Trials are opportunities to develop volitional faith, which is the commitment to God's truth, and Satan attacks this commitment through various means, including guilt. The sermon distinguishes between historical guilt (the fact of sin), judicial guilt (the sentence of judgment), and psychological guilt (feelings of unworthiness), noting that Christ bore judicial guilt. False guilt, arising from human standards, distracts from true guilt, which is the violation of God's standards, and both can be overcome through confession and God's generous, reproachless forgiveness. True security and wealth are found not in economic status, but in Jesus Christ, whether one is rich or poor, as both learn their mortality and find eternal riches in Him.
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And read through verse eight. 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. If any of you lack the wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting. For he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that a double-minded man unstable in all his ways will receive anything from the Lord. As we talked about faith the other day and the true constructions that follow the verse believe in the New Testament, we distinguished those as intellectual faith and volitional faith.
And I was suggesting that the area where Satan attacks and the area by which James is concerned is volitional faith. But we have committed ourselves to what we believe. And that faith must always be growing, as our intellectual faith must always be growing. We're constantly increasing the amount of material we understand from the Bible that we accept as truth. And we must correspondingly be increasing our commitment in life to those truths that we are learning. And the tests that James is talking about are tests of that volitional faith. And where Satan attacks us is that point of volitional faith. He wants to decrease or eliminate our commitment to the truth of God, our commitment to Jesus Christ in all kinds of aspects of life.
He wants us to give up on that. And I was talking about the various ways in Scripture that Satan uses, the various things he uses, to get people to give up on their commitments to God. And one of the things he uses is our own failure, our own sin. And I was talking about his work with Peter and how Jesus prayed for Peter that his faith would not fail. And I'm suggesting that as he talks about our sin, Satan uses false guilt as well as true guilt. And I want to pick up at that point and talk about that before we go on in this letter of James. The word guilt is used in three different ways. It is used in what theologians call historical guilt.
That is, we are the people who did it. That's historical guilt. It has nothing to do with our feelings. nor necessarily with the sentence that is going to be imposed upon us. It's the historical fact we did it. And that will always be true regardless of anything. I will always be the individual who committed those sins. I will always be the individual who failed to do those things. That's historical fact, and God himself will not change that. God is not a Russian history writer who rewrites history to suit himself. Facts are facts. That's what happens. We bear the historical guilt. The second is called judicial guilt. And Paul talks about that in his letter to the Romans. He really talks about both. That all the world might become guilty before God.
That's the sentence of the judge on those who are historically guilty. This court pronounces you guilty. That's not only to say you did it, but a sentence comes upon you, a judgment, judicial guilt. Now, what our Lord Jesus Christ bore was judicial guilt, not historical guilt. He never became personally guilty of the sins that we committed. They were always our sins that he bore. They were not his. He did not become all the sinners of the world. He did not. He was always holy, spotless, undefiled, separate from sinners, even when he was dying for our sins.
But he was dying for our sins, not our sins that became his. They were ours. Historically, they will always be ours. What he took was judicial guilt, the sentence of God, so that we who were historically guilty are no longer judicially guilty. We will never experience the judgment of God against our sins. He took our judicial guilt, and that's what Paul means when he says that God made him sin for us. God did not make him sinful. God made him sin. God made him judicially guilty, but not historically guilty. The third kind of guilt is dealt with very little in the Bible, but it's psychological guilt.
The feelings we have, the feelings of unworthiness and blame that we have, because we are historically guilty under judicial guilt. Now, those kinds of guilt can be divided into two sections, true guilt and false guilt. True guilt is our historical guilt that is a violation of God's standards. False guilt is the guilt that we feel, the feelings of blame and unworthiness, when we have violated human standards. That is, particularly in Christianity, people set up all kinds of ideas of what it means to be good and what sin is.
And when we violate the expectations of other people, we feel their displeasure and we feel blameworthy. It's when we violate the expectations of people, that they have absolutely no relationship to the expectations of God. And the problem with false guilt is that we are occupied with that and are not able to face our true guilt. And what we must deal with is our true guilt. where we have violated the standards of God and not the standards of men.
But false guilt is such a part of our lives that it robs us of the ability to look at our true guilt. And we may spend a lifetime with our guilt feelings that are related to the disapproval of somebody whose nose was out of joint and never get around to dealing with our true guilt before God. And that would bring in the whole area of conscience. And we don't have time to talk about that. But let me give you an illustration for my own life. I grew up in a church and in a family that had very, very rigid standards about worldliness. And as we get further down in this chapter, we'll talk about keeping oneself unsplotted from the world. But worldliness, as I understand it from my youth, worldliness is any amusement that non-Christians have.
