I'm going to invite Anne up, who's going to read scripture for us.
She's going to read James chapter 1, verses 9 to 18.
These are the verses that Corey's going to teach from just shortly.
! Thank you, Anne.
Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation,
and the rich in his humiliation,
because like a flower of the grass he will pass away.
For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass,
its flower falls and its beauty perishes.
So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.
Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial,
for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life,
which God has promised to those who love him.
Let no one say when he is tempted,
I am being tempted by God,
for God cannot be tempted with evil,
and he himself tempts no one.
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin,
and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights,
with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth,
that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
Amen.
All right, well,
I don't know if you've had the experience,
I think I do know you have,
that you go to bed on a weeknight too late,
and then you get up too late the next morning,
and your morning self hates your nighttime self for it.
And then you can't find your keys,
and then, or you go to the bus stop,
and the bus never comes,
despite the fact that the app said it was two minutes away.
And then you get into work or uni,
and you're frustrated, and you're flustered,
and you get an email,
and it says,
we need to talk,
and it's from your boss.
It's the email I send to David Court every week.
We need to talk now.
And then the next day comes,
and you get that unexpected bill.
And the next day comes,
and you get a ticket,
because you drove in the bus lane.
And then the next day comes,
and your friend wants to talk,
and poor,
and addiction they're struggling with,
into your life,
and say,
I need your help.
And it's good,
but it's a burden.
And then you come,
you drag yourself to church on a Sunday.
After a hard week,
and an ordinary week,
and the text is James 1, verse 2,
that says,
count it all joy,
brothers and sisters,
when you face trials of various kinds,
big and small.
Now, the week I just described
is not martyrdom.
It's not the persecution
that the first century scattered church
was facing,
and the week I described
was not a life-ending diagnosis.
But sometimes those weeks do come as well.
It was quite a normal week,
quite an ordinary week,
that we face.
Various trials,
big and small,
James says.
Count it joy when you face them,
no matter what they are.
So we saw last week
that Christians meet trouble
on ordinary roads.
And just because you're a Christian,
it doesn't mean
that you're exempt from suffering.
In fact,
it's exactly the opposite.
It's a guarantee
that you will suffer.
And we learned that
when you're a follower of Jesus,
you need an entire cognitive reframe
of what suffering is.
And James is telling us
the reason suffering is so different,
we receive it so different as believers,
is because God can grow you
and mature you in the midst of it.
It has a completely different purpose
than we normally think about suffering.
And so he said,
count it all joy.
Consider it joy.
Put the events of that week
in the credit of joy
instead of the debit of misery.
It's a thinking term.
It's a thinking command.
And he says also
that every single moment like that,
the week I described,
is a, quote,
testing of your faith.
It's a trial.
That's a testing.
And a testing is a smelting term.
That's the Greek word that's chosen
as one of the verbs
for how you smelt precious metals.
And so if you're going to smelt gold,
you've got to stick gold into a furnace
and heat it up
to at least 1,064 degrees Celsius
to smelt gold.
And you do it in cycles,
over and over again,
pulling it out,
sticking it back in the furnace.
And the impurities fall away over time.
And you move from 80% gold
to 90% to 92, 93, 94,
up to 98, 99% gold.
That's as good as you can get.
It's never perfect.
And that's exactly what he means
by reentering the furnace
over and over again.
You can become perfect.
Not sinless, but whole.
More and more mature.
More and more Christ-like
over time is the idea.
And so today, we come back.
He's talking about the same stuff
in the passage we read.
But today, he's getting more specific
and saying,
well, how does this work exactly?
What does this mean
in certain circumstances more precisely?
So he's talking here
about how to be blessed
in the midst of reentering the furnace.
Whether the bus,
that's the bus doesn't come
day after day
or the life-ending diagnosis,
you reenter the furnace
big and small all the time.
And how can you be blessed?
How really can you?
What does it look like practically?
And you see that in verse 12.
He said,
blessed is the one
who remains steadfast.
You say,
how could we be blessed in that?
And so that's what he's answering
for us today.
Now, this is James,
the biological brother
of Jesus Christ,
writing to the church,
Jews and Gentiles,
scattered all throughout
the Roman Empire
in the first century
or all the empires
of this world today to us.
