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Well, good morning everybody.
Yes, sir.
Turn that air conditioner on.
That's that's good stuff I'm not I'll try to talk loud if the air conditioners loud.
That's fine.
I'd rather be cool and loud than the opposite Wanna Share a little story kind of goes with the lesson today not exactly But I think you'll see how it all fits together closer to the end Two o'clock this morning my One year old daughter.
I have five children.
I have a 20 year old daughter a 18 year old son and then a five three and one year old So we've got spanning the age spectrum Two o'clock this morning.
We have a monitor in the one-year-olds room It's got a little camera on it keeps an eye on her, you know, and we can hear if she starts to cry Well, she normally and she's been great.
She sleeps through the night just about every night even from early on She's been a very good baby last night at two o'clock She wakes me up crying now We don't always just run to them when they start crying We give them a second to calm down, you know Because sometimes they startle themselves and wake up and they'll cry and then they'll go back to sleep Well last night she cried and it didn't stop so my My wife is still asleep.
I'm startled and woken up and I said well, I'll wait And see if the baby goes back to sleep didn't go back to sleep.
So finally it wakes my wife up and She expects me to go I expect her to go and my willingness to stay in bed out Bared hers and so she got up and went to get the baby.
Well when she picked the baby up out of the crib The baby vomited all over Now I want you to know this baby again, not only does she sleep well, but she doesn't get sick very much So this was new and different the baby vomiting on her was a big deal, you know And so we immediately start cleaning her up towel on her off and we said well, maybe she ate something bad You know, we'll we'll let her Let her be fine.
Well, we later with us about 15 minutes later blub blub blub Here it comes again this time projectile that all over us.
They love that right? It's a great story to start with right? So so this is twice in 30 minutes.
So now it's like oh man, this is not good.
Well about 15 minutes later again, you know, it seems like her body just gets rested enough just to get to sleep and then boom It happened again.
It happened about four or five times in a period of about two hours So my wife and I in an attempt to save our mattress Get out of bed Take her to the living room where we have a tile floor and just put towels all over the floor and just say well She's gonna go we're gonna let her go and we just stayed in the living room all night now I imagine some of your fathers Not all of you, but I imagine some of your fathers That little story and it is true.
I did not have a very good night's rest That little story is one that some folks would say was a trial That was a difficult night compared to other nights where I just go and lay down maybe read my Bible or pray and Fall asleep and sleep for four or five hours and maybe seven hours if I have a good night Maybe even eight hours if I'm really doing it good, but last night I got about three hours sleep And we can say that's a trying night but on the grand scale of life's trials Not that big a deal.
All right, I might catch a nap later 20 minutes and it'll be okay Now I want to compare that to a very dear friend of mine He's a loving man he's been in our church for several years and Few years ago when he was at our church He had a daughter 13 years old beautiful girl and it was it was he and his wife's only daughter I Get a call in the afternoon In fact, I was just fixing to head out with a group of people from the church.
We're going to do something I remember I don't remember what we're doing, but we're going to go do something and I Get a call.
Hey Kevin's at the hospital.
Okay What's going on? Well, his daughter has been busy Something's wrong.
I don't know what it is, but she's dizzy.
She's not feeling well.
Something's up Can you come yeah, yeah, I mean I'll be right there So I come to the hospital by the time I got to the hospital.
They had found out that she had a DIPG tumor The DIPG tumor is an inoperable tumor in the stem of the brain Which means it's absolutely impossible to get to because if you did the surgery you would Inflict death because of where it was located Over the next year or so and I don't remember exactly how long ago it was it was an absolute nightmare For Kevin and his wife I Tried to be there with him as much as possible and I was there with them on the day that she did die I wasn't there the moment.
She died.
I left just a few minutes before and then I got the call and I turned around and came back and You know the reason why I tell two very vastly different stories this morning is because We're going to look at a place in the scripture today Where James is going to talk about trials And he's going to use a word he uses the word various He says we are going to experience various trials Some of them are small and relatively meaningless and we get over with just a little nap But some of them are going to bring us to our knees and Make us have nowhere to look but up right and we're going to wonder sometimes why we have to go through those and They're going to put all the other ones into perspective So if you open your Bibles, we're going to go to James chapter 1 we're going to pick up right where we left off last week For those of you who I think most of you here I let's see a lot of familiar faces with those who were not here.
