Wisdom In Trials

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All right, well, welcome back to our second night in our study of the Epistle of James.
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And we began last week, and we said this is going to be an interactive study.
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Every week, I'm providing you not only with the words that are written in the English Standard, which is the version that I'm teaching out of, but I also provide you with a printout of other versions.
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And we're going to sort of try to take the same amount of text each week.
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We're not going to try to do big, long sections, but we're going to try to focus on shorter sections, making this more of a verse-by-verse study of the Epistle of James.
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So you'll notice tonight that your notes reference James chapter one, verses five through eight.
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Now, before we get there, I do want us to read verses one through four, just to again remind us of the context.
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One of the benefits of preaching and teaching all the way through a book from beginning to end is that it provides us with the opportunity to understand context week to week, rather than having to establish new context every time we come.
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If I were jumping from Matthew to Luke to James to Hebrews every week, I would have to be establishing who's the writer, who's he writing to, what's he writing about, and I'd have having to be establishing that context every time we come together.
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And that not only is exhausting, but it's also confusing.
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The benefit of us going verse-by-verse through a book is that we allow ourselves to really dig into what it is that James is saying.
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We understand that what he's written here is written by the breath of God.
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The Bible says it's God breathed, theonoustos in the Greek, but it is James writing.
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He is the instrument that God's using.
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So what is it that's pressing upon James and what is it that we need to know? Well, the first thing we talked about last week is the first word, it says, James, a servant of God.
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Who is James? He is, remember, the half-brother of Jesus Christ.
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This is James, who was a leader in the early church.
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This is not James, the apostle of the 12.
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It's not James, the brother of John, who is the other.
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There's James, son of Alphaeus, and then James, brother of John.
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It's not those.
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This is James, the half-brother of Jesus Christ.
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And it says he's a servant of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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He doesn't identify himself as Jesus' brother.
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Instead, he identifies himself, doulos, is the Greek for servant or slave, is another way that that term is translated.
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I think that is how it's translated in King James, isn't it? Is it slave or servant? I only ask because I know you have one.
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It's a servant, but I know it's also- Doulos can be translated as slave.
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And it's to whom? It's to the 12 tribes in the dispersion.
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This is referencing the tribes, referencing the 12 tribes of Israel.
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So it's specifically in a Jewish context, but we understand also that this is referencing the church.
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One of the things I didn't mention last week is that Paul is given the specific designation as the apostle to the Gentiles.
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And Peter is given the specific designation as the apostle to Israel or the apostle to the Jews.
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So it is interesting that even in the church, in the early time of the church, there was sort of a distinction between churches that were made up primarily of Jewish Christians and churches that were made up of Gentile Christians.
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Even though there was an attempt and a trying of the church to bring unity in this division, and that's what we're gonna see in Acts 15 when we get there on Sunday morning.
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We're going through the book of Acts and we get to Acts 15, we're gonna see that there was an attempt to bring unity.
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Even though there was an attempt to bring unity, there still was somewhat of a nationalistic sort of division that was going on even in the early church.
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So it's interesting that he references here the 12 tribes, he references Jewish people, but as we said last week, this book is not limited to Jewish Christians.
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It's just specifically referencing the 12 tribes in the dispersion, which could be talking about Christian Gentiles as well, but we understand 12 tribes is speaking particularly of Jews.
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He says in verse two, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.
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And we said last week, and this is just so sort of by way of reminder that joy is not the exact same thing as happiness.
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Even though oftentimes we compare happiness to joy, we think of when we're joyous as we're happy, and we think of joy as an emotion.
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But does anybody remember what I said is the difference between joy and happiness? Okay, well, that was it.
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But I said specifically, happiness depends on happenings.
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What happens? Happiness depends on what happens, but joy is a state of being.
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So that's what we know.
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When he says count it all joy, we can remain joyful, we can maintain joy even in trials.
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In fact, I was listening to another minister preach on this same text, and he made the point, he said, you know, we don't often think of this way, but to think of our trials as blessings, because what does it say that happens in verse three? It says, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
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You know, you don't think of your trials as blessings, but if you think about those things in your life, especially those things which forged you or purified you, caused you to be the way that you are today in whatever fashion, those things that brought you out of something, you might look back at them now and say, yes, that was a blessing.
