You tonight, some of these you're just going to have to
write down and kind of go back and look at them later.
We don't have enough time to look at every passage or we'll
be here all night. But Matthew chapter 20 and verse
#27 says, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your
servant. What a great example that James
is showing here. James is showing the true heart
of a pastor or a minister and exactly what that ought to be.
A servant is a bondman or a slave.
Being a servant of God through Jesus Christ really is the
Christian life in a nutshell. And James by just calling
himself a servant boy, he he puts himself on the same level
as everybody else. The ground is level at the foot
of the cross, right? Doesn't matter who you are,
doesn't matter what title you have or whatever else.
We're all servants of Jesus Christ.
That's how we approach him. That's how we are able to do
things for Jesus Christ. But Paul often described himself
as a servant of Jesus Christ in the same way.
So did Peter. So did Jude.
You can read through their epistols.
You can read through the those books that Paul wrote.
They they they just simply saw themselves as servants of Jesus
Christ and and honestly that's the basic meaning of the term
disciple. It's just somebody who submits
to a master. The term disciple is used many
times in the New Testament to describe a believer.
We are just to submit to our master.
We are servants of Jesus Christ, and Christ said that a true
disciple continues in His word. We find that in John chapter 8
and verse #31. But no one has the right to
claim to be a Christian if he does not claim also to be a
servant of Jesus Christ. That's who we are.
We're servants, and that's what our responsibility is, is to do
nothing but be a disciple and a servant of our master.
But I think also here we noticed that James just exhibits a
wonderful humility. Think of all the things that
James had to his name that he could have claimed, right?
But no mention of. I'm the brother of Jesus Christ.
No mention of. I'm an apostle.
No mention of by the way, I'm the pastor of the largest and
most influential church in all of Jerusalem, and really
probably in all of that area. No mention of any of those
things. He's simply a servant.
And as we close out looking at this introductory verse here,
it's no small thing to notice who James said that he was a
servant of. Look what he says there in verse
#1, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now that's he was a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that's a very significant phrase, and it's significant for
two reasons. Number one, this speaks of the
deity of Jesus Christ. If Jesus were not God, it would
be idolatrous for James to say that he was a servant of God and
also of Jesus Christ. Right.
There's a lot of verses that we can look at in the rest of the
Bible that prove the deity of Jesus Christ, that prove that
Jesus is God. But that's exactly what this is
doing here. And remember with James being
the first book of the New Testament that was written and
very early on in the in the in the early church, this book is
getting out there and James is making it very clear exactly
where he stands on who Jesus this is.
Remember most of the Jews rejected Jesus Christ as the
Messiah. And why did they kill him?
They killed him because he was being a blasphemer, saying that
he was God, right. And James establishes very early
on, I'm a servant of God and I'm a servant of Jesus Christ
because they're one and the same.
Anytime God and Jesus Christ are included together like this in
the Bible. The Bible is telling us that
they are the same, that they are equal of course is nothing left
to the imagination in Philippians when when Paul tells
us that that who being in the form of God thought it not
robbery to be equal with God. Jesus Christ was God and it's
not blasphemous to say that no man could be spoken of in direct
connection with God the way that Jesus Christ was.
Add to that the fact that all the way throughout the New
Testament, Jesus claimed to be God, and there's a lot of people
out there that would try to say that Jesus was a good man, he
was a good teacher, he was a rabbi, he was, he was all this,
but he just he wasn't God. Well, either Jesus is the
biggest fraud that ever lived or he was God because he claimed to
be God. And if you're going to claim to
be God, you're not a good person if you're not God, right?
And that's exactly who Jesus Christ was.
He was God in the flesh, but he was all God.
At the same time, Jesus accepted a worship of as God, which we
see many times in the Gospels and in the epistles.
Jesus is called God many times. So this speaks of the deity of
Jesus Christ, for James to say, a servant of God and of the Lord
Jesus Christ. But the second reason that
phrase is important is because it speaks of the Trinity.
Now, James doesn't specifically use that term.
He doesn't use the term Son for Jesus Christ.
He uses the term Father for God. And he actually does that no
less than three times in the book of James calling God the
Father. But we know by comparing
scripture with Scripture as is, as is a wise method of
interpretation of the Bible. Compare scripture to Scripture
that the mystery, quote, UN quote of Jesus being described
as equal to God is explained by the Trinity.
