain why we know the answer.
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That is the right answer.
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If anybody wants to write down who is this James? Okay.
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There are a couple of Jameses in the New Testament that it could be, but there's only one that it is likely to be.
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Okay.
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James, son of Alphaeus, was one of the disciples.
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But outside of his name being listed among the 12, we know nothing else of him and see nothing else of him in scripture to be able to identify him as the writer of James.
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Okay.
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He would be one that would be a very, very unlikely person to have written James.
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James, the son of Zebedee, who was the brother of whom? John.
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Remember, James and John are called Boanerges, sons of what? Thunder, right? James and John.
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Do they want to call down the fire of heaven against those who were against Jesus? So Jesus gave him a little nickname.
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All right, hotheads, calm down.
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So you've got the Boanerges brothers.
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You've got James and John.
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But this is likely, and I would say almost impossible to be him because he, by the time of the writing of this book, is long since dead.
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You remember we studied just a few weeks ago in the book of Acts the death of James? At the behest of whom? Herod.
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Herod Agrippa, who wanted to win favor with the Jews.
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So in winning favor with the Jews, what did he do? He attacked the church.
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The first person he killed? James, the brother of John.
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And then he took Peter into custody.
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And we know the story.
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We went through it in Acts.
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So we know it's not him.
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He's long since dead.
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We know it's not likely to be James, the son of Alphaeus.
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So we have another James.
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There's actually a couple more, but they're really, really far out.
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They're just named but never mentioned again.
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There's one James who rises to great importance and prominence in the early church.
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And it is James, the half brother of Jesus.
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I want to take you to where we first see this in Matthew chapter 13.
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If you have your Bibles, take them and open them, please, to chapter 13.
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And go with me to verse 53.
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It says in verse 53, And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there.
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And coming to his hometown, that would have been Nazareth, he taught them in the synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? We can stop there at the first part of 56.
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Notice that there is a listing of brothers and then sisters that are unknown.
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But brothers we know.
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And the brothers start with James.
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And if you look at the list and compare this with Mark chapter 6, which is the parallel passage of this particular section, you'll notice that it starts with James there as well, indicating that he is likely the eldest, because normally you name children, especially if you're giving a list of names, you would name them by age.
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And seeing that he is preeminent in both lists outside, Jesus would have had to have been the oldest because Mary was a virgin when she had Jesus.
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So James is the eldest of Jesus's brothers.
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By the way, I do have to make mention because I've been teaching Roman Catholicism in our Sunday school class, teaching regarding Roman Catholicism, this is one of the passages that would at least be used in one sense to deny one of the cardinal doctrines of Mariology, the veneration of Mary, and that is that she was a perpetual virgin.
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The belief of the Roman Catholic Church is that she was a virgin before she had Jesus, that she was a virgin while she had Jesus, and that she was a virgin after Jesus was born.
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Because they believe it was not only a miraculous conception, but also a miraculous delivery.
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They believe there was a miracle which kept her virtue, if you want to call it, intact.
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So she was never at all disturbed in that way.
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Yes, the argument for them is that Joseph had another wife either prior to Mary or after Mary.
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If it were the case that she were prior to Mary, James could have then been older than Jesus.
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I don't agree with that, but I'm saying if that were the case.
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The other side would be that this actually is used for cousin and not brother.
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The word here for brother.
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Here's the bad part about that though, is that you can read the original language, and the original language which is used here and in Mark chapter 6 is Adelphos.
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Adelphos in Greek is brother.
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Adelphi is sister.
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So he makes a distinction.
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If he would have said cousin, it would have been gender neutral.
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If he would have said he had cousins, but he doesn't.
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He says he has brothers.
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Adelphos, the O there indicating masculine gender.
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And then Adelphi, the A indicating a feminine gender.
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Adelphos, brother.
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Adelphi, sister.
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So this is why the original language does matter.
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Because we can go back to an argument like that, and we'll say, well, it doesn't really jive with what's being said here.
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Okay.
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So we know Jesus did have brothers and he had sisters.
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We cannot prove they came from Mary, but we know they're with Mary.
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It doesn't indicate there is a second wife.
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Joseph doesn't even come on the scene after Bethlehem, which indicates that likely he has died at some point between Jesus.
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Well, he comes on the scene at Jesus 12 years old.
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So sometime between Jesus's 12th birthday and Jesus's 33rd birthday or 30th birthday, there's something that has taken Joseph out of the picture.
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Most likely, he has been taken in death.
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Yes, you have a question? No, of course not.
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And thus, we would have to identify these as his half brothers.