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Where at the time, it certainly did not feel like a blessing.
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You know, I've referenced many things in my life that have been difficulties that at the time were I given the opportunity to get out of them or were I given the opportunity to simply say no more or stop or to erase those things.
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At the time, I would have done it, but looking back, those things are what has caused me to be where I am today.
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So the trials, we don't often look at trials as blessings, but in God's economy, a trial for a Christian, the fire is what produces the purity.
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It's what produces the purification that we need.
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Thinking about like in my own life, you guys know that I teach karate.
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I teach little kids karate and karate is a physical activity.
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And sometimes that physical activity can be very difficult.
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You have to stretch your body beyond what's the normal limits of stretching.
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You have to exercise your body beyond what's the normal limits.
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And sometimes you're pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing.
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And at the time, nobody likes it.
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You know, we have this little exercise where you lay down on your back, you put your hands behind your head and you lift your legs up six inches.
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Now that doesn't sound like it's very hard, but after about 15 seconds, all the muscles in your stomach begin to burn.
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Everything in your lower body begins to hurt.
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And you hold your legs up six inches for another 30 seconds or 45 seconds or a minute, and everything's hurting.
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Your whole body is just pouring out with sweat and you're hurting.
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And we call them six inch killers because that's what they are.
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They kill us.
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Then six inches off the ground, you can't imagine how heavy your legs get after just one minute.
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And so, you know, but what does that do? It breaks down the muscle so that it builds back stronger.
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And that's the goal of exercise.
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And that's why we exercise.
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We push heavy weights.
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Why does pushing heavy weights make us stronger? Because it actually breaks down the muscle and it builds it back up stronger.
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And so our trials work in a very similar way.
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Trials are intended to break us down so that we will build up stronger on the other side.
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If we never had to endure a trial, then we're not going to be very strong in our faith.
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It's like what I've always said, the child who gets the cut on his finger and he's never had any other bad thing happen to him, that cut on the finger is the absolute worst thing in the world.
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It's this, I can't live.
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I'm bleeding.
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The blood is coming from my finger.
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What am I gonna do? It's the worst thing in the world because they've never had to put up with anything.
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But the child who's had bumps and bruises and scrapes and he's running to the coffee table and he looks like my child.
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Hope's got bruises, everything from the knees down because she runs into everything.
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She's going to be tough as nails by the time she's a teenager because she just has no, she's boom, boom, she's had no trouble.
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We had a lady make mention of that earlier.
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She said, you know, it's just amazing.
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She just is so strong.
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I said, yeah, but she's built that up and she's gonna keep building it up.
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And that's how we get strong.
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We get strong through trials, not through not having trials.
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And one of the worst things that the charismatic slash word faith movement has brought into modern Christendom is the idea that the ultimate goal for the Christian life is to live with absolute and unending pleasure and that's the goal.
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You know, we should seek out pleasure.
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And you say, well, that isn't what they're saying.
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It really is because it's all about your what? Best, I don't know, your best life now.
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You probably get tired of me picking on Ol' Osteen but he's worthy to be picked on.
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The whole idea of your best life now, it's every day's a Friday.
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That's the title of one of his works, every day's a Friday because he wants, you know, life is just this sort of grand banana and we're just all taking a bite.
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You know, that's this silliness.
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It really is silliness.
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And you can't look at a lady like I looked at earlier and you can't look at a lady who's just lost her husband of 40 years, who's got her head between her knees, slobbering all over herself crying because he was a healthy baseball playing, basketball playing man's man who for 40 years was her husband and in four months went from cancer to death, went from, you know, a 200 pound scrapping man to nothing.
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The cancer ate him down to nothing in four months.
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You can't look at that lady and say, hey, every day's a Friday.
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What are you, nuts? You see, that's where this charismatic nonsense, it leads us to foolishness.
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So having addressed that, I'm not, I didn't just bring, that's not a rabbit trail.
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It's actually taking us where we're going because when we get to verses five through eight, we actually come to a section of scripture which the word faith movement often lifts out of the context and tries to make it a proof text for their argument that all I must do to receive whatever it is I want from God is name it and claim it.