God is 1 God in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit. So First off we see that James
is one of the general epistles and his introduction there lets
us know exactly where he stands on who he is and who he believes
Jesus Christ is. He's just a simple servant of
Jesus Christ. But then he jumps right in and
we find #2, the blessing of trials.
James, chapter one and verse #2, my brethren.
And by the way, we mentioned that.
But over and over and over and over, you see James talking to
them as brethren. We're we're equal.
We're equal. Before God, my brethren counted
all joy when you fall into divers temptations.
Now what's he talking about? First of all, we see the nature
and the extent of trials. James is going to differentiate.
In fact, in this first chapter, we're not going to get to it
tonight. But he's going to differentiate
between trials and testing from God and temptation from the
devil. That word, temptation is used
two different ways in the New Testament and of course, the way
that we always think of it. I was, you know, I'm tempted.
I can't handle the temptation, right.
That's the way. That's one of the ways that we
that we think of it. It refers to being tempted with
evil. And we're going to see that in
verse 13 through 15. In fact, let's just read it now
so you can see what I'm talking about.
Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God.
For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempted he, any
man. But every man is tempted when he
is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.
So we see that is, and that's a perfect example.
A perfect example of that would be Christ's temptation when when
he when the devil came and tempted him those three times.
That's that's the evil side of that temptation.
But it also refers to trials and sufferings in general.
We see a great example of that in this passage, which we're
going to read in just a second. But we also see it in in First
Peter. Peter talked a lot about trials
and tribulations and going through those different things.
In First Peter, chapter one of verse six, he said you are in
heaviness through manifold temptations.
Verse Peter, chapter 4, verse 12, he called it the fiery
trial. And that's exactly what James is
referring to here. In this passage.
He's referring to troubles and sufferings that are not brought
upon ourselves by sin. Sometimes we do that, but but
sometimes a temptation, a trial. Suffering is just brought on
because we're human and because God has things that he's trying
to accomplish through that, which is exactly what we're
going to see tonight. Temptation in this sense simply
means testing. Now here's another thing that I
think is very interesting or or or or worth pointing out here in
in that second verse is James is saying that there will be
trials, there will be trials, You're going to face them.
Nobody who is a Christian is going to be able to skate
through without ever having to face a trial or temptation in
their life. Nobody's going to make it
through without suffering. Nobody's going to make it
through living on easy street, right?
It's it's wonderful being a Christian.
Christian life is an absolute joy to live.
There's no other way that I would want to live.
But it does not mean that you're going to go through life with no
hurt, with no trials, with no temptations.
Notice, he says. My brother encountered all joy
when you fall into divers. Temptations.
Not if. If there was a possibility that
we could get through life without it, then he would have
said count on all joy. If you fall into diverse
temptations, he says when because he's saying it's going
to happen, you're going to fall into those temptations.
It's it is God's will to allow his people to be subject to
troubles in this present life. We're going to go through those
trials to every child of God. What he's saying here is don't
be surprised by trouble. You're going to go through it.
Don't be confused. Don't be angry at God.
Don't be swayed, don't faint. Under the trial, don't be turned
aside. You're going to go through those
things, so you might as well turn and face them.
Notice that James also says that we fall into trials.
I think that gives us the idea that we fall in the trials
unexpectedly. Well, you could be smooth sail
and you can go right along and boom, the next thing you know
you're in the middle of something that you never saw
coming, right. It's like walking along in a
path and all the sudden you the bottom drops out and you
disappear into a pit. Right when we were, I was
working on the, the addition on our house actually is putting
the porch on the front of it. We had a bunch of holes dug over
there and my wife was walking along one day and stepped on one
of the boards that was supposed to be solid and it wasn't.
And she fell down into that hole and cut her leg on the way down.
It's and that's a lot of times the way that we fall into divers
temptations, right. We're not expecting it.
We don't know that it's coming or we would avoid it, right?
But we fall into those temptations, which means it's
it's like I'm walking along and suddenly I fall into this hole.
But God is in control. God knows that it's going to
happen. God allows it to happen and
we're going to fall into those trials.
And I and I think we see lastly when it comes to the extent of
our trials that there are divers temptations.
