Well, let's take out our Bibles
and let's turn to the letter of James. We're going to turn
to the letter of James. And we're going to do an introduction
tonight and talk about things and then set a course for the
weeks to come. And I'm also going to be doing
both when I get into Timothy on Sunday morning and on midweek
I'm going to be doing some other types of teaching interspersed
in between these letters. I want to teach some out of the
Old Testament, teach some of the stories of Genesis and some
of the profits and some different things of that nature, and then
also want to teach some of the wisdom literature and the Psalms
as it relates to the gospel. So we're going to be digging
back into in between those areas moving forward throughout the
summer. Let's pray as we start this letter tonight. Father,
we are thankful to be able to get together and we are glad
to fulfill that which you've commanded us to do to assemble.
in order to gather under your word to put and all the other opportunities
that we have father that you have ordained for us. And so
Lord, I am In desperate need of the gospel, just in reality,
Father, I am burdened and overwhelmed. And Father, my mind is occupied. And so I thank you for the reprieve
of being able to open your word together with those that we love
and look and be encouraged by the gospel. And so as we start
this letter, Father, I pray that you would help us to see it for
what it's intended to be used for, to encourage us, to admonish
us, Lord, and to warn us. about what true faith is in the
context of our lives together as a body. And so we are praising
you for your glorious grace and that we are set apart in Christ
alone and that his righteousness is ours. And father, that all
that we have in life and in all that we have eternally is in
him and nowhere else to be found. And we pray these things in his
name. Amen. The letter of James. The letter
of James. There's probably not been a more
controversial letter in the New Testament historically as the
letter of James, and there's a lot of reasons for it. And
for those of you who are students of language or students of antiquity
or writing and letters and things of that nature, you may be familiar
with some of the debates and some of the arguments, but by
and large, it doesn't matter. And I'm going to say that it
doesn't matter because it doesn't matter. Any of our children could pick
up the letter of James and by the Spirit of God they can read
it and understand it and God can teach them through it and
can admonish and encourage them in its teaching and in its commands. And so it doesn't matter that
we don't have a lot of agreement in history and a lot of agreement
in higher critics to its authenticity or even its authorship or even
its purpose or even its genre. Some people say it's not a letter
at all. But as we open it, we do know that it is the word of
God, for God has ordained it to be here in the list of letters
throughout the days of the apostles. And I stand on the shoulders
of people who are not brilliant, but people who are humble in
the context of my understanding of how they came to figure these
things out. And ultimately, I stand on this
in the way of its authorship, that it is the brother of Jesus,
James. And I also stand on the fact
that I believe it was written somewhere in the mid to late
40s, not during the time of John's writings toward the end of the
century, but in the mid to late 40s. I also know that it is not
your typical letter. It's not your salutation, your
greeting, your conclusions, but yet it is written as a letter
and it's not written in a context of a lot of intimacy, though
it is intimately expressive. So as we get into it, I want
you to think about these things because here's something that
I find that's true for me, and it may or may not be true for
you, but that is that when we start studying something, when
I start studying something new, it's easy for me to get bogged
down into some of the details of what history has said or what
other people have said. It's also seems like supernaturally
when I get into a new teaching and it takes me about three weeks
on average to prepare to start a new teaching. It's not just
like you can pick it up. You have to get ahead by several
weeks in order to continue to preach weekly so that you can
have the time that it takes to prepare. But it never fails when
I start something new and I begin to teach it, there's always going
to be out of the woodwork individuals who will come and refute what
we're trying to say or begin to say, oh, you know what's really
cool about the book of James, or you know what's really cool
about the letter to the Romans, or you know what's really cool
about Hebrews is, and they'll give you some anecdotal things
that aren't true, that aren't even historically accurate whatsoever. and then they want to debate
these things and so then it boggles your mind, it divides your mind
in a lot of ways and puts you in the place to where you're
thinking well man maybe I don't know what I'm talking about but
the Bible is clear enough. This teaching is going to be
very very clear as we go through it. I'm going to take a long
time to go through James. I'm not going to read large portions
like I usually do on midweek. I'm going to exposit it as I
feel the Lord would have me do and as we go through it, if it
takes a year, it takes a year and we will be patient with that.
