That You May Be Perfect and Complete

James’s Greeting and the Reading of the Epistle

Please remain standing and turn in your Bibles to the book of James and chapter 1. We start the body of the epistle this week. It will be chiefly concerned with verses 2 -4 of chapter 1. I'm going to read the chapter again to help set it in context.

This is God's holy and infallible word. James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. To the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greetings. My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.

But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation, but the rich in his humiliation, because as a flower of the field he will pass away, for no sooner has the sun risen with a burning heat than it withers the grass, its flower falls, and its beautiful appearance perishes.

So the rich man also will fade away in his pursuits. Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love him.

Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone, but each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.

Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we might be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Therefore, lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

If anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows and their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

Prayer for Wisdom in Trials

May the Lord be pleased with our study of his most excellent word. Please pray with me. O Lord, we are rattled by trials. We don't find joy in them. And I pray that you would cause us to see the great value of trials, that we might grow up in the faith to full maturity, and that we would be able to count it joy when we fall into various trials.

O Lord Jesus, we pray that your gospel would shine through, and we also ask that your great application of truth would happen, and that the Holy Spirit would open our hearts, that we might examine ourselves and the fruit of our lives to test the genuineness of our faith and our progress in growing to maturity.

We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. As I mentioned last week, James is a very practical book, and it comes for us at a good time after spending many months in apocalyptic prophecy in the book of Zechariah to come to a very practical and accessible book for the church.

The title of the message today is That You May Be Perfect and Complete, and that comes from the end of verse 4, that you may be perfect and complete. For those of you who are in need of an outline, I have two points for you.

First is to count it all joy, that would be number one, count it all joy, and two, let patience have its perfect work. Let patience have its perfect work. I also have a fairly lengthy list of the purposes of God in trials, and I'll enumerate those to you as we go through.

Counting It All Joy in Various Trials

Count it all joy, and let patience have its perfect work. What is it that you value and treasure the most? What is it that makes you get out of bed in the morning and ready to run into the day? What is it that your heart is set upon?

What captivates your attention and grabs your interest? It's a very telling question. For us to properly understand the point of James in this first message, we must understand that James is operating under the premise that Christ is preeminent in the heart of the Christian.

So that's obvious. It may be theologically obvious, it may be in terms of precept, it may be obvious, but what is your life characterized by? What is it that moves you and motivates you to live your life?

What excites you? What is something that you're passionate about? James thinks that we should be zealous for Christ and there should be no rivals. And this zeal for Christ orders and arranges our lives in such a way that even negative things like trials are recast in our own eyes and image that we see the value of trials and temptations and sufferings because they drive us to Christ, not only in faith, but for help.

It drives us to show that we love Christ by obeying his commands. And so today we consider James chapter 1 verses 2 through 4. Let's look at it again. The first words here, my brethren, we generally gloss over greetings and things like this and James has some hard words for his audience.

There should be times when we're going through the book of James together that you should be put back on your heels and drop back into the pew because you are halted with a deficiency in your life and your walk with Christ.

But he starts with a term of affection. It's familial, this very common word, adelphoi, my brethren, the people whom I love in Christ. It's familial. It's pastoral. James is hard on the people, but it's a hardness that's motivated by love, like a father correcting a wayward son.

He corrects him because he loves him. He corrects him because he seeks his good. James says that you should be glad and rejoice. That's what that word greetings means. And brethren, the people I love, we're part of the family of God.

I want to give you some pastoral wisdom and you must apply it to your life. And then he starts in, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. I was thinking about this and how would you explain this to a young child?

Because when hard things come, those things aren't fun. And if you said, it's very hard for me, or I should say, I enjoy when my car, the wheel breaks off on I -4 and I almost get into a wreck. That's exciting and fun for me.

Let's say you were deranged. Or when I get stricken with some disease, oh, this is great. I love being stricken with some disease. How do we count it all joy? We need to understand that this idea here is to reckon and consider and esteem that the trial and this whole thing has a thrust in the accusative, and that'll make some sense here in a moment, I can be joyful, you can be joyful in trial because the trial tends toward your greatest joy.