It's alright for Christians to do the work or pay that non-Christians do, but it is wrong for Christians to do the amusement that non-Christians do. And if non-Christians have the amusement of going to baseball games like the Pittsburgh Pirates where I grew up, then it is worldly for a Christian to go there. If non-Christians go to an amusement park, it is worldly for Christians to go there. Anything in the area of amusement. that the non-Christian society does is wrong for the Christians. It's strange how you can work for pay the same thing they do, but you cannot have their amusement. So you can't go to the theater, you can't go to movies. We call them films.
You can't go to movies. You can't go to the theater. And that's the standard under which I grew up. We were not taught to evaluate. We were not taught to discern. We were just taught that blanket, all of it is wrong. I remember as a child, my brother and I being taken into downtown Pittsburgh by my parents at Christmas time when they were going to shop for us, and we went into Kaufman's department store. And one whole floor of that department store was given over to toys. You talk about a kid being in heaven. And then my parents suddenly realized their dilemma. They wanted to pick out our Christmas gifts, and we were with them.
Now, what are they going to do? There were no babysitting services back then in department stores. They were afraid to deposit us anywhere else. But it so happened that on that floor, there was a children's theater. And there was an innocent little clown's play going on to entertain children. And my parents said, aha, here is a place to deposit the boys while we do the shopping. So they took us over to the theater, take my fare to Tarshish, and set us inside.
And we were sitting in a perfectly innocent clown play for kids. And my conscience was killing me. And I had to get out of there. Now I was right to get out of there because it's wrong to violate your conscience. But the conscience code was wrong. In contrast to that, my brother who was younger than I, he and I had typical sibling rivalry. And I used to eat the tar out of him gladly. Until he became bigger than I and all that stopped. And I had no conscience about it.
I had no conscience about something the Scripture talks about very, very plainly. But I had all kinds of guilt feelings about something about Scripture and science. That church and my parents were well-meaning, but I'm convinced they were wrong. And the load of that kind of guilt, of man-made standards, gets us so occupied we are not able to deal with our real guilt before God and this goes on in our churches all the time don't you dare go here or there and we wouldn't think about it but we gossip and backbite and stab each other without a qualm and those are things the word of God condemns in the strongest terms but we have no conscience we feel no guilt And we need to learn to come to grips with true guilt.
But in either case, Satan will use either one. He doesn't care. He will use either one to destroy our confidence in Jesus Christ. How do you handle that guilt, those feelings that you have that you can't get rid of? You confess them. if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins if that does not give us the sense of forgiveness i am convinced we are not dealing with a spiritual problem but with an emotional problem i've got enough confidence in the word of god that if i confess my sins i believe god will honor what he has said and he will forgive me and therefore to me i am not dealing with a spiritual problem any longer i am dealing with emotional problems Now what do you do?
I've got a suggestion. One of the things I have found very helpful is going through the Gospels and seeing how Jesus dealt with sinners. Beautiful. And put myself in their place. That's how he deals with me. Another thing I have found helpful. that you take seriously what James says in this epistle, confess your faults one way or another. And when the Protestant Reformation occurred, we got rid of the Roman Catholic confessional, but we didn't put anything in his place. And there have been times when I have had to go to my brother and tell him what I have done.
To hear from him the word of God. that assures my forgiveness. And to sense in him the reality of my forgiveness and my acceptance, which has then made me able to understand and grasp the forgiveness of God. One reason we have trouble emotionally grasping God's forgiveness is because we've experienced so little of it on the human level. That we carry grudges against each other and we refuse wholeheartedly to forgive. It makes it very, very difficult to understand God's forgiveness. That's why I go back to the Gospels and see Jesus here on earth, dealing with real life sinners like me.
That's one of the things, and that's just one of the things I've appreciated about Truman's ministry in these character studies. He refuses to spiritualize those stories. They are historical. They are real. There are the lessons right there. And what that does for me is make me realize God deals with lives of ordinary people like me. Those people were not plaster saints. They were not up on a pedestal. They were down in the dirt where I am, and God was working in their lives. They were not great heroes. They were ordinary people, and God was working in their lives. And that gives me a great deal of comfort. And I value that kind of approach to the historical narrative and truth. And my brother then helped me realize in flesh and blood terms that God has forgiven me.