And the reason for that is because for some of us we know this already,
so sorry to be redundant, but there is a standard in which
Christian scholars and theologians have argued that James is not
authentic and James is not canonical, that means it is not scripture,
should not be included in the measure of scripture, the canon,
because he contradicts the teaching of Paul in relation to justification.
But there's something that we need to understand about writing
and that is that words in and of themselves are not necessarily
defined equivocally. Words are also not heresies,
but the meanings behind which these words are used can be heresy.
The meaning behind which these words can be used can be wrong
or right. And honestly, if we are both
thinking the same thing, but using different terms, we can
both be right. So we have to get to the bottom
of what we're talking about when we're talking together, and we
seem to be at odds. The same thing is true. We can be using
the same term and both think that the other person is thinking
like we are. For example, like justification.
Somebody may say, well, justification. It is that reality that is true
forensically or judicially where a man or woman, the elect person
who has been granted faith, is set before the Lord with a sinless
record. They are justified before God
through the person of Christ. And that would be a correct definition,
but there is something also that we know as a semantic range.
And the ranges of words and their meanings change about every three
to four years. Depends on the culture. After
a decade, a word can completely mean something different than
what it meant 10 years before. After 50 years, it could absolutely
be non-existent in the vernacular. And after 100 years, if it comes
back up, it could have no relationship whatsoever to its original meaning.
So when we think about certain terms like justified or justification,
just because we know what it means in a forensic sense and
in a spiritual sense and as it relates to the gospel and the
work of God and redemption for his people, it doesn't necessarily
mean that James was writing the same thing. As a matter of fact,
James would be the first person to use that term in some sense
before Paul wrote Romans, of course. But as we get here, you'll see.
I'll help you see. And the Lord will help you see.
And most importantly, you will help you see. All together as
we read it. I would encourage you to read
the letter of James at least once a week before midweek. Read
it before, read it after, it doesn't matter. Read it twice,
it doesn't take very long. So that it can be fresh on your
mind as we go through it together. So let us start. And we're going
to read the first 15 verses. No, we're
going to read the first 18 verses. James, a servant of God, of the
Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes in the dispersion, greetings. Count it all joy, my brothers,
when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the
testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness
have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete,
lacking 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 a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Let the lowly
brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humility,
or his humiliation. because like a flower of 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 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. Let no one say when
he's tempted, I'm being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted
with evil and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted
when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire,
when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully
grown, brings forth death. So do not be deceived, my beloved
brothers. Every good gift and every perfect
gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with
whom there is no variation, no movement or shadow due to change.
Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that
we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. In verse 19 he begins to give
some commands. He begins to give some commands.
So as you hear just the first 18 verses of this letter you
automatically understand what I'm saying when I said that it
doesn't follow a natural intimate epistle. It's not like, hey everybody
this is James and I love you in the Lord and greetings and
so-and-so sends greetings and There's a couple of things I
want you to know. You've been born, I want to remind you of this.
No, he goes right in in some sense a poetic way and in another
sense he almost sounds like he's writing a proverb. Matter of
fact, the disjointedness of this as a letter is one of the reasons
so many people reject it as canonical. Instead of just reading it, knowing
that God is sovereign in His measure of His Word, they like
to reject it because it doesn't fit the pattern. Well, James
is a different guy. He writes here in this very,
I mean, you're talking five or six years after the Lord ascended.