I'll go ahead and read verse 1 But we're going to read down to verse 4 last week We only did verse 1 but this week we're going to do verses 2 to 4, but I'll read verse 1 to give a context James and as we said last week, it's actually the name is Jacob, but in Latin It was James and so that's the way we know it James a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the twelve tribes in the dispersion greetings Count it all joy my brothers When you meet trials of various kinds 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 Nothing, let's pray father as we go to the text today and as we deal with a subject that Really does have a lot of intense Personal agony because we have to think about the trials that we have faced.
I Pray father that you would first and foremost keep me from error And I pray that you would open the hearts of these men to the truth.
I Pray Lord that you would speak through me that your Holy Spirit would overpower me and overshadow me Because without your spirit the lesson will not only be wrong, but it would be without application to the heart So father apply your word to the heart your word promises that it will never return void So may your word go out today in Jesus name Amen one of the most common questions that we ask in life is Why? Isn't it I mean it come in different forms why me why now Why this why him and even more commonly I think the most common question that I've had in in 12 years as a pastor five years before that as youth and associate pastor and various ministry Jobs in the church probably the most common question that I have heard From lay people and by that I mean just regular rank-and-file church folk.
There's a question why? Do bad things happen You finished it Yeah, well, that's true and honestly Yeah But isn't that the question that everybody asks yeah, you see the the youth group headed home from a missions trip They're slammed into by a drunk driver 13 of the 15 people on the bus dead all because of One night of bad decisions and you say why do bad things happen? to good people and Yes, absolutely There are no real good people and and we could follow that route of talking I mean we could go down the the the the root of Romans 3.
There is none good.
No, not one There's none who understands there's none who seeks after God right, but but we understand when we ask the question Why do because nobody wonders why bad things happen to rapists? You know nobody ever asked that question Nobody ever happened asked what happens why do bad things happen to murderers? And that's what we think that's what everybody thinks yes Yeah Absolutely, absolutely Yeah, and we're talking about some of these a yes, sir, you know Well the Adamic nature is is is the fall in the sin and that's right And that's why the bad things happen, and we're all going to get to that too.
You guys are outrunning my brain And I know no, that's fine That's fine because that because in all of this we have to understand There's a purpose and a plan and that's that's really where we're going to go.
Yes, sir The same kind of topic is what's brought to the table by Joe's friends Absolutely the reason why you're suffering job is you're really not righteous You know God or even his wife.
You know why don't you just curse God and die? Yeah Some people use Trials suffering difficulties as an argument for the non-existence of God How many ever heard of a man named David Hume? David Hume H u me David Hume lived in the Well two centuries back.
He was he was a philosopher, and he did not believe in God and David Hume's lack of belief in God was based on a very simple Maxim or axiom that he had that he had derived or come to in his mind He didn't believe in God, and I'm going to quote exactly what he said He said is God willing to prevent evil, but not able If so he is impotent Is God able to prevent evil, but he's not willing If so he is malevolent or evil Is he both able and willing Then why is there evil? That was David Hume's maxim now how many of you saw Superman versus Batman? Okay, few of you.
There's Lex Luthor said it a little a little easier So if this helps Lex Luthor Simplified in that movie David Hume's argument.
He said if God is all good He can't be all powerful, and if he's all powerful.
He can't be all good Because if God is all good And he's all powerful Then there would be no evil because God would stop it you understand the argument now That's the argument of Lex Luthor who was simply parroting the philosophy of David Hume In a movie that wasn't that great, and I'm a fan of Superman, but but the So the point is this people use tragedy people use suffering people use brokenness and Hurt as a reason to not believe in God As if God was there.
He'd stop it if God was there.
He would do something about it 3,000 people died when the towers fell if God was there he would have done something about it 200,000 people died when the tsunami hit India, and if God were there he would have done something about it Somebody's child dies If God were there He would have done something about it.
You understand how that tragedy Causes people to say God can't be there And I want to say this I believe the entire argument of David Hume The fictional Lex Luthor or any of the rest.
I believe the entire argument while it sounds very compelling.
It's actually a sham So why is it a sham? Because it presupposes many things that it doesn't prove For instance if I said God can't exist Because evil exists if I say that what am I presuming in that statement? I'm presuming there's such a thing as evil If I say God can't exist because evil exists I'm presuming not proving but presuming that evil exists and yet without a standard of righteousness How then would I know what evil is? Without a standard of goodness.
