Sermon Transcript
be a fun summer. We’re going to start a new series today in the book of James, and James begins with trials, which is interesting. In fact, it says right up front in the book, consider it all joy when you encounter various trials. Now, I don’t know about you, but most of us don’t begin letters that way when we, you know, are writing to friends. Hey, you know all those trials you’re going through?
You should really be filled with joy for what you’re going through right now. Usually that’s not our approach. And I would say that when we think about trials in our lives, we’re not usually thinking about happiness either. I recently, as I was working on this message, knew that going into this I would probably be setting myself up for a variety of trials, as you can imagine, right? As soon as you teach on a subject, whatever that subject is, you’re going to be tested on the subject.
So just a couple of matters that came up. One had to do with a computer problem that I was having, so I called the computer service people. We have a contract with an organization. I won’t get too specific here. However, some of you that work at certain companies right now will come to me afterwards, as somebody did in the first hour, and say, I could fix that problem for you if you would change your system.
But anyway, so that’s a whole different thing. But anyway, so I called the service company. They transferred me 7 times. 7 times. Every time they say, we’ll get you to the right department.
So you’re hoping the next one’s the right department. 7 of those in a row. So 75 minutes later, seriously, my joy was not on the increase, okay? It was somewhere else at this point in time. And finally, at about 75 minutes, we began to really get the problem fixed, which was kind of nice at that point.
But my joy levels were diminished. We’ll just say it that way. And I think that oftentimes that’s how it is. Around that, we got a phone call from my oldest son who has been back from Haiti for a couple of weeks, and he said, I’m on my way to emergency. I think I might have malaria.
And if you know anything about malaria in Haiti, you don’t wanna get it, right? So that was another incident that, Potentially sucked my joy. My daughter called, who’s pregnant now, Katie. She said, I’m having a problem with my pregnancy. That was another challenge there at that moment in time.
And that evening, we got a note from our daughter-in-law. She said, I’m up and I’m having migraine headaches. Would you please pray for me? Now, I’m not telling you anything that you guys don’t go through. I don’t know what the circumstance is in your life or circumstances.
I mean, just some of you are just like, I can’t wait wait to finish this last week of school. That’s my joy sucker right now, or whatever it is that, you know, is pulling the joy out of you. So when you open the book of James up and you immediately are addressing the subject of joy, you realize, man, we’re going to talk about something that’s right where we’re living, right? Because so oftentimes when challenging circumstances come our way, we aren’t people that are counting it all joy. When we encounter various trials, are we?
James writes to a group of people that were in some pretty tough circumstances. If you’ve got your Bible open, I want you to look at it with me, James 1:1, because you kinda gotta see the context that he’s writing in in order to be able to pull this into our world today. But evidently, their joy was taking a nosedive in some kind of capacity, so James begins his letter with, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the 12 tribes scattered among the nations, greetings. And then he says, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters. So these are Christ followers.
These are people who had made an intentional decision to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, but now things have gotten rough in their life. And sometimes that’s how it happens. I don’t know if somebody told you that when you come to Christ, it doesn’t mean all of your problems are going to be eliminated. And certainly that’s not the case here. These people have come to faith in Christ.
They were in the church evidently in Jerusalem. Going really, really well until Stephen was martyred for his faith. And the result of that was the entire church scattered throughout many different nations. And so he’s writing to these Jewish believers, these Christ followers who are now living among different nations. And the first thing he says to them is, consider it joy.
Now why would he say that? Put yourself in the context. Or if you’re Assyrians who’ve lost your country and you’re running for your life, well, these guys are running for their lives. They left their homes, they left their friends, they left their families, they left their businesses, they left their possessions, and probably when they left all of that, they left behind joy. So their joy levels are low.
Maybe their anxiety levels are high. Maybe they’re depressed, they’re worried, they’re dreading what they’re going through. Maybe they’re even thinking some of the kinds of thoughts that sometimes we have when problems come into our lives. Doesn’t God care? Isn’t he a part of my life?
