Sermon preached at The Bridge Church, North Vancouver- June 16, 2024
Intro
We bought family passes this past year for the Grouse Mountain Skyride. As you might know, after growing up in Manitoba, I have very little use for snow, so I didn’t care to do much with those passes over the winter. Now in the summer, though, it’s a different story. I’ve done the Grouse Grind a couple of times this past month and am hoping to do it a bunch more over the next few months. The thing is, I’m very competitive. Doing the Grind for me is not a leisurely, enjoyable outing. It’s a mad dash to the top hoping to beat my best time, leaving me panting like a bulldog and sweating like I’ve just come out of the shower. Again, not necessarily fun, but rewarding, especially when you get to the top.
Another summer event I’m looking forward to is our annual trip to the Cultus Lake water park with the Children’s Heart Network. I love going down waterslides. It’s easy. You just lie there passively and the water takes you down. You barely have to do anything, you just go with the flow. Aside from a few masochists, I think the vast majority of people would say it’s easier and even more enjoyable to go down a waterslide than climb a mountain.
We’ve been talking about trials and challenges over the last couple of weeks, because that’s how James begins his letter in the New Testament, which we’re spending time with this summer. James writes to people who have been scattered and are facing adverse circumstances. He shows us how every trial carries with it a two-pronged potential: to be dragged down in temptation to sin, or to look upward to the Father and persevere through faith in Christ. It’s a bit like either going down a waterslide or climbing a mountain. One is a lot easier and requires less work than the other, but there’s a significant difference in the final outcome too. That’s a glimpse of what James writes in 1:13-18. Let’s start with the first few verses.
1. Sin’s nature (James 1:13-15)
13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
James 1:13-15
Let’s walk through this. First, James mentions temptation. The word is actually the same as the word for trials in verses 2 and 12. However, it’s clear that the Bible speaks about these “peirasmoi” (the Greek word) in two ways. One has to do with external circumstances. Those are the trials that come upon us. The other way is the internal pull to sin, what we call temptation. These two things are not unrelated. Usually, when you encounter a trial of some kind, there is an accompanying temptation that springs from it.
The Old Testament figure of Job was hit with a cascade of trials. We’re talking death of children and servants and livestock, followed by the affliction of painful sores on his skin. Here’s his wife’s super helpful comment in the aftermath of that: “are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9). Thanks wife, that’s exactly what he needed to hear, good to know you still want him around. But that was the temptation. The trials were the circumstances, the temptation that came with it was to curse God and give up hope. It’s the same idea with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew the trial that awaited him: he knew the betrayal and abandonment of his friends, he knew the false accusations, he knew the physical pain. He saw that all coming. The temptation he faced in the garden was to walk away, to not follow through on the purpose for which God the Father had sent him. Trials always carry with them some kind of temptation. And what we see in those stories is that the temptation is almost always the easy way, the “go with the flow” way.
Who to blame?
Before we explore that a bit more, though, James wants to be clear who’s not responsible for temptation, or for the sin that may come out of it. He commands that no one should say “God is tempting me.” You don’t get to say, “well, God made me this way. It’s his fault that I have these desires, He’s to blame if I go down this path.” James is adamant: no, God doesn’t tempt people to sin. He has nothing to do with sin. He is holy and He is good, which we’ll come to in the following verses. He permits testing, absolutely. You could even say that He ordains various tests in the Bible. But His desire when He allows us to be tested is to strengthen us and form us, not to cause us to fall.
So it won’t work to blame God for our moral failures. Actually, it won’t work to blame anyone or anything. Notice that James also doesn’t invoke Satan here. He talks about the devil later on in the letter, so it’s not like he denies the devil exists. But the devil isn’t an easy out here, like he is for people when they say “the devil made me do it.” And James certainly doesn’t mention parents or childhood trauma or any of that, which is another popular source of blame. You don’t get to justify your bad deed by pointing to that kid back in third grade who called you a four-eyed nerdy ninny.