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And they use James chapter one, verse five as a proof text for their nonsense.
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So what I wanna prove to you tonight and show you from this text is that if you remove it from the context, you do not have a proper understanding.
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It must fit within the context of what James is saying.
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So what is the context beginning in verse two? Joy in what? Tribulation.
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Joy in, and I was gonna say trials, believe you're right, but tribulation works too.
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It's joy in trials.
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James does not change the context in verse five.
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In fact, I can prove this.
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In the ESV, it says, if any of you lacks wisdom, but notice, jump down to the New American Standard.
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Notice that it says, but if any of you lacks wisdom, do you see that in the New American Standard? And then you go over to the King James.
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It just says, if any of you lacks wisdom, that word but is insinuated in the Greek.
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Okay, you can argue for the NAS.
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We'll do that another time.
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But if you look at the Greek, you see the Greek, it says it has the letter, what looks like an E and an I.
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And then the next letter is a D and an E.
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Greek looks very similar to English.
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And then it's T-I-S.
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All right, adetis is the three words there.
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Adetis, adetis is the sense of but, if.
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So what is but? But is, so it starts with a C, huh? It's a conjunction.
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It's a connecting word, right? And that's what you're saying.
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It's connecting what came before to what we're reading now.
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And that's why I think that the ESV and the KJV, at this point, this is why I say I can find good things and bad things about all translations.
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But at this point, I think that the inclusion of the but is a proper inclusion because it's hearkening back to the idea that we need to be taking joy in trials.
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But if any of you lacks wisdom, and I'm just gonna read from the NAS since I referenced it.
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Let him ask of God who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
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But he must ask in faith without doubting, without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
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For the man, that man, and that's an important phrase too, that man, that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
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Now, how do the charismatics use this? They will apply wisdom to just about anything and essentially say that if you believe it, you can have it.
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And if you doubt it all, then you won't have it.
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So if you didn't get it, whose fault is it? It's yours.
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It's yours, it's your fault, yes.
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Sure, and that's true.
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That, like I said, it becomes applied to everything.
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Yeah, Justin Peters, you know, I've heard him teach on, Justin Peters, if you don't know, is a preacher who has cerebral palsy.
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He's a wonderful preacher, and he has gone to great lengths to show the failures of the charismatic teaching, especially regarding the miracles of healing.
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And he goes to these meetings where they are having these big-time healing things.
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He's been pushed to the side.
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He's been put in areas where they don't let the really sick people up on stage because they don't want to be embarrassed when they're not really healed.
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You know, those things do happen.
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This is not something that's made up.
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They really do have these people, and the sad thing, people like back when Katharine Coleman was a big, I don't know if you guys know who Katharine Coleman was.
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She was the proto-Benny Hinn.
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You remember Katharine Coleman? She was sort of the proto-Benny Hinn back in the day.
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People would come and line up to hear her speak, line up, and there would be all these people in these wheelchairs, and they would just be begging to get up on the chancel with her, begging to get up on the stage with her, and she would pull up the people who had ringing in their ears or a sore elbow, and they would, woo, they're healed, but the guy with no legs, he's out of luck, you know, because we just can't do anything about him.
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And so she would go walking off.
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She'd walk right by these people without, you know, having mocked them with her false teaching and false healing.
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It's a shame, and it still happens today.
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It still happens at Benny Hinn's crusades, happens at Todd Bentley's crusades.
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These guys are nutbars, and we know it, and the sad thing is, though, they're holding, these people have one last hope at healing, and this is all they got.
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You know, they're like the African native who goes to the shaman to have that miracle done, and the shaman does the little trick, slide of hand, where he pulls a chicken gizzard out of his stomach, and he says, well, here's what was causing your problem, and now you're healed, and then the guy dies two days later.
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You know, there's a little trick they do where they take a chicken gizzard, and they hide it in their hand, and they pretend they're pulling it out of your body so they can say, oh, there's your tumor.
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It's not limited to shaman in Africa, either.
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It's been done by false faith healers right here in America.
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It's a sham, and it's a shame.
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So I take great issue with people who misinterpret Scripture.