How could I have any standard by which to judge evil? Somebody says well, we know what evil is.
How do you know? You think evil is something that we just come up with on our own or is there a transcendent? understanding of evil I Give you an example Would you would you act would you have to wonder if what Adolf Hitler did was evil? If you don't know what Adolf Hitler did he killed six million Jews and many other people who were of physical limitations He killed people who were down syndrome.
He killed black people.
He killed What were they called gypsies anything right anybody that he didn't care for yes Absolutely they he would the pure Aryan race is what they could refer to themselves the blonde haired blue-eyed White person right and even though he was dark haired But he but he saw this pure race right this pure race And he said this is what should be so we eliminate everything else in the in the apprehension of this pure race And so he was willing to put people into concentration camps, and you go to Germany and you will see in the museums Piles of boots These are the boots of the of the dead that are just piled up and you can't imagine how many feet filled those boots how much evil was In that place where they would take people in who think they were getting a shower and instead of a shower They were getting gas that was raining down on them and killing them together Women holding their babies as both of them take their last breath in in 1980s I forget things 85 86 somewhere under there man by the name of Gordon Stein debated Greg Bonson on the subject of the Existence of God and Greg Bonson asked Greg Bonson was the Christian Gordon Stein was the atheist and Bonson asked Stein he said why was what Hitler did evil if? You reject God if you reject the existence of a transcendent law a transcendent law giver Why was what God did evil? Or why was what? Hitler did evil sorry for that mistake And Stein thought about it for a minute and knowing he had to be Logically consistent because he was before a great group of people and he was debating someone who was going to call him out if he wasn't He said well, it was it was evil because it went against the morals of society and Stein or Bonson immediately his response is but what if it didn't? What if the whole world said it's okay to kill Jews would it then be okay? He said well, no it goes against our natural instinct.
He said but what if it didn't? What if the evil heart of man said it's okay to murder? the Jews Would there not still be a law that says it's wrong? Would there not still be something greater that says it is transcendentally or higher than us and It's wrong You see you can't have evil in the sense of understanding what it is without having a standard by which to measure that evil and The standard is God There is nothing outside There's nothing in us that makes a standard because my standards are different than yours There are things I do you probably wouldn't do and vice versa Right because we all live in sort of a moral relativism.
Yeah, I do my thing you do your thing But we all know there's certain things we ought not do because God says don't do them If I Romans 14 says that right there's gonna be things that I do like I might eat certain things You don't eat because you might say I don't want to eat shellfish because the Bible says selfish or unclean I don't want to do that or whatever or any of many things, right? But there's certain things like we would all say murders wrong and not just because evolution told us So not just because Richard Dawkins tells us so not just because PBS tells us so but because we have a natural Internal understanding of the law of God, which says thou shalt not take a life unjustly, which is the very definition of Absolutely, absolutely and that's something evolution doesn't account for by the way doesn't account for the the universality of Moral law in fact in the in the in the animal kingdom the the what's that The understanding of the universality of moral law it's universal among men And women I'd say that make that simple among people It's not the same in the animal kingdom Animals murder each other all the time You know what else they do rape all the time But we understand those things are wrong Because we're not animals and by the way, if you grew up learning that you're just a higher level of an ape You're much different and much more and much greater than an ape But I digress I've gone a little bit past what I was trying to say my point in all of this is to say When someone says I don't believe in God because there's evil So I don't believe in evil without God Because to have evil you have to have a standard of goodness and the only one standard of goodness I've ever been able to find is the God who created all things and is himself righteous He is the standard But apart from the philosophical argument, we still have to deal with the issue of trials.
Okay? God exists.
The argument is foolish to say that he doesn't but we still have to deal with the issue of What about all the pain that people go through? How do we justify that in view of God who we who we say is good.
We say God is benevolent That means he's loving.
In fact, we say that he is omni benevolent.
He is all loving the Bible says God is love and So in the midst of we knowing God is love.
Hey, brother in the midst of knowing God is love Why then do people suffer? In fact, some people think that if you're a Christian you don't suffer You ever heard of the health and wealth movement Oh Name it and claim it blab it and grab it.
Yeah If you can't believe you can receive And all you all you've got to do Is send in that money? We got a we got a prayer cloth That our pastor sweat on yeah, and we'll send it to you for a small fee Oh Boy, it's just like a relic.