And he's going to teach you today
in verses 9 to 18
that you can be blessed
in the midst of suffering
when you will see
that number one,
suffering will strip away
your idols.
Number two,
that suffering exposes
your truest,
greatest problem.
And finally,
your suffering will point you
to the man
who is the blessed one.
All right, so first,
let's think about that.
Suffering,
suffering can bring a blessing
when you will allow it
to strip your idols away.
All right, so if you look down
at verse 9,
he says,
let the lowly brother
boast in his exaltation
and the rich brother
or sister in their humiliation.
Now, it looks like James
is switching topics here.
Suffering, wisdom,
and now rich people
and poor people.
But this is the same topic.
He's still in the realm
of talking about suffering.
And we've already said
just this morning
that a trial for James,
suffering is a test
of your faith.
And so what he's talking about
when he brings up
the poor,
the lowly brother or sister,
the lowly,
the poor Christian
or the rich Christian,
he's saying that
if you're poor,
if you're a Christian
and you're poor,
you don't have money.
If you're a Christian
and you're rich
and you've got a lot of wealth,
you're still going to face
the same problems.
And that's suffering.
But you come at them
from different perspectives.
He's drawing a difference
of perspective there.
Now, the first thing
he says is to the lowly person.
And the word for lowly here
is not the most normal word
for a poor person.
So it would be different
in English than saying
the homeless
or something like that.
Instead, it's a word
that's more closely associated
with a person
who has been humbled.
And so it's more than economics.
It's, you know,
there's, as we grow older,
I think we learn
that there's lots of different ways
to be wealthy.
You know, you can have
a lot of money,
but you can have
really poor friendships.
And so there's lots of ways
to be lowered,
to be a lowly person.
And I think the reason
he uses this particular word
is because,
if you remember last week,
he's talking to people
who in the first century
were scattered
by persecution
across the Roman Empire.
And from Acts 8,
Stephen was stoned to death,
and then people dispersed.
And if you were one
of those Jewish Christians
that got dispersed
from Jerusalem,
you ran,
and you left behind friendship.
You left behind your money.
You left behind everything
that you would call wealth
in this life.
You left behind
market relationships.
You know,
you don't even have a source
of generating a new business
and living in Antioch
or Corinth or Thessalonica.
You don't have anything.
And so he's talking
to that lowly person
who has lost it in life.
All material wealth,
friendship wealth,
market wealth.
And he's saying,
you've entered
into that station in life,
and that is the trial.
That is the test.
And you've got to take it,
and you've got to think
of your exaltation.
What is he talking about?
He's explaining
how exactly a person
who doesn't have a lot
in this life
would consider it joy
or count it joy.
So he's saying
to the lowly person,
look, it'll be your temptation
if you don't have a lot
in this life,
if you don't have a lot
financially,
if you don't have a lot
in terms of relationship,
whatever it may be,
whatever lack of wealth,
it will be your temptation
to despair,
to even say things like,
God doesn't care about me.
God doesn't value me.
I've done everything I could,
and God's left me where I am.
And so God clearly
doesn't care what I'm doing.
And that'll be the temptation.
And there's another temptation
that you will face,
and that's the same temptation
that the rich face.
And that's that you might say,
if only I had economic wealth,
if only I had
these different types of wealth,
then my life would be better,
then everything would be okay.
And so the poor person
who's suffering
is facing all sorts
of temptations
to think God hates them,
even.
And what he's saying
is you've got to,
how do you move
that suffering
from the ledger
of debit to credit,
of misery to joy,
and you've got to consider
your exaltation?
What is he saying?
He's saying you've got to realize
that if you're a Christian
and you don't have a lot
in this life,
that you are so united to Jesus
that His glory is your glory.
In other words,
you've got to actually think
about the fact
that God sees you as exalted.
You think God hates me
in the midst of my lowliness,
my suffering, my poverty.
No, no, no.
He's saying when you're a believer,
you can suffer differently
even when you're poor
because you can say,
inasmuch as Jesus Christ
was exalted into the heavenly realm
at His resurrection,
so God the Father sees me
like He sees Him.
See, boast in your exaltation.
Boast in the fact
that you have glory
because you're connected to Jesus.
Be lifted up in that.
