Sermon preached at The Bridge Church, North Vancouver- June 2, 2024
Intro
I want to start out by talking about the title of this series that we’re beginning today and running through the summer. 10 years ago, I finished my master’s degree at Regent College in Vancouver. My favorite professor there was a Pentecostal New Testament scholar from Australia named Rikk Watts. The first year New Testament foundations course he taught was my favorite course I’ve ever taken. It went for three hours every Wednesday afternoon, and I remember so many weeks wishing that we could go another three hours. Rikk was incredibly passionate about Christian faith. He’d distribute detailed notes before class but half the time veered away from the notes into straight-up preaching. One minute he’d be talking about the authorship of Ephesians, the next tears were streaming from his eyes as he’s talking about God’s grace, and then tears would be streaming from my eyes- a “I’m not crying, you’re crying” kind of thing. Rikk also had all these phrases and topics he’d often come back to, prompting one of my friends to create “Rikk-tac-toe”, which was a kind of bingo game during his lectures. And one of the phrases on Rikk-tac-toe was this one: “it’s about life!” As you’d come into the chapel, which was where we would have the class, he’d have a slide show going on the screen with people’s faces. He told us this was because he always wanted to remind us that what we talked about in New Testament studies wasn’t just theoretical, pie in the sky stuff. What we talked about in class was about life. It was about day to day reality. It needed to make a difference for the kind of people whose faces we saw in those pre-class slide shows.
One of the books in the New Testament that best encapsulates this idea is the book of James. To bring you into the context for this book, let’s start out by reading 1:1.
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: greetings.
James 1:1
A few important things emerge here. First of all, the author. Apparently, it’s a man named James. No last name, no family details. It’s got to be a pretty important James if he’s on a first-name basis, right? It’s like if someone says, “look, it’s Adele!” You don’t reply, “Adele who?” The problem is that there are a couple of famous James’s in the New Testament. Traditionally, harking back to the early church, the James here is the half-brother of Jesus. I don’t think there’s compelling evidence to deviate from that. In Galatians 1:19, Paul refers to James as the Lord’s brother. Earlier in his life, James was probably part of Jesus’ family that tried to rein him in and refused to believe that Jesus was the Messiah (Mark 3:21). However, he is listed in 1 Corinthians 15:7 as one of the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. In Acts and Galatians we see that after other apostles fled Jerusalem because of persecution, James became the leader of the Christians who were still in the city.
So if that’s who this James is, which is quite a biography, why doesn’t he lead with that? It seems like a pretty impressive resume to tack on to the top of your letter. He’s got a lot to say in this letter about how followers of Jesus should live, so why not back his authority up with some heavy-hitting personal facts? Maybe he doesn’t do that because they already know. Or maybe it’s because his authority didn’t come from his biological relationship with Jesus, or his earthly status, but instead from his spiritual relationship to Jesus. Above all else, James was a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. By the way, that could also read, “servant of Jesus Christ, who is Lord and God.” Either way, it’s what we call a very high Christology. We have a very high view of Jesus and his divinity from a man who may have grown up with Jesus and was immersed in the monotheism of Judaism. That’s incredible! James says that he is, first and foremost, a servant. This is actually foundational for all the practical instruction that comes afterwards in James. If your identity is primarily found in your relationship to Christ, as his servant, then the most important question is not “how do I want to live my life?” But instead, “how does Christ, my Lord, want me to live my life?” The practical stuff is an outworking of a foundational identity.
Next, James says that he is writing to someone. In other words, this is a letter. However, the recipients are almost as vague as the sender. “To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations.” This is a pretty obvious allusion to Israel, a people originally made up of 12 tribes, based on the 12 sons of Jacob from the book of Genesis. By James’ day, those tribes had mostly been lost to history except for the Jews and the Levites. The thing is, James is obviously not writing to all Jews, or to all Israelites. He’s writing specifically to followers of Jesus. For example, he reminds them in 2:1 as “believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ”. He says these twelve tribes had been scattered among the nations. Again, that was true of the Jews in general, because even after the exile ended, a lot of Jews remained in foreign lands instead of returning home. But it may have also been literally true of the Christians James was writing to.
Here’s what I mean. In Acts 7, there’s a story about the first Christian martyr, a man named Stephen. He was full of fire and wisdom and boldness. The guy had all kinds of very public debates with his fellow Jews about the identity of Jesus as Messiah. In the end, they had enough of him and decided to toss a few heavy stones his general direction at fairly high velocities. Stephen did not survive, and his death resulted in a “great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1). It’s after that point, it seems, that James became the de facto leader of the church there. It’s possibly the scene for his letter we’re reading. If it is, this is one of the earliest books we have in the New Testament. James may have written this letter to these newly scattered Jewish followers of Jesus (if our timeline is correct, there weren’t many non-Jewish followers of Jesus yet). These were believers who were experiencing all kinds of struggles as a result of being scattered and persecuted. That’s a great segue into the next few verses.