Doesn’t he know that I love him? I’m really trying to do all the right things. So when this book begins with this subject, I think it kind of hits home in the reality area for all of us. And I want to ask the question as we just begin the book this morning, so how is it possible to live with joy when life is anything but joyful? And that might be your circumstances today, because that’s really the question that he addresses right up front.
He wants them to know that they can live with joy even in less than joyful circumstances. I think that’s probably relevant to everybody here unless you prefer to be an angry, bitter, depressed, annoying person who a lot of times people don’t want to be around, you know, joyless kind of people. I think there’s a lot of application here in our relationship with God because it does make a difference in our relationship with God as well. And so what James does is he shows us how it’s possible to live with joy even when life is not joyful. Now, Let’s give a definition to what joy he’s talking about here, because he’s not talking about happiness, which is connected to circumstances.
But he’s talking— and I’ll give this definition— he’s talking about a state of emotional delight. So how is it possible to live with a state of emotional delight? How is it possible? Well, he tells us. He says, first of all, verses 2 to 4, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything. Now what he wants them to recall or bring to mind is something that evidently they already knew. They were in the midst of all kinds of trials, and notice that it says trials of many kinds. That’s typical of trials. They don’t just come in one package.
They come in a variety of ways. And all these different trials have hit these people, but he wants them to know something. He wants them to know that right now, first of all, their faith is being tested. And the word that’s used here for tested is a word that was used to describe the process of refining gold. Gold, this solid, was heated.
It was heated by fire, and as gold was heated by the fire, the gold would liquefy, and the impurities in the gold would rise to the surface. Those impurities were called dross. And a goldsmith, what he would do as these impurities rose to the surface is he would skim the dross off of the surface, and they said that he would then look into the gold, and if he could see his reflection in the gold without any impurities, he knew he had pure gold. And what James is saying here is that trials will do the same thing in our life. Oftentimes we’re tested, we’re under the fire by trials, and these trials are such so that we become somebody that we’re not right now, so that Jesus— so that the reflection of Jesus could be seen in his Christ followers.
But he says, in order for that to happen, We’ve got to let faith produce perseverance. We’ve got to be faithful in the midst of our trials, not running away from God but to God, and persevering or staying in that circumstance, not running away from it necessarily. I mean, if there’s a way to get out of it, fine, but oftentimes there isn’t. It’s out of our control. And we let that perseverance continue its work so that we become mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
You see the picture? God is desiring that we become something that we’re not, something that we could become. And so James’ first point for experiencing joy in the midst of less than joyful circumstances is to focus on what God is doing in us, or focus on what God is doing in you. He’s put us in a testing circumstance. He’s asking us to trust him by faith, to endure, to persevere in that.
And the ultimate fruit of this is maturity in our lives, but that maturity is the result of endurance. Now, I work out. I know it doesn’t look like it, but I actually do. And when I go to the gym, oftentimes I will watch people that are working with trainers. And whenever I see them working with a trainer, I always think to myself, I never wanna do that on a regular basis.
From time to time, I’ll work with a trainer, you know, just to get a new program or something, change things up or something like that. But usually it would be like a one-shot type of thing or something. But in terms of like meeting with a trainer 2 or 3 times a week or for weeks and weeks and weeks in a row, I have no desire to do that. And part of the reason is because when I watch people working with trainers, they are in much more pain than I’m in. Okay?
I mean, it’s like the trainer’s job to make you hurt. And so there are people that stand there and say, one more, one more, you can do it, one more, you know, and then it’s not enough for one. They ask you to do more than one more and all of that. And, of course, that’s just all a part of what they believe. They believe that if you will endure, you’re going to become something that’s better than what you are.
Thus, the reason that, you know, I’m not all bulked up and I’m not, you know, the muscular guy up here and stuff is because I don’t really like endurance all that much, quite frankly. I don’t— I already, you know, it’s enough for me to just push it a little bit, but in terms of having somebody on me making me push it, I really don’t, quite frankly, want to go there, so I don’t go there. But the reality of the Christian life is, is that we’re going there. It’s not an elective. It’s a requirement in growth.
