Lord, we know that it is your
power, the power of the gospel, which is able to save and able
to grow and able to encourage and able to sustain. For you,
Lord, are mighty, and you alone are mighty. And so as we continue
in this letter, I thank you for the strength to be able to be
here and to teach, and I pray that you would be honored in
all that is taught. Lord, help us to hear it and give us ears
to understand. In Christ's name we pray all these things. Amen. Well, this is part number 5 of
the letter of James. So let's start out by reading
the first 11 verses. Actually, the first 12 verses.
James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve
tribes and the dispersion. Greetings. Count it all joy,
my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know
that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let
steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete,
lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let
him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and
it will be given him. 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. For that person
must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
He is double-minded, and he is unstable in all his ways. Let
the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich boast
in his humiliation, 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. So also
will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Blessed
is the man who stands, or who remains, steadfast under trial. For when he has stood the test,
he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to
those who love him." Now I stopped there on purpose. And it's been
two months since we talked about this letter, so I'll give us
a little bit of a review of what we learned last time. And for
those of you who are unfamiliar with it, those teachings are
there on the church website, or on our Facebook pages, or
on our YouTube channel. But we've learned that the command
in the midst of suffering is joy. To count all things joy
and to rejoice. And to understand that the trials,
as verse 17 teach us, are part of the every good gift and every
perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.
And so we've also learned that our station or our steadfastness
is not about our ability to stand firm, but about God's ability
to keep us in Christ and the gift of faith to see that our
steadfastness is indeed the rock of our salvation, who is Jesus
Christ. We've learned that wisdom is something that God gives to
all who ask, all of His children. That He doesn't get on to us
or say, well, I thought you'd never ask or withhold wisdom,
but He does give wisdom. And we've learned that this wisdom
is to teach us to understand and to know and to continually
rest and the knowledge of His grace and the knowledge of the
power of Christ. We learned two months ago that
God in granting wisdom helps us understand ourselves as well
as Him. We understand who God is and
what He's accomplished and His power and we also understand
where we are and what we are able to do or otherwise what
we are not able to do and our powerlessness. And that's sort
of where we... left off. We need to realize
that when we see verse 5 through verse 12 here, there is instruction
and example and illustration all there that is going to lead
us into the rest of this letter. It's a very short letter, though
we could really stay in it for a very long time. We're going
to continue in our path that we typically do on midweek, which
is to read the letter and exposit it as we go. Verse 5, it says,
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously
to all without reproach, and it will be given him. We've learned
that we must also, verse 6, ask in faith without doubting, for
the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and
tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose
that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is double-minded
and he is unstable in all his ways. And then verses 9, 10,
and 11 talk about a lowly brother and a rich brother. So the lowly
brother will be a poor brother. And then it gives the illustration
about how the sun burns up a flower and a plant, and it dies, and
it scorches, and its beauty is gone. So the rich man will also
fade away. Then in verse 12, we see the
promise that James reminds us of. And that is, the man who
remains steadfast under trial, when he has stood the test, he
receives the crown of life. He is blessed. Because God has
promised to those who love Him and are called according to His
purpose this eternal life. So as a way of review in this
text, to prepare us to where we are, I want to talk about
tonight being double-minded, what it means, and what it does
for us, and what it depletes from our life as believers. I
think I spoke the last time we gathered here in the letter about
the fact that James writes theologically as well as practically. In other