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be matureand complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:2-4
1. Nature of the trials
Trials: what are they?
Let’s first talk about the nature of these “trials”. What are we up against here and who is up against it, according to James? He calls them “trials of many kinds”. Many kinds, meaning many colored, various, complex, and so on. Sometimes I think that the only trials worth mentioning in church are the ones that are specifically a result of your Christian faith. If people make fun of you for being a follower of Jesus, if they toss rocks in your relative direction at a high velocity, then consider it joy. But if you have secular struggles, sorry, you’re on your own, nothing redemptive about that. James corrects me on this. Trials come in all shapes and sizes. It might come in the form of suffering injustice or poverty. In James 5, James rebukes the rich who have failed to pay the wages of their workers and have lived in luxury and self-indulgence. In James 2:6-7, it’s injustice and persecution. He writes, “is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?” And we can add to this brief list sickness and injury, losing a loved one, loneliness, heartbreak, pandemics, wars and so on. All of these are trials that James could name.
In verse 3, James gives another name for these trials: they are tests of your faith. The only other place the Greek word here shows up in the New Testament is 1 Peter 1:7, which also includes the same phrase for trials: “in all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed”. The NIV translates the same Greek word for “test” in James as “proven genuineness” in 1 Peter. That brings out the meaning of the test. It is a refining, an intense process involving a ton of heat and pressure, that refines precious metals. But that imagery also makes it clear that this isn’t a fun process. This isn’t easy. There are no shortcuts. Your faith in God is inevitably going to be tested, it’s going to be tried, it’s going to be stretched because of all these various kinds of trials.
Here at The Bridge, we’ve been baptizing a bunch of people lately and hearing their testimonies. It’s so exciting. However, baptism is usually the beginning of the journey. That means that when you’re baptized, you don’t always know what’s going to come. It’s the same thing with weddings. Weddings are the beginning of the marriage, and sometimes a couple hasn’t really been tested yet. You might be at a wedding, and you watch the bride and groom gaze at each other all doughy-eyed, reciting their own created airy-fairy vows: “oh, I promise to love you even when you have a bad hair day, I promise to love you even when you leave the toilet seat up”. Isn’t that cute? Everyone who’s been married longer than 5 days is like, are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how hard this is? How your fairytale relationship is going to be tested? Back to faith, James assumes that circumstances in life will place significant pressure on your relationship with God. You might think, “nothing could ever shake me, I’m 100% certain, I just bask in His love every day!” Suddenly, you find yourself enduring a season when He doesn’t seem to be answering prayer, when He is allowing all kinds of challenges to come your way, when His presence seems elusive, when you come across passages in the Bible that you can’t make any sense of, when things happen in the world that contradict everything you thought you knew. Expect that to happen, expect there to be tests to your faith.
Trials: who are they for?
That gets to the other aspect of the nature of trials: who is up against them? Again, James has just addressed the readers of his letter as the “twelve tribes”- the people of God. It’s pretty inclusive of any who trust in the Lord. In verse 2, he addresses them as his brothers and sisters, those who have put their faith in Jesus. It’s really clear to me from this that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are not immune from poverty and from sickness and from alienation and so on. This is what boggles my mind about the health and wealth gospel, which is actually no gospel at all. Preachers of the prosperity gospel want to offer you a shortcut. They want to tell you that God’s will and purpose is for you to avoid anything challenging or uncomfortable, that if you just have enough faith, you’ll have lots of money and be perpetually healthy and happy. James reminds his brothers and sisters that whenever you face trials of many kinds. In John 16:33, Jesus tells his disciples that in this world, you will have trouble. We’ve got to stop misleading people, falsely advertising Christian faith. We do new believers a favor when we help them expect trials.
2. Our response to the trials
So that’s the nature of the trials in terms of what we’re up against and who’s up against it. How are followers of Jesus to respond to those tests of faith? It’s not to avoid trials at all costs or to feel guilty because the reason you’re enduring trials is a lack of faith. Instead, the theme that James keeps coming back to in this section is perseverance. James says that the testing of our faith produces perseverance. He tells us to let perseverance finish its work. Verse 12 hits on some of the same themes and says that the one who perseveres under trial is blessed.