I wrote some years ago a class on growth, on Christian growth, on maturity, and I used growth, the word growth, G-R-O-W-T-H, as an acronym to talk about 5 different areas that you gotta look at when you’re gonna grow. And guess what the T was? Trials. Now, I wanted to find a way to teach the class without adding trials to growth, because I’m not like big on trials, and you’re probably not big on it either. But the fact of the matter is, and we can see it right here, is that our trials are essential to our growth.
Rick Warren said it this way: when God wants to change us, he starts by putting us in a frustrating situation that’s totally beyond control. Some of us can understand that right now because we’re in a frustrating situation that’s totally beyond our control. A.W. Tozer said, God is preparing his heroes, and the time will come when they will appear and the world will wonder where they came from. Well, where do they come from?
Well, often it’s the result of the work of God that he does in us in testing situations to transform us into people that we’re not, but we could become. Maybe some of you saw this post. They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. At this point, I should be able to bench press a Buick.
Some of you are saying, I could bench press a Catholic— a Catholic— a Cadillac.
You ever make the mistake of praying for patience? You ever done that? I think I made that mistake one time. God, make me patient. You know what comes after that, right?
Yeah, all these circumstances are gonna try your patience because it’s through the trials of patience that ultimately you become a patient person. And I, before we had children, I thought that I was a very patient person. Then we had children. I found out how impatient I was. Those circumstances.
And that’s what James is saying, is that we can find joy when we know that God is going to work in us to change us. So we got to focus on what God is doing in us first to experience this joy that can be a part of our lives. Well, he goes on, skip on down to verse 9. We’re going to come back to verse 5 next week. Second essential for delighting and experiencing emotional delight, our circumstances.
Verse 9, he says, believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position, but the rich should take pride in their humiliation since they will pass away like a wildflower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant. Its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business. Now, if you were just to read all the way through chapter 1, you kind of get to this point, you’re thinking, that’s kind of out of there, you know.
I mean, I don’t get how that flows until you put it back into the context that he’s writing to these believers who’ve been scattered. They’re no longer living in their homeland, and they’re in different conditions. There are those who came socioeconomically, we might say, as the poor And there were those who came socioeconomically as the rich. But both of them now find themselves in challenging circumstances. Some that were financially poor, they were continuing to live in maybe even more humiliating circumstances, humble circumstances.
They’re scraping to get by. They didn’t have a lot. And there were some who were financially rich, but now all of a sudden, having been scattered, what they had has now been taken away from them.
And so you have 2 groups, 2 groups that are struggling to find joy in the circumstances that have been imposed on them. So it’s not something they chose, it’s something that happened to them. There are those with a little, and James says to those with a little, he says, you need to take pride. And really, that is the same concept of delighting in or take joy Take pride or joy in, and he says, and they don’t have much, but he says, take pride in your high position. And you think, high position, what are you talking about?
Well, in God’s kingdom, anybody that’s in God’s family has a high position. They’ve been adopted into God’s family. They’re fellow heirs. They’re gifted. They’re empowered.
They’re endowed with purpose. They have high position. So he says to those that are in humble circumstances, think about what you have as a member of God’s family. And then on the other hand, he says to those who’ve lost a lot that they need to take pride or delight or joy in the humble circumstances that they’re in right now. Why?
Because the humble circumstances could teach them a lot about what matters most. And he wants them to realize that what matters most is not the temporal, it’s not having riches, it’s not what you had, But it’s what you have in Christ because those riches are like a wildflower. And then he describes it this way with this analogy. You see, those pass away like a wildflower. The sun rises with scorching heat, it withers the plant, its blossom falls, its beauty’s destroyed.