You never seen him sell prayer cloths.
I do it on TBN.
They sell prayer cloths They sell you know all these different things This has been prayed over by a group of very sanctified people and we're going to send it to you 1995 or more whatever you have in your cookie jar go to your cookie jar right now and whatever you've been saving We need you to send it to us Holy water.
Yeah.
Yeah Mm-hmm Well, yeah, and then do you know Jim Jim kraut sort of took the makeup she took it to a whole nother level But I don't remember the exact conference.
I remember Jimmy swagger get caught with a prostitute Yeah, really literally with his pants down and then Jim and Tammy Faye.
I think it was a financial thing.
I think there was Was it whether that was yeah, yeah, I wasn't but but it wasn't, you know, the same as some of the other folks.
Yeah I'm not I mean laughs just like that when you're so bad.
They taking away your jail money.
That's bad Well, I mean because of the way he robbed people yeah It's like a Christian version of Enron.
Yeah, he didn't just take everybody Absolutely Manipulate and that's why and that's why I have no love for health and wealth Preachers, uh, I mean, I love them in the Lord in the sense that I pray for their repentance But I also pray that God would break their teeth so they can't continue to talk their nonsense So that's what the psalmist says You'll break the teeth or the prophet rather says break the teeth of the unbeliever that he that he cannot blaspheme you anymore You know, that's yes, sir Absolutely, and that's a good point because people will say well God can't exist because look at who his representatives are Look at all these evil people who say they speak for God Give her up.
Y'all know who Ray Stephens is Some of you older guys might only old like me Ray Stephens old country singer that would tell stories in his songs, Mississippi squirrel Well, he did a song one time called would Jesus wear a Rolex? Great song if you look it up on YouTube or listen to it with Jesus wear a Rolex on his television show And he asked he said would he would he admit he's been talking to all those preachers that say they've been talking to him No, no, because they haven't I've heard a lot of crazy people say a lot of crazy things But it's always falls down to the same thing If you come and do what we tell you to do if you come and listen to me, you're going to be healthy You're going to be wealthy and everything's going to be good for you.
If you want that best parking spot That's what I was at Joel Osteen's book How to have the best parking spot in his book.
What is it a best life now? By the way, if this is your best life now, you're going to hell Because this life is as close to heaven as you're going to get if you're not saved And it's as close to hell as you're going to get if you are saved So if this is your best life now, you're going to hell just so you know That's the Joel Osteen is not a is not a is not a preacher He's a he's a motivational speaker who holds the Bible and says this is the Bible I am what it says I am I can do what it says I can do and he twists the scripture Absolutely, but one of the things he says God wants you to have everything.
That's the best He wants you have the best parking spot at work That's in one of the pages of his book I didn't buy it But I sometimes stand in Walmart and and while my wife is shopping and I'll read the what's there, you know And I remember reading that best parking spot brother.
You got best seat in the house.
You're right here You don't have to look at my face So the health and wealth teachers they say You live for Christ You financially you're always going to be good health is always going to be good.
Your family's going to always be great Yeah, you're going to be a life of prosperity now, I want you to juxtapose that or meaning compare that With what James says in verse 2 He says count it all joy my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds Now some people say yeah, baby keeping you up at night vomiting on you that's a trial Not really because the context of James one two If you remember last week, we talked about the saints of the dispersion remember he said James He's the brother of Jesus but he called himself a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the saints who in the Dispersion, you know why they're in the dispersion Because they've been persecuted.
They've been run out of town They've been pushed out of their homes Jesus said if you follow me Your family may want to turn you over to the court your father will fathers return against their children and and mothers against their their husbands and And all of these things will happen because they will hate me and they'll hate you because of me Jesus saying and that's what's happened.
There's a dispersion here.
There's real persecution happening now.
I want to say this I Mentioned timeline last week if you think about the timeline of the first century, you know zero to 100 ish Jesus lived approximately right here somewhere between I actually think he was born about 4 AD or 4 BC rather right right around 4 is when Jesus would have lived which would have put the cross right around 29 AD All right You say why do I think that? Because the Bible says Kyrenius was a governor of Syria so we can look at that as a timeline Historically speaking Kyrenius was a governor of Syria when Jesus was born says that in the Gospel of Luke and it was around around 4 BC so Jesus was born before Christ Yeah No, it's it's what I mean is our timelines a little off but right around 30 AD right on 29 AD is when the cross happens The next 20 years or so up until around 50 The church is going through massive amount of persecution and they're being dispersed all around But it isn't until the between 50 and 70 that you start experiencing what's called the neurotic Persecution.