Not necessarily that far away. Five or six years ago, I remember
what I was doing in some general way. I can look back and go,
oh yeah, I remember that. It's not like I have to think
back when I was 14 and call my mom and say, do you remember
this? And look at some pictures to tickle my memory. No, this
was a fresh writing. And one of the things that James
does is he employs some of the writing styles that were popular
in his day. Why would he do that? Because
we speak how we hear. We write how we read. That's
a common thing. I've said this many times over,
is that I can listen to saxophonists, non-performing artists, but I
can listen to saxophonists, what you'd call your intermediate
professional or whatever, but your non-famous guys, and I can
tell you by how they do certain phrasings and how they breathe
and how they use certain turns as to who their influences are.
Same thing when you hear people sing. can hear people sing covers
of certain songs and you can almost tell when they're listening
to a certain vocalist more than another just like our children
and they even can embrace and adopt speech impediments or mispronunciations
of our own vernacular of our own words misuses of grammar
we just adopted so James adopted and he would just like everyone
in that century just like everyone today has adopted and molded
themselves as to how they speak, write, and interact. Let's don't
even get into behavior because we talked about Sunday. So James
is given some instruction and the letter of James has a lot
of commandments in it. I'll be honest with you this
is one of these letters that If you're uncomfortable with
being told what to do by God, then it's going to be a real
rough ride for you. That's why we need to realize that this
is not an evangelistic letter whatsoever. There is no evangelism
in this letter at all. It is written to who? Look at
this, verse 1. James, a servant of God and of
the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion.
Greetings. to the twelve tribes." What is
that? That's a Jewish way of saying
to the Jewish folks, The Church of Jerusalem who at the time
in the early to mid 40s or the mid to late 40s especially were
being persecuted so badly they had to leave their own homes
to go out into the wilderness and go out into other communities
and to transfer or transplant themselves into Gentile territory
because their relationship with the gospel of free and sovereign
grace had ostracized them from their own people. Just like Paul's
writing to the Hebrews that we just finished. So here's James, a Jew, writing
to his Jewish brothers and sisters. Now was it exclusively Jewish
audience? No. I'm sure Gentiles were mixed
in there just like Jewish people were mixed into the Gentile church
at Rome. But ultimately, this is to help
us understand that this letter is written at the occasion when
people were being persecuted severely for their relationship
with the gospel, for being found in Christ. And it's interesting
that we all hear, especially social media, hey, hey, hey,
the church is being persecuted. Folks, the Church of the United
States of America is not being persecuted. It's not persecution. To be told you can't serve, you
can't have a service inside. That's not persecution of the
Lord Jesus. When they chop your heads off
and watch your children burn in front of you, then come say
persecuted. When they take your house from
you because you are a Christian, even when you're underground,
they still pursue you, that's persecution. And what do we do
when that happens? We do not return revile with
revile. But we entrust ourselves to the
one who judges justly, righteously. And there was a problem. And
these people were experiencing it. And then as they were together,
there was a lot of other problems. And see, James is going to deal
with the problem of persecution. And he's going to deal with the
problem of interaction. And he's going to deal with the
problem of arrogance. The problem of a superiority
complex. the problem of the elitism of
rich people, the problem of the covetousness of poor people,
and then he's going to give some general instruction. So here
we don't have a strict theological treatise on specific things.
When we see a sentence, especially written in the flavor in which
James writes, we should not create an entire proposition that leads
us to an entire theology. We should check that theology
based on the whole of Scripture from Genesis to Matthew. We should
look at it. And we should come to the realization
that when we see something taught or commanded, it does not contradict
anything else that was taught or commanded. So that when we
see what may appear as a contradiction, we should whack ourselves in
the face like a facepalm and go, oh, I'm the dumb butt. And
then we should realize that there is a range in which James is
using a term that is much different than how Paul or John or Jesus
may have used a term. Because it does not contradict.
So here, these servant, this slave of Christ and of the Lord
James, the brother of Jesus, is the only logical person to
have written this letter at the time it was written. He says
in verse 2, count it all joy. Important parenthetical here,
my brothers, and that is a gender-neutral word. It doesn't mean men, it
just means my siblings in Christ, brothers and sisters. Counted
all joy my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds. So here is command number one. He's like, Hi, I'm James, a slave
of the Lord and the Lord Jesus Christ and of God. Greetings.