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Because in a physical sense, they're half brothers.
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But that distinction of Joseph being Jesus's earthly father, at least in scripture, his relationship father to son is never robbed from any dignity.
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That's an important thought.
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You know, when Joseph is called the father of Jesus, it's never robbed of any importance.
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He is very much his earthly father.
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Though he did not procreate with Mary to create Jesus in the womb, there is still a sense in which Jesus obeyed, giving honor to his mother and father, which were his physical mother and father.
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So we see here in Matthew 13, James shows up.
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He shows up a few more times in the gospels.
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But I want to show you somewhere else that he shows up that is to me a huge part of understanding why I think he's the writer of James.
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Okay, actually two places, if you'll indulge me.
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I would like to take you first to Acts 13.
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And then I'd like to have you go backward because Acts 13 is too far.
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I'm going to have you go to Acts chapter 12.
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Acts chapter 12, after Peter is rescued from prison, he goes and he talks to the people that are praying for him.
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You remember? He goes and knocks on the gate.
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The girl comes, sees him at the gate and then does what? Leaves him standing there in the street and goes in and tells everybody they don't believe, they think she's crazy.
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She saw an angel, but not really Peter.
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So they finally come out and they come to talk to him.
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And we see here this in verse, if you're in chapter 12, it's a little start at verse 15.
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They said to the young girl, you were out of your mind, but she kept insisting that it was so.
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And they kept saying it is his angel.
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But Peter continued knocking.
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And when they opened, they saw him and were amazed.
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But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he shushed them.
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I don't know if you know what shushing is, but he shushed them.
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And he described to them how the Lord had brought them out of prison.
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And he said, tell these things to whom? James and to the brothers.
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Why is he referencing James? It seems as if at this point in the history of the narrative, James, the brother of Jesus, and that's who this is.
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And I'll show in a little while how I know that.
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But it seems as if this James has risen to a certain level of leadership within the apostolic church.
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In fact, we know this isn't the James who got his head cut off because that happened earlier in the chapter.
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This is the other James.
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And this is James, the brother of Jesus.
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How do I know that? Go to Galatians with me.
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And go to chapter 2.
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And then go back one chapter because I keep saying, go back to chapter 1, verse 18.
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The apostle Paul, when he got saved, did not immediately go into ministry.
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The apostle Paul was taken for a time where we can only assume he was studying, praying, fasting, and preparing for ministry.
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And then it says in verse 18, it was three years.
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It says, then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas.
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Now, who is Cephas? Cephas is Peter.
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It's the Hebrew word for a rock or a stone.
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Same as Greek, Peter, Petros is rock or stone.
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It's the same thing.
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I went to visit Cephas and remained with him 15 days.
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But I saw none of the other apostles except who? James, the Lord's brother.
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You notice what is the interesting thing in that text? He identifies him as an apostle.
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But not in the same way that Peter and the 12 were apostles.
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But I would argue in the same way that Barnabas is called an apostle.
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Because he is.
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He's identified and acts as one who is sent with the message.
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That's what apostolos means.
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He is a messenger of Christ.
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He is a leader in the church.
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He's part of the apostolic church.
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And this doesn't give us the opportunity to wonder who he's talking about.
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It says, James, the Lord's brother.
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Case closed.
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Now, I'm not going to take you all the way back there.
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But if you go back to Acts 15 with the first church council, which I'm going to be preaching on a few weeks.
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I'm really excited.
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I really like that section of scripture.
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Because the church comes together to solve a dispute.
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Who is it who stands up and gives the judgments? Not Peter.
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It's James.
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It's this same James.
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This man has a prominent and important position among the people of God in the church of God, the apostolic church of the first century.
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All right.
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Now we know who we're talking about.
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Okay.
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At least I hope that that was a convincing testimony.
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At least who I think we're talking about.
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The church tradition also tells us of who it is.
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That it's James, the brother of Jesus.
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Not that tradition is always correct.
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But, you know, when you agree with tradition, that at least is helpful, you know.
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But we go back now to James 1.1.
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We've got through one word.
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Everybody say, yay.
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I said we're going to get through four verses.
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We have five minutes to get through four verses.
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We might not make it.
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But.
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Just keep going.
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Uh, Iakobos theukai kuriu Iesu Christu.
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James, a servant of God.
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I love the fact that he identifies himself not as the brother of Jesus.
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I don't think that he doesn't identify himself as not the brother of Jesus because he wasn't.
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I think that he considers himself more a servant than a physical relative of Jesus.
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He is a servant of God and the word kai is the conjunction and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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He is a servant of both.
