I once knew a guy who had no problems whatsoever. He was never tempted by sin; he was never put in a position where he was frustrated and angry, never worried about the future. No wait, that’s no right. I don’t know anyone like that. I don’t know anyone who has skated through life, I don’t know anyone who has gotten a free pass without some trials and some temptations. Most people I know struggle through life; life can be messy much of the time. We worry about the future, we worry about what others think about us, we worry about if we are following God correctly, we worry that we worry too much. At least, I do. You all may be different. You may be that person who floats through life, from found treasure to found treasure. But I doubt it. I think most people are like me, going from trial to trial, from temptation to temptation instead of having investment after investment pay off big time.
Christian life is hard. I make no bones about it. The struggles we have are much different than the ones experienced by the early Christian church, but the adversary is still the same. There will always be active opposition to our growth as a church, to our growth as Christians. Becoming a Christian is quite simple. Living as a Christian is often frustratingly hard. When family matters intrude on our delighting in God, when job stresses continually draw us mentally out of worship and into worry, when personal interactions go through our minds over and over; we recognize that living as a Christian, living as a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ is not easy. The Bible, helpfully, recognizes this, and provides a framework for stresses and brings purposes, although not always answers, to our suffering.
James is a little letter in the New Testament, but a very practical little letter. It comes across as the voice of a fellow believer who has been there; in the toughest places and is encouraging nonetheless. Listen to the first section of chapter 1 in James.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many
kinds, 3 because you know
that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so
that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, he should
ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be
given to him. 6 But when he
asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of
the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That man should not think he will receive anything from
the Lord; 8 he is a
double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
9 The
brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. 10 But the one who is rich should take
pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower. 11 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 man will fade away even while he goes about his
business.
Let’s pray.
We’re going to be taking a look at James over the next
few months. James is a great book, even though it has had some bad press in the
past. Martin Luther didn’t like James at all because of its focus on Christian
life; it may seem when reading James that what we do is more important than
whose we are. Please don’t ever hear me say that. Instead, James is more interested in living out the
Christian faith, living as though we believe that Jesus died on the cross for
us, and because of that, our sins are taken away and we are ushered into the
very presence of God. I like that about James. It is a very practical book, a
book focused on how to live as Christians. You have to remember scholars
believe James is the half brother of Jesus, one of the leaders of the early
church in Jerusalem. His little letter to the church, copied over and over
again by hand and read to the little, tiny congregations that eventually grew
into the church, is extremely practical. I suspect this is why James resonates
with me. I tend toward practical Christianity; maybe it’s a West Coast thing.
Other Christians tend toward being extremely scholarly, looking at the
different ways Jesus might come back, thinking deeply about the ways people
become Christians, whether God calls them or whether individuals can chose God
on their own. I have my own suspicions about how that happens, but I’m really
more interested in how we are Christians in a lost society, and how we are
Christians together.
Which brings us again to James. James doesn’t seem to be
dwelling on the high and interesting little bits of Christianity; James writes
to help the early church survive, to help it thrive, to help the bits and
pieces of the church work together to praise and worship God, to God’s glory
alone. James isn’t a professor in an academic setting, high in an ivory tower
who understands life only through theories; James is in the midst of it. There
is a feeling I get that James has been there. James has been through the fire
of following Jesus, this is his advice to the rest of us. It doesn’t mean he was
perfect, but this is what he strove for in living for Christ, and this is what
we should be striving for in living for Christ. This message, although directed
at the early church, a struggling church, a persecuted church, pertains in our
lives as well. I believe strongly that the church has returned to its position
of persecution in the world; not overtly in this country, but with the polite
mocking, with the pity of non-believers we see every day. This letter is for us
too.
Today’s passage, obviously, is about trials and
temptations. Why would James begin with these topics? Why would he chose to
write about these things first? I think it is because how we respond to trials
and temptations defines who we are as Christians. It is foundational, whether
we are going to fold up into a fetal position for the rest of our lives, or
whether we are joyfully going to confront the world and all that is in it.
Trials aren’t a curse from God, neither are they a form of punishment. But they
will come to all who follow Christ, so James begins with this admonition…
Consider
it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of
your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature
and complete, not lacking anything.
Note
at the outset that the joy is in the
trials, not for the trials. James
writes to a minority group within a world of pagans and Jews who haven’t
believed. Trials were coming from every direction; that’s the reality for both
James and his group of believers in Jerusalem and for the churches he was
encouraging. But trials aren’t a reason to panic and give up faith in Christ.