Do you know what that is? Under Nero right where Nero would literally Wrap people in animal skins and feed them to animal feed them to dogs vicious dogs and things They would take Christians and put them inside animal skins and feed them to animals They would hang them up and light them on fire.
They would dip them In a in a in a substance that was flammable that would hang them up in the garden and light the garden with their burning bodies Nero was absolutely Absolutely, just one of the most craziest Dictators and all of history So right that all is happening in here So that's actually I think later because I believe James is written right about here.
I Type of language is used based on the timeline of James's life based on Several other factors.
I believe James is one of the earlier books of the New Testament Yeah, there's Thessalonians may have been a little earlier There's a few books that sort of vie for the first spot but I believe James is one of the earliest books of the New Testament right around 45 and It's right there in the midst of that persecution that Paul Paul is not the writer that James Sorry, I'm used to talking about Paul that James would say to his people Count it joy count it joy when you fall Into various trials Meaning when you're when you're pushed out of your house because everybody hates you in your house Count that as joy When you lose your job because no one wants to hire a Christian because you guys are part of a cult By the way, it was called a cult of the way you've read in the book of Acts that it was called the way That was identification of a cult.
They're part of the way.
It's sort of like if we said the Haley bot people You remember the Haley bot people? again talking about my age Yeah.
Yeah, they the group of people out in California.
They had a leader.
They all took strychnine and died.
They were found Yeah, they believe the comet was coming and they were all going to catch a ride on this comet and fly to glory And they all died Jim Jones, you know, it was 900 and something people men women and children Drank the Kool-Aid you've heard the phrase drank the Kool-Aid.
That's Jim Jones.
He put he put the the poison in the Kool-Aid They drink it they die Right.
So James is dealing with people who are going through persecution real persecution They've been dispersed And he says count it joy Count it joy when you meet these various trials And I want to tell you something by the way, I have a title I always title everything the title of today is the paradox of profitable pain Kind of came to me as I was studying the paradox You know the paradoxes that means when something doesn't seem right.
It seems like it's a contradiction, but it's not This really does seem like a contradiction Count it joy when you have a trial Count it joy when things are hard count it joy when things are bad That seems very paradoxical It seems almost unrealistic It's almost like a pie in the sky type thing, right? You know a pie in the sky is oh, yeah, everything will be All right, just turn that frown upside down.
You have somebody tell you you know, and you're like, what do you mean? Are you being ridiculous and some people do some people look at this and they say James is not being realistic I can't be joyful.
I Can't have joy When things are bad You can and that's what yes, you're absolutely right and look right there In my my one little half sheet of notes, I have Bible verses I don't forget and that's right But it is tough when you're in the middle of it It's tough to say to the person who's sitting next to their loved one dying of cancer and say, you know what? You need to count this as joy It's tough when you're standing next to the child who is 10 years old.
Who's just lost his mother Unexpectedly because she had a brain hemorrhage and died right in front of him To go up and say hey young man You need to count this as joy In fact, I would say that to do such a thing and to into and to speak such a way Is almost abusive because I think it's it's misunderstanding the point In fact, I want to say I want to share something with you that I've shared with our church many times because I try to I Try to make this point a lot When we talk about the word joy We often confuse it with a different word happiness, that's right Right Spelled it.
Okay.
That's enough.
We confuse joy with happiness and You said it who said is based on circumstances happiness is based on happenings.
That's the same root same idea Yeah, in fact a few years ago Christmas Christmas Day a few years ago.
I'm ready to have Christmas with my family I'm excited right go in flush the toilet and And instead of going with gravity as the toilet normally does The toilet comes back up and floods with unholy water my bathroom And I thought well, I'll get a plunger and take care of this and I go in there and I plunge it Nothing's happening.
It's not going down.
So I go out to the clean-out which is right in front of my house I open up the clean-out and water pours out into my Front yard I Call the plumber please come and fit Christmas Day now, I Wasn't feeling very prosperous because all the money I spent on presents about a better return to pay for plumbing Guy comes put the camera down to shoot.
