Persevering Through Trials

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Rob Konold; James 1:1-11 Persevering Through Trials

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Good morning.
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Good morning, Recast. Hi, I'm Rob Knold. I'm a former elder here.
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It's been a privilege to serve as an elder, and I'm now off the elder board for the first time. But it's my privilege to preach in Don's absence this morning.
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I am not Don, so if you're looking for Don, you'll be disappointed. But if you're looking for hearing
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God's word this morning, I hope you'll be encouraged. I'll be preaching this morning out of God's word. We kind of hold the book, this
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Bible, this book called the Bible, God's word, we hold it very high at Recast.
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The T in Recast stands for truth. I don't know if you knew that. We talk a lot about the acronym
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Recast here, and we want to continually preach God's word. We want to stick very closely to God's word, because this is the almighty
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God of the universe, his word to us. This is his way of communicating to us, so we really want to stick close to his word.
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This morning, as a way of introduction, I'll be preaching from the book of James. This is one of my favorite books in the
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Bible, the book of James, and I hope you enjoy it. It's an epistle, a letter written by James to the 12 tribes of the dispersion.
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It's an interesting book. I don't know if you've ever read James. Some have compared it to Proverbs in the
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Old Testament, because Proverbs is a wisdom book, and James, in many ways, also is a wisdom book.
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It gives a lot of practical advice and insight. Some have talked about it as like a string of pearls on a necklace, and so each pearl has its unique beauty, its unique truth.
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But I think actually James is interesting, because I think those pearls are actually all connected together into themes.
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There are themes that weave through James, and we're going to be digging into some of those themes this morning as we present the message.
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Themes such as wisdom, how do we get it? Where does it come from? Or suffering, why do we experience suffering?
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What's it there for? How should we respond to it? There's other themes, such as the rich and the poor, that keeps coming up in the book of James.
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How should we respond, whether we're rich or we're poor, and how should we respond to those situations?
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So I hope that you are excited about the book of James this morning. I have one more comment about James as we introduce it, and that is that it's a very practical book.
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You're going to find that it gives a lot of practical explanations about Christian living. One thing James does not get into is a lot of details around who
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Christ is, and it doesn't give details around salvation, and how is one saved, or end times, or things like that.
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So some have criticized the book of James, in fact, for those reasons. But I think what you'll find as you dig into James is that it is a very great book on practical
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Christian living, and more than that, it actually explains who God is. I think all of the
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Bible does that. As you read the Bible, I hope that you're always learning about who God is. The book of James, in particular, really helps us understand who
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God is, how He works in the world, what He desires of us in our lives as Christians, and how we should respond to Him.
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So the author of James is pretty straightforward.
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I don't think you're going to be struggling so much to understand what he means. I think you're going to be struggling more to live out what he says.
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So as we dig into the book of James here, I'm going to read from James 1 -11 to introduce the service today, and then we'll worship together, and then we'll come back to preaching.
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So James 1 -11. By the way, if you don't have a Bible, feel free to raise your hand.
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We have Bibles in the back. I see Mark Klein here just eager to hand some out. So we'd love to give you a
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Bible. If you have a Bible app, this is the time. Pull your phone out. You don't hear that a lot in church.
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Pull out your phone. But feel free to do that. And if you don't have the app, a Bible app, I'd encourage you to download one.
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Why not? It's a good idea. Have the Bible with you at all times. But we're going to read from James 1 -11.
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James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes in the dispersion.
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Greetings. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.
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For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
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If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him.
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But let him ask in faith with no doubting. For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
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For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double -minded man, unstable in all his ways.
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Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation.
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Because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls and its beauty perishes.
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So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.
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Let's pray now as the Dave and the worship band come to lead us in worship. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this passage from James.
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God, I thank you that we can reflect on your word, the word of God, and be challenged by it and be humbled by it.
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And Father, as we come to worship this morning, my prayer, Father, is that we would not be distracted by just the busyness of the week and the many thoughts in our minds,
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God, but that we would be able to set aside those distractions and focus on you. You are amazing,
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God. You are almighty. You are powerful. You are our rock and our fortress.
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You sustain us and you strengthen us, God. And you're worthy of all our praise.
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You're worthy of all glory. And so, God, I pray you would be glorified this morning. I pray as Dave and the band come to lead us in worship now,
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Father, that our hearts would just be united with them in giving praise to you because you're worth all of it.