Counted all joy when you face all kind of trials my siblings.
All right, so what is inclusive here? What's the command? To
count it all joy. Now, how many times have you
ever heard that from the mouth of someone trying to cheer you
up? Is it a cheer up? Is this a fortune cookie? Is
this a cheerleading thing? Is this an amen corner? Count
it all joy. I mean, is that something that
we do? And then when we're told to do, we go, you know what?
I wasn't counting it all joy. Thanks for the reminder. Now,
does it really solve the problem? No, it doesn't solve the problem.
It's to command us to do that which is antithetical to the
problem. So we're to count it all joy when we get a new car.
Not a problem. Count it all joy when we find
a new spouse, or find a spouse, not a new spouse. That was stupid.
I just saw the new couple and I thought, newlywed, when we're
newlywed. Count it all joy, yeah, not a problem. Count it all joy
20 years later when there's problems. Count it all joy when the transmission
goes out of the new car. Count it all joy when you have
a new child. Yay! Count it all joy when he's a devil. Count it all joy when everything's
going well in the world, I'm in good health. Count it all
joy when I get a terminal report from my doctor. Count it all
joy when the church is running well and everybody's happy with
one another. Count it all joy when the knuckleheads
come in and stir up problems. Count it all joy when everybody
loves my Facebook post. Count it all joy when I'm called
effeminate. Count it all joy. See, it's easy
to do it in the good times, but the command here is to do it
in the hard times. It is a command. And God Himself
is commanding it through His Apostle. Count it all joy. And this great reminder of why
we can count all things joy. Now what does that even mean?
Do we even say that? Count it all good. It's all good, man.
We're taking a tally. We're taking a measurement. We're
making a judgment. And we're saying to ourselves,
here's the experience, here is the environment, here is what's
happening right now. Wow, this is not a opportunity
for happiness and gladness and joyfulness and thankfulness and
celebration. This is an opportunity for revenge,
aggravation, sobbing, depression, throwing ourselves off a short
tower, or whatever it may be, this is not an opportunity for
joy. And so James is saying, by the command of Christ, as
you calculate all the experiences that you are now having, come
to the tally of joy. They all add up to joy. They
all add up to joy. This is the first time we've
seen this, but what's the big deal? I mean, why in the world
would he say something like this? Because this very next thing,
the audience here, and this adjective, inclusive of this pronoun, brothers,
we know that this is something that is very intimate. This is
not just, yo, what's up, bro? You're my man, you're my guy,
you're my dude. This is not brothers in humanity. These are brothers in the Lord. These are those who have been
granted by the Spirit of God the disposition to know Christ
and to know the Father who sent Him and understand with all the
saints the joy of the Lord in salvation and they are together
as an intimate family. And they are being persecuted
as one. And they have made themselves a home in a land that was not
their own. in what would be very akin to
the wilderness days of the Exodus without the resources. So now
we have all of these people who are brothers in the faith and
this intimate truth of the gospel salvation that is theirs in Christ
is the centerpiece of how now God can command through this
apostle count it all joy. Because you are my brothers. You are my sisters. We are together
in Christ's work. So count all of these things
joy. What things? When you meet trials
of various kinds. And there were a lot of different
trials. For some people, you know, wandering around the countryside,
going place to place and living on the land is not a problem.