Now divers doesn't mean that you're going to be tempted by
somebody that's diving, right? Divers literally means diverse
or diversity, different kinds of temptations, and there's a lot
of different types of temptations that we're going to
face in our life. When it comes to suffering and
trials, there's certainly persecution, but there's also
sickness, there's poverty, there's grief over the loss of
some loved one. There's there's slander, there's
false accusations. There's all kinds of different
types of trials that we're going to face.
And we see in multiple places in Matthew and John and Acts and
1st Thessalonians and Second Timothy and Hebrews and first
Peter that faithfulness in those trials is a major theme of the
entire New Testament. Now, obviously James makes that
one of the major themes in his book, but we see that theme
throughout the entire New Testament.
Faithfulness in the middle of those trials.
Boy, there the there. There wouldn't be so much of an
emphasis on it in the New Testament if it only happened
every so often. If only a few Christians here
and there fell into those temptations, the sufferings,
those trials. No, we all face it, and we all
face it multiple times in our life.
And our faithfulness in the middle of those temptations and
those trials is what this focus on.
So this temptation that He's Speaking of in this passage is
testing that is ordained by God and designed to be a blessing to
us. Now nobody ever looks at it as a
blessing. Oh, what a wonderful thing.
I can't wait till the next time I go through something
difficult. Nobody says that.
But God designed it. Why did?
Why would he, say, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall
into diverse temptations. By the way, we're going to talk
about this next week. It doesn't mean that you got to
be happy and Getty through the temptation counted all joy.
Doesn't mean that you have to say yay, I love temptations.
This is wonderful. That's not what he's talking
about in that passage. But we'll get to that next week.
We looked at then the nature and the extent of trials.
But I also want you to see this in the next verse.
And that is the purpose of those trials.
James chapter one and verse #3 says, knowing this, that the
trying of your faith worketh patience.
Now turn over. Keep your finger there in James
chapter One, but turn over, if you will, the first Peter
Chapter one. First Peter, chapter one.
I'm going to give you a few purposes in our trials, if you
will, that we find in this passage here.
But the first one is that suffering is a trying of the
faith. Suffering is a trying of the
faith. First, Peter chapter one in
verse #7 says this, that the trial of your faith, being much
more precious than of gold that perishes though it be tried with
fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the at
the appearing of Jesus Christ. Faith is purified by suffering,
the same way that gold is purified by the fire.
Gold that's never been through the fire is not worth a whole
lot. It's impure.
It's got it's it's it's it's not.
It's not very clear. It's not worth a whole lot.
But gold that has been refined because it's been through that
fire process is gold that's valuable.
It's gold that's worth something.
It's gold that's pure. And the same is true of our
faith. The trying of faith is a main
reason why the believer has troubles.
It's a main reason why we have to wait for the fulfillment of
God's promises. It's a main reason why we as
believers are subject to all sorts of difficulties and
struggles and and lacks, if you will, and frustrating
circumstances in this present life.
It's main reason why God does not answer our prayers
immediately, right? God has the ability to do that,
doesn't he? If we could pray today and he
can answer it in the next 10 seconds if he wanted to, no
matter how big the request is. But why does God let our prayer
request linger sometimes? Why does it seem that God is
slow to answer our request sometimes?
It's because it's the trying of our faith.
And the trying of our faith is what produces that that
purification, if you will. And there's a number of reasons
that the Bible gives us for suffering.
I, I, I'm only going to look at one of these verses.
There's a there's a good number of them here if you want to and
if you can write these verses down and use it as a as
something to study through in your devotions this week.
But there's a number of reasons why the Bible says that we are
going to suffer #1. We suffer because we live in a
cursed world. We find that in Roman chapter 8,
in verse 22 and 23, everything we do in this world is tainted
by sin. Had there been no sin, there
would be no taint, right? Had there been no sin,
everything would still be perfect.
Adam and Eve sinned and passed on to us.
We sin. We're no different than they
are. We have the choice in whether we
sin or not. We could be perfect.
We're just not right. And it's it's impossible for us
to be perfect because we have that sin nature and because
we're humans and we're going to sin.
But we ought to be trying not to be sinning all the time.
We ought to be trying to be holy, as God is holy.