Your faith in Christ first, communion with him, and that the trials prove and improve upon your faith. You see, if Christ is preeminent in your life, then anything that makes you closer to Christ, more adoring of Christ, or more reflective in Christ's likeness of Christ, you're about those things.

Anything that makes me more like Jesus, I should be excited about because that's my greatest desire, is to be united to Christ and to be like him. To count it all joy when you fall into various trials.

This is not part of the text in Greek. It's more of an idiomatic expression from our own language. I think it's appropriate for us to say if, not if, but when you fall into trials. No Christian lives without trial.

No Christian has ever lived without trials. Sometimes our friends in the broader evangelical world portray the gospel of a life of ease. You come to Christ and all of your problems go away. I've mentioned a few times, a world of trouble comes upon the Christian when he comes to Christ because now he's at war with the old man that resides in him.

He is putting to death that old man that the new man might thrive. And you have the world, the flesh, and the devil coming at you and you fall into various trials. So the question has to be asked, what is the benefit of trials?

Some of us live our lives attempting to avoid trials. Like a good life would be to avoid trials. The scripture gives us some guidance and I had some help with many commentators to compile this list with some edits and revisions.

I have nine purposes of God in trials and if you're note-taking, this would be good to pay attention to this. The first is this, let me explain the reasoning here. I'm called to count it all joy and I'm called to count it joy when I fall into various trials.

So the natural question that must be answered when you're reading this text is, what is the purposes of God in trials? Then that question has to begin to be answered, I think, before we can understand the idea.

The first one, and it's a big one, it's an overarching one for the book of James, is to test the genuineness and strength of our faith. I'm going to add to that, to test the strength and genuineness of our faith, and to expose our weaknesses.

The purpose of God in trials is to test the strength and genuineness of our faith and to expose our weaknesses. I'm asking you to turn back one or two pages in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews in chapter 11.

The convenience of this section to our book is very helpful. We're going to come here a couple of times today, a couple of different illustrations. Instead of reading the account in Genesis 22 about Abraham offering up his son Isaac, a story, a history, a scripture that we're all familiar with, I'm going to use the short account in Hebrews 11, beginning at verse 17.

By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. And he who had received the promises offered up, his only begotten son. Now you have to remember the background. Abraham is promised to be this patriarch of many nations.

He's promised to be this really conduit of God's working in the world, and of his line is not only going to be Israel, but more importantly, the capital SC, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he and his wife are barren, they're unable to have children in their old age.

And so God miraculously, with a hiccup in the Hagar incident, he enables Abraham and Sarah to have a son, Isaac. And it's not long after, Isaac is a young man, an older boy perhaps, a teen perhaps. God calls Abraham to take his son Isaac up to the mountain and to sacrifice him there.

Abraham has been in a world probably, coming out of Ur of the Chaldeans, where human sacrifice might have been something that was around. It was totally antithetical to his understanding of who God was.

The pagans sacrifice humans. But in faith and obedience, God calls him and he does it. He goes up the mountain, he prepares it himself, he's ready to offer his son Isaac. And you've got to wonder, how does Abraham handle these conflicting messages?

In you, Abraham, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. In you, Abraham, I'm going to give you this miraculous son of promise. It runs through Isaac, you're as good as dead, and the future is going to be found in Isaac and his son Jacob and his sons.

But he obeys, he believes God, and Paul says, and James says, it's accounted to him for righteousness, because he believes. In James, the thrust in chapter 2 will be that Abraham's faith is legitimized by his obedience.

Not just his willingness, it was his actions of taking Isaac up the mountain. As you know, the Lord miraculously provides a ram caught in the thicket, and Abraham is extolled for his great faith in God.

Verse 18, it says, of whom it was said in Isaac, your seed shall be called, concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, which he also received him in a figurative sense. Isaac's standing again up off the altar of wood and being untied was a resurrection of sorts.