And sometimes that's the only way I can get rid of that psychological guilt as I keep going over and over what I have done with the shame of it. And my good friend, late good friend Bob Wilson was a tremendous help to me in the years we were to may have together. Tremendous help to me that way. He became the channel of God's grace to me on more than one occasion. Great to have a friend like that. Great. And if we don't have friends like that, if we sense the constant disapproval of our brothers, Satan gets into that. That's what Paul says in Ephesians, that if we don't deal with that anger and get rid of it, then our disapproval of each other, we end up doing Satan's work.
We become accusers of the brethren. And that's what Satan is doing. And what happens is our faith gets weakened. Our commitment to God becomes less in the sheer discouragement of our guilt. And Satan has successfully done what he set out to do. And what God wants to strengthen is that volitional faith, our commitment to himself.
And that's the thing that James is dealing with here. The test, the trial of our faith. God has mercy on us when the trials of our faith are caused by Christians. I expect it from the non-Christian world. I expect it from Satan that God help us when we are the cause of the trial of our brother's faith. James goes on to say that the reason for that endurance, why it's so valuable, is that through that we become perfect and entire, lacking nothing. The word perfect means that what we have is without blemish. The word entire means that all the parts are there.
And this is what God is working for, to make us perfect, like Christ. that we are whole people and i am more convinced than ever as i read through the scriptures that i think about adam in the fall and then i read passages in the new testament about what god is doing in redemption and sanctification he's simply trying to make us human and anything that denies our real humanity is not christian god is trying to make us whole people completely human again No one has been completely human since the fall, except Jesus Christ. And God is trying to make us completely human again. And one day, thank God, we will be, perfect entire lacking nothing.
But that's, it's endurance that moves us toward that goal. Now in that process, there's something we may lack, and that's what James calls wisdom. And you're aware of the difference among knowledge and understanding and wisdom. And knowledge is an acquaintance with facts. Understanding is an awareness of the significance of the fact. Many of us know a lot of facts, but we don't see their significance. And when you're working in a local church, you not only have to know what's happening, what's going on in the church, what's going on in the lives of the people, but you have to understand the significance of what's going on. And many of us fail here. We really don't see the significance of what is happening.
We have simplistic answers, and we don't see the significance of what's going on. Wisdom is the ability to take knowledge and relate it to good purposes. Wisdom. If you were in the Old Testament times and you wanted wisdom, what you would do is go and sit at the seat of the elders of Israel, and they would teach you wisdom. And the book of Proverbs is a compilation of just that material. The wisdom of older men who in the process of a lifetime have learned how to live so as to please God. And we've got the distillation of all that in the book of Proverbs.
But remember, that book is a book of Proverbs, not a book of promises. Don't confuse the two. It is not a book of promises. It is a book of Proverbs. fifty sayings that distilled the experience of godly people in their lifetime this is how they took the word of god and applied it in specific situations to life so that in those specific situations they could please god but those are not promises those are proverbs but that's with it how in this specific situation am i going to respond So it's to please God.
And many times that's what I lack. So I need to go to the source of wisdom who is God, and it begins with the fear of God, as the book of Proverbs tells us. You're not going to get wisdom without the fear of God. Because when you get to those specific situations, unless there's that holding reverence for God, in that specific situation you're not going to want to please God. So I go to God for wisdom, and I love what James says about God here. He gives to all men generously. I like that. The idea of the word generously is a single fold. There are no hidden folds in this cloth.
There are no hidden folds in the heart of God where other motives can be stored. And the one he displays is generosity. but secretly there are other feelings and motives in God that you're going to bump into later on. No, there isn't anything like that. God has only one fold. It's a simple fold. And when God unfolds that, there isn't anything secret or hidden that is against what we call generosity. He does not give and then be Christ and he is given. He does not give because he has to.
There is no key that God has put into your hand that will force God to do what you want. That's paganism. That's not Christianity, nor is it Judaism. God has never put that key in anybody's hands. There is no ritual. There is no magic. There is no incantation. There is no formula. God responds to what is moral. And in the heart of God, There are no hidden motives. He does not give begrudgingly. He does not give because he has to. He gives because he wants to. And he will always want to. And he will never have anything else in his heart.