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In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. You may be seated. Thanks, Dave.
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Thanks, band. Appreciate your leading us in worship this morning. I was just encouraged in worship.
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I hope you guys were as well. We don't worship together just as a routine, a thing to do.
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It's an important part of, I think, corporately just praising God together, you know, and aligning our hearts.
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And it's right. It's a good thing to do. And I just appreciate the band's consistency and willingness to serve us in that way.
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Today is my goal to examine these first 11 verses of the book of James.
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And I'm so excited to preach, but my confidence is in the word of God. It really is. You know,
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I prayed and prepared, but I'm so excited to bring God's word because I believe it has the power to change us.
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It has the power to speak to our hearts. And it's really the Holy Spirit speaking. It really is. So that's my prayer this morning, that God would speak to you and that he can use me in that process.
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So from an outline standpoint, I just like to lay out what we're going to be covering here. It's on the slide.
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Introduction is verse one. And then James jumps right in verses two to four. He talks about the topic of suffering and then five through eight, wisdom.
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And then finally, verses nine to 11, he talks about the rich and the poor. So these are the topics we'll be going through.
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And again, my goal here is to not just explain those verses, but also
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I think show how they connect. There is a connection. There is a theme and they do tie together. And I'm excited to dig into that this morning.
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So starting off with verse one this morning, James chapter one, verse one, James introduces himself, the author of the book, right?
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James. Well, which James? There's a number of James referenced in the
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Bible. You may remember James and John, the sons of Zebedee, the sons of thunder. They were disciples of Jesus.
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And this James in particular was a fisherman. Well, the James that was a disciple actually died shortly after Christ's death and resurrection.
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And he is not believed to be the author of this book. So who wrote this? Clearly it's James, but which
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James? There's also James, the brother of Jesus. And most scholars agree that it's that James who wrote this book.
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Although the book itself doesn't clearly state his relationship to Christ. As you know, it says he's a servant of God.
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It is believed that this is the author and there's a lot of supporting evidence for that. Scholars pretty much unanimously agree on that.
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What do we know about this James, the brother of Jesus? First of all, it's interesting that just last week in Matthew chapter 13, verse 55,
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Don read and preached from a passage that referenced James, the brother of Jesus. Do you remember that? He is one of the four brothers that's listed and he's the oldest brother after Jesus.
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And so it's that brother who is writing this book to us today. Think about it.
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He saw Jesus. He grew up in the same house, saw Jesus doing the mundane things of life, lived with him day in and day out.
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It's hard to imagine what would that have been like to know Jesus every day of your life.
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And he saw all of Jesus' upbringing yet did not believe.
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It says in John chapter seven that Jesus' own brothers didn't believe in him. You may remember that.
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So here's a brother. He doesn't believe in Jesus. So then how is it that he's writing this book to us?
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Well, after Christ's death and resurrection, it says Jesus appeared to many people.
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It says specifically that he appeared to James and to the other brothers.
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So he appeared to this James and perhaps that's the point where James placed his faith and trust in Christ.
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But the bottom line is he became a leader in the early church. James wasn't just a marginal believer here.
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He was the authority, the leader. And in fact, Paul, it says in the New Testament, he goes to Jerusalem, specifically seeks out
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James and the other leaders in the church. And so we know that James in Galatians chapters one and two is referred to as a leader in the early church.
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So I think it's just interesting to ponder this for a second as we start into this book. The brother of Jesus, the author of this book, initially did not believe in Jesus as a
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Messiah, later puts his faith in Christ, and he ultimately died a martyr's death, standing up for that faith that he had in Christ, his own brother, the
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Messiah, the Lord and God. And that's the one who's writing to us today. So it's interesting perspective.
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Here in the intro, it's interesting that he also mentions that he's the servant of Christ.
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So if you were introducing yourself and you were writing a letter, how would you introduce yourself?
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Maybe you'd try to build up your credibility, right? I'm the leader of the church in Jerusalem. I'm the brother of Christ.
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Instead, he says, I'm the servant of Christ. And the word servant, doulos, actually is a word for bondservant or slave.
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So he's actually saying, I'm the slave of Christ. And that's his introduction, very humble introduction that James is giving in this letter.
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Who is the letter written to? It says very clearly the 12 tribes of the dispersion or the 12 tribes scattered among the nations.