We have a tendency to do this, don’t we, to blame others for our mistakes? In the Garden of Eden, Adam ate the fruit from the forbidden tree, and when he was confronted by God about it, he said, “that woman you put here gave it to me!” And then she counters with, “it’s the serpent’s fault, he lied to me!” The blame game is nothing new. However, it seems to me that we live in a culture at the moment that is very intent on removing agency and responsibility from people at all costs. More and more, it seems, our culture wants to see individuals as simply the product of historical and social circumstances. As I said a couple of weeks ago, our culture wants to therapeuticize everything and figure out what other people did, even generations back, to make you the way you are now. It wants to see negative health outcomes through the lens of “disease” only and deny that life choices might have had anything to do with it. Let me acknowledge that there are some helpful and true insights in some of this. There might be a good correction here to some hyper-individualism. It might provide context. But as far as I can tell, the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that people believe they don’t have to own up to their own actions.
In the face of that, in verse 14 James asserts that each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desires. By their own evil desires. Yes, there are other factors at play. The world and the devil exert their influences on you, for sure. But ultimately, it is your heart that is twisted, it is your desires that lead you down the wrong track, and it is your decision to follow those desires where they lead. We’re watching the old, original Star Wars movies with our kids right now. The kids finally understand why people say “I am your father” in that creepy Darth Vader voice. We like to keep them roughly 40 years behind the pop culture times. If you watched the prequel Star Wars trilogy from the early ‘00s, you might remember the scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker have their big, epic lightsaber fight. Anakin accuses Obi-Wan of turning his wife against him. And you remember Obi-Wan’s reply? “You have done that yourself!” Legendary! I want to say that until we acknowledge this, until we stop blaming others, until we own up and say, “I have done this myself, I have made a mess,” that Christ’s salvation will remain beyond our grasp.
Where temptation leads
Now, just because it’s our own twisted desires doesn’t mean they’re any less powerful. James says that we are dragged away by these evil desires and enticed. The words that are used there are taken from fishing and hunting. The order probably starts with enticement. We see something, a thought comes through our mind, and instead of turning the other way, we dwell on it. We let it grab our attention and attract us to it. This is true whether we’re talking about sexual immorality or the thought of giving up faith and quitting a difficult calling. In any temptation, there’s something enticing, something attractive, and it pulls us in.
We’ve had mouse problems in our home for the last few months. Because our kids are pretty sensitive and lovers of animals, we haven’t been able to use conventional traps. Instead, Carolyn sets up these elaborate scenes with ramps or stairs running up to a deep tupperware bin, with a plastic ruler overhanging the bin and some marshmallow or peanut at the tip of the ruler. The mouse is enticed by the marshmallow and suddenly finds itself at the bottom of a container. It’s ingenious! The problem is that these particular mice jump. Did you know that mice can jump? We have the most athletic mice I’ve ever seen. Anyway, this has all been Carolyn’s doing. I’ve been content to have the mice as housemates, but she’s caught three mice this way and then released them in Inter-River Park, where they can provide food for the skunk population. A mouse is enticed, and then they’re dragged along in a Tupperware to their death. A fish is enticed by bait and is dragged along through the water into a boat. And people are enticed by sin and dragged along by their desires to their destruction.
An important point to make here is that temptation itself is not sin. We can say that with great certainty because of Hebrews 4:15, which I often quote: “for we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are- yet he did not sin.” Tempted in every way. Jesus wasn’t ignorant of the sinful bait that is everywhere in the world. It would even seem from this text that experiencing various desires may not be inherently sinful. What counts is what you do with those desires. What counts is whether you take the bait or not. I read somewhere that it is not the infrequency of temptation that marks Christian maturity, it is the infrequency of giving into temptation. All this to say that experiencing temptation is inevitable. There’s no shame there.