And whenever we make it possible for him to give, he'll give. And the only thing that keeps us from getting is we don't make it possible for God to give. Well, that's two broadest statements. There are other factors that work in the plan of God. But in our responsibility, this is what happens. But on God's part, He gives to all men generously. I have had gifts given to me. One of the disciplinary things in the way that we handle our preachers in this, what we call the life of faith, one of the disciplinary things that come to us is the way that some people give. And I have many a time felt like I want to give the gift back.
because of the way in which it was given. But of course we are taught to be nice. I have sent a gift back to a conference that didn't even cover my plane fare. And there were plenty of wealthy people there. And I said, it seemed to me that they needed it more than I did. And so I sent it back. But you accept those gifts that are given grudgingly in the whole thing on the face and the attitude of the individual is that way. And you come back to this passage in James, which just went on the floor here. I lose these Bibles. Don't worry, I've got another new one at home, but I just can't get used to getting out of this one and into the new one.
It's refreshing to go back to a passage like this and read about God who gives generously. No hidden motive. No grudging when he gives. And as James says here, he gives generously without reproaching, without scolding. He never comes to me and says, well, what did you do with the last thing I gave you? Like we do with our kids sometimes. No, I just gave you a dollar. What do you want another one for? Why didn't you last one? God doesn't do that. He doesn't get scolded when he gives. He never reproaches us. He gives. Period. He gives. In the same way he gave his beloved son. There was no grudging in giving him.
There was no withholding. He gave. When he gave generously, he emptied the treasury of heaven. when he gave his son. That's the way he gives. I'm not talking about the amount, I'm talking about the attitude. And you know, when you came to Christ, when you came to God for salvation, God didn't say, well, you wicked sinner, you made all this necessary. I sure hated that I had to give my son for you. But since I did it, I'll give you eternal life. No, he was like the father of the prodigal son. He ran out there to meet us, and in all our filth, he threw his arms around us, kissed us.
That's the way he does it. Not a word from that father reproaching that boy about the far country. Not a word. Bring on the orchestra, and let's dance, and put the best food on the table. He's old. That's all the old man can think about. That's the way God received us, isn't it? And by the way, when you get home to heaven, you ain't not going to sneak into no back door. Now, if you can figure out the grammar of that, you are not going in the back door. God will not have any of his sons going in the back door. You're going in the front door, and you're going to sit down to the greatest feast you've ever seen. It'll even beat this camp soon.
You're not going in the back door. That isn't the way God does things. And that's the attitude he has toward us when he gives, particularly when we are asking for wisdom. When I have all these facts, I see what's going on in life, and I'm facing this trial, but I want to respond in a way that pleases God, and I'm not sure how to do it. I lack wisdom. And God is so pleased with that, the way he was with Solomon, that he poured everything else out on Solomon. When Solomon said, just give me wisdom. I need to know how to lead your people. Give me wisdom. And God was so pleased with that.
He says, man, I'll throw in wealth and riches and long life and any else you want. I'll give it to you. And that ruins Solomon, unfortunately. But that's the way God gives. He's so pleased at that request. Sure, sure. Glad to give to you. He gives liberally, generously. He does not reproach. But on our part, he says, we are to ask in faith that commitment now with no doubting. Now, please don't talk about doubt that we sometimes have and pull this verse out of what James is saying. What is James talking about when he's talking about doubt?
He's talking about an unstable man, a double-minded man, blown about like a driven by the wind of the sea. That's what James means by doubt. The honest questions we ask never bother God. God was not upset by Job's questions. God was not upset by Habakkuk's questions. Don't tell me a Christian shouldn't ask why. Jesus did. God is not afraid of our honest questions. And God is not afraid of our honest objections if they are honest. No, he's not. Over and over, Moses came down and says, you can't do this. What's going to happen if you do this?
Then God says, okay, I won't do it. It's Amos who gets those visions of God's judgment on Israel. And one of those visions is a tremendous locust plague. And Amos cries out to God, you can't do this. Think about Jacob. He is so small. You wipe him out if you do that. God says, okay, I won't do it. God is not put off by our honest objections or our honest questions, so long as they are honest. That's not doubt. That's not the kind of doubt James is talking about. And when you are wrestling with questions of faith and those questions are going through your mind, don't be afraid of those.