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Who is he speaking to? To the twelve tribes in the dispersion.
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Now, the twelve tribes in the dispersion.
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Uh, what that is referencing and it's similar to the opening of first Peter.
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What that is referring to is the fact that the church had been pushed out of Jerusalem.
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We know that after the martyrdom of Stephen, many of the believers who were in Jerusalem had gone out from Jerusalem and they had been dispersed all over.
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You could also reference the fact that many Jews had been dispersed as a result of the persecution that was happening.
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But we know specifically he's speaking to the church.
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You could say, well, the twelve tribes he could be speaking here to Jewish Christians.
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But we also have to consider the fact that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek.
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So you say we're speaking to the twelve tribes.
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It has to be Jews.
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Well, if that's if that's where you want to be, that's fine.
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But I don't think that there's anything in James that is only speaking to Jewish people.
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I think that James has, in fact, the title for James in the Greek is Jacobus.
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What is it? Epistolos Katholikai.
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Universal.
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The word Katholikai is in there.
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Catholic.
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Catholic doesn't mean Roman Catholic.
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Catholic means universal.
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You know, the epistles of Paul are each one addressed to a church or to an individual.
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Right.
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It's either to the church at Rome, to the church at Corinth or to Timothy or to Titus or to Philemon.
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But these are called general epistles.
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Why? Because they're to the church.
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They're to the general population.
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These are Katholikai.
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These are universal epistles.
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These are not intended to deal with an issue in Rome.
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They're not intended to deal with an issue in Corinth.
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These are intended to be for all who have been dispersed.
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So to them, he says, greetings.
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Now, we get to finally get to the part I wanted to get to all that was introduction, because now we get to his starting point.
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Remember how earlier I said that James is a lot like Proverbs.
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I want you to just hear.
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In fact, you can set your paper aside.
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Actually, turn to James.
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I'm going to read through verse 15, not because we're going to study it all.
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But I just want you to hear the way that it is written.
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And in your mind, think about the Proverbs that we were given from the Old Testament and Solomon.
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Think of this.
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He says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet various trials.
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For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
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And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
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If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him.
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But let him ask in faith with no doubting.
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For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
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For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
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He is a double minded man, unstable in all his ways.
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Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and let the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away for the sun rises and it scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls and its beauty perishes.
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So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.
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Blessed is the man who again think of the Proverbs.
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Blessed is the man.
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Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for whom he has stood the test.
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He when he is to the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.
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Let no one say when he is tempted, I'm being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one.
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But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires.
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Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin and sin, what is fully grown gives brings forth death.
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And he goes on.
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But you just see how it seems to be coming at us in morsels of wisdom, pieces of wisdom, which are brought together in these in these phrases that are intended to drive us toward a closer conformity to Christ.
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Is it a little bit different than Proverbs in the way that it's written? Certainly.
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But what I'm saying is you see the wisdom literature as it's coming to us.
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You know, the Bible is broken up in different types of literature.
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In the Old Testament, you have history, you have poetry and you have prophecy.
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In the New Testament, you have history, you have epistles.
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I'm sorry, I said, yeah, I'm sorry.
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In the Old Testament of the law, history, poetry, prophecy.
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In the New Testament, you have the Gospels, history, epistles.
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And prophecy writes where is the poetry of the New Testament? Where is the wisdom literature of the New Testament? It's right here.
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It's right here.
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This is our proverb.
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It's not the same, but it bears much similarity.
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So with that being said, what is that that we will deal with tonight? We will deal with this call to count trials as joyous.
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Can I ask you, is that a difficult thing? Is this quite possibly one of the most difficult things that we read in the New Testament? I would say so.
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Have you ever had a bad day? Have you ever had a bad week? Have you had a bad decade? I'm 35.
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I can look back.
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No.
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We all know that life is filled with these unexpected difficulties and trials.
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And yet, the natural man, when faced with a difficulty in a trial, his response is often anger and frustration and just sheer madness.
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But James says, take joy.
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And it almost is like it's just too good to be true.
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I mean, you ever talk to somebody who just lost their parent and said, take joy? No, you probably haven't.
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Maybe you have, but you know that's a hard time to bring something like this to the table.
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Somebody who's lost a child.
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Even harder, right? Somebody who's lost their job, seemingly don't know what's going to do.
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They were already living to paycheck to paycheck.
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Some of us live paycheck to four days before paycheck.
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We know what that's like, right? Yeah.
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And so, you lose your job.
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What am I going to do? My kids have to eat.
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And now, joy seems to vanish.