words, he's going to give a lot of practical expressions to the
church. Things that they need to understand
and apprehend and apply. And they need to do so because
their joy is at stake. I also need to remind us, beloved,
that we are learning out of an apostolic writing. We are reading
the letter of the Apostle James to the churches. And these letters
are written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit And the Spirit
of God is teaching the church, and the church is learning, and
the church is growing, and the church is remembering who she
is and whose she is. And that when we read the instruction
of the New Testament, we need to remember that without the
body, the New Testament instruction has zero application. Zero application. In other words, we are to endure
for the sake of the name of Christ, and we do so in the context of
the local assembly, that the family of faith, through the
good and the bad times, when things are going well, we love
each other, and when we're having strife, we are to stay together
in the gospel. We are to stand firm in the sufficiency
of God's grace, and we are to judge all things according to
the scripture as instructed us, that there is no reason, there
is no application for a lone Christian to live out the book
of James. There's no way possible for it
to be done. Now, of course, we could check
our attitudes, but the attitudes are checked so that the unity
of the faith is continual and growing in the context of the
local family of faith. This is not a way for us to live
out in a social sense on social media. These things were not
written so that we may learn how to write letters to one another
or text or call or do our Zoom meetings. These things are done
and written. so that the local assembly, as
it has been instructed and ordained and orchestrated and organized
by the Lord Himself, as we see in 1 Corinthians, will give glory
to His name. Now some people may disagree
with me, but you would have to disagree with all of the apostles,
for they write to the saints, to the churches, to the assemblies,
which implies and requires the explicit reality that there is
a gathered people who are in different places in life, who
all claim the same gospel, who have elders who are affirmed
by the body in which they serve, and servants, deacons who oversee
the work of the ministry, that the word of the Lord would be
taught so that the saints would be instructed and encouraged
to do the work of the ministry as we see Paul writing to the
people of Ephesus. And as we remember that, we need to remember
that this wisdom that we have asked God for shows us who God
is and what He has accomplished for us. And it shows us our powerlessness
in every way. We need to be reminded that we
are, just as the flowers of the field, a vapor. That our life
is absolutely just a puff in the glimpse of eternity, just
a small little breeze blowing through, ready to be extinguished. But in the context of the local
Christian family, we have a great eternal preparation ahead of
us. And so that we who are in the body, we who are gathering
together, and those who cannot do so, who invite or are invited
to partake as much as they can into our lives through other
means, who are in covenant with us, we need to realize that our
relationship with one another is not a vapor. It is an eternal
promise that we will be with Christ and that in that eternal
glorified place of the new heavens and the new earth where we live,
we will be together. And nothing glorifies and honors
the Lord more in this present life than to be able to show
through His power our unity and our love and our service to Him
because of our unity and our love and our service to one another.
We've learned already that Christ is our wisdom and that He is
our righteousness. And that in the wisdom of God,
we do not get answers outside of ourselves. As a matter of
fact, it is not teaching us that we are looking for the answers
of life's problems and complexities. But yet we are looking at and
to the answer who is Jesus Christ, our righteousness. We are not
effectuating God's purposes in our choices and actions. We are
part of God's purposes in our choices and actions. So wisdom
teaches us that we are powerless and that what we do or don't
do is not going to change the outcome of God's absolute sovereignty. God's will is done already on
earth as it is in heaven. It is happening right now before
us. Wisdom says, wait and learn,
wait and see, rest and know. And wisdom says, do not forsake
that which I tell you is wise. Because if you do, the Scripture
says, don't expect anything from me because that which I have
promised is yours. Wisdom rests and waits for it. Remember, we
learned already that God in answering our prayers and our requests
for wisdom does not just zap us with answers. And sometimes
we see other people getting answers. We see other people getting resolution.