So we have the choice. We just often make the wrong
choice. And because we live in a cursed
world, everything we do is tainted by that curse that came
about because of the man's fall. So that's one of the reasons for
suffering. Another reason we suffer is so
that we can help others. We find that in Second
Corinthians chapter one and verse three through verse seven.
It's it's through that suffering that we learn the lessons that
God teaches us that we can use to then help somebody else who
is going through the same thing or something similar to what
we're going through, right. God allows us to go through
those things so that we can be a help to others who are going to
go through those things as well. It could be somebody in your own
family. It could be somebody in your
church. It could be it could be somebody
anywhere that you can help through those things.
But that's one of the reasons why God allows us to go through
the suffering #3. We suffer so that we're not
trust ourselves. We find that in Second
Corinthians chapter one, verse 8:00 and 9:00.
It's it's through suffering that God takes away that
self-confidence. Right.
If I could just plow my way through it and make it out the
other side without any assistance, without God, without
any of those things, well, then I could trust in my flesh.
I could trust in myself. But God allows us to go through
those difficult times to prove to us that we need Him, Helps us
keep our eyes on Him. That's a necessary part of why
we have to suffer sometimes. And honestly, the harder the
harder headed we are, the the the longer and more difficult
the suffering is a lot of times because of that.
Look, you you allow yourself to be pliable and soft and
moldable. Sometimes we don't have to go
through as difficult of things. That doesn't mean that that our
life is going to be easy either, but the but the we we make it
easy on ourselves. When we realize the the earlier
we realized that God is in control and that we need him
that we can't. We don't have everything under
control. And here's another reason why #4
We suffer to keep us humble. Kind of goes right along the
same thing. But in Second Corinthians
chapter 12. That's the whole story of the
Apostle Paul, right? He was.
He had the thorn in the flesh, and he begged God to take that
thorn in the flesh away from him.
Three times he asked God to take that away from him.
God said no, it's necessary for you, right?
Charles Spurgeon said that one of his greatest spiritual
battles was with pride. He said it's a part of the old
flesh and and Paul prayed to ask God to remove that.
But God said that it was necessary to keep him humble.
And that's why we need trials, boy.
We get to thinking that we're something.
A lot of times God has to humble us sometimes by sending us
through those trials. The fifth reason why God allows
us to suffer is because of persecution.
We find that in Second Timothy chapter three, we live in the
enemy's territory. And since the devil and his
people hate God and they hate Jesus Christ, we can we can be
sure that they hate those who represent God and those who
represent Jesus Christ, right? Why do you think it is that
they're trying to take the 10 commandments down out of every
courthouse? Why do they want the Manger seem
to be removed from the public squares?
Why do they want no mention of Jesus name in a prayer or
anything else? Because they hate him and they
hate anybody that represents him.
So you can bet that you're going to be persecuted for that.
And that's that just comes from being being a Christian.
And sometimes that's suffering that we have to endure.
Number six, we suffered to correct sin and to mature us in
Jesus Christ. We find that in Hebrews chapter
12. But that passage teaches us a
few things. Number one, that God is a good
father and he corrects his children.
And that's exactly what a good father does, right.
A good father is going to correct his children.
How? How horrible of a father would I
have to be to allow my kids to go run out in the street and not
say anything to them because, well, I don't want to hurt their
feelings or I don't want them to not like me.
So I'm, I'm not going to correct them.
And I I just hope that a car doesn't hit him someday, right.
What kind of father would I be if I didn't say, get out of the
road, you're going to get hurt. And if he doesn't get out of the
road, he gets spanked. He's got to know that there's
consequences for that disobedience, right.
And. And what kind of father would
God be if he didn't discipline us when we needed that
discipline and when we needed that maturity, Right.
I would hope that a that a 10 year old kid would know better
than to go run out and play in the street, right?
Because with that, with that maturity comes a greater
understanding of what's harmful for you.
But a 2 year old kid doesn't know any different.
It looks fun to him. He's just going to go running
out into the street. So with maturity comes the
understanding of what we need to do as Christians and that's
where God's trying to get us. He's trying to trying to mature
us as Christians. Discipline is not a pleasant
thing, and we are often tempted to despise that discipline and
to hate the one who brings that discipline in our lives.
I can't stand it. Why would God do that to me?
