Trials are opportunities for spiritual growth, producing steadfastness and completeness in believers. James, identifying himself as a servant of God and Jesus Christ, addresses the scattered Jewish Christians, urging them to count trials as joy because they refine faith. True kinship with Jesus is found in obedience to God's will, not physical relation, and believers are called to be witnesses, like seed scattered among nations, attracting others through their integrity. The sermon emphasizes that joy in trials stems from knowing God is at work, not from the circumstances themselves, and that this perspective is cultivated by consciously directing one's thoughts toward God's purposes.
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who are here from Sunnyside. I took up these first four verses two years ago on my way from camp, and I don't expect you to remember that, but if you do and you want to go to sleep, it's perfectly all right. But I'd like to look at these first four verses of the Epistle of James from there. And I still may go from that. I was thinking of different individuals in the Bible who were in various kinds of distal and trouble, and how God worked in their lives in the midst of that trouble. And I was going to introduce it with this section on James. And we'll look at that anyhow and then worry about going from there tomorrow morning. So James chapter one, the first four verses.
James, a servant of God, is the Lord Jesus Christ. And twelve tribes in the dispersion, greeting. Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials. for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." Students of the New Testament tell us that the Epistle of James is very much like the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. That's not surprising. James became the leader of the Jewish Christian congregation in the city of Jerusalem.
and particularly of what is known as the Hebraic section of the Christian congregation in Jerusalem. The early Christians in Jerusalem, because of their own background, were divided into two groups, the Hellenistic group of Christians among the Jews and the Hebraic group of Christians among the Jews. And the difference was cultural. The Hebraists were those who were Jewish not only in religion but also in culture. They had grown up in Palestine, are in another area of a strong Jewish culture and their culture as well as their religion was Jewish. Their whole outlook on right was conditioned by their Judaistic culture.
The Hellenists, on the other hand, were Jews who were Jewish in religion but Greek in culture. And among the Greeks that were scattered throughout the Roman Empire, they had grown up in a Gentile culture under Gentile education with Gentile ideas. while maintaining their loyalty to Judaism as a religion. This meant that these two groups within Judaism had two different outlooks and two different attitudes. And James was the leader of the Hebraists in Jerusalem, and his outlook as well as his religion was fairly Judaistic. The Hellenists were the ones who got the persecution in the book of Acts, and they were the ones who had driven out of Jerusalem and began to propagate the gospel to the Gentiles, and they were natural, it was natural for them to do that.
It would have been very difficult for the Hebrews to carry the gospel to the Gentiles, because their outlook was too thoroughly Jewish. And the ones God had to use carry the gospel to the Gentiles were the Hellenists, whose outlook on life was Gentiles who are maintaining loyalty to the Gentiles. basic tenets of Judaism, the basic confession of hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. James, as a leader of the Hebraists, was thoroughly Old Testament in his thinking, thoroughly Jewish in his outlook, and as you read through his epistle, you have a strong sense of being put down right in the middle of a Jewish community, and the strains of the Old Testament are very strong.
in this letter of James. But what James is doing is taking profession of faith, whether it be the basic Jewish confession that God is one, or whether as Christians, and he's writing to those who are Jewish and Christian, or whether as professing Christians, they were to confess that Jesus is the glory. In either case, that is a confession. And what James is interested in is not what we are saying with our mouths, but what we are doing with our lives.
And the test of the reality of that confession is in how we live, not in what we say. And so what James is doing is taking up the tests of faith. We're going on in his first epistle is presenting us with the tests of love. We can talk a great deal about love, but what John faces us with are specific situations where the reality of love in our hearts by the Spirit of God is going to be put to the test. James takes situations in life where the reality of the confession on our lips is going to be tested by those situations in life.
And we'll talk a little bit about faith as we develop this section in these first four verses. But note how James begins. He called himself a servant, a slave of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ. James could have begun, James a brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. He could have taken that name and been right in doing so. It was James the Lord's brother who was the author of this epistle and the leader of that community in Jerusalem. He could have written James the brother of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he didn't. He wrote James the third slave. James and the others who grew up with Jesus in that household in Nazareth did not believe in Jesus during our Lord's earthly ministry.
It was not for his resurrection and private appearance to James, but James became a believer. And yet there were things that Jesus taught during his earthly life that seemed to stick in the mind of Dave. One of those incidents was when Mary and Jesus' brothers, and that would include Dave, came to take Jesus home because people were saying Jesus is beside himself, and Mary and Jesus' brothers came to take him home. There's a great crowd around our Lord, and Mary and the brothers of Jesus were not able to get through the crowd, and a messenger came through, and they got word to Jesus that your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you.