We see other people having peace. And we wonder, well, when is
the Lord going to do this for me? It's not immediate, it is
in the timing of the Lord. And only in the timing of the
Lord. But if we do not rest in this,
we do not rest in the wisdom of Christ, we can expect nothing
from God. Because we cannot affect our
own outcomes. We've also learned that we are blessed by God because
we are objects of mercy and grace. We are the objects of the work
of God completely given to His elect children through the work
of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we have eternal life. Therefore, we have the promise
of a full life right here in the midst of the hardest times. We belong to Him and we know
and can rest knowing that we are His and He will not leave
us nor forsake us and that we can have such wisdom. And because we know that we can
have wisdom in Christ, we can have hope. In the midst of suffering,
in the midst of trials, which is the context or the occasion
for which this letter was written, we can have hope. And we can
have wisdom to know what to do. And more importantly, we can
have the wisdom to know who to view. Salvation and wisdom and
faith and joy is all of God's business. I've said this before
and I'll say it again. So that we know that the business
of God is God's doing and God's doing is His to do and His timing. So steadfast living and standing
firm and receiving the crown of righteousness is not something
that we accomplish nor keep, but that it is being kept for
us who we, being kept by the power of God, are being guarded
in heaven, for a great thing Peter talks about in his first
epistle. So this business of God causes
us to have the wisdom to understand that we put away the flesh. It's
not about what we're supposed to get right. It's about who
God is and He has caused all things to be right according
to the counsel of His will. And so we put away the flesh
in all parts and we rest in the knowledge that God alone is supreme
and that God alone is sovereign. and that He cannot fail us. I
thought of it this way this morning when I was looking at this again.
I thought, imagine if the worries and the fears and the doubts
of life were like a sea. And we were tossed into this
sea and told to have faith. Some people think faith is swimming
and grabbing and groping for some rope of safety, holding
on to something that we may or may not know is there or looking
to the right thing and with all effort and all strength against
all possibilities, we've tried and finally succeed. That's not
what faith is. Faith does not swim through worries
and fears, groping for the safety of a handle. Faith sinks to the
bottom of this sea and breathes deeply in the knowledge that
our life is the breath of Christ. Faith rests in the drowning of
the flesh. So we get direction. We get wisdom. And sometimes we miscalculate
what it really is. Now I could go on and go back
to Hebrews and preach about faith and we could talk about the philosophy
of faith and the theology of faith and the doctrine they're
teaching or the subject of faith and we can pretend that we are
smart but ultimately we need to be wise in Christ rather than
wise in our knowledge of the things of Christ. Because one
sometimes does not lead to the other. Faith is truly resting
in the sufficiency of God's promises. And that in of itself is a promise
of God and is the power of God as a gift. It is not something
we muster. We could also talk about what
knowledge is. There's a lot of people with knowledge, but it
doesn't mean they believe it. There's a lot of people with belief that
have little knowledge. Some people are looking for discernment.
Well, discernment. I have discernment. Well, what
is discernment? I can discern food when it's bad because it
may taste bad or smell bad. But that doesn't mean that everything
that smells bad and tastes bad is bad because some people in
some countries like delicacies that are rancid. Discernment. A lot of people think it's wisdom.
Wisdom, of course, discernment can be wisdom, but what is discernment
really? Except that knowing what is the
will of the Lord and understanding to rest in His time until He
affects the outcome of His decrees in our temporary circumstances. We wait upon the Lord, we don't
run with the Lord. But beloved, I see a mess in
the name of discernment in our culture. I see it in the mess
of our own lives, in my own life at times. Sometimes discernment
seems like a compass that spins around in a circle. Discernment
seems to spin on all points of a compass. And when it happens
that way, it yields no trustworthy direction. Where am I supposed
to be going? And we are looking like fools,
running around, going nowhere. Well, the Bible would call that
double-mindedness. that when we see the compass,
the Scripture, the Word, the Lord, the Spirit, the teaching,
the understanding, the hope, the rest, the faith, the righteousness
of God, the promises of God, and all the power therein, when
we see those things sitting clearly, pointing straight to Christ,
and we go, oh, we shake the compass. We thump it. We blow on it. We make sure that we're not near
a magnet. And we think, well, certainly
not that way. That's double-mindedness. Double-mindedness. Double-mindedness
means a lot of things. Double-mindedness, by definition,
means instable, instability, unstable, divided loyalty. Saying that God is able to be
one's discerning power, to be one's wisdom, but continuing
to level one's own wisdom, reason, argument, power, ability to affect
the outcome is not wisdom. It's stupid. It is not faith. It is unbelief. And beloved,
we are all guilty this very second of that very thing. But God is
gracious and He gives wisdom without what? without reproach. And when we trust in Him, we
are lacking nothing. Well, double-mindedness could
be understood as doubt. You ever have doubt? Doubt. Well, I know what the Bible teaches
about God's promises. I know what the Scripture says
about God's power. And I know that He's sovereign
in all things. But I doubt that it's going to
work out for my good. The Bible says that it would.