I know that I haven't been exactly what I need to be, but
why would he do that to me? Why would he allow that to
happen? We're tempted to faint, to stop
serving and stop praying to turn away, but God's chastening is
evidence of salvation. And let me add here that some
argue against the doctrine of eternal security by claiming
that if this doctrine were true, then a believer could live
however he wants to live. If eternal security is true,
then we can live however we want.
But those who make that argument don't understand that salvation
is a new birth, and those who continue to live as they please
have never been born again. If you can live the exact same
way after you are saved as you did before you were saved, then
I would highly doubt that you were ever saved in the 1st
place. You are a new creature in
Christ, and if you are not a new creature in Christ, then you're
still an old creature in sin. Jesus Christ changes your life.
The new birth gives a person a love for God and he no longer
wants to live that life. That's contrary to God's will.
If a person can live as he pleases and not be chasing by
God, I would argue that he is not God's child and that's why
God doesn't chasing him. We suffer because we have to
have that sin corrected and we have to be matured in Jesus
Christ. Now turn over to First Peter
chapter 2. I told you I was going to have
you look at one passage and this is it.
First Peter chapter 2. And this is the last reason why.
And there's more. But but these are the ones that
I chose to focus on tonight. Reasons why the Scriptures give
us for suffering. First, Peter chapter 2 and verse
#19 says this. For this is thankworthy If a man
for conscience toward God, endure grief, suffering
wrongfully, For what glory is it if when you be buffeted for your
fault, you shall take it patiently, but if when you do
well and suffer for it, you take it patiently.
This is acceptable with God. For even here, on to where you
call because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an
example that she should follow his steps.
That whole context is talking about suffering, and we're
called to be like Christ in the way that he suffered.
So sometimes we are allowed to suffer so that we can follow in
Christ's footsteps. He was hated, He was mocked, He
was doubted, He was lied about, He was rejected, He was beaten,
He was crucified. And his people should not expect
anything different in this world.
So #2, I want you to see this. Trials work The blessing of
patience. Trials work The blessing of
patience. Turn over to Romans chapter 3.
We're talking about the purpose of trials, and we said that
suffering is a trying of the faith.
But #2 trials work. The blessing of patience.
Romans chapter 3 and verse #3. And I think this is a great
explanation of just exactly what James is trying to get across
here in this passage. He says in in Roman chapter 5
and verse #3 and not only so, but we glory and tribulations
also. Knowing that tribulation work is
patience and patience, experience and experience, hope
and hope maketh not a shame because the love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us.
Back in James chapter one, verse #3, he says knowing this, that
the trying of your faith work as patients.
The word knowing is not an instinctive knowledge, but it's
knowledge that's gradually obtained through the school of
Hard Knocks, if you will, or through long experience trying.
Knowing this first at the trying of your faith, trying refers to
a sufficiently difficult experience that pushes us beyond
our previously known limits. And I hate to remind the kids
about school because it's right around the corner, but you've
ever remember taking a test in school?
Was that test there to teach you something new?
Hopefully it wasn't. No, the test wasn't there to
teach you something new. The test was there to reveal
what you already knew or what new things you had learned,
right? That's what a test is for.
And that's exactly what he's talking about.
It's the idea behind the trying of your faith.
Faith is mentioned here as the first of 16 times in the book of
James. Again, as we already discussed,
one of the themes of the book is active faith, not just passive
faith, right? And then we see worketh knowing
this first, that the trying of your faith worketh patients.
And this is actually the first of the links between faith and
works that we find in the book of James.
And here he is already talking about it there in just the first
couple verses. But faith is rest and trust.
But it has to be accompanied by labor.
Faith is not labor. Faith is not work, but it's
evidence or revealed to others by work.
And as a tool, it only accomplishes something when we
exercise that faith right. It only accomplishes something
when we use it as the tool that is supposed to, that is supposed
to be used as so in this particular application, Faith is
tested and tried by our response to difficulty and our patient
perseverance in that difficulty is the work that accompanies our
faith. They work hand in hand.
You can't have one without the other, which brings us to the
patience that he's talking about here.
Patience is that endurance under suffering.
He says, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh
patience. Patience is mentioned seven
times in the epistle of James. Obviously that's something that
he's putting the focus on if he mentioned something 7 times, but
this is absolutely necessary to Christians serving and praying
to a God who has a whole different concept of time than
we do. Hebrews chapter 12 and verse
one. Wherefore seeing we also are
compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay
aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us,
and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
We have to be patient in fruit bearing, patient in prayer,
patient in our expectation of His return, patient in seeing
the scriptures proven true, patient in receiving promises,
patience in running this earthly race right.