Think about the next life.
That's what he's saying.
And this is striking something
so hard for us
as modern people
because in our culture,
in our moment,
really since the time
of the Enlightenment,
we think we're tempted
to secular materialism
all the time,
even as Christians,
to think that way,
to live in that framework.
And when you live that way,
you don't believe
that there's a life to come.
Not really.
Not practically.
And so if you are a person
in this life
who's a materialist
and you lose all this stuff in life,
you lose your economic wealth,
you lose your friendship wealth,
you lose relational wealth,
you lose market possibility,
business opportunity,
you fail your degree,
whatever it may be,
you're left saying,
I don't have anything left.
I don't have a glory
that is to come for me.
And so you're living
in this horizontal plane
without any hope.
And he's saying,
but when you're a believer
and you face suffering,
you might lose everything
and you can still say,
I boast in the fact
that I know
I will be exalted.
I have hope in the next life.
So in other words,
he's saying that the opportunity,
the blessing,
even when you're poor,
is that you're having
your idol stripped away from you,
even when you're poor.
Because you're being told
that there is a hope
of everlasting life
that's far greater
and that's sharing
in the glory of Jesus Christ.
Now, I've got to move on.
To the rich, he says,
secondly,
he gives more words to the rich,
more clauses to the rich.
Because when you're rich,
it's far harder
to have your idol stripped.
It's far harder to let go.
And you see,
I think one of the reasons
he chooses humiliation
for the rich,
exaltation for the poor,
is he's saying,
you're facing the same things,
but you've got to think about it
in opposite ways.
And that means that
suffering,
when you suffer with Jesus,
it almost lifts the poor
to the same plane as the rich,
and it lowers the rich down.
See, it humbles the rich
to be equal to the poor,
and it raises the poor
to be equal to the rich.
Because you're all facing
the same things.
And so he turns to the rich here
and he says,
you know,
the poor man or woman
is going to be tempted
to despair,
to say,
God hates me.
I'm not a person of value.
Nobody sees me in this life.
You've got to think
of your glory
with Jesus.
But the rich person
is going to be far more tempted
to hang on as tightly as possible
to the pursuits
that that person has pursued,
to the things of this world,
to get it back,
to say,
no,
this is what completes me.
I've got to have these things
that I've built my life around.
And so he's saying,
you've got to consider it joy,
count it joy,
by thinking about the grace
or the humiliation,
the humbling
that you're experiencing.
You've got to think
not about the glory
that you're to receive
because you've been living that life.
You've already lived
a life of glory.
But you've got to thank God
and say,
here's how I can count it blessing
because God is lowering me
to remember
that everything is grace.
Everything is a gift.
The rich man suffers,
the rich woman suffers,
and the gift of God in that
is your humiliation.
You're being humbled.
You're having your idol
stripped away from you.
The poor person suffers
and they're being lifted up
and say,
remember that you're sharing
in the sufferings of Christ
to share in the glory of Christ.
You see how it goes
two different ways
to make an even plane
right across the board.
Now, the reason I think
he's focused a little bit more
on the rich here
is because
what's the biggest danger
pretty much every one of us faces?
So James is talking here
to first century people
who ran away from their homes.
They're living as refugees.
They don't have anything.
That's none of us.
We are the rich.
Very few of us in here
can say that we're the poor,
really,
when we talk about this.
If we eat every day,
we're the rich
that James is talking about.
So that's all of us,
mostly in the modern Western world,
mostly everyone sitting
in this room today.
And so the reason
he focuses on us
a little bit more
is because the most dangerous
place to be
is to be wealthy,
to have plenty of food,
plenty of water,
plenty of shelter,
and to never have trouble.
That's the most dangerous place to be,
to be prosperous,
to have a lot,
but to never have any trouble
in this life.
That's the greatest
spiritual danger
you can face,
the Bible says,
is to be prosperous
but not suffer.
Whoa.
You see,
he's saying that suffering
is a blessing
because it strips away
your tight hold
on the potential idols
that we all have
in this world.
And so he gives you
a little illustration
in verse 11.
And here's why
it's so dangerous.
You know,
the flower rises in the morning,
it's beautiful in the springtime,
but then the summer heat comes
and it falls to the ground.