However, taking the bait, dashing on to that ruler to grab the marshmallow? That’s going to lead to all kinds of sad consequences. James gives us an anatomy of sin using the metaphor of childbirth. When temptation is given into, our desires conceive and give birth to sin. And you might think, “how wonderful, the miracle of childbirth!” Yeah, not when your child is named Sin. This child is completely hellbent on destroying your life in every way, and when Sin grows up, it gives birth to a child named Death. Now you’re a grandparent, but it’s not going to be a lot of fun to babysit Death.
Listen, this is the result of giving in to temptation in the long run. It’s death. And you know this. You’ve experienced it, I’m sure. Some temptation seemed alluring to you. It promised an easy way out, a gratification of what felt like inevitable, overwhelming desires. And unless your conscience has been completely dulled, you pretty quickly realized that it wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. The problem is, you were now enslaved. As much as you didn’t want to give in, you didn’t know how you could say no. Suddenly there was this presence in your life that you brought about, that you opened the door to, a monster you gave birth to, and all this presence did was run around putting holes in your walls, beating you to a pulp, and locking you inside so there would be no escape. And without an escape, without a rescue, this beast will lead to your death. In a temporal sense, it will cut you off from real life here and now. It will keep you from feeling and hearing and seeing as you were created to. It will cut you off from meaningful, deep relationships. And it cuts you off from relationship with the Living God. In the long-term, without intervention, sin will kill you in the sense of eternal death, spiritual death, miserable separation from God forever.
There’s a crucial piece of wisdom here for many of us. We might think that we can play with fire. We can give sin a little room in our hearts and in our minds and keep it there. Hey, if it’s just a fantasy in my mind, it doesn’t hurt anyone, right? But once given space, once given a foothold, sin has a way of growing and consuming more and more. Give it an inch and it takes a mile. That’s why Jesus said in the sermon on the mount, “you’ve heard, don’t murder. But I’m telling you, don’t harbor anger towards someone, because that’s what leads eventually to murder” (my paraphrase). “You’ve heard, don’t commit adultery. I’m telling you don’t even look at someone lustfully, because that will one day give birth to adultery.” Sin has to be nipped in the bud. Don’t take the bait and think you can control sin. It will drag you away.
To recap this not-terribly-cheery section: every trial carries with it a temptation. That temptation is often the easy way out of the trial. It’s following the twisted desires of our heart wherever they lead us. Going back to an analogy from the beginning of the sermon, falling into temptation is as easy as going down a waterslide. It just sweeps you away. The difference is that with this waterslide, the initial thrill gives way to a thrashing pool of bloodthirsty sharks at the bottom. This is one waterslide you will 100% regret going down.
2. God’s nature (vv.16-18)
The good news in all this is that through the Gospel, there is an intervention. Once we’ve owned up to who we are, salvation is possible because of who God is. We’ve talked about sin’s nature, now let’s talk about something much better: God’s nature. Here’s what James says about that.
16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. 17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
James 1:16-18
James begins this section by telling them not to be deceived. That’s what sin does, it deceives. It lies to us. It tricks us into thinking it will give us life while in the end it gives death. But notice what he calls his readers. He refers to them as “my dear brothers and sisters.” He declare they are his beloveds. This is what strikes me whenever I open up a letter in the New Testament. Sometimes these guys have really challenging things to say, but it’s clear that they are propelled by love. They say the tough stuff exactly because they care so much about the people they’re writing to. They want to say, “look, there are sharks down there, don’t get on the waterslide!” Likewise, I want you to know that as a pastor, when I say challenging things based on God’s word, especially in relation to things going on in our world, it’s because I really, genuinely love you. You may disagree with what I say but please know that I say it because I want you to know the Lord and grow in His grace.