That's a trial for me. It's not good. There's not enough
cleanliness. There's not enough sanitary surfaces. I can't do that without losing
my mind, folks. There's nothing I can do about
it. It is impossible. The only thing that would keep
me going is knowing, oh, when I get through, I'm gonna bathe in some
alcohol. But some people, it's not a trial at all. To other
people, it would not be a trial to walk away from their home
and from their car and from their job and just travel in the wilderness. Living off the land would not
be a problem. For others it would be like, I don't want to leave
my house, I don't want to leave my car, I don't want to leave my
stuff, I don't want to leave the pictures of my family. It's a little tiny
trial in comparison to the reality of eternity. It's nothing, it's
idols. So sometimes that would be the
trial. Others would be the trial of, okay, I'm staying here because
I'm not going to get involved in this Jesus stuff and I'm staying
in Jerusalem and then You're leaving. So the divided household,
imagine the divided household where you had to go and live
in the dispersion, with the dispersion, while the rest of your loved
ones stayed behind to continue to be Jews. Faithful to the end. Count it all joy. Count it all
joy. You know one of the biggest identifiers,
that's not the right word, you know one of the biggest Punching
the guts, I think it is in our world today, myself included,
is that as Christians we complain about too much. And complaining
is the antithesis of joy. Because joy, by design, according
to the scripture, is to thank God and be thankful for God.
You know, we already read that 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. Count it all joy. Because God
has ordained the trials. He has given them to us, and
they are good gifts. The trials are good gifts. The
trials are perfect gifts. If not, then God is not sovereign.
If God has established even discipline in the life of His children,
and it is not good and perfect, then God is not sovereign. See how weak our faith is? We
may have theological things in our mouths and minds to the point
that we can argue with the devil himself who is wiser than us
all. But if we don't understand the
simplicity of childlike faith that rests in the sovereignty
of God, we are living a miserable life. A miserable life. God has ordained in His sovereignty
for our joy. How is that joy? I will give
you my joy, Jesus says. Not like the world gives. I will
give you my peace. Not like the world gives. I will
give you my joy and my peace. It shall be yours. How did Jesus
have joy and peace in the garden? How did Jesus have joy and peace
on the cross? Not my will, but yours, Father.
The promises of the Father to Jesus Christ, the Son, established
the reality of what was certain against the backdrop of what
was temporal, from which the eternal glory
would spring. And then we've been promised
that. So in verse 3, there's a reminder of that. See, James
is not trying to teach these people this. They know that.
For you know. You see that? I started just
to preach an entire hour on that phrase. For you know. For you
know. What is it that you know? Do
you know the gospel? Or can you just recite somebody
else's gospel that you took off their website? You know the gospel
or do you just know some gospel propositions that you just keep
throwing out? Can you intertwine the gospel
into any conversation about any subject at any time? Can you
express the gospel in different ways? from your own mouth, from
your own heart, and from your own words. The way you speak,
and the way you read, and the way you understand, the way you
communicate, can you communicate the gospel in your voice? Not
with your vocal cords, but with your voice. Or do you use my
words? Do you use the word of God, and
do you establish that confession? What do you know? Do you know
the gospel? Do you know what faith is? Or are you continuing
to look at your faith? Or worse, your faithfulness,
thinking that your assurance comes from your faithfulness.
James says you know something. And James tells these people,
these brothers and sisters of his who are facing incredible
trials, he says, for you know that the testing of your faith
produces steadfastness. Alright, what is steadfastness?
And I'm not going to get into all that because I don't have
time. I'm going to take it slow. I'm not really going to get past
this. I just want to introduce a launching pad because this
little thing here, it launches trials, tests, faith, produces
steadfastness. Steadfastness has a full effect
which makes you perfect, which makes you complete, which allows
you to lack in nothing. And that's a key word because
that's the theme of this letter. He's specifically dealing with
a problem of joylessness that was, listen to this, that was
exacerbated by people who thought they were better than others. In a time when everybody was
gone and dispersed, but there were many people who had nothing
and some who had everything. And now there was disunity in
the church, not because of theological divisions, but because of intimate
problems. People thinking that they were
better than someone else. Here, the great and good gift
from the Father of Lights, who never changes, gave trials to
His children, who are brothers and sisters, for their joy, so
that their faith would be tested. What is faith? Faith is confidence, faith is
assurance, faith is knowing, faith is being given the knowledge
and the wisdom who is Christ Jesus. Faith knows God. Faith knows the Son of God. And we've gone through that.