And he says,
all of us in our pursuits
are the same way.
The flower fades in the summer.
And in the same way,
when you hitch your heart
to something,
to some pursuit
that's going to fade,
if you hitch your heart
too tightly to it,
you're going to fade with it.
So as it fades,
you will fade.
And suffering is meant
to strip that away from us,
to take that away
from our hearts.
Best time of the year
in Edinburgh,
it's not the Christmas market,
it is when the cherry blossoms
bloom in the meadows, right?
And you can walk through
the meadows
or wherever else
under those archway trees
in the meadows
and the cherry blossoms are out
and it's late April
and they're out.
And you know
that if you've lived here
for any time,
probably far longer than me,
that you can walk
underneath those beautiful blossoms
in the morning
and you come back
in the evening
and where are they?
They're all on the ground.
You know,
it just goes by like that.
And that's exactly
the nature
of the wealthy life.
The glory will fade
and if you have your heart
too tightly attached
to the cherry blossom,
you're going to fade with it.
And it still will remain beautiful
because it is beautiful
on the ground for a while,
but you know
it turns to vapor
and dust eventually.
And that's the warning
he's given us.
There's a genre of art
called memento mori art
from that Latin phrase,
remember,
you must die.
And that genre of art
is reminding us
with skulls
and crossbones
and all sorts of things.
Remember,
you must,
and that's what he's saying,
remember,
you must die.
The rich man has got to remember
that you're sharing
in the suffering of Christ,
your humiliation.
The poor man,
the poor woman
has got to remember
you're sharing
in your suffering
in the glory of Christ.
You're being lifted up
like he was lifted up.
You see,
vice versa.
It's how you can be blessed
in the midst of suffering.
Boy.
Secondly,
the second way
he teaches us here
is to be blessed
in the midst of suffering
is that suffering
then exposes
our deepest problem,
our truest problem.
So let me bring you down,
we'll pass over verse 12
and come back to it,
but verse 13 to 15.
Now he says,
let no one say
when you're tempted,
I'm being tempted by God.
Now there's a temptation.
If you're rich or poor
or something in between,
if you're a human being,
you're a sufferer.
You're facing trials
all the time,
big and small trials.
And now he's turning
and saying,
with that suffering,
with those trials,
there are temptations
coming about
in your life
all the time.
Let me say it like this.
Trials are a test of faith.
He keeps saying that
over and over again.
Your suffering is there
to test your faith.
And that testing of your faith
can grow you,
it can make you mature,
it can make you compassionate,
it can make you,
it can strip away your idols,
it can do so much good
to make you like Jesus,
becoming more and more like Him.
But it can also break you,
it can make you bitter,
you can respond to it
in ways that you actually
end up chasing after
addictions because of it.
So we can respond
to our suffering
with coping mechanisms.
There's things that we need
to run from suffering
with these addictions in life,
we can respond with anger at God,
anger at other people,
bitterness,
this isn't fair,
why have you put this
into my life?
All sorts of ways.
It's not automatic.
Suffering can make you
or break you.
And so now in verse 13 to 15,
he's addressing that temptation
because the temptation
for anybody who faces suffering
is going to be something like,
yeah, I've been in this
long season of suffering
and maybe I haven't handled it
well all the time.
It's made me into an angry person,
a bitter person,
an addicted person.
But you know,
God made me like this.
This is just who I am.
These addictions that I grab hold of
when I'm suffering
to cope with my life,
this is just who God made me to be.
Or you might come and say,
on the other side,
in the midst of my suffering
and my pain and my sorrows,
it's clear that God hates me.
And you can take the approach
of Job's wife and say,
you know, curse God and die.
You've done something bad.
He hates you.
He's left you in the midst
of this misery.
And in verse 13, he says,
let nobody say that.
Verse 16,
don't be deceived,
brothers and sisters.
Let nobody say that.
If you're in the midst of suffering,
God hates me.
Or if you're not handling it well,
not with wisdom,
but with foolishness,
it's God's fault,
not my fault.
He's the one tempting me to this.
He's the one that made me like this.
He says, let nobody say that.
You can't say that.
So in verse 13,
look at the language really specifically
because it's so specific.
Let nobody say when they're tempted,
I'm being tempted by God.