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And so, this part of James becomes a very difficult part for us to live out.
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And yet, it's the very first thing.
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After he identifies who he is, after identifies his audience, after he provides to them the greeting, that love greeting, he then says, count your trials as joy.
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And he says, oh, count it all joy, my brethren.
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And you want to know what I think is interesting? If you look there in the Greek, right there where the number two is, that second line, the word there is pasan.
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It's the first.
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You see that one that looks like it's got two pillars? That's the P in Greek.
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Pasan.
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The word all comes first.
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In the Greek language, often to identify something as being important, word order becomes stressed.
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Word order isn't as important in English.
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In English, we put the subject first, the predicate last.
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But in Greek, you don't have to do that.
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You can identify subject and predicate using definite articles and other ways, endings and beginnings can identify what words are subjects, what are predicate.
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But in this, you see word order often shows what's most important.
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And what is the first word in the sentence? All.
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All.
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All joy.
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Esteem it, is the Greek.
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To count it all joy when you face various trials.
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Boy, I wish, I hate that our time has come and gone.
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I really wish I had more time to flesh this out.
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And I know we could, huh? Pasan, karan, ege, sasasthe.
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That's a longer word there.
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And so it is saying, all joy, esteem it, is the, is the, is the, you can see it down here at the bottom, my brethren.
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Adelphoid, that's that same word we talked about earlier about brothers.
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But the key there, I was just pointing out the fact that the first word is all.
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You know, we think about trials and we say, well, I can have joy through this, or I can have joy through that, but I certainly can't have joy through this.
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I remember one time, this guy had gotten some real bad theology.
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He was, he was a relative of mine.
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He'd been going to a Assemblies of God holiness church.
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And, well that's, Assemblies of God Pentecostal church.
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And he told me, he said, God will never give you more than you can handle.
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That is not exactly true.
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That passage says you will never be tempted beyond what you can bear, and with every temptation you will be given an avenue of escape.
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It's not talking about your trials, it's talking about your temptations, and there is difference.
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So just keep that in mind.
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What it's saying is that there's no sin that you deal with, that one, everybody else hasn't had to deal with, and that God hasn't given you a way to say no to that.
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That's what that starts, it's not talking about your trials.
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He said, he said, God will never give me more than I can handle.
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I know I couldn't handle the death of one of my children, so I don't have to worry about it.
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Now thank God neither one of his children have had anything bad happen to them, you know, at this point, praise the Lord.
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But the reality is, what a foolish thing to say.
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That because I know I can't handle that, well God just won't let me.
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Do you think the people who've gone through that said at some point, I can handle that, God, bring it on.
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Who's stupid enough to think that? But you know, that's what he was taught.
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This is why theology matters, folks.
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This is why theology matters.
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He says, count it all joy when you meet various kinds of trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
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And this is one why I do like the King James, because the word steadfastness, in the NAS it says endurance, in the NET it says endurance, but in the King James it says patience.
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And I really think that's the the idea here.
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It's producing in us the ability to get through these trials.
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Every trial comes with an opportunity for us to be victorious or for us to be defeated.
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And with every time we're victorious, we are then able the next time to get through even better.
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My wife and I have talked about this several times, about how over the years we've dealt with quite a few trials just in the church.
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People who have tried to see our ministry obliviated.
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Is that a word? Because they were unhappy with what I was teaching.
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They were unhappy what was happening, unhappy what was going on.
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But I praise the Lord that he's kept me here, he's kept me going, he's kept me preaching.
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It's his it's his will that I be here obviously, because if it was the will of man, I'd have been gone a long time ago.
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And it seems like that, those trials that at the moment I didn't want to go through, at the moment I was so frustrated I want to throw in the towel.
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But it is times like that, that I look back on and I say you know what, now the next time I'll be able to look back and say the Lord has seen me through before, he will certainly see me through again.
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And that's the patience, the steadfastness, the endurance that James is talking about here.
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He says we can count our trials joy, because we know that with our trials, every time we go through a trial and we come out stronger on the other side, we are becoming more and more able to trust in God.
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And be patient through our trials that the Lord will see us through.
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And then he goes on to say, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
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Turn your pages over and I'll give you the answers, because I sure don't want to send anybody home with blank papers.
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Let me give you the answers.
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Here's the outline, and this is how I'm going to try and do this every week.
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I don't know it's going to always look the same, but this is the outline that I figured out.
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We do the first part, we'll actually look at the text, break it down, and then we'll turn over and make some application.
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Hopefully next week I'll get you out of here on time.
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First things first, there is a difference between joy and happiness.