If they are intellectual questions, face them honestly and look for the answers. Men called Beekner, whose books I like, they're awfully irreverent, but I like his books, he says, He says, doubt is the ant in the pants of faith. And they make you, sorry, they make you question and push and shove until you find answers. There's nothing wrong with that kind of doubt. Don't mistake doubt for unbelief. Our skinners have something to say on that that you ought to get hold of if you've got that question about the difference between doubt and unbelief. But what James is talking about here is not that. I get so scared of that strongly saying, if you trust and never doubt, he will surely bring you out.
I ain't never going to get out. But that's what it is. If you trust and never doubt, he will surely bring you out. He'll never bring you in. If I've got to have more than the faith of a grain of mustard seed, I'm in trouble. He'll never bring me up. That is what James is talking about. James is talking about a man who can't make up his mind whether he wants to commit himself to God or not. That's the double-minded man. And as long as he is in that condition, he is unstable in the totality of his life. That's the kind of man James is talking about. He's not talking about us who have committed ourselves to Jesus Christ and want to increase that commitment.
He's talking about the poor individual who can't make up his mind. And sometimes we get like that in our own lives. We get into a situation and we're really not sure that I want what God wants in this situation. Well, if I'm like that, there is no use asking for wisdom until I make up my mind I want what God wants. Because if I go to God, not having made up my mind of my commitment to him in this situation, there's no use my asking for wisdom because I really don't want it. Wisdom will show me how to respond to this situation in a way that pleases God, but I have not yet made the decision that I want to please God. So there's no use asking for wisdom because it would be useless for God to give it to me.
That's the kind of situation James is talking about. That's the doubt. It's the unstable man, unstable in everything he does because all of life is unstable if you are not committed to a principle or something that is bigger than you are. And that's one of the problems with our society. There's no commitment to anything bigger than we are. The only commitment is to our own pleasure in something that a very unstable society. I don't care if it's commitment. Well, I do care. But if it's commitment to patriotism, if it's commitment to whatever, if the nation can be united around a common commitment, we'll have stability. But until it is, we won't. As long as I am committed to my pleasure and you're committed to your pleasure, we're going to have instability in our society.
And we in our individual lives, until we are focused on someone who is bigger than we are, and a cause that is bigger than our pleasure, we are going to be unstable in our own lives. And in that condition, there is no use asking for wisdom, because God cannot give it to us. God does not give encyclopedias to infants. And that unstable individual, we see nothing from God. Because God is going to do nothing that is going to further his instability. He's not going to do it.
That's the kind of individual James is talking about, who says he cannot get what he asks from God. Now, I want to go on, and I'm not sure we can finish the sixth paragraph, because there are sections in here that I feel I just must get to... before Sunday afternoon unless you want to say Sunday afternoon have another session we might finish chapter one I don't know but beginning in verse nine our commitment to God is now tested by our economic status in life let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation because like the flower of the grass he will pass away That's his humiliation.
The sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass. Its flower falls and its beauty perishes. So will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuit. And James says, you ought to rejoice in that. How so? Well, I can see the first side of it in chapter two. The poor man rejoicing in his exaltation. In verse five of chapter two, listen, my beloved brethren, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him? Most of Jesus' disciples were poor.
Not many wives, not many noble, not many noble. Paul said, not many of those. There are those and not many. Why not? because the wealthy people are able to insulate themselves from the real struggles and trials of life they don't know they have any problems and that insulation can be fatal and they never have to face the reality of their own death they don't have to look at it if they don't want to they have the wealth to get the kind of care that poor people can't get They can keep themselves out of prison, and they can keep themselves out of other things if they're wealthy enough. The poor man can't do that.
It's a day-to-day existence for him. He doesn't know whether he's going to be alive tomorrow or not. The rich man never thinks that way. The poor man does. He's scraping to stay alive one day at a time. He knows the limitations of life. He faces death every day that he lives. and that leads him to the eternal hope that's in Jesus Christ and that's why so many of the poor people become Christians they've got nothing in this life of material good they realize their mortality and they latch on to the good news in Jesus Christ but the rich man's wealth insulates him from all those problems he doesn't know that he's going to die.
And so James says, the wealthy man who has learned that, and he goes on at great lengths to describe it, you're like a flower in the field, and that hot eastern sun comes up, and what was nice and green in the morning is withered and brown and dry by the evening. And James says, that's the way your life is. And the rich man says, thank God I found that out. And James goes on to say, like that, you're going to be cut off like in the midst of your business pursuit. And the wealthy man responds, thank God, I know that may happen. I'm glad I found it out. He's not like the man later in the epistle of James who says, today, tomorrow, we're going into the city, we're going to trade and get wealth and all the rest of it. He doesn't say if God wills, and then if God wills, it's not just a statement.