Jesus' response was, who is my mother and my brother? And looking around at his disciples, he said, He that does the will of my Father in heaven, the same is my mother, my sister, and my brother. That must have been very hard for Mary and the brothers of Jesus to swallow. But it was a necessary thing to say. Being physically related to Jesus may be only temporal. being spiritually related to him is eternal.
And what Jesus is saying is he is building another family. And that new family that he is building is closer to him than any kind of nature. And true kinship with Jesus is not to be a blood relative of him. True kinship with Jesus is obedience to the will of the Father in heaven. That makes us part of his family. That's why he came. We have a family likeness. And the family likeness to Jesus is not physical. The family likeness to Jesus is moral.
It's obedience to the will of the Father in heaven. It's of these that Jesus said he is not ashamed to call them brethren. And James learned that. And now when he thinks of himself, he thinks of himself in relationship to God as a servant, obedient, doing the will of the Father in heaven. That's his real kinship with Jesus. And that family, of course, is open to all of us. Some of you who came from non-Christian homes, and you may be the only one out of that family who knows Jesus Christ. You have learned that painful lesson.
that in this new family in which you have come in this new family those brothers and sisters are closer to you than your natural brothers and sisters could possibly be that's what Jesus is saying and that's the lesson James learned so he calls himself by by what is a true distinction not that he's the brother of Jesus physically The true brotherhood of Jesus is to be the servant of God, to do the will of the Father who is in heaven. And that, as I say, is open to all of us.
But he adds something to that. He's not only the slave of God, but he says, and of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he must have heard Jesus teach, no man can serve two masters. You can't do that. And yet here James seems to make himself the slave of two masters, God and the Lord Jesus Christ. And the only way to resolve the seeming contradiction is the realization of who Jesus Christ is. And it's one of those incidental witnesses in the New Testament to the deity of Jesus Christ. This is how the early church looked at him, that to be a slave of Jesus Christ is the enslave of God.
It's not to be a slave of two masters, it's to be a slave of one master, because that man Jesus is God. So James designates himself then as the servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those whom he writes are the twelve tribes in the dispersion. And that word dispersion became a technical term in Judaism for the scattering. after the Babylonian exile. And from that time on there were pockets of Jews in cities all over the world because only a minority returned to Jerusalem when Cyrus liberated them and let them go home.
The majority of Israelites continued in the territory that Babylon had once ruled and eventually became scattered all over what became the Roman Empire. James picks up that term, dispersion. Because in that term is the word for seed. And the dispersion is a scattering of seed. And what God intended to happen as his people, Israel, were broadcast through Gentile countries.
was that in those pagan cultures they would be witnesses to the one true and living God and attract others to the worship of that one true and living God. People who were disillusioned by the polytheism of their culture with its resultant lack of moral standards could find the monotheism and the high ethical standards of Judaism very attractive if they ever saw it lived out. Ezekiel mourns that instead of that the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles because of Israel.
Now God is telling us that wherever we live, wherever we are, whatever city we come from, even if it's Tuscaloosa, whatever city we come from, we are there as seed. God has planted us there. And God's purpose is that we shall attract others to the faith and worship of Jesus Christ. But I use the word attract. It's the goodness of God that leads men to repentance, Paul tells the Romans. It's not the judgment of God that leads men to repentance.
In the tribulation period, the most severe time of God's judgment on the earth, men will not repent, they will blaspheme. It's not the judgment of God that leads us to repentance. It's the goodness of God that leads us to repentance. And we are the agents, not of God's judgment, but of God's love. And as people around us see Christianity lived out among us, will they be attracted to Jesus Christ? It will not do for us to preach the gospel without living it. The gap between what we say and what we do is too great to be bridged by an individual coming to Jesus Christ.
J.I. Packer in an interview in a recent issue of Disciple Magazine was asked about his analysis about evangelism. What are the needs of evangelism in our own twentieth century right now in this age? Well, he says in his judgment, people are no longer asking, is Christianity true? That's ten, twenty years ago. That was the question. Is it true? And you had to support Christianity. You had to defend it. You had to demonstrate that it was true. It was not a myth. It was true. But Packer says, that is not the question people are asking today. And if we are still defending Christianity that way, we are not meeting the questions people are asking.