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This is either a literal reference to the 12 tribes who literally were dispersed among the nations.
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You may remember Assyria attacked the Northern kingdom, 10 tribes dispersed, and then Babylon attacked the
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Southern kingdom and two tribes dispersed. Then they came back, but many stayed dispersed. So there were 12 tribes dispersed among the nations.
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It's possible that is the intention. But many scholars also believe that this could be a symbolic statement about the church because we are all spiritual descendants of Abraham.
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We are also considered descendants therefore. So it could mean that he's referring to the entire church, the multiracial church, both
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Jews and Gentiles. So really the bottom line is I don't want to get hung up on that technicality. I read a bunch of commentary and they're pretty much equally distributed between those two views.
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The important thing is James is writing to believers, Jews, or perhaps
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Jews and Gentiles that were living in first century Roman empire. Think about that.
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What were they going through, these people in the early church? It was not an easy time to be a
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Christian. There was persecution, there were trials. And so it's interesting to me as we move into verse two now, very first thing
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James jumps into is he starts talking about trials and tribulations. So let's pick it up there.
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Verse two, James chapter one, verse two, he talks about trials.
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He says, consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds.
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And this early church certainly was facing trials of many kinds. They probably were facing persecution, physical, like real persecution, property being seized, being ostracized from society, losing jobs, perhaps even being killed.
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We know there are many martyrs in the coming years in the early church. Our trials might seem kind of petty compared to that.
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I don't know how you feel about your own trials today, but we do have trials, don't we?
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We do have trials. We have hardships and difficulties that we go through. Trials come from a variety of things, life circumstances.
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They come from the choices we make. Sometimes we make bad choices and live with those consequences.
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They come from evil things, wrong things that people do to us. That is real. That is real trial and persecution.
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They come from Satan himself. Just ask Job about that. And God allows trials into our lives.
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God does not tempt anyone. It says later in James chapter 1, God does not tempt, but He does allow trials into our lives.
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He allows trials into Job's life. He allowed testing and a trial in Abraham's life regarding the sacrifice of Isaac.
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So we know that we experience trial and hardship. And you know, on a personal note,
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I know I have experienced trials too. And I'll tell you that I don't think the trials that I'm going through now are not necessarily the ones
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I thought I would have, and they're not necessarily the ones I would choose. Then maybe that's true for you as well.
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Sometimes trials just knock you out where you don't expect it, and they hit you where it hurts. So the amazing thing is
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James says we should be joyful in those trials. Now this is not the first thing you want to hear,
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I don't think, when you're going through a trial. And I would not recommend that you go up to your friend going through a trial and just smack them in the face with this verse, okay?
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Not the best approach. Trials really do hurt.
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They're painful. They knock the wind out of us. They're not fun. So please be compassionate to those around you going through trial.
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But James does say we should be joyful. So what does he mean? I don't think he means the super happy, giddy kind of good feeling that you get.
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I think he means a deep -seated, solid, strong confidence in the goodness of God.
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The reality that God is working through those trials in our lives for His glory and for my good.
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It's just really hard to have that perspective in trial. I'll admit it's hard for me as well. So I've come to the conclusion that this command to consider it pure joy when you're facing trials of many kinds has got to be a supernatural thing.
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And that's where I would look at Galatians chapter 5 where it says, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.
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And that joy in Galatians chapter 5, the fruit of the
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Spirit is God working in us to bring about the joy that we need to have in the midst of trial.
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By the way, as you read Scripture, I don't know if you've noticed this, but I would encourage you to read Scripture, first of all. Read the
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Bible. Read it consistently. It is God's truth and God's Word to us. But I would just say as you notice things repeating themselves, themes popping out at you, that is a real good thing to notice.
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And jot that down. I would encourage you to do that. For example, this theme of having joy in the midst of trials is one of those themes.
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It shows up in 1 Peter chapter 4. It says, Peter says pretty much the same thing.
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And it looks like we're... Oh, we got the slide to advance. Fantastic. It says, basically
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Peter says, expect trials. They're going to come. And he says also to rejoice in them.
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And in Philippians 4 .4, it says rejoice in always, basically in every circumstance, and that would include trials.
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So we see this theme of rejoicing in the midst of trials repeated by different authors in the Bible in different places.
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And it just reinforces that message for us. Well, verse 3 in James chapter 1, it gives us a logical progression.