You know what happened a bird You know that little thing that let's air in so that the I don't know much about plumbing But I know there's a thing that goes out the roof Well mine had gotten open a bird and my kids all thought it's funny said daddy pooped a bird.
I didn't poop a bird What happened the bird got down there and stuck and and and and Christmas Day I'm this far into a pipe full of crud Trying to reach and get this junk out so that my kids can poop No No, I know that this was actually my uncle died in my house.
It's a family house.
We've had it since the 60s But I got my arm in this thing and I'm thinking about this verse Huh? As I said right now, I'm not happy Now I was trying to hold myself back from using any type of words that would be on keeping with my personal moral character But they were in here and I was thinking some words, huh? Yes, yes, I'm there and I'm not happy But in the midst of elbow-deep in crud water and I've always told my kids this is why I don't do dishes by the way I said I did this once I've done all the dishes.
I'm ever gonna do they're yours now.
I Said I had my hand in your crud water.
You can do the dishes So I'm thinking you know, even in the midst of this crud.
I Still got Jesus As simple as that is I've still got Jesus even though I'm in the midst of this crud I'm elbow-deep in poop water from seven people and yet In the grand scheme of life and even into my eternity this means so little and It's so insignificant.
I Don't I don't have I use an illustration at our church and I don't have a physical rope But I want you to imagine a rope you guys can imagine that right you can you got imaginations? I want you to imagine a rope That Goes forever I'm holding the end of it But the other end never stops Imagine it goes maybe down over a cliff down into a crevice and the crevice is forever and it goes on forever and ever and ever Never stops now.
I know that can't be I know that I'm exaggerating the point for the sake of illustration But I want you to imagine a rope that goes on forever.
Have I used this already? Have I talked about this? Okay, because sometimes I'll repeat and I don't want to I don't want to be too repetitive This is an important illustration though because if you imagine that rope imagine on this the end that you're holding there's a little piece of Duct tape, you know duct tape is about that wide and it's wrapped around the end of the rope, right? Let you know where the end is If you can imagine in your mind the rope that goes on forever and that little piece of duct tape that little piece of duct Tape represents this life compared to eternity That little piece of duct tape represents everything in this life the good and the bad the hard and the soft the love and the hate the virtue And the sin everything in this life is represented by one little strip of duct tape and then you have eternity And what's interesting is all that eternity is is going to be based on what happens in that little piece of duct tape So what is happening in that little piece of duct tape isn't insignificant But when you compare it to what is coming it is absolutely Not to be compared Romans tells us what the present sufferings are Not to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us That's at Romans 8.
I don't know the exact but Yeah, it's it's in it's in the midst of Romans 8 when Paul's given that great admonition about there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of sin and death and he goes on and on and he says For the redemption of our bodies right and he says in the midst of that our present sufferings are not to be compared with the Glory that is to be revealed in us and I think that's the perspective that makes James 1 to Make sense going back to my brother's point Romans 8 28 Every one of you knows if you've been here long enough.
I know I know mark has mentioned at least once God causes all things to work together for good For those Who love God They're calling the corners purpose, right? The part of the people don't get people always say God causes everything to work together for good not for everybody Straight up not for everybody If that's all you say is God cause all things work together for good and you stop right there First of all, you're cutting Paul off at the knees Yeah, yeah exactly You're cutting Paul off at the knees if you say God would cause everything to work for good and you stop because that's not where he Stops, but also it wouldn't make sense Because if a person lives this life and it's hard and then they go to hell and that's harder It's hard to justify God working everything together for good for that person.
And that's why it doesn't say that It says God and by the way, it says God causes all things to work together for good.
It doesn't say everything is good Because you look at the life of Joseph And you look at Joseph and man, first of all, he's his father's favorite child.
Things are going pretty good.
He's living it up He's little Lord Fauntleroy, right? Everybody loves him except for his brothers So his brothers figure out a way to get rid of him throw him in a well that doesn't work They don't want to kill him.
So they pull him back up and they sell him into slavery He goes into slavery gets over to Egypt.
He gets In a man's house a wife accuses him of rape Hashtag me too, right? He was right there in the midst of the me too movement five thousand years for whatever happened and he's right there getting accused of rape He didn't do it, but she had evidence.
So because she took his cloak.
So she had the evidence you did it I didn't do it.
It's okay.
You're still guilty.
You go into jail.
He goes to jail.