We've gone through all of Hebrews 11 and 12 and we've seen what
faith is and what faith does. So faith is tested. Now here's something interesting,
and you may not see this, but I hope you do see it. As James
unpacks this letter, it's very quick. It's like, boom, he starts
to get a topic, boom, another topic, another topic. He's just
going very quickly. He's saying that faith is going
to be tested through the trials, and he's not talking about the
testing of one's understanding of doctrine. This isn't Galatia where people's
faith was tested through false teaching. There's no false teaching
here, just false living. No Christian living. So when
James talks about faith in this verse, he's not talking about
in as much as the teachings of Jesus theologically, he's talking
about the commands of Jesus relationally. And that is part of your faith.
Don't we use that idea in a way of calling faith a noun, the
faith? And so James is written in a
way that is in contrast to what Paul would write to the Romans,
but Paul would write to the Romans who were so inundated with the
idea that they could not be as equally standing before God,
the father of righteousness, because they had lived lives
so far away from the law of Moses, so far away from the righteous
works of religion. They've lived lives so far removed
from that. How could they just in a, Woof! Be standing perfectly on the
same platform as a man who was a Jew who was 80 years old. And Paul says, by faith. And in the same way, when someone says, well, I need
to work harder, Romans is that letter where you go and you say,
no. You don't. You have to work at all. You just rest. Resting faith. That's what God grants His people.
And sometimes resting faith, whoo, gets in the way like 2
Thessalonians where there's something going on there, you know, doctrinally
about the second coming and the resurrection and people just
give up and they sit on their hands and they do nothing. And
Paul tells the Thessalonians, if these people don't help and
work, don't feed them. Let them go hungry. You only
feed widows and children. You don't feed
young widows unless they work. You certainly don't feed a man
unless he can't move to do something. He's got to do something. If
you don't work, don't eat. That's sort of what Paul says. John would say in his first epistle,
you know, these brothers who aren't loving and have the world's
goods and they don't love their brother, this is a stupid faith.
They believe what's going on here. So there's always a time
where there's a testing of the faith. And when some people say,
well, you know what? I don't have to listen to the
instruction of the Bible because I am, I believe in sovereign
grace. Free in sovereign grace. Great. Then live it out. You're commanded to live it out. Paul would write in Hebrews,
you know, some of you guys who have known the sovereign and
free grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, you've known it for so long yet
you should be teaching others and living in respect to others
to serve and teach each other to love and own to good service
of works. As the Lord prepared, let's go into Ephesians for us
to do before the foundation of the world and yet you aren't
because you're little teeny tiny babies just whining around in
playing around with words and you need to get off your bohonkas
and do something for somebody. You see, that's what Paul says. And James is in a particular
fashion the first to introduce this idea And so he's saying
that the Lord is going to give you trials and it's going to
test your faith. Of course it's going to test what you believe.
Our God's promise is true. Is Jesus Christ really my Savior?
What do we see in the apocalypse? What do they look? Lord, when?
What is going on? Are we going to be lost? No, we're not going
to be lost. We hold fast to that. So it's of course what? It is truth
and it is also what? Intimacy is the body. So he says, the testing of your
faith produces steadfastness. Because as your faith is rocked,
as you doubt, as you wonder if even what God has shown you is
reality, God the Spirit will continue to hold you fast and
you will be satisfied and you will rest in the promises of
God, in the doctrines of Christ. And as you do that, and as you
interact, because you know the theme of the letter, right? It's
conflict. There's problems, people are
not loving each other. And beloved, if there's anything
that'll test your faith quicker, it's somebody who really upsets
you. And sad to say, since January,
I've been divided in this issue. My mind has been overcome. I've
been giving my time to things that I should not have been giving
it to for the sake of hoping to help and do some other things.