There's patience is necessary for every aspect of the
Christian life, and as I've said before, our culture, more than
at any other time in in human history, is geared toward
impatience. Give it to me and give it to me
now. And if I can't get it right now,
then I'm gonna go somewhere else, right?
How many times have you you pulled up to a I don't know any
number of things where it wouldn't have been hard for you
to get out and go in. Let's just say a drive through,
right? And the screen is down.
All you got to do is pull around to get out and walk into the
store. And you're already there, right?
But how many times have you said, well, forget this, I'm
going somewhere else and you drive 20 minutes up the road to
go to another drive through. That's working, right?
Because we want it now and we don't care how long we have to
wait to get it now, but we just want it now, right?
And that's, that's that's why we have to learn patience in our
Christian life, because we as a people are trained to be
impatient. We want it, right?
We want it and we want it right now.
And that's that's what our world is giving us at the moment,
right. I mentioned that on Sunday about
Amazon, right? If I can't get it in two days,
I'm going to order it from somewhere else.
I'm not going to get it from there, man.
That's that's going to take three or four days to get here.
Forget that. I'll I'll pay $10 more to get it
somewhere else if I can get it tomorrow, right.
That's how that's how we are. And that's how our culture is
training us. That's not how the Christian
life works. And so when we go through these
difficulties and when we go through these trials, we have to
learn that patience because that's how God operates.
What we find here is that patience and faith go hand in
hand with all that patience does for a spiritually.
We should look at the trials and the testings as being a thing of
joy because they bring patience, which in turn eventually brings
everything else. If you have faith, then you have
patience in trials, and if you have patience, it's because you
have faith #3. I want you to see this.
Suffering produces spiritual growth Back in James chapter one
and verse #4, This is what we're going to end with tonight.
Suffering produces spiritual growth, but let patience he
says. So back to verse 3.
Knowing this, that the trying of your faith work is patience.
But let patience have her perfect work, that she may be
perfect and entire wanting nothing.
Without this, Patience will never become mature Christians,
which I told you. The overriding theme of the
entire book of James is maturing us as Christians, right?
He talks about perfect, he mentions it in that verse.
Patience has to be allowed to have her perfect work, her work
of completing and maturing us and making us complete or
mature. So even well meaning and
spiritual people who are serving God will mess spiritual service
up by being impatient. We can get out in front of God
even when even when we're trying to do God's things, even when
we're trying to serve God, Even when we're trying to live for
God, we have that impatience we get in front of him and we can
mess a lot of things up spiritually.
We can actually resist God's work by refusing to accept the
trials that He's designed for us.
Listen, God is giving us those trials as a way to teach us
patience and as a way to refine us.
And when we block at those trials and say, I'm not going to
go through that, then essentially what we're doing is
blocking at God's desire to refine us into exactly who He
wants us to be. It's also possible to let the
trials have some benefit, but not all of the benefit that God
wants us to get out of it. Let patients have her perfect
work, her complete work, worrying about our
circumstances. We're resisting the God who said
that all things work together for good to them that love God,
and to them who are the called according to His purpose.
Do you believe that or not? That includes the good things,
but it also includes the bad things and includes the
wonderful times, but it also includes the difficult times.
All things work together for good.
To them who love God, to them who are called according to His
purpose. See, Israel did that in the
wilderness when they were thirsty, walked against God.
God want to do great things and show the miracles they pushed
against it. They did the same thing when
they they lusted for Egypt's food, right?
They they did the same thing when they were afraid of the
giants. God's not near as interested in
the quantity of your service for him as he is in the quality of
your service for him, because you can do a whole lot of things
for God. That's not really accomplishing
a whole lot for God because you're doing it in your own
flesh, because you're doing it without that patience.
You're doing without in the way that you want to do instead of
doing it the way that God wants you to do it.
Testing responded to in faith brings patience.
Patience brings that perfection or that maturity in all sorts of
areas of our Christian life. Suffering brings that spiritual
growth because it produces patience, and patience produces
that spiritual maturity. And we see that.