I mean, a wildflower is beautiful for a while, but then ultimately it’s going to die. And in the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business. I mean, when they’re least expecting it, all of a sudden the bottom falls out and they’ve got nothing. And what James wants to say to these individuals is that you need to see your riches are not grounded in the riches that you have financially, but your riches are grounded in Christ, the eternal, not the temporal. So what’s he saying at this point with regard to living with joy?
He’s saying here you need to focus on what God is giving to you. And what is God giving to you? Well, if you have a little, If you have a little, it’s a unique opportunity to realize you have eternal riches, and these eternal riches are abundant, and that is sufficient grounds for living with joy. My wife and I, several years ago, we traveled to Moldova, and while we were in Moldova, we stayed in a couple’s home. They had virtually nothing.
The morning after we had one night of sleep there, we got up and they They gave us breakfast and they said, please sit down. And so we sat down and we waited for them to sit down and they didn’t sit down. And we said, aren’t you going to sit down? And they said, no. We said, but please sit down.
They said, no, we want you to eat. And what we came to realize was this was all the food that they had. And so they put the food there for us to eat and we tried to get out of it and ask them to share some of it with us and they wouldn’t share some of it with us. But I’ve got to tell you, even this family that had nothing, had everything in their minds. They were filled with joy.
And what James is trying to say to these individuals here is, you may feel like you have nothing, but that’s not true. And on the other hand, he wants to say to those who have a lot, you know, the loss of your lot is really an opportunity that God is giving you to reevaluate your source of joy. Reevaluate what God has given to you. Reevaluate where your focus is. Where is your focus?
Is it in the Lord? Are you priding in the relationship that you have in the Lord? Are you finding joy in the Lord and his purposes for your life? So focus not on what you don’t have— see, it’s a change of focus— but on what God is giving to you right now, even if you’re living in humble circumstances. You may remember the name Dave Dravecky.
After he lost his baseball career and his pitching arm to cancer, he said this: Nobody ever promised that life would be fair. Everybody’s going to have adversity. The only way to handle it is to take our eyes off of our circumstances and put them on the Lord. I mean, that would be a pretty tough blow, right? Your whole life’s been about baseball, and now all of a sudden you don’t have baseball and you don’t have an arm, your pitching arm.
Everything’s changed. And he says, my focus isn’t on the circumstances, my focus is on the Lord. Sounded, sounded to me like he was living out 2 Corinthians 6:10. You familiar with this passage? Paul said, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing.
As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Go to 2 Corinthians 6 sometime and look at the list that was making Paul sorrowful. I mean, it was a long, long list. In fact, after he said, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, he then saved— he said, having nothing, yet possessing everything. I’ve got nothing, And yet I possess everything.
And I think that’s what James is going after here. He’s saying, sure, there’s sorrow. We’re not in any way downplaying sorrow, but there’s also an opportunity to find joy even in the midst of sorrow. I have a friend right now who’s keeping me appraised of his situation, and now it’s no longer just his situation but his wife’s situation. Both of them have cancer.
His name is Jay Carty. And in his last update, which came last week, he said the test results now for him are going in the wrong direction. They’re going south. And of course, as you’re reading through the letter, you’re thinking, okay, how’s he doing with all of this? But instead of focusing on how bad things are right now, he’s still focusing on the Lord, and he’s focusing on the gift of life that God is giving to him.
And so at one point in this letter, letter, he said, one thing I know is certain: Mary and I will take every breath God has ordained for us regardless of the odds or the mortality rates.
I mean, God’s still given us life, and we’re going to enjoy every second of life that we have right now. And then if that wasn’t enough in this letter, he went on to focus on his brother-in-law who 2 weeks ago was walking on the sand in Maui, and he had some stroke-like symptoms. So they took him to the hospital, they did an MRI, and they found that he had a cancerous brain tumor the size of an apple.
So he went in for the operation, and while he was being operated on, he died.
So Jay’s talking about all of this in this letter. And then he ends the letter with this verse, Colossians 1:11, we pray that you will be strengthened from God’s glorious power so that you may be able to pass through any experience and endure it with joy.