And in turn, I have experienced nothing but trials. And it has strengthened, it has
tested my faith. It has not strengthened, it has
tested my faith. You've heard me and Pastor Jesse
tells me often through the years, stop making jokes about punching
people in the throat. So this will be the one for this
year, and I won't say it again, but sometimes when people test
your faith, the easy remedy is just thinking. That's what you think, right?
It's your anger. It's inside. But you've got such
control over it because you've matured that, praise be the Lord. You see,
isn't that special? Doesn't erase the fact that it's
there. Our faith is tested in a great
way when people come along and begin to conflict with our lives,
conflict with our comforts, conflict with our theology, conflict with
our idealism. and everything else, mess with
our money, mess with our time, mess with our families, cost
us. Then what happens? This is a gift of God that we
should say, praise the Lord, what a blessing. And you know
what, if I said that out loud every time I felt tested, I'd
be a hypocrite. Because in the testing of your
faith, you're not warm and fuzzy feeling, thinking, hobby ding
dang, this is God giving me a gift, woo hoo! No, you're like, Lord
give me permission, just one moment, just a minute or two,
you know? Let me deal with this, give me one, just turn your back,
You know, I know it says, there is no shadow with you, no variation,
no change. Can you turn around just once?
Just once! Let me slap some sense into him.
I mean, that's how rednecks think. That's how it works. Or maybe
it's not anyone in particular. Maybe it's just the whole idea
of everything. Maybe it's everything that we
eat and everything that we see and everything that we listen
to. Anxiety for me. over the last year has been off
the chain and over the last four months has been the worst it's
been since I was 17 years old. And my obsessions have taken
root in my brain. I probably wash my hands 40 times
a day. And if you were hanging out with
me, you will wash your hands 12. Because I will tell you 12
times to wash your hands. You came in from outside. Wash
your hands, man. Here. Why? Because my faith is being
tested. What am I scared of? Nothing.
It's just what I do. It's control for me. I got it. One less thing to deal with.
You know, that alien bacteria causing fungus to come out of
my eyes and in my sleep. Stupid stuff. Go ahead and call
them. They've got little white padded
trucks that come help me. Steadfastness. You know what
we want? We want steadfastness. We want
to be able to stand firm and stand up for ourselves and go,
I'm fine. I'm okay. You're not going to bother me.
You're not hurting my feelings. You're not going to interrupt
this joy. See, that's what we want. And
when you act on a screen, you can put that vibe on, but when
reality hits, even if we can hide the expression, the turmoil
is still there. We want steadfastness. We want
to be steadfast because we want other people to think they got
it together. Remember what I said Sunday morning?
How we act sometimes, how we're putting on a face, and we don't
even know it. We're just doing the motions of what society has
told us to do and what the faith, what the culture in the faith
has told us to do. But ultimately, steadfastness
is being able not to what? See, I've heard people say, well,
steadfastness is like when Peter walked on the water. He didn't
walk, he sunk. That idiot got out the boat and was surprised, I think. And realized, I'm walking on
water and sunk. Because he wasn't walking on
nothing. I know that means he was walking on something, but
there we go. Christ was causing him to walk
on water. Christ was holding him up. The
minute he thought, I'm walking on water. No, I'm not. And people will
say, you got to be steadfast. You got to be like Peter. I'm
going to walk on water. You want to just jump on. I got
to be like Moses. Get out there and put your hands up. Let the
sea come out. You got to be like so-and-so. You got to be like
David. Sling that rock at the giant. Don't be like those people. They weren't faithful. Christ
was faithful. And that's not what it means
to be steadfast. In Ephesians chapter 6, we see that steadfastness
is really looking like I'm standing here and the devil's firing arrows
at me. And I'm not wearing any armor
at all. I'm in Christ. Christ takes all
the aim. Christ takes all the fire. Christ
takes all the trials. Christ takes all the temptation.
He's already succeeded. He's already established my righteousness.
He's already done all that is required for my salvation. I
am a brother of Christ and we are brothers together in Christ.