What people are asking today is, does it work? And the only way they can see that it works is if they see it at work in our lives. If you've read Sheldon Van Alken's book, A Severe Mercy, You remember how his conversion came about when he and his wife, as very intellectual pagans, went over to England to study, do their graduate work. And in the providence of God, there are one contact with somebody at the university in England who gave them a name and sent their name on to this people, happened to have a contact with a very solid Christian couple in graduate school, and they were introduced into this Christian circle in the graduate school.
some studying physics, some medicine, some law, whatever, and they were all keen Christian young men and women. They also had the misfortune to be at the university where C.S. Lewis was teaching, and it's very difficult to be an atheist when you're faced with this kind of stuff, and it wasn't long before all the walls came down. But what led them to see that Christianity was viable? was the way those Christian graduate students lived. That's what did it. It's the way they lived.
It was not a pious pretense. They could sit and discuss law, politics, physics, medicine, whatever, and do it intelligently. and maintain the integrity of their own character and the integrity of Christianity. It was the integrity of character and the naturalness of it that brought the man out into the faith in Jesus Christ. And if we are to be seed, the seed here, though in other places in our Lord's parables, the seed is the Word of God. The seed here is not the Word of God. The seed is the people of God.
Do not substitute the message for the messenger. The integrity of the message is wrapped up in our integrity. We are the seed. And wherever we live, people are going to be attracted to Jesus Christ. by the integrity, the reality that is seen in our own lives. Now to such people, because there are things that may begin to wear at that, James talks about trials. And he says to these people, Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials.
And it is the word meet. to meet. You are not hunting for them, but you do meet them. And there are various kinds of trials. And all of us in life meet trials. There is no way to avoid them. We are going to meet them. James does not say if you meet various trials, but when you meet various trials. And when we meet those various trials, James tells us what to do. He says, count it all joy, my brethren.
That's what you're to do when you meet those various trials. But I'm glad he said, my brethren. Because one of the things I need when I am in trial is a brother. Well, the brother may be a sister. That's no point. But what I need in trial is a brother. A brother, the book of Proverbs said, is born for adversity. That's a strange thing to think about, that the reason you have brothers and sisters is for adversity. Not to cause adversity to you, that's not the idea. But when you are in adversity, it's the brother who helps.
And in the Christian family, this is one of the reasons we have brothers and sisters. John, writing the book of the Revelation, talks about himself that way in chapter one. Your brother in tribulation. You're going through persecution for Christ's sake. So am I. I am your brother in tribulation. He goes on to say, and in patient endurance, and in the kingdom of Jesus. There's more to it than the trial. But I'm your brother in trial. And I'm looking for two things when I'm in trial. I'm looking for someone who has been there.
And I'm looking for that someone who is a brother. That's the person I'm looking for. James addresses those in trial as my brethren. My brethren. And what we need in trial is the sense of that brotherliness. I don't need someone to throw a verse of Scripture at me personally. I need that Scripture infleshed in the experience of that brother. In fact, it may be better if he doesn't say anything at all. The best thing Job's comforters ever did for him was shut their mouths for seven days.
And when they opened their mouths, they destroyed everything. Sometimes the best thing you can do is sit with a brother in trial and say nothing. Joe Bailey in his book that used to be called The View from the Hearst, which is a much better title than the new title that they've given to it. It's been reissued under a title. I always thought the old title was much more Joe Bailey. I know Joe Bailey didn't give the new title to it. Somebody at the publishing house did. The view from the hearse, that's Joe Bill. And Joe lost three sons. He and his wife buried three of their sons. And he talks about his experience and his deep sorrow and the people who came to try to help them and the well-meaning pastor who came and sat with Joe in his grief and opened the scriptures and showed in the scriptures reason after reason why his son was taken.
And Joe said when he left, I was glad that he left. Then another brother came in and just sat with Joe in his living room and didn't say anything. Put his arm around him and left. And Joe said, I was sorry to see him go. That's what I want in trial. I want the brother whose heart is breaking with my heart. I don't want answers. I don't need answers in trial. I don't need answers. And I don't want you to come to me in trial and give me answers. I want someone who can meet with those who need. That's what I need in trial. I need that brotherliness.
I don't need the Pharisee with his lessons. I don't need a rabbi to catechize me. I need a brother. And James offers himself that way. My brethren. when you meet various trials count it all joy now all of us know there's a difference between joy and happiness happiness is my pleasure at circumstances that please me i like them but i have no control over my circumstances i cannot control whether i'm happy or not if my circumstances please me i'm happy If my circumstances don't please me, I'm not happy.