And of course, this is a type of what God would do in sending his only son, his only begotten son, Christ to the cross, only there is no other substitute to be offered, Christ alone himself will suffer and die, and this will be used by James in our illustration here even, to show the value of obedience.

James will make Abraham prominent in his interpretation of events in chapter 2, will be the greatest controversy in the book, but we know there is no controversy actually, Paul and James are not at odds.

They speak of two sides of the same coin. Abraham's patience and endurance in the most difficult trial proved to him that God was with him, and he provides for our greatest needs. There's something about trials that I've been reacquainted with in thinking about James.

The trial is really not for God's benefit. He knows what's in the heart of us. He knows what sort of faith we have, the genuineness of it. The trial is for us, that we can see where we are, that we can see our desperate need of Christ, we can see the progress in the faith maybe that we have made in him.

Later we'll learn in scripture, if you're proceeding from Genesis, that Christ for the joy set before him endured the cross. It's also important to remember that Christ was perfected, and that word comes up in our text today, the idea that we get the theological understanding of things, the end, the goal, the end of the thing, that Christ's suffering is the validation and the stamp of approval and the validation of his messianic office and the perfect mediation that he supplies.

Christ doesn't do this in the abstract, but in real trials. Christ really suffered. Christ really endured heavy trials. He was, as Paul prayed today, tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin. Christ's exaltation comes through his patient endurance of trials.

Therefore, the Christian must walk after the trailblazer himself. We must walk in these things. We too must persevere and endure great trials. The trials reveal the strengths and weaknesses of our faith.

This is the first one. And this should yield a twofold joy in us. In the positive, we take encouragement for the triumphs of our faith. When you endure and you get through the trial in faith and obedience, it's a cause of rejoicing.

I urge you to be more reward-centric in your Christian life. Persevere in trial to get the blessing and the reward of obedience at the end. We kind of are negative about those ideas, aren't we? Doesn't seem very spiritual.

I want you to have all the blessing that could come to a child of God walking in faith and obedience. And secondly, how can this be good negatively? Our need of strength is revealed, and we run to Christ to fill our want.

Don't have to turn there, I'm going to read a very brief portion of Galatians chapter three to tie a bow on Abraham's faith. A test of the genuineness and strength of faith, Galatians 3, 7 -9 says this, Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.

In the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, In you all the nations shall be blessed. So then, those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

It's interesting, the chief figure of covenants in the Old Testament, you could argue, is Abraham, and covenant keeping, obedience, is a rich, central component of his greatness as a man, worthy of our emulation.

Christ, par excellence, does this. So Abraham does it on a pretty grand scale, Christ eclipses it. We of the faith of believing Abraham, following after our Lord and Master Christ, we too must walk through trials to test the strength of our faith, and to expose our weaknesses.

Humility Through the Thorn in the Flesh

Secondly, you and I need humility. I'm going to ask you to turn to 2 Corinthians in chapter 12, 2 Corinthians 12, we just heard this morning some more about Paul and his character, and it's interesting how he perceives the trial of the thorn of flesh in his life.

How does Paul view the thorn of flesh in his life? 2 Corinthians chapter 12, beginning at verse 7. And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, and hold your finger there just to be reminded of the revelations, he says at the beginning of the chapter, I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.

He says, I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago, whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows, such a one was caught up to the third heaven. I believe this is autobiographical of Paul.

So Paul gets discipled and gets seminary with the Lord for three years. He gets caught up into heaven. Verse 3, it says, and I know such a man, whether in the body or not, out of the body I do not know, God knows, how he was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible words which is not lawful for a man to utter.

Of such a one I will boast, yet of myself I will not boast except in my infirmities. For though I might desire to boast, I will not be a fool, I will speak the truth. But I refrain lest anyone should think me above what he sees me to be or hears from me.

Some of this internal evidence about Paul being the one who these things were revealed to. Verse 7, and lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure.