He's in jail He's got these guys that are there with him and he interprets the dreams for the king on behalf of those guys and he's thinking He's gonna get out still didn't get out But he gets to the point where he's the highest in the jail because he's trustworthy and he's and he's a godly man and he's Trustworthy even in the jail.
He's he's he's being favored by God and there is a sense in which he's receiving God's favor But he's still going through trials.
Finally.
He gets to be the second of all in Egypt Second only to the Pharaoh himself and then comes the brothers the brothers who Sold him into slavery They're brought to him and they're scared to death their knees are hitting together man Their teeth are chattering because they figure he's got all the power in the world.
He's gonna kill me And he doesn't that's right, what does he say Yeah, well, this is a good verse for you.
If you want to write it down and remember Genesis 50 20 what you meant for evil God meant for good Absolutely and was what they did evil No, it was it was evil from their perspective.
Yes It wasn't even and that's the point.
There's two the verb is the same what you meant for evil God meant for good What you purposed for evil God purposed for good.
I Don't want to take it right turn and go too far.
But if you've ever studied the will of God You you've probably heard that there are two wills There's yes, you could say within the will of God there are there there is a division There is the prescriptive will of God which is given to us in the Bible thou shall not murder But then there's the what some people call the permissive will of God God permits murder Right, even though he prescribes that it not be done He permits that it is done and he allows the wicked to go off into their wickedness, right? So we would say God has a prescription and he has an ability to permit and that's the permission But I use a different term in fact in our systematic theology class, I'm going to explain this in several weeks at our church Because even though I do believe it's a permissive.
Will I Don't believe God ever permits anything that he doesn't have a purpose for and in that The purpose makes it what I call a Purposeful will not just a permissive will because I because there are things I permit because I don't have any control over it, right? Few years ago Something happened in my life.
It was bad.
I didn't like it, but I didn't have any choice So I had to permit it you ever had that happen I'm now I'm gonna give you the exact details, but you've had many things in your life Sort of like a police officer going to a drug raid Right and he walks in and there's all these guys with ak-47s and all he's got is a glock 19 And he says you know what I'm leaving Cuz what am I gonna do? I gotta permit it cuz I don't have the power to prevent it Does God not have the power to prevent So why does he permit it? Because he has a purpose for thank you.
That's it.
That's the answer and that's the that's the key was that absolutely, he permits it because he has a purpose for it and And Why does God permit? Believers Christians people who love the Lord.
Why does God permit them to go through suffering in trials? He tells us right here That you yes verse 3 So that the testing of your faith would produce steadfastness the word steadfastness there can also be translated patience Because we go through trials that makes us you know one of the one things I've learned over the years don't ask God for patience Because if you ask God for patience, he's going to give you something to be patient about and it's gonna be tough Well, that's true, but you know I Just I'm real careful about asking for patience Yeah, especially with a with a with an 18 year old son I got to be real careful as even me drives my patients all the time But he says you're he says testing your faith will produce patience or steadfastness and steadfastness When it has its full effect or other translation when it's fully grown Will make you perfect and complete now you have to understand something Perfection in this term.
In fact, the word is tele or a and a Locky Roy, what's that? It is in fact the word tele or the word for for for For perfect Right means someone who has grown up.
Yeah, and The word for complete means something that is whole.
I Do not believe I want to say this right away.
I don't believe Christians can ever attain what's called sinless Perfectionism that was actually a doctrine that was taught by the Wesley's you remember the Wesley's they began the Methodist Church Charles and John Wesley now they did a lot of good things wrote a lot of great hymns a lot of the hymns We sing or are written by the Wesley's and so we have Tremendous blessing of their contribution and George Whitfield one of the greatest Calvinist preachers in history loved John Wesley and said that that man would be closer to Jesus because somebody asked him will he be in heaven? Because they had a different theology He said I won't see him there because he'll be so much closer to Jesus than I will I mean, that's how he thought about Wesley's Who's that? One of them died and the other one was there I don't remember which one died for Jess yeah, Wesley was Arminian Whitfield was a Calvinist But my point about Wesley is he did have one doctrine that I would say is dangerous Even though I would say his Arminianism is wrong.