I can't control that. Happiness depends on what happens to me. It is the opposite of sorrow. I cannot be happy and sorrowful at the same time. That's impossible. It's a psychological impossibility. Joy, on the other hand, is not dependent on my circumstances. It's the sense of well-being because of my relationship with God. And my circumstances have nothing to do with that. My circumstances should never tell me, they should never be allowed to say to me, God doesn't love you. They can never really convey that message because they have nothing to do with God's love for me.
and so actually nothing should be able to affect my joy because nothing can destroy God's love for me that's how Paul ends up Romans chapter eight I can be joyful and sorrowful at the same time my circumstances may bring sorrow to me But those circumstances cannot change my relationship to God. So the joy can remain in the midst of sorrow. Because circumstance and relationship to God are two totally different dimensions of life.
So Paul could say he was sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. And in trial, my trials may bring me a great deal of sorrow. James is not saying, don't be sorrowful. that's unnatural it's also unbiblical he's not saying don't be sorrowful but he is saying count it a matter of joy and I can be filled with sorrow by my circumstances that try me and at the same time have the realization of deep joy count it all joy Now note, James does not say count the trial to be joy.
There are Christians who say you can do that, but the Bible doesn't say that. James does not say count the trial to be a matter of joy. When you are in the trial, count it all joy knowing because you know something. What enables me to count... joy to think of joy in in this trial is not the trial but something else that i know that is not caused by the trial and i can count it a matter of joy because i know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness or endurance now that's a participial construction the king james said no it And the keys, one of the keys to the language of the New Testament is participle.
And really in translation you should leave it as a participle. You've got to do something with it. You're going to make it an adverbial participle, an adverbial participle. You've got to do something with it. And here I think other translators are right. It's an adverbial participle. It's an adverb of cause. Here is the cause for my counting in a matter of joy. because you know that the testing of your faith produces setbacks so i don't have to thank god for this trial what i thank god for is that he can work in that trial to produce something in me that is very valuable to him and i can counter the matter of joy because i know something The knowing, do you see, I know I'm laboring the point, but this hair-shirt Christianity, that you're supposed to be joyous in things that God weeps over, I'm laboring at the point because of that.
The joy comes because of what I know, not because of what I'm experiencing in the trial. Do you see that here in Jesus? If you see it, let me go on to something else. I don't want to stay there. Okay. But this is something I have to do. I have to count it a matter of joy. And I don't think we're going to finish this tonight. I'll pick it up tomorrow morning. And that relieves me of any decision about what to do tomorrow morning. Count it all joy. This is something I must do. Count it all joy is a command. This is what I'm to do in trial. Now the word counts.
There's another valuable Bible study tool, by the way, and it's the Vind Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. If you don't know the Greek, it's okay. Get hold of the tools written by people who do know the Greek. And one of them is the Vind Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. And if you were to look up this word count, you would find, as Vind explains it, the word means to lead. And here, in this kind of a context, it means to lead through the mind. And when I meet trial, my responsibility is to lead something through my mind. What I am to lead through my mind is this idea that God is at work in my life in the trial to produce steadfastness, endurance.
And the fact that God is at work in my life is a matter of joy. but it all depends when I'm in that trial what I lead to my mind. And if you'll take that word count, get hold of thine fictionary, the Greek word, and begin to look that word up in the New Testament, you'll see the idea. And I want to look at two passages where it occurs very quickly. Acts chapter twenty-six, is it? Yes, Acts chapter twenty-six, Paul before Agrippa. When Paul is now given permission to speak before King Agrippa, he says in verse two, I think myself fortunate that it is before you, O King Agrippa, I am to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, because you are especially familiar with all customs and controversies of the Jews.
Therefore, I beg you, listen to me, patience. Now, I think myself fortunate. I think myself, that's our word, count. I count myself... I'm leading an idea through my mind, Paul is saying, and the idea is, I'm very fortunate to be making my defense before you, O King of Grip. That's one way to look at it. Now, the reason, he says, is because King of Grip is familiar with questions of Judaism. And what a relief that is. I've had my tax returns audited. Do you know the difficulty I have sitting down with an auditor and trying to explain how I get my income?
No. They are totally baffled by it. They have no idea what I'm talking about. And I'm ready to tear my hair out, trying to get them to understand. If I could ever get a Plymouth Brethren tax auditor to audit my return, fine. We know what we're talking about. I would count myself fortunate to be in front of such an auditor. That's what Paul is saying. Because Agrippa is familiar with these questions, and he understands that this is a religious matter which those Roman governors would not.
They don't understand the ins and outs of Judaism and the relationship of the Messiah to the Old Testament and Christians to Jews, etc. There's no way of understanding that, but Agrippa would. and paul says i count myself fortune now paul could have led some other ideas to his mind could he he could have said good grief two years and i'm still making my defense and this guy i got to defend myself before i had no power to release me and the governors who do have power to release me are waiting for a bride or to curry favor with my enemies in jerusalem And now I've got to be trotted out like some display in the circus to perform before this man.