Instead, use the trials in your walk as a disciple. Jesus Himself endured
trials; who are you that you should skate through unscathed? I have never
considered trials to be joyful occasions. That’s because I’m not the mature
Christian I wish I were; at least I’m not yet there. I know that times of
stress and trials have grown me in faith, they have changed me into the person
I am, but I most confess before you all that I am not looking forward to the
next time of testing. Like most people, I try to avoid pain. But it is those
times of tough Christian living that I look back on and can see clearly that
God was using those times to teach me dependence on Him.
One
of the hardest things I ever had to do was forgive someone who had really hurt
my mom. I’m a little more forgiving when it comes to me…but mess with my mom
and you’ve grabbed the bull by the horns. For my growth, for my moving on in
life, to develop perseverance and to become the person God was changing me
into, I had to forgive this slimeball. I confronted him, and he felt there was
nothing he did wrong. That’s a hard place, isn’t it, trying to forgive someone
who doesn’t want your forgiveness, or worse, feels like they are above your
anger and hurt. Like it didn’t even matter that he caused mom to lose her
church. What a jerk. And yet, we are not called to be Christians only when it
is easy. I wanted to grab that guy by his shirt and chuck him out his third
story office window. But I didn’t. I told him I forgave him, and then I worked
and prayed to make it so. And I am not looking forward to the next time I have
to do that. But what he meant for evil, God meant for good for both me and mom.
You can tell I’m still trying to forgive him, especially when I accurately
describe him as a slimeball. But perseverance is not something learned in an
hour, or in a day. Perseverance is learned over time, over a long time. What is
the end goal of perseverance-Christian maturity. The deep knowledge that God is
in control, and we belong to God.
I
am still learning about persevering. I am still learning what it means to
depend on God through the tough times. I still rely too much on myself, and too
little on God. Too often, when the chaos comes, I panic. Maybe you do too. But
we’re learning together, hopefully. One day at a time we continue to learn what
it means to pick up our crosses and follow Him; it takes humility, it takes
obedience, it takes us focusing and concentrating on Christ, seeing how each
day, each conversation can be used to His glory. This focus on Jesus is what I
think James is getting at in his next bit, and I think it is the key to this entire
passage.
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God,
who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.
6 But when he asks, he must
believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown
and tossed by the wind. 7 That
man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable
in all he does.
One of the ways we can
rise above our circumstances is to ask God for wisdom. Asking God for wisdom
gives us perspective on our struggles. In fact, more accurately, we should ask
for a little of His wisdom, a little of His perspective. God’s perspective
encourages us when we are in the midst of stuff we have to persevere. So often
we understand what God was doing only looking backwards, because we don’t
always ask for wisdom. I heard about a woman at Fuller who switched her
denomination affiliation in order to date a guy. She felt in order to be
acceptable to his family and faith, she needed to switch. I can’t remember from
what to what, it doesn’t really matter. So she did switch, only to have the
relationship fall apart. Painful times; giving up something comfortable and
cherished like one’s faith tradition, only to have the relationship fail. But
it became clearer when she went onto the mission field. The people she was sent
to could not accept her unless she switched denominations again. So she did,
and it is my understanding that she has a powerful ministry to those people. I
believe she is a Wycliffe Bible translator to a remote people, but not remote
enough to not have a denomination preference, I guess. In any situation, she
feels very strongly that if she had not been in the situation where she had to
change her affiliation the first time, that she wouldn’t have been able to do
it when she was on the mission field. She would have gone out under the
authority of her original denomination, and she would have been rejected by the
people she was sent to. But she sees, in looking back, God’s hand guiding her
through that tough time. God needed her to depend on Him through the changing
of denominations in order that He might use her more effectively.
So we ask, focused on
Christ. We ought to know that if God wants us to know how things will work out,
then He will let us know. But we ask, trusting God. That person that does not
trust God is, like James describes so well, a wave tossed hither and yon,
tossed about by our own indecision, tossed about by the mocking voices of
others and of the power we struggle against. The ocean was an image of chaos
for the ancient Hebrews; rogue waves, sea monsters, storms and so forth. Even
more chaotic is a wave tossed back and forth by the wind. Our lives can seem
just that chaotic; we struggle to focus on Christ, to focus on our part in the
clash between the world and Christ’s body. We can get so distracted, so caught
up in thinking as the world does. We can begin to think God doesn’t really hear
prayers, that God doesn’t really answer prayers. We can get pulled away from
our primary purpose to know God and make Him known by the cares and concerns of
the world. Then we really are in the chaos, with nothing in life solid to hold
onto. But Jesus is different. He is solid, he is our firm foundation, He is our
rock amidst the chaos of life.