So all of these things are really just small little gifts to show
us that we can stand fast in Christ and that He has not moved. And all it takes is one little
thing, isn't it? One little thing. One little political speech.
One little neighbor who causes trouble. One little issue in
your head. And just like, oh, it can upset
the apple cart. It can turn it upside down. And
we run off in the ditch. And don't know how we're ever
going to stand back up. Well, beloved, we're standing even when we're
falling. We're standing even when we're in the ditch. We're
standing even when we're groveling in the mire. We're standing when
we're weeping into our pillow. We are standing when we don't
even know why we came into the room because our mind is so full
we don't know why we're even here. You ever been that full? And you know what doesn't work
when it's spiritual, brain dumps, organizers? Doesn't matter. What matters is that Christ is
standing. Steadfastness in Christ. Knowing
that God has not promised to move us out of these circumstances,
God has promised He is immovable in the giving of these circumstances.
I want you to see that, beloved. And I know there's a lot of stuff
that I'm skipping there, because I'm going straight from like
verse 3 all the way to verse 17 in the context, because there's
some other stuff that gives the instrument through which all
these songs are being played. The tempo, if you will. Look
at verse 12. Blessed is the man 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. See, that goes together, beloved. It's part
of James' instruction here. Because everything that we have
in this world, everything that we're experiencing now is nothing but fodder. It
is just chaff. It will fail. It will dry up
and burn. It is gone. But Christ, He remains
forever and our relationship in Him is a steadfast anchor. So our relationship together
in Him should be the pinnacle of our existence. pinnacle to
the praise of His glorious grace. So this is what the letter of
James is trying to teach us. And then what James is going
to do and what we're going to look at over the next months
is we're going to see phrase after phrase and instruction
after instruction and command after command that will help
us walk in this journey of trials together as a body while we are
all suffering, but not because of one another. We should eliminate
that. As long as it is up to us, Paul
says, we should be reconciled to one another. So here are some
things that James is going to do to teach us. And you're going
to be surprised. He picks on, and I say that because
that's what somebody's told me, James just picks on a certain
group of people. He doesn't pick on a certain
group of people. But let me tell you something, beloved. We who
have much, much is required of us. We have certain talents and
skills and wealth. More is required of us if we
have more. It's like giving an infant a
balloon to blow up. They can't do it. They don't
have the lung capacity. They don't have the know-how.
They don't have the dexterity in their lips and jaws to push
air through their lungs and esophagus in a way that could force it
into a balloon. They can't. But Daddy can. without ever taking another breath,
just one big breath. We have the capacity. Some of us have
a greater responsibility to certain areas of our intimacy than others
do. I have a responsibility to study,
and to pray, and to watch out, and to care, and to teach, and
that is my primary responsibility. And it's not just midweek and
Sunday. It's every day, all the time,
as I'm able, without usurping other responsibilities that I
have to my home and to my health. at home. And everything else can come
after those two things. So nobody's off the hook. Everybody's
important. Everybody's a sinner. And everybody
in Christ is justified in Him alone. He never changes. So let's listen to what James
has to teach us. And let's understand it together. And let's live it
together. and grow in it. Let's pray. We thank you father
as you'll tell us in this letter that let's not be just hearers
of the word and fill ourselves up with the fullness of your
glory as it is taught but father let us also be doers of the word
and fill our lives actively with that which is taught help me
do this father Lord protect us from complaining and not looking
at all these things as a way of strengthening us, causing
us to know that you are our true anchor. So Father, I pray for our body.
I pray for every part. I pray, Father, for those precious
sheep who are our peripheral brethren who sit and long to
be with us. Lord, keep us patient. Keep me
patient and long-suffering and gentle and wise. Help us to see that what we are
to do requires wisdom. How we are to do it requires
wisdom. The way in which we ought to
walk requires wisdom, and that only is found in Christ Jesus,
who is our righteousness, who is our wisdom, who is our glory. In His name we pray, amen.