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James doesn't just tell us to be joyful in trials. He gives us some reasons. And so let's follow his reasoning.
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He explains, we should rejoice in suffering because the testing of your faith develops steadfastness or perseverance.
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The Greek word for steadfastness or perseverance is hypomene. And hypomene basically means enduring or remaining under the challenges
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God allots in life. Enduring or remaining under the challenges
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God allots in life. So how are you doing at enduring the challenges
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God has put in your life? Do you want to escape out from under those difficulties?
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I know that's my tendency. I think it's human nature. We want to get away from the pain, avoid it.
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But the truth is we need to remain in difficult circumstances if we're ever going to develop perseverance.
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I'm not recommending you seek out hardship, by the way. Don't take away from this that I need to go find hardship.
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I need to go seek it out. God will bring it to you. Trust him. He'll do that for you. Just wait on God.
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But when you do experience trial, I just want you to think about this and know that God is allowing it in your life and he's allowing it for a reason.
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Another way to think about this is if you never experienced trial in your life, you would never learn perseverance.
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You would never learn and grow. So it's really a mercy of God that he gives these things to us.
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Perseverance is only developed through experience. In verse 4,
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James goes on to explain that perseverance must finish its work so that we can be mature and complete.
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As we just mentioned, that word to finish its work really reminds me of we gotta stick with it.
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We gotta persevere through. No shortcuts. And we're talking about the Christian life. It's just the journey of faith.
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The whole point of this, by the way, is to grow up in Christ -likeness, to grow up in maturity in Christ.
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It happens through trials and difficulties, so we should be grateful for those. And we should be joyful. It all ties back into that theme of joy in the midst of trials as we endure and persevere.
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I'm just thankful that God does care enough about us. He loves us enough to give us trials.
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I know if it was my choice, I would avoid them. But he loves us enough to put us there. I remember this specific passage in James.
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When I was in college, I remember thinking about this passage a lot. I went to college at the
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Naval Academy. The first years you're there, you're called a plebe.
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I don't know if you've heard of the term plebe. It comes from plebeian, which is like the lowest caste of society.
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And I heard an expression that makes sense to me. If there's a totem pole, and you know, where am I on the totem pole?
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Well, the plebe is the dirt under the totem pole. That's basically what they think of you when you're there the first year.
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And the first summer is kind of like boot camp for those who've been through military experience. It's a lot of physical and mental stuff they throw at you.
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I think it's basically sanctioned torture, no waterboarding. I don't remember any at least, but they put you through a lot of stuff.
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In fact, I remember being in what they called the front -leaning rest for quite some time. That's a push -up position, if you didn't know.
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And they have you do a lot of push -ups, but then they would just leave you there. And it seemed like for hours.
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I don't know how long. And I must have been developing some good core muscles during that time.
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But at any rate, it was a hardship. And I remember thinking about this passage and thinking, how am
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I supposed to be joyful in this? I really struggled with that. And yet I think I did learn through my experiences at the academy some things.
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I learned that I really did need God to endure some of these challenges in life. I think my faith in God grew.
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And I realized that sometimes these hardships and trials in our life, actually, we're more sensitive and more open to God speaking to us when we're going through those harder things in life.
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I also noticed that I was getting a little bit stronger. I did. There's muscle difference. And I got to tell you,
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Dave Bunt is maybe the physical training expert here, but I do know that muscles cannot grow without being torn.
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You have to give resistance to those muscles. It has to hurt. You have to push through that, persevere through that pain, and tear the muscle.
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And then the muscle regrows stronger. The only way to get stronger muscles is to go through the pain.
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And I think it's the same thing spiritually. If I can find my place in my notes, it is the same thing spiritually.
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The only way to mature and grow in your faith, and I think of this as kind of your spiritual muscle, is to persevere through the trials and tribulations in life.
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We need that in our life. So what difficulty are you going through right now?
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Is it a loss of a job, or maybe discouragement or depression? That can be a real thing.
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A loss of a loved one, or maybe just loss of friends, and you're lonely. Perhaps it's just frustration at work or in school, not getting the success that you long for.
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My question for you this morning is not so much, how are you going to fix it? How are you going to make it better?
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How are you going to solve all your problems? I'm not going to go there this morning. My question is, how are you responding to it, whatever trial you have in your life?