The Bible says that it has. Double-mindedness is not just
doubt, it's also hesitation. I know the scripture teaches
this, and God has called me here. That's my discernment. Oh, things
aren't the way they're supposed to be. The things aren't the
way I imagined them. Oh, woe is me. I better not do anything
else again. Or maybe the Scripture says,
hey, do not forsake the gathering together as some are in the habit
of doing. Maybe the Scripture says to put
away all mouths and envy. Maybe the Scripture says to not
speak ill and to not use your tongue for cursing. Maybe the
Scripture says these things and yet we go, oh, I know I shouldn't
be doing these things or I know that I should be doing these
things. Maybe the Scripture, when it says to pray without
ceasing and to trust in the Lord and to rest, we hesitate. Or maybe we fear. Maybe we fear
too much the outcome. Maybe we fear that the Lord is
going to do something and we're going to miss the boat. We're
going to find ourselves not in the will of God. It's impossible.
It's impossible. That's double-mindedness. Fear.
Paranoia is double-mindedness. Worrying about what might be
the contra ideas of hypotheticals. Resting in worldliness. With
a divided loyalty. These things are double-mindedness. What does it mean to have a divided
loyalty? Well, I'm going to trust in the Lord with all my heart.
I'm going to love Him. I'm going to serve Him. I want to rest
in Him. Oh, but there are other things
that I need to trust in. If I could just get this, I know
the Lord would grant me peace. What may it be? We'll see some
examples in just a minute. Sometimes we rest in worldliness.
Sometimes we rest in relationships. Sometimes we rest in our own
reason. But in the end of it all, double-mindedness
is instability. Because all that is unstable.
Being tossed around. Well, the Lord says this. The
Lord brought this. The Lord told me this. I'm going here. Oh,
nope, nope, nope. Maybe not. I'm going here. Oh,
maybe not. I'm changing my mind. I'm doing this. I don't know,
I'm scared, I'm worried, I fear the Lord in a bad way. The Bible says that the double-minded
person is unstable and it just doesn't say unstable in his thoughts. It doesn't say unstable in certain
things, it says unstable in all his ways. I want you to think about that
for a second. Because sometimes we, in our
search for wisdom, refuse the wisdom of God, effectuate some
other idea or some other outcome, and then we get to the point
where we're going, okay, I was just unstable there. No, you're
unstable in all your ways. We are unstable in all our ways.
If Christ is not our stability, we are unstable because we are
walking on sinking sand. We are walking on water without
Christ there. We are trying to do that which
God has not promised for us because God has promised He is our victory. He is our King. So the unstable person in all
his ways is sort of like someone with a split personality. And
it's a split personality in relationships, it's a split personality in thinking,
it's a split personality in all matters of life. Because what happens is, whatever
we put top of mind, or whatever we're exposed to, seems to be
the guiding force in our life. Well, I've got to go talk to
Pastor Tippins, because whatever he says, I'll do. Well, that
would be a very huge mistake. Well, I'll go talk to mama. She'll
tell me what to do. I'll get on the internet. They'll
tell me what... I have a friend and such and
such. He'll tell me what to do. And this goes on and on and on,
and we expose ourselves to more and more so-called wisdom, more
and more conversations, more and more relationships, and these
ulterior or alternate ideas are constantly at war with the simple
idea that Christ is our wisdom, that God has it. And so we're
unstable in our choices. So then we're unstable and we
make mistakes. Then we have failures. Then we
change our mind again and again and again and again. Yeah, I do. The Lord's calling
me. X, Y, Z. Things get rough. The Lord's
calling me A, B, C, now. It don't happen. It doesn't happen.