Perseverance
Let’s make a couple of notes about this perseverance. For one, it’s been noted that when the Bible talks about enduring situations, it’s not a passive submission to those circumstances. It’s not like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, waddling around as a victim, glumly accepting whatever happens to him. “My house has fallen to the ground again, nobody listens to me, nobody cares.” Instead, endurance is an active steadfastness. It’s a resolute decision to move in a certain direction, regardless of circumstances. I think about superhero movies where the hero is getting pummeled and shot at and yet just keeps moving toward the goal, even if the whole world seems to be against him or her. Endurance isn’t a passive abdication of choice, it’s an active resolution to move in a certain direction regardless of the cost.
The other thing about this perseverance is that it perseveres all the way. Verse 4 says to let perseverance finish its work. The idea here is that you could persevere for a little bit and then give up before the job was complete. And James isn’t saying, hey, good enough, at least you tried for a little bit! NBA and NHL playoffs are into the final rounds, and one of the things that marks out contenders from pretenders is the ability to play with consistent focus and effort through a whole game. You can play a great game for the first 40 minutes, laying your body on the line, but then totally take the pedal off the gas at the end. You’re tired, you’ve built a bit of a lead, you figure you can coast. And suddenly, everything falls apart. The other team goes on a 16-0 run, or scores 4 unanswered goals- I’m trying to be hockey inclusive here, which is hard for me- and you’re done. You didn’t let perseverance finish its work and you lost.
I don’t know if you agree with me about this, but it seems to me this active, persevering perseverance is something our Western culture has lost. For various reasons, the way that some of us grew up and the way that many of our kids are growing up is not cultivating perseverance. For example, we live in an instant gratification world where if I order something on Amazon today and if I don’t have it tomorrow, I’m losing my mind. This is a true story: I ordered a book about perseverance on Monday and was flustered that it didn’t come until Wednesday. Two whole days! I remember the first time I used the internet. I wanted to go to some website about Michael Jordan. It probably took 5 minutes to load. I didn’t care. Now, if a website doesn’t load for me in 3 seconds, I’m contemplating throwing my phone through the window. The point is, enduring doesn’t fit with that instant gratification expectation. There’s also the rise in “safetyism”, a term coined by a couple of writers who talked about the “coddling of the American mind”. They talked about how education, for example, has become focused on protecting kids from ideas they might find uncomfortable. This has given rise to all kinds of campus protests, trigger warnings, safe spaces, and so on. In that book, the authors begin with the recent rise of peanut allergies. As it turns out, this happened because kids weren’t being exposed to peanuts at an early age anymore. When you attempt to protect them from everything, the result is they’re more fragile. There’s also the turn to therapy as a response to any and every hardship in life. I have a book I’m reading through that was released earlier this year called “Bad Therapy: Why the kids aren’t growing up”. Abigail Shrier asks a basic question: “with unprecedented help from mental health experts, we have raised the loneliest, most anxious, depressed, pessimistic, helpless, and fearful generation on record. Why?” She says that one of the outcomes of our therapeutic culture has been to turn everyone into a victim, with various labels that keep them stuck in that helpless victim mentality. Something has shifted here in our culture. Some of us have ancestors who endured exponentially more challenging circumstances, and some of us have endured these personally. We’re talking about global wars, genocide, immigration to a new country and so on. However, our ancestors seemed to be far more equipped to handle those gigantic trials than some of us are today when faced with a bad test score or a rejection from a job application. I don’t believe we’re a culture marked by perseverance.
So that’s one way followers of Jesus are to respond to trials: through an active, resolute perseverance. This is something that should set us apart. This is something as Christian parents we want to be cultivating in our kids as a counter-cultural value. However, it’s not just perseverance that James talks about. He talks about something even more incredible. What does he start with as a response to trials of many kinds? In verse 2, he says we should consider it pure joy!
Joy
Different translations do something different with this. You might read an English translation that says “consider it all joy”, which is what the Greek word often means. That makes it seem like you should experience nothing but joy when hardships come. “Oh you have shingles? Praise God, I wish I was in your shoes!” “You went through a break-up last week? That’s amazing, you are blessed!” See, that just seems off, unless it was a really toxic relationship! That’s why I think the NIV gets it right when it sees it as pure joy, referring to the intensity. You might experience other emotions and thoughts in the trial, but one of those responses as a Christian should be genuine, authentic joy.