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Are you accepting it as a trial from God? Are you persevering through and not giving up?
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And are you growing as a result? You know, I hope you are. I know God is teaching us things.
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The goal of the Christian life, by the way, is not the fat, cat, easy living that we might like.
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I don't know where that picture came from. I didn't pick it out. But it's not that at all.
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The goal of the Christian life is to grow up in Christlikeness, to grow up in maturity.
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That's the goal of the Christian life. So James is going to give us some help in how to do that.
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That's the next part here that we're going to read. So let's turn ahead to verse 5. If anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask
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God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. James jumps right into the topic of wisdom.
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And I do not think this is a random sequence. I'd submit to you that this wisdom that James is talking about here is critical to recognizing trials for what they are in the previous chapter.
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We have to respond correctly to trials in order to recognize them and actually have joy in the midst of trials.
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And that takes wisdom. So I think that's the connection between this and the previous passage. By the way, have you ever met someone who used to attend church and has maybe drifted away from the faith, and they're not attending church, and they're not seeking
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God? And a lot of times I've had conversations with those people, and I find that something happened.
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There is an event that triggered it. There's something happened in their life, a trial of some type, typically, something wrong done to them, some sin, some issue, some problem.
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Trials don't guarantee growth. Trials don't guarantee it. It's in the response that we have.
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We have got to recognize trials for what they are and respond correctly to them. And that's where wisdom is so critical.
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We desperately need wisdom to correctly respond to trials instead of growing bitter. And I think that's why
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James is challenging his readers to ask for wisdom. There's a couple of things that jump out to me in verse 5 as you read that verse.
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The first thing is simply the posture of the person asking for wisdom. It says, if anyone lacks wisdom, the person has to recognize that they lack wisdom.
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Do you recognize you lack wisdom? I think sometimes the pride in our heart doesn't really want to ask for help.
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We don't want to admit that we have a need, but we all need wisdom. Do you recognize that?
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Do you ask for it by prayer? So you have to recognize that you need wisdom. Then secondly, you need to take a step.
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You need to ask for it. Prayer is simply asking God, opening up the door, allowing Christ into your life.
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In this case, asking for wisdom and allowing Him to give that to you. Don't resist
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God. You know, when you're in the midst of trial, why rail against God? You know, I'd encourage you to pray and be honest with God, but open up the door to Him and allow
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Him to speak to you and give you the wisdom you need in the midst of your trial. Second thing is the nature of the
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God who we are asking. In verse 5, this is literally translated, let him ask of the one giving
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God. So God here is described as a giving God. It's a God who gives generously.
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And later in James verse 17, we're not going to get that far today, but it is described as God, every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
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Father of heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows. God is a giving
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God. If you think about it, everything we have is a gift from God.
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Everything. The fundamental relationship between creator and created. He's the giver, we're the receiver.
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He gives us sun, rain, crops to grow, food, air to breathe, bodies that live.
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You know, I mean, everything we have, He sustains our life. It's all given from God. It's all a gift.
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He is a giving God by nature. We are the beneficiaries.
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So I would encourage you to ask God, ask God for wisdom. Moving on to verse 6, it says, oh, but when you ask, you must believe and not doubt because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind.
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Asking must be done in faith. Faith and belief are required, but what does faith mean?
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Later in this book, James does a magnificent job, I think, of describing what faith is.
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He says true faith is your beliefs in action. True faith is demonstrated by what you do.
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So in other words, here's an illustration, not in my notes, but if you're going to go out on a branch and say,
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I have faith, I believe that branch is going to hold me, and you walk it, you walk out of that branch, let's say the branch is two feet off the ground, no big deal, but let's say that branch is 50 feet up in the air.
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You could say, I believe that branch will hold my weight, but if you go out on the end of that branch, that's real faith.
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Do you see the difference? Faith is demonstrated by what we do, especially when push comes to shove.
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Do you actually put your faith into action?
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Well, what is the opposite of faith? Doubting. And what does doubting look like? Well, fortunately,
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James paints us a nice word picture. Doubting looks like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind.
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Wind kicks up, it moves the surface of water, it creates waves, it pushes them around.
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Have you ever felt like a wave getting pushed around by forces around you?
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That is what a doubting person feels like. And verse 7 simply states that doubt does not lead to answered prayer.