I remember as a young man, I remember being in what, I'm so old that I went to junior high. I didn't even go to middle school, I went to junior high. And I remember in that season of life that the one thing that you couldn't have happen to you was to be embarrassed.

It was horrifying to think that anything could embarrass you or that the people would laugh at you, that you would spill your lunch tray on the ground and everyone in the cafeteria would erupt in laughter.

That was death for a person in junior high, that something would happen like that. But as Christians, we should smile every time when we're big in our britches and when we fall down. Every time when we're humbled and when we're self-exalted in our hearts and we think highly of ourselves.

Anything that comes into our lives that brings us down and brings us low, the trial that leads to our humility is glorious because it shows us our desperate need of Christ. Paul had a thorn in the flesh and it was so unpleasant, he says in verse 8 concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me.

And he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, my strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches and needs and persecutions and distress for Christ's sake.

For when I am weak, when I am humbled, then I am strong. We must long to have trials bring us low. Unless we be exalted above measure, we have need of humbling. Anything for us to forsake and mortify our pride will be uncomfortable, it'll be painful, but it's needful.

Paul was left seeing his weakness and need of Christ and this is the very substance of what made him strong. So what is the purpose of God in trials? To test the genuineness and strength of faith, to expose our weaknesses and to yield humility in us.

Breaking Attachment to the World and Longing for Heaven

There's something else, and this is the third of that list, is to break our sinful attachment to the world. I want to turn your attention again back to Hebrews 11. The hall of faith is here and it's so nice that it'd be right here by our book and our study in James.

You need to break your sinful attachment to worldly things and to the young among us, I have to confess to you, this isn't the first time that a group of young people were drawn away by worldliness. And in fact, all of us have a tendency to be drawn away by worldliness.

We must, we have to put this to death and we know James is going to later say to have friendship with the world is to be an enmity with God. We make God our enemy when we are friends with the world. This is halting.

Whatever is worldly in you, without exception, give the enemy no quarter, purge it out of your life, put it to death, set fire to it, excise it, whatever you have to do, drive out the worldliness of your life.

A helpful way to do that is to read the scripture, to pray, to be discipled, to have relationship with other brethren who sharpen you like iron, but the Lord also provides trials to wean you off of the world.

A great example of trials, and it's an interesting thing, is Moses, and he's the figure we're going to look at in Hebrews 11. It says in verse 24, by faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.

Something happens very powerfully and majestically in the life of Moses. He's growing up in Pharaoh's household. He has honor. He has wealth. He has access to all the things the world has to offer, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, and he eats at Pharaoh's table.

But he sees a trial and affliction, and he wants to unite himself to that trial and affliction. This is a work of God in him, verse 25, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he looked to the reward.

He forsook the wealth and privilege of Pharaoh's house. He saw the trial of his people, and he esteemed, he counted it all joy. Same language, the reproach of Christ as being of greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.

It sounds a lot like Paul this morning in Philippians. He saw his union and communion with Christ as being superior and better than anything this world has to offer. We would do well to be instructed by Moses.

The believer can count it all joy because they look to the reward. In faith, you can peer through the fog of the trial and you can see it. I'm all for us being in the moment and invested in today and not just thinking about when we die and go to heaven.

But if we were wise, we would seek the treasure that moth and rust and thieves cannot destroy or take away. Our lives are but a vapor, a moment, a mist, and then they're over. All of the things that are trendy and cool today will be out of fashion tomorrow.

You will look back 20 years from now, young people, in horror at your hairstyle and the clothes that you're wearing today. We need to break our sinful attachment to worldly things. Well, that's the third one, and this is the fourth, and it's the inverse of this.

We need to have a great hope in our heavenly citizenship. Turn quickly to Romans 8. I'm just going to read a shorter portion of that text, Romans 8. And again, we're trying to ask the question, what is the value of trials?