We were talking about
this at the contemporary service last week. There are so many things that
distract us from focusing on God, so that we do become like waves that are
tossed about by the wind. We are tossed about by finances, we are tossed about
by family issues, by our job situations…so many things in our lives can lure
our focus away from Christ. But those same things can be, if we seek God though
them, opportunities to grow in Christ. These same distractions can teach us to
focus on Jesus during a crisis, can teach us to be dependent on Him, can teach
us that His death on our behalf was not in vain, but so that God can be with us
each step of the day, with us in each conversation, each problem, each bit of
chaos we encounter in our days.
We decided in our
conversation after the sermon that a concentrated prayer time helps us focus on
what’s really important; through a good prayer time each day we learn to focus
on God, and it is easier to return to that focus during the day. When a problem
arises we are more apt to turn to God in prayer as a first response, rather
than as a last resort. That is the discipline of prayer that is learned over
time, learned through crises that we endure. James will illustrate this later
by stating a man can’t love both God and money. We can’t love God and our
social position. We can’t love God as much as ourselves. We can’t be double
minded, always torn away from God by our worldly lusts. St. Augustine, one of
the great thinkers of the Christian faith wanted very much to have intimacy
with God, to know Him better and more fully, but he was also sleeping around,
and wanted to continue to do that. Finally, he understood that he couldn’t
follow God and his desires. He became single minded, focused on God. He
developed into a great thinker, writer and pastor. Single focused. I think we
all deal with this frustration, of wanting to follow God, but also to follow
ourselves. The apostle Paul put it like this in Romans 7; “I do not understand
what I do. For what I want to do, I do
not do, but what I hate, I do…For what I do is not the good I do; no, the evil
I do not want to do-this I keep on doing.” Maturing in Christ is beginning to
realize that there are things in our life distracting us from following Christ.
Even the things we have to do, like dealing with our children, can be done in a
God-focus, god glorifying way. That is what we are seeking; not a retreat from
the world but to be the best Christians we can be in the middle of the trials,
the chaos of life.
Then James attempts to
illustrate this by examining people’s motivations about money.
The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high
position. 10 But the one who
is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a
wild flower. 11 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 man will fade away even while he
goes about his business.
Those who are rich may
think that they can eliminate all the trials and temptations out of their
lives. The humble, those in humble circumstances, know that it isn’t possible.
There is through this passage a theme of burning away what is unimportant. In
verse 3 there is the word ‘testing’, which can be used with the connotation of
gold, heating up gold to purify it, to burn away all the impurities. We want a
faith that is like gold, the hotter it becomes, the more pure. This is not an
easy desire; it is not the easy step of faith to take. James, you will remember,
is not writing to the high and mighty, he is not writing, for the most part, to
the powerful in society. Those who joined the early church weren’t, for the
most part, the powerful, the influential, the well heeled. They were the poor,
the outcasts because of their new belief that Jesus was the Messiah the ancient
prophets had talked about, and that He died for them; the outcasts, the poor,
those at the edge of society who had come to believe that their lives had a
greater purpose than struggling for survival in the dirt. They carried in their
hearts, in their written Scriptures, the message of hope for the whole world.
They proclaimed Christ
Jesus, arrived from heaven, healer and teacher, sacrificial lamb on the cross,
payment in full for our sins. They were free in Christ to worship God, to
approach God in prayer and worship clothed in the perfection of Christ. Even
though they would go through many trials, persecutions, theirs was Christ. The
early church went through 250 years of persecution. They really were thrown to
the lions, they really were killed for failing to burn a sacrifice to the
emperor. They really were killed for Christ, the message of Christ and Him
crucified, but also risen. The trials matured them quickly. The realized the
importance of the message, of the truth they carried to a lost world, and even
though the world hated them, it was their calling to reach the world with the
love of Christ. I wonder if we’ve lost that maturity of perseverance in our
churches, in our culture. We’ve done so much to avoid trials, so much to hide
our faith that we have become a country full of spiritual infants. Don’t be
afraid of trials; don’t revel in them either. Use them to become the people God
is shaping you to be. I don’t know what your trials are; maybe your kids, maybe
your finances, maybe your job frustrations… trials come in all shapes and
sizes. But instead of living in fear, live in God. God makes the worst things
survivable-look at the cross. The worst thing lead to the best thing.
Let’s pray.