Any experience and endure it with joy. I mean, how do you do that? You just kind of muster it up in yourself. No, he’s talking about the joy that’s found in the Lord. It’s rejoicing in the Lord and realizing he’s doing something in us and he’s giving something to us.
How’s it possible? Well, James also gives one other way it’s possible. James 1:12, he says, blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, because having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. Him. I think this is kind of the ultimate reason that we can rejoice.
There’s a day coming, James says, when God’s children are going to be rewarded. They’re going to be rewarded for what they’ve endured, for what they’ve stood strong through, for what they’ve not given up on. They didn’t abandon post. And of course, the question is, so what’s the crown of life? I mean, what is that?
Hard to really know for sure, but there’s an interesting passage in Revelation 2:10 where Jesus is speaking to the church at Smyrna, and he says this, do not be afraid of what you’re about to suffer.
I mean, that is enough right there, right? He’s announcing in advance this church is gonna suffer. Do not be afraid of what you’re about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for 10 days. Be faithful even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.
That kind of helps. I think what he is saying is that on the other side of pain, on the other side of this painful life, for those that stand firm in the Lord Jesus Christ, they’re going to experience life. They’re going to experience heaven. They’re going to experience eternity. It’s not that we earn that.
It’s just the privilege. It’s the gift that God gives to his children. And so we could say there’s the heavenly compensation. There’s— we call it the mansions of glory. Call it whatever you want to call it.
Paul said in Romans 8:18, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us, or in us even. I mean, that’s an interesting statement, isn’t it? I mean, all this suffering, he’s saying, you know what, what we’re going through right now, it’s in no way going to compare to what’s ultimately going to be ours. So let’s not even make the comparison, okay? Let’s not even make the comparison because this far outweighs this.
So what’s James focusing on here? He’s saying You wanna be a person who lives with joy, you gotta focus on what God is preparing for you. And what God is preparing for you is eternal life. And that life is going to exceed anything you’ve ever experienced, anything you’ve ever experienced here. John MacArthur talks about a call that he made to his sister, Julie Noll, when she was living with terminal cancer.
She was in the hospital at the time. And John said to her, Julie, you know, the worst thing that could happen to you is the best thing that could happen to anybody. And of course, John at the time was thinking about, you know, statements like Paul’s statement, for me to live is Christ, but to die is gain.
The worst thing that could happen to you is the best thing that could ever happen to anybody, John said. So he went on and he said, you know, the worst is that you’re going to be in the presence of the Lord in the glories of heaven. That’s the worst. And Julie replied, she said, well, you know, John, that’s my confidence. John said, that’s wonderful.
But then she said, but you know what? I’ve been misunderstood here at the hospital. She said they sent a psychiatrist in.
And they said that they were going to put her in group therapy because they wanted her to get in touch with her inner child. See, because she had confidence in the Lord and what was coming next.
And she said in response to the psychiatrist— psychiatric department that wanted to put her into this group therapy, she said, no thanks. I don’t need to get in touch with my inner child, thank you. I’m in touch with my Lord Jesus Christ. Everything is fine. Everything is fine.
I mean, even the world won’t understand this, and in some ways we probably won’t understand it either, but joy is found in the midst of our circumstances when we focus on what God is doing in us, when we focus on what God is giving to us, and when we focus on what God is preparing for us.
Now, it kind of has something to do with perspective, doesn’t it? I mean, our perspective could be on the pain, it could be on the problems, or it could be on all of this that we’re trying to understand from James’ perspective this morning. Billy Sunday said it this way, if you have no joy in your religion, there’s a leak in your Christianity somewhere.
That really touches close to home, doesn’t it? I started the sermon by saying, hey, there was a big leak. A week ago on my joy, and it wasn’t hard. Just put me on a 75-minute phone call with a company that, you know, doesn’t know what department to get me to. That’s enough to begin to suck it out of me.
Or just getting information about what’s happening in my family, a family that I absolutely love dearly.