I would say there's one doctrine that the Wesley's taught that was I would say it's dangerous and that is the doctrine that There is a second work of grace That God does that removes all sin and you become sinlessly perfect Yes, if they have a doctrine called sinless perfectionism But that but but that but that doctrine is popular in some church My mom goes to holiness Church And they there are some in the holiness Church who believe that they're without saying we had a guy come to our church one night I wasn't teaching I had another guy teaching on on history So we were doing a history lesson guy came into our church He sat down for only about 15 minutes and he got up to leave Well since I wasn't teaching I followed him out I wanted to know what was so Offensive or what was causing him to leave they have emergency or something Could I pray for him kind of wanted to kind of kind of pick his brain? Why are you leaving in the middle of the lesson? Right? So I followed him out to the lobby I get out to the lobby and I said sir You know, can I can I ask you you visited with us tonight? You haven't told me your name yet Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and he said he kind of told me his name and a couple things and he said He said tell me what you guys are about as a church I Said what we're about he said yeah, tell me what you're about.
I said we're about letting every man know That he is a sinner before a holy God and that because of that sin He owes a debt that he cannot pay and Jesus Christ paid the debt that he couldn't pay And if he will trust in him and repent of his sins, he'll have eternal life in Christ.
That's what we're about And that was the simplest way I could put the gospel in a very quick answer and he said but I'm not a sinner You're not a sinner What is first John tell us yeah, anyone says he has no sin he's a liar And deceives himself So so he says he says I'm not a sinner I said, what do you mean? He said well the Bible makes a distinction between sinners and saints and as a believer.
I'm a saint.
I'm not a sinner I'm saying sir you saying you don't sin He said yes So so wasn't just he was making a distinction because I can make that distinction too I can say believers are saints and they're juxtaposed from the sinner and in that sense There's a distinction to be made but we're still sinners.
In fact, Luther said we are a similar used to set peccator We're at the same time just and sinner.
He said we're like snow-covered piles of dung he said if you look out in the German fields and the winter all this piles of dung that they use for for manure that's used for What? Fertilizer it would be covered up with snow and and and Luther would say that's like us We're piles of crap Covered with the blood of Jesus covered with the white snow Right robed in white and and so I pushed him.
I said so you've never sinned Since you became a Christian or since you received this extra special measure of grace and he said I'm not a sinner I said sir, I don't want to argue with you.
I Said but I'm going to tell you that you're wrong.
And here's how I said sir What is the greatest commandment love the Lord your God with all your heart all your soul all your mind and all your strength I Said from the moment you got up this morning To this very moment right now Have you truly? Loved the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind and with all your strength without any Failure, and he looked at me funny and he said I didn't say I was perfect You absolutely did Because sin is falling short of the glory of God and you said you don't do that So having said that going back to James He says you're going to be perfect understand in the in the mind of the writer and in the mind of God Our level of perfection in this world is to be translated as a maturity Paul gets on to the Corinthians and 1st Corinthians 3 why because they were immature they were acting like children In fact, he said I have to talk to you like you're unbelievers Because you're so immature I have to talk to you like people of the flesh So to round everything I don't know we're about out of time to round everything out James is talking to a group of people.
They have suffered severe trials and he says you can count these trials joy.
Why? Because everything that you go through in this life has the purpose of Conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ Everything that you go through in this life is meant to mature you in your faith If you're a believer, it's pointing you to Jesus You guys y'all have a gym back there, right? How many gymnasiums I don't know if this one has it the gymnasiums you're going there's a big sign up on the wall It says no pain No gain, I know that's maybe silly and a little trite, but it's the truth You know how they make This is the greatest sword in history Samurai sword, you know how it was made They took a piece of steel and they would heat it and they would beat it and they would fold it and they would heat It and they would beat it and they would fold it.
They would heat it They would beat it and they would fold it heat it beat it fold it heat it beat it fold it Until and if you've ever seen a samurai sword a real legitimate samurai sword that comes from Japan That was made by true swordsmith.
You can look at it and you can see where the metal is folded into itself and The reason why it's beated heated and folded beat it heated and folded is so it gets stronger and When it's finally done, it's polished and sharpened to a razor's edge And it's the most beautiful and the most deadly of all the ancient weapons because it was beaded heated Folded and repeated and if you're going through trials and you're a believer, that's what God is doing To you and your trials, let's pray Father I thank you for your word I thank you for the promise that tells us that we can count it joy not because it's always going to make us happy But because we never can take our eyes off of Christ and we can know that when you beat us Heat us fold us and repeat that you're conforming us To the image of Christ and it's in his name.