And God, what are you doing? You know I want to get to Spain with the gospel, and I'm incarcerated without justification for two years. God, what are you doing? He could have led all that through his mind, and he would never have found himself fortunate. It all depends what you lead through your mind, whether it's a matter of joy or not. You see that? Something else Paul was leading through his mind was the commission that Jesus Christ gave him on the Damascus Road. Saul, you're going to appear before kings and authorities for my sake.
What is Paul doing? He's appearing before kings and authorities. Hallelujah! The promise of Jesus is being fulfilled. I'm fulfilling my commission. By the way, how are you going to get the gospel to King of Griffin? You're going to call him up on the phone and say, King of Griffin, we've got these two wonderful speakers at Corona. Would you join us for the week? How are you going to get the gospel before season? Are you going to invite him over to the house for dinner and then give him the four spiritual laws? How are you going to get it? There's only one way you're going to do it. you're going to have these men judging a trial where the issue is Christianity.
And who do you want as a defender of Christianity at that trial? You want the best man God is God. You've got him right here. You've got him right there. And so Paul looked at the situation that way and he says, I count myself for a few. You see that? you have the choice of leading through your mind different ideas you can lead through your mind oh how terrible this is what have i done to deserve it don't ever ask god that he'll tell you what have i done to deserve this etc etc and make yourself absolutely miserable or you can see that god is at work building character in you that is very important to him.
But all depends on what you lead through your mind. And James is saying, lead through your mind this matter of joy. Another passage where this word is found is Philippians chapter two. Three, Paul tells the Philippians, do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but only count others better than yourself. there is any passage that some of us have misunderstood, that's it, count on yourself. And we start making comparisons, saying make a comparison between yourself and anybody else. That is how you do it. The way you killed others better than yourself is just exactly what Paul is saying here.
And the example he gives in Jesus Christ, you killed others better than yourself by serving them. That's how you do it. It's not a matter of saying, oh, you're so much better than I am, which is probably true. But the reason you say that is you want the other person to come back with a compliment. You're fishing for a compliment when you say something like that. And that's a matter of pride. That's not counting others better than yourself. That's really counting yourself better than them. You just want to hear them say it. No. In the society of the first century... If you were to go into a dining room, which you could do, a wealthy man's dining room, and stand around and watch this feast they're putting on, and listen to the conversation.
They weren't as concerned with privacy as we are. And that's how that prostitute came in when Jesus was at that Pharisee's house and could wash his feet with her tears. Because he went off the street and stands around the walls and sees evil and the food that's being prepared and presented and listened to the conversation. And you could do that. And if you were to do that, And you saw, you know where the chief seat is, and you know on the right side of that reclining position is the guest of honor. You could pick out the host. You could pick out the guest of honor. And going around that table, you could pick out the relative rank and society of every one of those people. And you would see other people coming in with basins of water and washing feet and anointing them, and you know they are a slave.
And you know they are of no importance. But you would see that once in Palestine where you would be wrong. You'd see that once in Palestine, you'd be wrong. And that's when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. If you're making comparisons and saying, the man who washes somebody else's feet is less important than the man whose feet are washed, in general in society that was true. Jesus used that when he says in his disciples, which is greater? He that sits at me or he that serves. There's not he that sits at me. That's society. But I am among you as he that serves. What was he doing when he watched the feed of his disciples?
Taking the place of a servant. And the man that sits at the table is greater than the man that serves. And Jesus counted them greater than himself by serving them. It's not a matter of comparison. and we count others better than ourselves by serving them. But I've got to leave that idea through my mind that it is important to serve, or I'll never do it. I've got to leave that idea through my mind that in God's society, contrary to our society, the most important position is the position of being the servant.
Our Lord just turns the tables upside down in the value structure of his society over against the society that are around us. Now, that's something I've got to lead through my mind because my society has never put it in my mind. My own sinful heart has never put that in my mind. I've got to lead that through my mind because of what I know and pursue. It's because I know that. That I count others better than myself. All right. So let's finish that in the morning. So James is saying, read that through your mind. That God is producing endurance in you. And that's valuable to God.
Let's pray. Our Father, sometimes we don't think straight. And we really don't want in our lives what you want. Forgive us. help us to place greater importance on those virtues that you want to build into us than we do on our ease or our pleasure or our own desires and help us to want more than anything else the development of christ likeness in us and help us to be joyful when you are working to produce that.
Thank you for your good word. You understand us so well. Thank you for that good word that helps us. We ask that you will help us to help each other. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.