Remember the Apostle Paul that ended up in prison? He wanted to go to Rome. If you know his story, he wanted to go to Rome because Rome would have been a privilege and a great opportunity to share the gospel with others. So his whole life he’s looking forward to Rome, and he— his missionary journeys don’t get him there until finally at the end of his life he’s imprisoned in Caesarea. He spends some time in Caesarea in imprisonment, and they finally send him off to Rome.
So he goes to Rome, but it wasn’t the way he thought he would ever go to Rome. He goes to Rome as a prisoner, and while he’s in Rome he begins to write some prison epistles, and one of the epistles was the Epistle of Philippi. And it’s a fascinating epistle because he’s talking about joy all the way through the epistle. The Epistle of Philippians is the one where he says, rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. You know that one.
So I mean, it’s like talking exactly to where we are this morning as we look at this first chapter and these first thoughts in the book of James because we’re so oftentimes not people that are rejoicing in our circumstances. But here he is, he’s rejoicing in Rome even though he’s in Rome in a different way than he ever thought he would be there, but he’s rejoicing. Where was he finding his joy? Well, he was finding his joy in what God was giving to him. And what was God giving to him?
Well, what God gave him ultimately, 2 years in prison in Rome, where he wasn’t exactly in prison. He was actually chained to prison guards. So that was a whole different experience. For 24 hours a day, a Roman guard was chained to him, and every 4 hours this Roman guard member would be released and they would send another one in. So what that meant was he had the privilege and opportunity to have a captive audience.
Now, maybe the guard thought Paul was the captive audience. I don’t think so. The Roman guard was the captive audience. So he possibly— just do the math on this— he possibly could have witnessed to 4,380 guards in the time that he was in Rome. And then you ask the question, so who was the real prisoner here?
I don’t think Paul saw himself that way. And he says in Philippians 1:12, I want you to know, my dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the good news. I mean, how good this has been. Wow, look what God has given me the privilege of doing. And if you read the rest of the account, you find out that even among Nero’s own household, there were people that were coming to faith in Jesus Christ because of Paul’s witness.
And Paul then goes on and he says, and so because of this, I’m rejoicing.
And sometimes it’s just a perspective change, isn’t it? We could get so fixated on our problems that we lose perspective on what the Lord can do in the midst of the problems. So where is joy found? Joy is found in focusing on what God is doing in us. Joy is found in what and what God is giving to us.
And it’s a prison experience. And joy is found in realizing God is preparing something for us, for us. Let’s thank him together.
Father, thanks for speaking to us today about a subject that is so difficult for us. And thank you for your patience with us. Thank you, Lord, that you’re not done working in us, that you’re changing us through the circumstances we find ourselves in life, that you use circumstances that from our perspective are terrible, they’re awful, but you’ve promised to bring good out of even awful circumstance. Even if circumstances isn’t good, you’ve said you’ll bring good.
Only those who are sitting here in their relationship with you know the condition of their heart this morning and how grievous life has been, difficult, challenging, the circumstances that they find themselves in. And so I pray that all of us, whatever those circumstances might be, can walk away from here today having been encouraged by the fact that you know, and Lord, you’re able to work in those circumstances to change us. To change our perspective on life.
You’re able to work in the circumstances to cause us all the more to long for heaven, to be diligent about how we live our lives. You’re able to use circumstances to draw us to yourself, and I pray that we would be drawn to you. I pray for anybody who’s here today that’s not yet come into a relationship with you through the gift of life that’s found in Jesus Christ, that even now even today they could receive the gift. Lord, you would draw them to yourself and they would be willing to say yes to you from, from this point on. And if that’s your desire, tell God that.
He’ll hear that prayer. And thank you, Lord, that those of us who found this relationship are in process with you. We are being transformed. And we pray that as this transformation process goes on, that we won’t short-circuit the process.
That will allow you to work in your timing, that will allow you to be the Lord, and will receive life as a gift from you.
Wherever that needs to be applied today, give us the strength and wisdom and the Spirit’s work to do that. For we pray this in Jesus’ name. Everybody said