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Faith leads to answered prayer. And I think we already knew that, but James is just reminding us, ultimately,
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God decides how to answer your prayer specifically. Our part is simply to pray, to put our faith in God.
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Simply pray and put our faith in God. Verse 8 goes a little bit farther with this doubting person, and it goes farther and describes the doubting person as a double -minded man, unstable in all he does.
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Bottom line, lack of faith creates instability in your life. It sounds like a house without a foundation.
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You can build a beautiful house. You can invest all kinds of expense, buy the best materials, do the best construction ever, and invest all kinds.
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And the problem is if there's not a good foundation under it, what's going to happen? It's going to start to move on you, and ultimately, the whole thing can come down.
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It can collapse. And what a waste. It's the same thing in your life. If you don't build on a solid foundation, the foundation of Jesus Christ, you don't have a stable life.
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You might think for a time, no big deal. I'll be all right. I'm good. Leave me alone.
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Let me do it my way. And you might think you're doing fine. But if you make your own choices and you don't live according to God's plan,
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I think eventually a few cracks are going to show up in your walls. And what are those cracks?
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They're evidence of that bad foundation. And I'm not talking about trials and tribulations.
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We just talked about how the fact that God is going to allow trials into all of our lives. I'm talking about the cracks being telltale signs of sinful choices, wrong choices we're making, where we start to see the consequences of those in our lives.
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If we ignore those cracks, then I would submit to you that if you continue down that sinful path of rebellion against God, against a giving and loving
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God, and if you continue to reject his salvation available through Christ, then someday we are all going to experience a devastation of the entire house collapsing.
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And what is that devastation? It's death. It's eternal separation from God in hell.
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So now I'd like to move into the last section here is verses 9 through 11. It says, let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation because like a flower of the grass he will pass away.
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So now we're concluding with the rich and the poor. How does this connect to the preceding passages?
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I believe that poverty is a type of trial. It is a hardship, a difficulty, but so can wealth be a trial and a hardship.
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James is saying here that basically he's pointing out the brevity of it all.
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He's saying life is short. Life is short. Later in James, he talks about your life being like a mist or a vapor that's just here for a while and then gone.
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And I think it's the same thing here. He's saying this rich man is like a wildflower. It blossoms for a really short period of time and then it's just gone, quickly faded.
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So honestly, how many of us have wished for wealth? I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand. That'd be awkward.
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But how many have wished for wealth, wanted to be richer? I mean, if you look at the lottery, for example, there's a lot of people buying lottery tickets, you know, because the amount just keeps climbing, right?
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There's a lot of people hoping and betting on the big one, you know, want vast and amazing wealth.
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And I think that's not the only people looking for wealth. There's a lot of people who work diligently their whole life and maybe slave after building up a huge retirement account.
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And there's nothing wrong with being financially responsible, by the way. Don't misread me here. Scripture commands us to take care, care for those of our own family, taking care of our loved ones.
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It encourages us to give to others, to give generously. Giving from wealth is a good thing and using our wealth is good.
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But I'm just asking the question, what is your attitude toward your wealth?
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Are you pursuing it for your own benefit, for your own gain? You know, it's another interesting thing.
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I was watching some commercials. You've probably seen them too. Buy gold and buy silver and protect yourself against the downturn in the economy and all that stuff.
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It seems like the more wealth you accumulate, the more you try to protect that wealth.
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And so it just becomes this vicious cycle of accumulating wealth and trying to hang on to wealth.
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And here's the thing. Scripture here says you're not going to keep it.
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It says pretty clearly it's going to be gone. It says the rich man will fade away in the midst of his pursuits.
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The rich man will fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Our wealth will pass away quickly.
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The truth of the matter is whether you're rich or poor, life is brief. Life is short. It's not so much how much you have, it's the question of what is your attitude toward it and what are you doing with it.
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So regardless of your financial position, whether wealthy or poor, I would just encourage you to put your faith in the right thing.
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Put your faith in Jesus Christ. Chase after him and pursue him.
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So I'd like to conclude with three applications this morning. The three applications
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I have. Number one is what trial are you in the middle of right now? No matter what trial you're in,
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I'd encourage you, persevere. Keep going. Keep going. I don't know exactly what your
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God is doing in your life. I don't know if it feels like you're hanging on the cliff like that guy in the picture there.
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Maybe that's how you're feeling at the moment. But I know that God is good. I know that God is good.