Let patients have her perfect work.
Remember that we said perfect means complete or mature.
I hope that the men that are in the institute class will sound
will think this sounds familiar, but Bible words have to be
defined by their context right? And James defines perfect as
entire and wanting nothing. And Second Timothy chapter 3 and
verse 17. Perfect is to be throughly
furnished into all good works in Colossian chapter 4.
Perfect is to be complete in all the will of God and Hebrew.
Chapter 13 verse 21. Perfect is to do every good work
according to God's will. First Peter 510.
Perfect is to be established, strengthened, settled.
The Bible defines these things right?
What is perfect mean? While James says that let
patients have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and
entire wanting nothing. well-rounded, balanced.
Mature Christians take a lot of testing, a lot of faith, a lot
of work and a lot of time to produce.
So you can't. You can't take shortcuts, can't
take shortcuts on the spiritual path to maturity.
By definition, if you take a shortcut, you're no longer on
the path, right? And we want that.
We want those shortcuts all the time.
You have to follow that. The trail that's laid out in
front of you and all its windings.
Never get discouraged, never get to the point where you're
despairing and all the woe is me when it seems that you're going
in the opposite direction from where you'd like to be.
Just keep patiently putting 1 foot in front of the other,
working at it diligently in faith.
Allowing God to lead your life how he will.
That's how we are going to end up in a place where God can use
us, in fact, be happy and everything seems to be going
wrong. Because the patience that it
teaches you is God maturing you into exactly what he wants you
to be when things are going wrong.
And you you look inside and you're like, I don't.
I don't think I have any sin in my life that God's trying to
root out. I don't think that there's any
reason why that would be. Going through this.
God is saying hey, I mean counted all joy.
When you fall into divers temptations, it's God maturing
you. It's God bringing you about in
that patience that you need. That's the only way to access a
well-rounded Christianity and a maturity in Jesus Christ.
So the purpose of trials, and honestly it's to have blessings
in the middle of those trials doesn't sound fun.
It's not fun when you're going through it.
But you look back and you see what God did through those
trials and you realize that, man, I needed that.
I needed that trial so that I could produce patience.
And I needed that patience so that I could continue to be
mature in Jesus Christ. When we get back together next
week, we're going to look at the rest of this passage here up
through verse #12 and talk about the way that we can have victory
in trials. There's some amazing things that
James gives us here that says, hey, do this, do this, do this.
This is how you can have victory when you're going through the
middle of those things. But we'll stop there for
tonight. We'll have a word of prayer and
then we'll be done. Father, we love you.
Can we thank you so much for your goodness to us.
Thank you for an opportunity. We have to read through these
scripture passages to study your Word and God.
I'll pray that it would help it. You'd help it to be convicting
in our own hearts. I pray that you'd help us to be
convicted of our need for maturity in Jesus Christ and for
the the sufferings and the trials and the temptations in
that aspect that we go through, so that we can be patient and so
that we can be mature in Jesus Christ.
And again we thank you for all that you do for us.
In Jesus name. Amen.
If you would stand at your seats with your head spot and your
eyes closed, I wanna give you an opportunity tonight.
And we're not gonna have a long invitation, but as we go through
this book, I'm gonna do more preaching than teaching.
But perhaps you are in the middle of something.
Perhaps you're going through something right now that you
don't understand, or maybe you just came out of something, Or
maybe you're facing something head on that you know you're
coming into and it is going to be a trial.
It's going to be a difficulty. Let God do that work.
Let God do the work that he wants to do of maturing and
completing you so you can be used to the full capacity
everybody wants to accomplish. We'll have a short time of
invitation as the piano plays. Invitations open.
You come on Sunday, then grab one of
these little booklets there. They're on the back table right
there. And make sure you have one of
those. Use it.
It's a it's a great little study tool and help.
All right, let's pray we'll be dismissed.
Let me remind the men real quick that we'll just have a quick
meeting down here in the front to just discuss a couple of
things for the camp out on Friday and Saturday.
Father, we love you again. We thank you for an opportunity
to be here tonight. For that, you just continue to
use the message in our hearts. Pray that you would help us to
be the witness in the testimony for you this week that you need
us to be and want us to be so that we can be the most
effective in your service. Thank you for all that you do
for us. In Jesus name, Amen.