In a couple of minutes, we’re going to talk specifically about the outcome of trials for a Christian, which is the reason you can feel joy. But for now, I’ll just say that joy in trials can only be possible if there is something in your life of greater value to you than comfort and safety and status and so on. Whatever the trial is costing you, there must be something of greater value to you that the trial is making possible. That’s the only way you could experience joy, right?
What’s interesting is that even non-Christians working from a social science perspective have come to the same conclusions when it comes to enduring hardship. In other words, this is how God has wired us as humans. The book I ordered on Monday, the one that frustratingly took until Wednesday to end up on my doorstep, is called “Grit”, written by a woman named Angela Duckworth. She’s a PhD, a MacArthur Fellow, a professor, a CEO and so on. She spent decades studying what made people successful in their various fields. She started by looking at some elite military training programs and why some people dropped out and others didn’t. In the end, she concluded it had little to do with intelligence or fitness or talent. It had to do with grit. Here’s what she says:
“Each was chasing something of unparalleled interest and importance, and it was the chase- as much as the capture- that was gratifying…second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had direction. It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit.”
Angela Duckworth
Did you hear that? They had perseverance and they had passion. It sounds a lot like “consider it pure joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” Now, I haven’t made it far enough into the book to know how exactly Angela Duckworth thinks about that direction and passion. Where does that come from? What’s the source? Maybe if Amazon had delivered it on Tuesday like they said they would, I would have that answer. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait on Amazon to give me James 1.
3. The outcome of the trials
Why are we to consider it pure joy when we face trials? What motivates us to endure them? According to James, the Christian has some incredible resources when it comes to answering this question. We could divide his answer into two categories.
Because of how they form us now
First, these trials have the potential to make us into certain kinds of people now. He says that when we perseveringly persevere, when we endure all the way through, that we can be mature and complete, not lacking anything. That word for “complete” has the idea of fulfilling the purpose for which we were created. From Genesis 1, we find that the purpose we were made for was to bear the image of God. We were made to reflect His character, to exercise the authority He’s given us in creation in a way that is consistent with who He is. The problem, going back to Genesis, is that sin distorts us. It mars the image of God. It messes up the mirror that we were intended to be.
What God does, ultimately, is send His own Son, Jesus. The New Testament describes Jesus as the “radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being” (Hebrews 1:3) and “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). Jesus is the definition of maturity, of completeness, of the purpose for which we were made. But listen to this verse in Hebrews 5: “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect (the same Greek word as “complete” in James 1:4), he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:8-9). Jesus became complete because of what he suffered- as in, it was through the cross, through the greatest trial any human has ever faced, that he fulfilled the purpose for which God sent him. It was through this that he became our salvation. What I’m saying is that enduring trials joyfully makes us more like Jesus, who endured the greatest trial in order to accomplish our salvation.
Paul is a great example of enduring trials joyfully because of their Christ-conforming potential. We went through Acts over the course of a couple of years as a church. We saw how this man lost so much of his status in Judaism because of his faith in Jesus and how he suffered much. But Paul says in Philippians 3 that whatever were gains for him, he now considers loss for the sake of Christ. All he wants is to gain Christ and know him. He says, “I want to know Christ- yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11). Paul will willingly, even joyfully, endure sufferings because it grows him in the knowledge of Jesus and participation with him. Remember, in order to consider it joy, then whatever the trial is costing you, there must be something of greater value to you that the trial is making possible. For Paul, that thing of greater value was growing in the knowledge and likeness of Jesus.
Because of what we will one day receive
So, we can respond with perseverance and joy because of how trials can form us in this life. Second, we can respond that way as followers of Jesus because of what we will receive in the next. Look again at verse 12: “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.” James says they will receive the crown of life.
Jesus makes a very similar promise in a similar context to the church of the city in Smyrna. He says, “do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.” (Revelation 2:10) Revelation 22, the last chapter of the Bible, spells this out even more: “no longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.” (Revelation 22:3-5) Those who love the Lord, who withstand the test of faith, will reign with him. They will have everlasting life. They will see Him face to face.
There is a choice laid before every human. You can live your life now by trying at all costs to avoid trials. You can attempt to numb whatever pain makes it through your defenses, ultimately wilting under the trials as you depend on your own strength to deal with them, ultimately finding that you have missed life altogether. Or you can put your trust in the Lord who suffered the greatest trial for you, you can embrace trials in this life as a way of growing in your knowledge and love for Him, and ultimately find that you have gained everlasting life. This is the choice laid before you today. All of you today can identify trials in your life right now, of various kinds. God doesn’t promise to take them away, not yet, not necessarily. Will you attempt to find shortcuts out of those trials by your own strength, or will you choose to trust Him in joyful perseverance?