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There is a difference between joy and happiness.
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What is it? Here's the easiest thing.
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Happiness is based on happenings.
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Yeah, it's based on circumstance.
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If I go home tonight and my wife has cooked me my favorite meal, and everything's great, and I walk in and it's beautiful, and she sets it down on the table before me, she's got a big glass of iced tea, and everything's beautiful, and it's wonderful, and it's great, I'm gonna be happy.
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If I go home tonight and the toilets have erupted, and I'm ankle-deep in water that I've got to dry before going to sleep, I will not be happy.
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Because happiness is really an emotion which is triggered by happenings, but joy is a state of being, and that's the difference.
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Joy is what we have in Christ.
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Because I know that if I'm ankle deep in sewage water, and I had before Christmas Day a few years ago, I was ankle deep in sewage water.
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That's a bad Christmas Day.
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But you know what? It didn't rob me of the joy of my salvation.
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It made me look forward to maybe going to heaven a little sooner, but it sure didn't rob me of Christ.
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And when I have Christ, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor things present, nor things to come, nor principalities, nor powers, nor anything, neither height, nor depth, or anything else in all creation can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus my Lord.
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So I can have joy in the storm.
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And thus, that's a state of being rather than a state of feeling.
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Okay? That's the difference.
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Number two, trials and difficulties in this life are inevitable.
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They are inevitable.
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I like the fact that James doesn't mince words.
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He says, count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet trials of various kinds.
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He doesn't say if.
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He doesn't say count it joy if you meet trials.
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He says when, because it's going to happen, folks.
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You ever see in the end of movies where it says, and they lived happily ever after? I always say, no, they didn't.
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Because even if that trial, because you know, movies are based on a plot which has an advancement to an apex, and then some type of resolution comes.
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And you have a protagonist and an antagonist.
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Movies are based on the same kind of platform.
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They're all building to a point.
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And at the end, everything's fine for that.
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And if they say they lived happily ever after, I always say, no, at some point they died.
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They didn't live forever.
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They had dealt with at least one more trial, and that was when they died.
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So we've got all of this life that we live is inevitable difficulties.
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And when we face them, take joy, James says.
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God uses trials.
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This is number three.
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God uses trials and difficulties to increase our endurance.
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And you could put slash patience, because I already said I kind of like the word patience there, because it's both similar.
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He uses these things.
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God uses the trials in our lives to make us more like Christ so that we more trust in him, that we more lean on him.
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That's the purpose for them.
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People ask me, why is it that God doesn't just take us as soon as we get saved? You know, we get saved, and then we go right back to fighting the battle of sin.
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Why doesn't God just take us? Well, for a couple of reasons.
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We have a purpose to be here.
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We're supposed to be being salt and light in the world.
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We're supposed to be making a difference in the world.
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We're supposed to be witnessing for Christ in the world.
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So we have a purpose for being here.
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But also he's conforming us to the image of Christ is what we call sanctification.
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Every day that we go through these trials, he's conforming us.
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And finally, a man possessing the quality of endurance or patience, whichever you want to say, lacks nothing.
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Now, that's not me saying that.
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That's James saying that because he says, let's that fastness or patience have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
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I want to make a point.
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James is not preaching sinless perfection.
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No New Testament author preaches sinless perfection.
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The idea of perfect in this text is the same way that the word is used throughout the Bible to describe different people of faith as a person who has arrived at a position of sanctification whereby they are living a righteous life, but not because of their own strength, but because of the strength of God within them.
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And I want to be clear.
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Think about Job.
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What does the Bible say about Job? It says he was perfect among his generations.
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Does that mean he was sinless? No, it's referencing his character in juxtaposition with the character of everyone else.
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That's what I like to use.
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Job says among his generations.
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If you compared him to the world around him, he was the shining light.
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He was the salt.
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He was the light in that world.
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He was different, folks.
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And what makes us different? That when we face the inevitable trials of life, we face them patiently, trusting that God will see us through rather than maniacally fighting against everything that we're facing and saying, God, why me? That's the difference.
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When we face the trial, we don't say, God, why me? We say, God, here I am.
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I am your servant.
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Give me the strength again to see me through the day.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this study.
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I thank you for the opportunity to go over this section of James.
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I pray that it's been fruitful for your people.
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I pray that we've all heard a message from your word that has been encouraging.
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I pray that you, Father, throughout the weeks to come, we just open up our understanding of the scripture, open up our understanding of what James has to tell us so that we might grow in our wisdom and knowledge of your word.
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In Jesus name we pray.
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Amen.