Don’t be deceived. Don’t think that God is tempting you or that it’s His will for you to fall to temptation. Instead, understand who He is. He is a Father who gives good gifts. In fact, James teaches that every good and perfect gift comes from Him. Notice this isn’t just “spiritual stuff.” It’s every good and perfect gift. I went for a little paddle this week in Deep Cove. As I looked around and saw the tree-filled mountains and waves and beaches of Cates Park, I was reminded that this is all a gift from Him. When I’m in California and I’m eating a double double Animal style burger from In ‘N Out Burger, I have zero doubt that this is a good gift. And if it’s good, it’s from Him. When I’m playing some soccer with my son or watching an NBA Finals game with my daughter, these are good gifts that are from Him. When I think about the heart surgeries that my son went through so that he could be the healthy and active kid he is today, I know that the medical knowledge and expertise at BC Children’s Hospital is a good gift. That means it’s from God. When I use the abilities He’s given me to preach and to share good news with others like I am today, this is a good gift that has come from Him.
This can be a good place to start when we think about God’s character. Look around at the gifts that are present despite our sinfulness and twisted desires and let your heart be warmed by His unmerited generosity. That’s what Paul and Barnabas did in the city of Lystra when the Lystrans tried worshiping Paul. He implored them, “I’m just a human, we want you to know who God is.” He exhorts them, “He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy” (Acts 14:17). In other words, every good and perfect gift comes from Him, so look to Him.
James continues. These gifts come from God the Father. This is something Jesus showed us: God is Father, a good Father who seeks to bless His children. He calls God the Father of the heavenly lights. That seems to pretty clearly be a reference to the sun, moon, and stars. It’s a reference to creation, which again is God’s gift to us. However, James draws a contrast here. Creation shifts and changes. We get seasons. I kind of wish we didn’t- remember that whole hatred of winter thing- but we do. We get high tides and low tides, we get phases of the moon. The skies are always changing, the earth is always moving. That’s the nature of creation. But James says that God isn’t like that. As the Bible says, He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His character is consistent, and it is consistently good.
However, as you’re listening, you might be struggling with some of what I’m saying. It might seem to you as you look at the world that there’s a whole lot that isn’t good. There’s stuff that doesn’t seem to be directly related to sin, and yet God isn’t doing much about it. You hear this language about God being a Father and if you’re honest, you’re not sure how cared for you’ve felt at some points in your life. I want to honestly acknowledge that. I get that. And I’m going to invite my friend Ray to share a bit from his life about this. Some of you have already met Ray this past week. He is our candidate to join our staff team as our Associate Pastor, and he and his family have been here the last few days getting to know our church. For the last 9 years, Ray has been a professor of theology at Prairie Bible College in Alberta. A couple of years ago, Ray and his family endured a tragedy that very few can truly fathom. I’ll let him tell you a bit more about that and how he understands a passage like this.
Illustration: Ray Yeo
In this passage that we are looking at today, James is calling the church to persevere under trial and not give in to the temptation to lose our faith in the perfect goodness and love of God. For me and my wife, this call to persevere under trial hits very close to our hearts. About three years ago, our oldest child Elena tragically passed away in a swimming pool accident. She was only 8 years old when she died. I still remember vividly that night, when the emergency workers were doing all they could to revive her, I was pleading with God to save her and take my life in her place. I have already lived half my life but her life had barely begun. Despite my desperate plea to God, she died.
Today is Father’s Day. While it is a joyous occasion, for me it is also a painful reminder that for the rest of my earthly life here, there will be no Father’s Day card, no greetings, nor even a text message from my first-born child. When our faith is tried and tested in the harsh realities of this fallen world, the temptation for us is to resent God, to blame him, and to question his goodness and love towards us. We might even say to him, “Hey God, I have given my life to serve you and this is what I get in return?” The temptation is to resent God and give up on our faith in him.