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He is a loving Heavenly Father. He cares enough to give us trials even when we don't want them.
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And that's a good reason to be joyful in trials. Submit to what God is doing in your life today.
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Humbly ask for wisdom in the middle of that trial and then persevere through. Keep going.
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Are you driven to your knees more often these days? Are you finding that you're praying more often?
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I hope so. That's a good thing. That's a good result of trials. Dependence on God.
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So keep growing in your faith. By the way, maybe you're not struggling with difficulties or trials.
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Maybe you look at your life right now and you don't identify at all with this. You're like, man, this smooth sailing, I don't know what you're talking about.
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Things are pretty good right now. Well, first of all, praise God. Thank Him for that too.
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That's good and I'm glad. But things may not always be so easy. So I would encourage you now to prepare.
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Ask for wisdom and pray for God's strength even now to prepare you for trials that may come in the future.
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Application number two. What is your attitude toward money? Do you desire it?
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Do you think it will bring you happiness, peace, security? It might be fun for a time, but money won't last and the happiness it brings won't last.
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And it's interesting to me that even secular surveys, they interview wealthy people, people of all incomes across income brackets, and they find that there's really not much difference in happiness.
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Wealth is not bringing happiness. Even the world knows this. And yet we still chase after it for happiness.
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Don't trust in money. Don't trust in money is my second point. Are you rich in this world's eyes?
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Then give generously while you have it because it'll be gone soon. Are you poor?
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Be grateful for that circumstance as well and serve God faithfully with whatever you have.
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So finally, last application point, number three. Put your faith in God alone.
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Put your faith in God alone. Ultimately, there's only one thing that we can bank on and that's
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God. Our money, as this passage points out, is going to fail us. Our health is going to fail us.
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Man, health seems to be a real popular thing. It almost seems like we worship that in our culture today, trying to be healthy.
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And there's nothing wrong with that. Staying fit and being physically, taking care of the temple of God, the body that God's given us.
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But eventually, our health will fail us. I hate to say it. I'm getting older all the time and 45 now and I'm starting to feel it.
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This body does age and health will fail. How about beauty, strength?
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All those things just go away. There's nothing to put your faith in except for God and God alone.
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He is completely dependable. He is our rock. You know, in his wisdom, he gave salvation to us through Jesus Christ.
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He sent his own son, Jesus. God himself, part of the Trinity, came to earth, died for us, died for you and I, to purchase our salvation.
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He did that before we even existed, before we were even born. God made a way for you to get right with him so we can have a relationship with him and so we can live with him forever.
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So I'd encourage you to put your faith and trust in Christ. And he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it through those trials, he'll keep maturing you.
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So I'm done a little bit early but in a minute here we're going to take communion as we do each week here at Recast and this is a tradition that we have.
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Every week we do this. This is intentional. We want to be every week remembering what
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Christ has done for us. He died for us. His body, the cracker, and his blood, the juice, as a remembrance, as a reminder of what he did.
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It's established for us and we want to keep remembering that. So a couple of instructions this morning as we prepare for communion.
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In a minute Dave will come up and we'll hear a song and if you're a regular attender or a member or even if you're a visitor, if you've put your faith and trust in Christ and what he's done for you,
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I just encourage you to join us in taking communion. Our habit is to get in the line and take the cracker and juice back to our seat and take it at our own pace.
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But if you don't know Christ, if you're not sure of who Jesus is to you, and if you're really not sure about putting your faith and trust in him,
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I'd encourage you to just keep considering that. Reflect on the words that Dave's going to sing here in a minute and just take the song in.
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But this is a time when we remember what Christ has done for us, the amazing sacrifice he paid for us.
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So let me pray now as Dave comes to sing. Heavenly Father, I thank you for salvation.
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I thank you for rescuing us from the simple mess that we are.
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God, you forgive us when we sin over and over and, Father, we need your continual forgiveness.
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Thank you for Jesus Christ, for the sacrifice he made to cover our sin.
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Thank you, Father, for loving us. Thank you for making a plan for our lives, for giving us trials and tribulations, even the hardships,
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God, that we don't like. God, thank you for giving it to us because it makes us lean on you and it makes us grow.
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Father, my prayer is that we would grow as we persevere through trials.
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So thank you again for this sacrifice that you've made for us and help us to remember you as we come to the table today.