People will argue that until they're blue in the face because
they don't want to face the reality that they're not looking at the
one who is our steadfast anchor. Remember, Jesus is the steadfast
one. Jesus, remember, being steadfast is not a requisite of eternal
life. Christ's steadfastness is the one who secured our eternal
life. Jesus is our steadfast truth.
Jesus is our hope. Jesus is the anchor of our souls. Jesus is our steadfast power. So then we know. We know then,
because of this, that we don't have to be unstable. We don't
have to be double-minded. We know that there are two things
that are the outcome of holding fast by faith, which is given
by God, in the truth of Christ, and that is that our joy is full
and our faith is strengthened. So what does that mean? That
means we can thank God in the midst of all sorts of hells.
and all sorts of devils, and all sorts of experiences, and
all sorts of doubt, and all sorts of divided loyalty, and all sorts
of fear, and all sorts of worldliness, and all sorts of bad relationships,
and all sorts of ridiculous reason, and all sorts of hesitation,
and the list goes on. We can thank Him in the midst
of these, that He never fails. And He doesn't slide. Every good
gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from
the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow
due to change. We're changing, He is not changing. So our joy, and it produces thanksgiving. We are thankful that God is our
steadfast hope. And it strengthens our faith.
And what does a strengthened faith look like? Is a strengthened
faith never doubting, never being divided, never being fearful?
No. A strengthened faith is in the midst of the greatest fear
and the greatest doubt, deeply breathing in the hope of Christ
and sleeping. Let's give the example of Jesus
in the boat. When His disciples are in the boat, and Jesus is
in the boat, and the seas rage against them, and they are in
a swivet, as we call it here, whatever that means, and Jesus
is asleep. And it unnerves them. Why are
you sleeping, Master? We're going to perish! They weren't
going to perish. He had it. Our faith grows and
we're able to rest. That's what faith is, resting
in the power of the promises and the provision of God in all
things. So that even in our instability, God's love is stable. His power
is stable. And when we are faithless, as
Paul tells Timothy, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself.
Beloved, the Bible gives us instruction. The Bible says that God disciplines
those He loves. Do you know what the active form
of the idea of Christian discipline is? Discipleship. So people who
say, I don't want to be disciplined, are saying, I reject the wisdom
of Christ. I reject growing as a disciple
of the Lord. They spit at Him. They insult
Him. Beloved, let's not be that way.
You see how we can expect nothing from our Father if we ask and
then He gives and we just knock it away? It's an insult. But
it's not for guilt that this is written. It's for correction. It's for discipleship. It's for
discipline. And those who hate this discipline
are not trusting in the power of God. They are despising the
promises of God. But as we keep going, as we keep
looking, we will see. As we see in verse 8. He's unstable
in all his ways. But James is going to give the
remedy. James is going to show the difference. And it's not
just in some of these examples that I've given. There's a lot
of different ways of being double-minded. And we'll see them as we go.
But I think in today's context, it's very important to call out
some of these things. Because many of us live in a
perpetual state of fear. James will give remedy, and the
rest of this letter is going to show several ways in which
one can show stability and trusting. First, he's saying in our trials,
we suffer well knowing that Christ is our stable and steadfast anchor. Second, we're going to see here
in verse 9, 10, and 11, that those who we suffer together
with often are in different stations of life. And sometimes we see
their complaints and we go, what are you fussing about? You got
it made. Like the rich man who has his anxieties, his fears,
his doubts, his divided loyalty, his paranoia, his relationship
desires, his worldliness and his reason, which causes instability
because he sees the promises of the world and he thinks, if
I could just get this to work for me, then God will use it
in this way. That's not how it works. And
then the lowly man, the poor man. These people suffering in
need of a lesser station. And that's where James begins
to go as he moves in to the 1st and 2nd, as he moves through
the 1st and 2nd chapters of this letter. It says there, look,
the lowly brother. What is the lowly brother in
this context? The poor man, the man that has little. Let him
boast in his exaltation. How is a poor man, lowly man,
being exalted in Christ? Oh, I'm weak. I'm frail. I can't
buy food. I can't buy clothes. I don't know where I'm going
to live. I don't know what I'm going to do. I can't have this. I can't find that. I don't
know what's happening. He's got a set of anxieties on
him. He's going through tribulation now because of the faith. He's
got even more stress on him and he's thinking, what am I supposed
to do? And James is saying, steadfast, stand in the midst of the One
who is your hope, who is Christ, who stood for you. Because He
has given Himself for you. You have been exalted. You have
been risen up. You have been raised with Christ.