The living Word of God is calling us to resist the temptation and persevere under trial. The way that we persevere under trial, according to verses 16 to 18, is to trust in his goodness and love by focusing on what he has done for us to redeem us and to give us new life. For me personally, what had allowed me to continue to trust in God and worship him in the midst of the trial is to focus in on the cross of Christ. I do not know why God has allowed this tragic event to happen, and perhaps I never will. But, when I look to the cross of Christ, I know I can trust that whatever reason God has to allow this to happen, it must be a very good and loving One. The cross of Christ allows me to see the deepest nature of God. God is infinite and our tiny finite brains cannot possibly comprehend all the reasons God has for doing whatever he is doing. But Jesus Christ and what He has done on the cross allows me to see and know what kind of God he fundamentally is. In Jesus, he is a God that gives of himself fully to us, to the point of being cursed by God and plunged into God-forsaken darkness. This is the deepest nature of our God.
When I know the deepest nature of my God, I can trust in his goodness and love even if I do not know his reasons for allowing such devastation. Romans 8:32 says… “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Brothers and Sisters at the Bridge Church, persevering under difficult trial and testing requires us to hold firm to the unchangeable goodness, kindness, and love of God that we see most clearly in the cross of Christ. On the cross, God has made his only Son who knew no sin to become sin for us. There is nothing more that God can do to demonstrate his love and kindness towards us. Therefore, in the trials we are going through right now, let us draw near to the cross and hold firm to his mind-blowing generous love for us. And when we have persevered through the trial, we shall surely receive the crown of life that the Lord himself has promised to those who love him. Amen!
Ray Yeo
Conclusion
I’m so grateful for Ray’s testimony and what he’s shared with us today. That’s not easy to do, and the kinds of situations he’s talked about are the real testing grounds for faith, aren’t they? There are two things Ray mentioned that I want to pick up on as we bring this to a close.
The first has to do with Ray’s reminder about the cross of Jesus Christ. Look again at verse 18. James says that God gave us birth through the word of truth. We give birth to sin, as James affirms in verse 15. We entrap ourselves. That’s generally our nature. But God, in His unmerited grace, gives us new birth. He makes us new. In a similar way in Ephesians, Paul says that we were dead in transgressions, but because of His great love for us, God made us alive with Christ. There was nothing lovable or attractive about us. We had rejected His good purpose for us. Despite all that, He did not discard us but came to save us.
The way He did this, this work of making us new, this work of giving us new birth, was through the cross. Jesus gave himself, he shed his blood in our place, so that our sins could be forgiven. When we confess our sins and trust in Jesus, when we trust in his death and resurrection, we receive this gift of new life. This is the greatest and good-est of all the good gifts that God the Father has given us. In John’s Gospel, he promises that “to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (1:12-13). The best gift is the gift of being children of God the Father through Christ.
The second connection I want to make with what Ray said was the importance of looking to these good gifts, and particularly to the gift of new life through the cross, when enduring trials. Enduring those trials faithfully and even joyfully might feel a bit like climbing a mountain, especially when going the other direction feels as effortless as sliding down a waterslide. It might seem daunting and impossible. Here’s the first thing you need to know: you can do it. Through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, through the strength Christ provides, you can climb this mountain.
I want to give you a tip about climbing a mountain. If you want to know how to do the Grouse Grind, this is the most important, time-saving and pain-saving tip I can give you. To climb a mountain well, you’re going to want to take your body, from your toes up to your head, and point it toward the top of the mountain. I know, it’s profound. But listen, if you try to climb the mountain with your whole body, from your feet to your head, pointed downward, it’s going to be unimaginably hard. You won’t do it. You’ll stumble so often and crack your head on one of those gazillion stairs. Here’s my point: I’ve found that enduring trial and resisting temptation becomes so much more possible when my eyes are on God and His character. When all I’m paying attention to is my own pain or my own twisted desires, I’m doomed. But if I remain focused on who God is, on the way He’s given me everything I need, on the way He is my Father and I’m his child through grace, if I’m focused on what He’s done for me in Christ, I find that the mountain isn’t as daunting as I thought. I think that’s why James starts with sin’s nature and ends with God’s nature. Let’s train our minds to look up, to live in praise and gratitude because of who He is and because of His unmerited love towards us.