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So I've made a claim, I've said they misinterpret it, so I need to interpret it so that we don't just sit and wonder, what does it mean? He says, but if anyone lacks wisdom, the wisdom for what? The wisdom for dealing with trials.
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That is the context.
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That is the wisdom here.
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This is not a generic wisdom.
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This is also not telling you, hey, if you need the wisdom to work at NASA, just pray, and God'll grant you 100 more IQ points, and then you can work at NASA, you know? That's, again, that's the type of foolishness that gets read into this passage.
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It's not what it's talking about.
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What it's saying is, you are being called to something difficult.
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You're being called to actually take joy in difficulty.
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You're called to have joy in tribulation.
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You're called to look at your tribulation as a blessing, and that is beyond you.
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That requires wisdom from God, and if any of you lacks that wisdom, let him ask of God.
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Now, I'm not ever at liberty to change scripture, but I am gonna add a little key standard version here for just a second.
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I'm gonna say this.
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It says, if any of you lacks wisdom, I'm gonna say, since we all lack wisdom, we need to all heed what this is saying.
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James is, again, fully correct in what he's saying, but I think at the same time, every one of us could say there are times where we lack wisdom.
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There are times where we can't see the forest for the trees when it comes to our pain and our suffering and our trials.
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All we see is this trial, and we can't see how it fits into the greater movement of our life and how God is moving.
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We can't see it because we're blinded by this one thing.
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So he says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask who? God.
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That, to me, seems the simplest, most basic thing in the world.
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If you are having trouble dealing with a trial in your life, who should you go to? God.
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You see, that's a simple thing.
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James is not hitting us with something that's hard to understand or even hard to grasp.
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He's saying, if you're having trouble getting through these trials, ask God and know this, God, who gives generously and without reproach.
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Now, the word reproach there, I spent a little time, I did a little word study, that's why I had to go grab my notes earlier.
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The word reproach there is something that we don't often think about.
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It's not a word we use, you know, you don't normally say, I was speaking to someone and they spoke to me with great reproach.
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You know, that's not a normal thing, but you would say, if you were talking to someone, you said, man, I spoke to Miss Jackie and she was mean to me.
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Yeah, I'll use your example because you're right in front of me.
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Or I spoke to Brother Rob and he was rude to me.
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Or I spoke to Brother Don and he was harsh with me.
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Right? He was mean, he was rude, he was harsh.
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He spoke disparagingly toward me.
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That's another big 50 cent word, but we know what it means.
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And what the text is simply saying is that when we actually stop and go to God in prayer, God does not get frustrated by our prayer.
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He does not get tired of hearing us pray.
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You know, I've heard people say, I wonder if God gets tired of hearing us pray.
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There's no way we could pray so much that God would get tired of it.
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There's no way, trust me, we don't.
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Try it.
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Try to wear God out.
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You couldn't possibly wear God out.
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I think of the story that Jesus told, the parable of the woman who came to the king seeking justice.
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And it says she came every day seeking justice.
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And he said the king finally gave her what she wanted simply because it wore the king down.
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Was Jesus making an analogy to God? No, he says how much better is God at answering our prayers than this king who can be worn down? God can't be worn down.
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We need to be consistently going to God.
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Don't think that you can ask too much for this wisdom.
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Don't think that you can ask too often for this wisdom.
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And don't think that you can ask in such a way that God would turn his back on you.
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Now that's the hard part because the next part sounds almost like that's what happens.
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Because the next part deals with how we ask.
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And I just said we can't ask in such a way that God would turn his back on you.
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But I wanna, I'm not gonna correct myself because I believe what I said, but I wanna tell you this.
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What I am saying is this.
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The asking for wisdom from God implies something.
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It implies trust.
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Trust is implied in the request because let's read now beginning at verse six.
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But he must ask in faith.
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The word piste there is the word for trust.
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It's the word for faith.
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It's, we all know what it is.
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It's the same word in John 3, 16, whosoever believeth in him will not perish.
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That's pisteun, it's derived from the same root.
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It's piste, pisteun, pisteun.
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It's to believe, to trust in God.
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And he says, we must ask in faith without what? Doubting, but let me say this.
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The word there for doubt needs to be really understood because this is where I think the greatest confusion comes.