You have been given life. Boast in that. Not in what you
wish you had. And in the poor, the rich man,
likewise, in the antithesis, like the flower who will fade
away and never be seen again in its beauty, so the rich man
in his wealth and possessions will also fade away. So the man
of substance, the woman of stature, should not think himself better, because both are from a place
of humility. What he has in this life will
perish, but who he is in Christ shall never die. And ultimately,
the end of it all, what we see is that our simple love and our
simple service, our forgiveness and patience with one another
in the midst of all sorts of trials, brings us to the place
of joy. Blessed is the man, verse 12,
who remains steadfast under trial. In other words, you stand with
all conviction, killing the flesh, standing in the One who is our
righteousness, and we will stand the test. We will receive the
crown of life because God has promised that to those who love
Him and are called according to His purpose. So this is the
remedy and the blessing and the promise of double-mindedness.
We focus on serving one another despite the environment and the
experiences of our life. Beloved, do not forsake this
because to do so is to forsake the very promises and the blessings
of God. And as we look more then into
this text we will begin to see what the trials look like, where
they come from, why they are effectual, and where we're supposed
to keep our gaze. And then we see practical application.
To know that we really have nothing to be angry about, we have nothing
to complain about, we have nothing to worry about, for Christ is
our righteousness, that even in the midst of all death, we
have everything. and that God is working everything
for our good according to His purposes and power. Beloved,
if we can't receive this teaching and apply this teaching, we have
no business worrying about the deeper things of Christ. We have
no business worrying about doctrinal depth. If we can't do this, we
can't rest. And if we can't rest, we can't
live. And if we can't live, we can't pray. If we can't pray,
we can't praise. If we can't do that, then why
are we here? Why are we together anyway? We're here to the praise of His
glorious grace. So beloved, I pray that as God has loved you, you
shall love Him. What does it mean for those who
love God? Those who love one another. Let's serve one another
in the midst of this mutual trial. Let's serve one another in the
midst of weak and strong moments. Let's love one another as unto
Christ, because when we do it to the least of these, we do
it unto Him. Because Christ laid His life down for us. The God
of all things, becoming like a servant. obedient unto death
on a cross, that He might atone and impute His righteousness
to us as He took and imputed our sins to Himself. And it's
in His name that we preach these things and for His purpose. Let's
pray. We thank You, Lord, for this
instruction. We thank You, Father, for just giving us hope in the
midst of an incredibly difficult time. So as we finish our thoughts
here, as we talk a little bit about what Your Word has taught
us, Father, help us to be mindful that everyone is not in the same
place that we are. Not everyone has the same trials. Not everyone has the same problems. And when we look at each other,
Father, it's easy for us to say, well, their problems aren't as
bad. I don't know why they're complaining. and have a sense
of hierarchy or a sense of superiority spiritually because we're suffering
in a greater way. But Lord, help us to put that
down to know that none of us have suffered under Your wrath.
But You have put Christ Jesus under Your wrath and You've given
all of Your vengeance and justice and anger toward the sin of Your
people on Him and He spoke not a word in His own defense. Not
my will but Yours be done, He said. And He cried out, and He
died. And He took up His life, and
He came back to this world, glorified with the promise of hope for
all who believe, for all who have been given to Him by You,
Father. In Christ's name, Amen.