What James is saying, we must say, is if God wills, we shall live and do this and this. The point is not if it's God's wills, I'll do this, but if God wills, I'll live. What we learn is that life is not in our hands, but in God's hands, and the rich man doesn't learn that. He thinks life is in his hands. He doesn't know it's in God's hands. And so he's not aware of his own mortality. The rich man who learns that lesson can be grateful forever that he learned it. He knows he's mortal. The poor man already knows that. The rich man has to learn it.
He learns he's mortal. And only in Jesus Christ can he get a hold of immortality. And he learns that his true wealth is not in any bank, not even in Lloyd's bank. His true wealth is not in any bank. His true wealth is in Jesus Christ. And the poor man learns that in things that really matter, he is not poor, but eternally wealthy. that is not to excuse the circumstances that make so many people poor, but it is to say that if we have got hold of what God has said, our economic status in life is not a matter of great concern to us.
If we are wealthy, we don't trust in it, we don't count on it, we don't rest our assurance in it, we've got it, we want to use it for God, but our real confidence is in God. And if we are poor, we don't chase day in and day out, but I don't know where tomorrow is this fool that's coming from, because I know where I'm going to be forever. And this life is nothing compared to that life. The poor man learns it one way, the rich man has to learn it another, but if they both learn it, they are a blessed God. Now that's got to say something to us. Where is our security?
What are our goals? Where is our real wealth? And I thank God for wealthy people who are indifferent about it, that I can sit down and be comfortable with because they put on no air, and they're using their money for the advancement of God's kingdom. And they see that's why God has given it to them. They are stewards. I thank God for the comfort of going into a poor Christian's home, poor in this world, good, but rich in faith. I thank God for those poor Christians. I can sit down in their home and be perfectly comfortable because in either home, our real joy is Jesus Christ. And I remember years and years ago, we were working in South Carolina, going into a mill village, and you were talking about poverty.
And God is going to judge those mill owners. He's going to judge them. They kept those poor workmen ground under with the village store, the company store, and the company homes, and just controlled their very soul and kept the unions out and everything else. And God is going to have something severe to say to them if I understand the process at all. But I remember going into the home of this poor worker in a cotton mill in the South, outdoor plumbing, four ramshackle chairs and tables they let you sleep on the best bed and you've been better off sleeping on the floor as far as comfort is concerned that's all they have and i sat down at their table that night saturday night that was going to be preaching in the little assembly on sunday morning and very cheerfully this father the breadwinner of the house this simple little meal uh very cheerfully as he gave thanks, he turned to me and he said, Brother Anderson, if there's anything you don't see that you want, you let me know, and I'll tell you how to get along without it.
And neither, none of us, the family was not embarrassed by the poverty of their surroundings, they were not apologizing. because we were interested in the things of God and we were talking about Jesus Christ and living a glorious time. And I've had the same experience in a wealthy man's home where we had so many forks and knives on the table I didn't know where to start. And there were dishes coming down of the servant bringing around that I never saw in my life and I didn't know what to do with him. But they were not embarrassed by their wealth and our conversation and their interest were all about the things about. And in both homes we had a tremendous time before God.
neither was impressed by his station in life. Both were impressed by the grace of God. That's what James is saying here. And we in our Western society, who is one of the highest standards of living in the world, have to beware that we are not sucked in by our society to find the meaning of our life and our sense of security in our wealth. The meaning of life is not in what is material. The meaning of life is in Jesus Christ. Security is not in any government program. Those of you who got into social security and I got into it said I couldn't get out of it with honest conscience years ago.
And it looked like a great thing. And we who trusted in social security are in trouble today. No government program is going to give you security. The only security is in Jesus' credit. And if the rise and fall of the stock market has caused me elation or depression, I better re-examine my spiritual foundation. So if you're wealthy, you rejoice that you've learned your mortality. If you're poor, you rejoice that God has given you eternal riches.
So both of us rejoice. around Jesus Christ. Now, my commitment to Jesus Christ about those things is tested then by my economic status in the world. If that upsets me, if that's the measure of my life that has tested my commitment to Jesus Christ, we found it wanting. You see that? That's what James is saying. It's our relationship.