If we understand and we have that deeper knowledge, we may be more readily able to count it all joy. Romans chapter 8, I'm going to begin reading in verse 16. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

If indeed we suffer with him, that we also may be glorified together. I should point out to you that this view of hope of a heavenly citizenship is not only eschatological, but it very much informs our life now.

We are citizens of heaven. We are joint heirs with Christ. We are princes in his kingdom now. And therefore we live a different way. The hope of heavenly citizenship has not only caused us to rejoice in the future of glorification and perfect sanctification and all those things, but it has direct relevance to now.

He says in verse 18, for I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. If it were possible, everyone who is in heaven would say, I would have done more for Christ while I lived.

I don't think they would be able to say that because of heaven's glory, but if they could reflect upon their life and the time and the energy and their heart, what it was given to, everyone who would be there now would say, I would have done more for Christ while I lived.

For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for what? The revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope.

Because the creation itself also will be delivered up from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. I don't know if you, this is one of the most familiar passages of scripture, but the depth and breadth of these statements is astounding.

The creation is waiting for the revelation of all of the redeemed in Christ. The creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, we also have the first fruits of the spirit.

Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for what sees, what one sees?

But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. We endure all of these trials and all of these hardships because of the glorious heavenly hope that is ours in Christ. Likewise, the spirit also helps in our weaknesses.

We don't know how to pray as we ought, but the spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the spirit is because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

We have two intercessors. I don't know how that works. Two persons of the Trinity are described as intercessors, the Lord Jesus Christ who knows all about us, the spirit who is united to us. When we are in our trials, the spirit of God is praying on our behalf and at work in us.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who are called according to his purpose. On your way back, I'm going to stop at 2 Corinthians 4, but you go ahead and go back to James 1. 2 Corinthians 4 says, We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed.

We are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, the suffering of Christ, that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.

For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So, then, death is working in us, but life in you. Skipping down to verse 16,.

Therefore we do not lose heart in these trials because of the hope of our heavenly reward in our communion with Christ. We do not lose heart, even though our outward man is perishing, the inner man is being renewed day by day, for our light affliction is but for a moment.

It's working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Well, time demands that we move on. The next few will be quicker. The fifth one, the fifth purpose of trial in the life of the Christian, it's already been touched on so I won't spend a lot of time here, is to reveal what we really love and treasure.

When the trial comes, and our first impulse is to see or to say, why is this happening to me? We have to acknowledge that our first impulse is of self-love, and it's idolatrous. So this would be a progress report, a great barometer of your faith going forward from this day.

When the trial comes, don't be offended and go, why, oh Lord, is this happening to me? Say, oh Lord, how will this be used for your glory and my growth in Christlikeness? This reveals what we really love and treasure, and we look at ourselves, it's very painful, we love comfort and ease, and we want things to go our way, that's what we really want.

We want to control, we want to be self-satisfied. The trials reveal our desperate need of a change, of repentance, that we would really love and treasure Christ and growing up into full maturity more than all of those things.

The sixth one, the purpose of the trials, that we might count it all joy, is that we would highly esteem communion with God and the blessings, as I mentioned earlier, that come with obedience. Jesus is our best example of this, from Hebrews 5, don't turn there.

Listen to Jesus, and this is how in his high priesthood he esteems communion with God and sees and lives and strives for all of the blessings that are only achieved and only come through obedience. In the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and was heard because of his godly fear, though he was a son, now listen carefully, this is the king of glory.

He holds the worlds together, it all belongs to him, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered. How are you and I going to learn unless we go through trial and suffer? If Christ has to suffer, if Christ has to learn obedience through suffering, then you and I must have to go through some trials.

And having been perfected, having the work be accomplished in his life, the trials came, and even better than Abraham, under the trial he patiently endures them in obedience and he comes out the other side perfected, it reached its end, he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him.

Philippians 2, which we just studied, he was humbled, he offered himself in obedience, and God highly exalted him. You and I get to enjoy the privileges that come from the faithful fruits of our labors that result from faith in obedience.