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Because what again, going back to the charismatic movement, what is their argument? Well, the reason why you didn't get what you wanted is because you doubted, you didn't have enough faith.
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And so faith becomes like a meter.
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And it's like that, you ever see those things with the applause meter? Like the applause goes up, the people that get the most applause, they win.
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And so it's like your faith just didn't get high enough on the meter for God to actually answer your prayer.
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God does not work that way.
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I, one of my most favorite phrases in the Bible is the man who came to Jesus and he said, heal my son.
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And Jesus said, I will heal him if you believe.
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He said, I believe, help my unbelief.
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Brother Lee Frazier preached that on a Sunday night.
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Last year, I think it was fantastic message because he made the point.
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You know, we ask, we have faith, but we still, we battle doubt, don't you? We have what we call cognitive dissonance.
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And that's where our brain is.
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It has two things going on at once.
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We want this, we don't want this.
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We need this, we don't need this.
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And we sort of have this back and forth in our brain.
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And he is dealing with that.
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But here is what is more involved here.
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It is the concept, not so much of doubt.
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And this is where I take issue with the ESV and the NAS.
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And I'm gonna say the King James, I think hits it best.
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Okay, I told you I was gonna do that.
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The word for doubt is waver.
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The word for doubt is waver.
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And I'm gonna make a point of sort of proving that to you.
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Diakronomenos is the Greek word, diakronomenos.
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Dia means through, I think of like diameter to go through something, dia.
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Krina is judgment, right? The person who is diakronomenos, the word here, it means to make a distinction or to discriminate about something.
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And let me just give you a few scripture verses to help you see how it's used in other places.
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Luke, when he's writing Acts, Acts 11, 12, it says, and the spirit told me to go with them.
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Remember, Peter is talking about going to the Gentiles.
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And he said, and I am to make no distinction.
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Same root word, diakronomenos.
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I am not to make any distinction, okay? I'm to go to Jew and Gentile the same, no distinction.
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Acts 15, nine, and he made no distinction between us and them.
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Again, Paul's talking about Jews and Gentiles.
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He says, there's to be no distinction between us and them.
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Romans chapter four, verse 20, no unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God.
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The wavering there is going back and forth from one thing to another.
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Romans 14, 23, but whosoever doubts is condemned if he eats because he is not eating from faith.
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This is talking about the person who is not, he says there's this food that he's not supposed to eat, but it's not because the Bible makes it wrong, but because his heart is wrong and he can't eat this thing.
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And so what does he say? He says, I can't do it in good faith.
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Even though the scripture doesn't say it's not wrong, I don't have firm conviction that I can eat it.
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So if I'm doubting that I should eat it, if I'm wavering back and forth, I can't.
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And finally, in 1 Corinthians 4, 7, if you just, I don't know if you guys are writing this down, who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? The word different there or distinct.
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So having said all that, I hope I haven't confused you because I want to go back now to James one.
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He says, but he must ask in faith without doubting for the one who doubts doubts or wavers is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
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How is it we see this word being used here? Well, the idea is this.
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We can't have one foot in one side and one foot in the other side and constantly be rocking back and forth.
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We need to stand firmly planted on the promise of God.
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If we want to have the wisdom to deal with trials, we have got to step into faith that God actually will see us through this trial.
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If we are constantly saying, well, maybe he will, maybe he won't, maybe he will, maybe we won't, maybe he will, maybe we're never going to have peace and we're never going to have joy.
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The only way to have the joy is to step out and say, yes, God's got this.
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And I'm not gonna go back and forth.
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I'm not gonna think he does sometimes and he doesn't sometimes, but the only way that I'm gonna have joy is if I trust that he does.
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So it's, when we think of doubting, I think what we often think of is we think of like when we sit around and we think, well, you know, I wonder if the world really is 7,000, maybe it's 8,000 years.
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Maybe it's 10,000 years old.
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Maybe I don't know.
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You know, that's something we've talked about, right? The age of the earth.
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Or maybe I don't know exactly how to understand Romans chapter seven because man, that's a difficult passage and people who are godly men have looked at it in two different ways and I don't know for sure.
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And I kind of doubt that I'm absolutely 100% correct, right? Is that the doubting that he's talking about here? No, that's being honest with my intellectual understanding of things.
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And I'm not wavering.
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I know where I stand on this, but I don't know for certain that I'm exactly correct.
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And I know there have been men who have thought they were correct and were wrong.
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What he's saying is he's talking about our trust.
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We either stand on the trust of God or we waver in and out of trust.
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And the only way we're going to have peace in the storm is when we stand firm on our conviction that God will see us through.
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And he goes on to give us the actual picture of this when he says, for that man, who's that man? That man who is wavering is like he's tossed by the wind and for that man ought not to expect that he'll receive anything from the Lord.
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Being a double-minded man, that's an interesting word.
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That's actually a word that we believe James coined because it's not found anywhere else in scripture and really in any of other literature.
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It actually means double-souled.
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It's diposuchos is the, posuchos is the word for your soul.
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How many of you have ever heard of the word psyche? You know the word psyche and it's spelled P-S-Y-C-H-E, right? Well, that comes from the Greek word posuchos, which is where we get the word for soul or mind.
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And here, if you look down at the very bottom of the page, the second word where it's got the number eight down there, the first word is on air and that is referencing that he is a man and then it's diposuchos.
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Diposuchos means double-minded or you could say double-souled, but ultimately this is a guy who cannot firmly stand on the promise of God but he's constantly going back and forth.
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And now here's how this works out practically.
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Let's say I go to God and I say, God, I really need your help dealing with this issue, this trial, I need wisdom for dealing with this trial.
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Your word tells me exactly what to do.
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Your word is very clear as to what I wanna do.
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Or your word is very clear on what I should do, but I don't wanna do that.
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So God, give me something else.
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Now, don't you stand there like you ain't never done that, like you ain't never thought.
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The Bible is very clear what I should do, but I'm a double-minded man because while I'm asking for God's wisdom, I'm not listening to God's word.
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Instead, I want him to tell me what I wanna hear rather than listening to what he already has said.
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That's double-mindedness.
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And you say, well, wait a minute, I'm guilty.
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We're all guilty at some point and that's what we need to repent of.
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That's what James is telling us here.
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There are times when we call out for wisdom from God, he's already given it to us in his word, but we're just not willing to stand on that truth.
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That's hard.
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So I think that the person who is unstable in all his ways, the reference here in the scripture, is the person who is constantly saying, God, give me wisdom, and he's not trusting in that wisdom.
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He's not standing firm on what God has said or what God has commanded.
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He instead, he still wants to go out here and have his cake and eat it too.
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There was a good illustration, Alistair Begg preached on this.
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I know you like Alistair Begg, I throw that out there.
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And he said, you know, we have this thing within us where we want something, but we don't want it.
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He says, you can't pray over here and play over here.
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This is a quote from Alistair Begg.
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He says, you can't play over here and pray over here.
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Meaning you're over here saying, God, I don't want to have these lustful thoughts, but I'm still gonna do this.
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You see, I'm praying over here, but I'm playing over here.
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That's the double-mindedness that James is saying.
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I don't want to overindulge in whatever this is, but yet I'm still gonna keep going.
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I'm still gonna keep doing it.
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And that's that double-mindedness.
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We ask for one thing, but we want something else.
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That's double-mindedness.
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Say, God, I know this relationship is bad, take it away, but I really don't want you to take it away.
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God, I know this habit is bad, I want you to take it away, but I really don't want you to, not today.
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What was it, Augustine, who said, Lord, make me pure, but just not yet.
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That's double-mindedness.
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And that's what James is addressing.
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He's addressing, he said, if you really want the wisdom to deal with these trials, you've got to first understand that it takes true trust in God, which means a forsaking of yourself.
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We don't want to do that.
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We don't want to do that, and that's what's hard.
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All right, well, now that we've gone through, we've sought to understand the text and the words being used, let's look at the application.
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This is on the back of your sheet.
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I'm gonna give you a little sentences tonight.
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I didn't want to give you just single blanks, but I wanted to give you a little sentences to write, so I hope that that's not totally terrible.
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The first one, joy in trials depends on possessing a type of wisdom which only God can provide.
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If you are going to get through your trials in joy, it's going to take a wisdom that you don't have naturally.
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Number two, having a right attitude towards trials can be difficult.
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Everybody say amen.
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Amen.
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Which is why we must ask for God's help.
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We must, we have to ask for God's help.
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We cannot assume to have this ability within us.
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It's just not there.
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Thirdly, the wisdom we most need in our trials is the wisdom to trust God through the trial.
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Remember what I said earlier about seeing the forest for the trees? We focus so much on the trial, we don't see that God has promised us one thing.
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I will cause all things to work together for the good of those who love me and are called according to my purpose.
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That's James 8, 28, but spoken from God's perspective.
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I will cause all things to work together for good.
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And yet when we're standing there knee deep in trial, we don't think that God's going to be able to work this out for good.
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And so in that moment, we're vacillating.
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We've got to stand in trust.
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And I tell you what, I'm preaching the choir here.
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I ain't perfect.
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Y'all know that.
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I'm telling you, this is what James is saying to all of us.
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You're leaving because I'm not perfect? Okay, I understand.
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All right, number four.
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Go ahead.
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Yes, I think that the way that that verse is often, it's often missed, this is what they say.
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They'll say, all things work together for good.
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Stop, not true.
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The vast majority of everything in the world that works together is working together for the bad, for unbelievers.
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Ultimately, it is death upon death.
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It is raining judgment upon them.
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And ultimately, they're going to die and go to hell.
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So for them, it's going to go from bad to worse.
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But even for Christians.
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Yeah, yeah, it's all things work together.
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That means every pain, every suffering, every heartache, every trial, every loss, every turmoil, every tribulation is going to work together for the good of those who love the Lord.
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Not that it's all going to be good.
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It's all going to work together for good.
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Ultimately, in the end, we will be able to look back at our life, just like many of us can look back at 20 years ago and say, yes, this trial happened and it brought me out and it caused this.
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Well, at the end of our life, when we're finally faced before God and we're able to see our lives as they truly were, seeing them from his perspective and the sanctified perspective where we no longer have sin, we no longer have these bodies of flesh, but we have a new body and a new mind and a new understanding, we're able to look at our life and say, yes, God did this and it was good.
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When at the time we could see no good in it.
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So, fourthly, wavering between trust and doubt will cause us to lose confidence when we need it most.
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Wavering between trust and doubt will cause us to lose confidence when we need it most.
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James is saying you got to pray for wisdom to get through these trials and you got to trust that God's going to give you the wisdom.
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If you're constantly wavering, you're not going to get nothing because you're constantly going to be going back and forth.
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You got to stand on God, brother.
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You cannot stand with one foot in the pool and one foot out.
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You got a cannonball right in that sucker.
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You got to trust that he's there and he is the one who is sovereignly causing it all to work together for the good of those who love him.
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Finally, number five, and we'll close.
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We need to keep in mind that God, this is a long one, desires to be trusted and gives without frustration.
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He desires to be trusted and he gives without frustration.
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It's interesting to talk about God desiring something for God is the sovereign of the universe and the Bible says he gets what he wills in the sense that he's not frustrated by anything.
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But at the same time, what does he call us to do? He calls us to trust him.
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He calls us to put our faith in him.
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That is what he wills for us.
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He desires that we trust in him and he gives to us without being frustrated.
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The more we pray, the more we trust, the more it pleases him because he never gets frustrated at our requests, but always stands ready to love us and give us what we need.
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So I pray that this message has been a comfort to you.
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Maybe if you're dealing with a trial or maybe you will be soon at some point, I'm sure we all will at some point deal with a trial, that this will help you to remember that we're called in our trials to ask God for wisdom and trust that he'll give it to us, not waver back and forth, but to stand on his promises.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth of the word.
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I pray that it's been encouraging to your people.
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I pray that this has been a faithful understanding of what this has to say to us tonight.
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And I pray that in the weeks to come, that we'll continue to see how James expounds this idea of joy in trials, expounds this idea of what we're to do as believers.
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And I pray, Lord, that you'll bless us in our understanding that your Holy Spirit ultimately would be the teacher.
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In Jesus' name we pray, amen.