Now, the word temptation there,
you can't see this in English,
but it's so important
that the word temptation there
is the same word in Greek
as the word trial
throughout the passage.
All right,
so when it says in verse 13,
let no one say when he is tempted,
there's two different uses
of the word temptation
or trial in that verse.
So let me translate it a different way.
Let no one say
when they are under a trial of suffering,
I am being tempted.
All right,
it's the same word in Greek.
Let no one say
when they're under trial,
I'm under trial.
Let no one say
when they're tempted,
I'm being tempted.
What is he saying?
He's using it in two different ways.
Let no one say
when they're under the yoke
of a trial,
God is tempting me
to sin in the midst of it.
Now, what is he talking about us today?
He's making this very important distinction
about the psychology of sin,
how does sin work in our lives?
When we react badly to suffering,
whose fault is it?
And he's saying,
you've got to know
that God will put you into trials.
Yes, God gives you suffering,
but he never gives you desire
in your heart
to sin in that suffering.
So God will place you
in an objective situation
of test,
of trial,
of suffering.
God never gives you
the desire in your heart
to react badly,
to sin in the midst of that.
Never.
See, it's the difference
between objective testing
and subjective temptation.
God does not tempt.
He never gives you evil desires.
No.
Any evil desire you have,
any way you react poorly,
who did it?
You did it.
I did it.
That's what he's saying.
And so he uses
a couple illustrations here.
Let me give you one
that's not in the text.
We all know this.
So if you're in school,
you're in uni,
or you have been,
you know that
a good teacher
gives you a test
in order to grow you,
not to break you.
Right?
And that good teacher
tells you in advance,
this is when the exam is coming.
And that exam is meant
to force you to study
and to raise up your knowledge.
And if you go
and you take the test
and you make a,
you make an F,
you fail miserably,
you can't turn and say,
the reason I made an F
is because the teacher,
it's the teacher's fault.
You know,
the teacher should have
never tested me.
The teacher,
the teacher tried to trick me.
The teacher tried to do this
or that.
A good teacher,
no, no.
A good teacher
wants to grow you
through the test.
So he's saying,
look,
God puts you
in objective situations
of suffering
in order to grow you
and change you.
But when we
make the wrong choices,
when we adapt
to those situations foolishly,
it's us.
It's us
that are doing the wrong,
that are doing the sin.
You can never say,
like Job's wife,
you can never say,
God's hating me
in this moment.
And you can never say,
it's God's fault
that I keep doing this,
that I keep coming back.
You keep seeing
that same test of faith
in your life,
that same person,
that same image,
and your heart
is lured and enticed.
You can't say,
it's God's fault
he made me like this.
So he uses here
a sexual metaphor
to explain it.
And you'll see that
down in verse 14 and 15.
Each person is tempted
when they are lured
and enticed
by their own desires.
And that word for desire
is a very important word
and I want to give it to you
in the Greek
because you'll know it
partially in English.
And it's this word,
epithumia.
Thumia just means desire,
but epi, epi,
like epic,
epic, big, bold,
epicenter,
the core,
bold desires,
big desires,
centering desires,
deep desires is the word.
It's not the normal word
for desire,
it's deep desires.
Why?
Because he's saying,
how does sin
take place in our lives?
Especially when we're reacting
to situations of trial
and suffering.
He's saying that
deep down at the core
of your heart,
deeper than
all of your thoughts,
deeper than
the self that you even know,
there is epi desire,
deep desire.
And that deep desire
sees opportunity for sin.
And then,
you see the rest
of the metaphor,
then it gives,
it conceives.
So when your deepest desires
for something
that is other than God,
see opportunity,
there's a conception
that takes place.
See,
it's a sexual metaphor.
And then,
that conception grows.
It says it grows
and it grows
and then it gives birth.
And birth brings forth death.
So it's saying,
every act of sin
follows that trajectory.
And what are these epi desires?
Thomas Aquinas
helped us know
what they are
and all sorts of
Christian thinkers
from the Bible
throughout world history.
There's really only four.
So you can desire
all sorts of things
in this life,
chase after things
that are sin,
but there's only four
epi desires,
really,
epithumia,
deep desires in you,
and that is the desire
for the illicit,
disordered desire
for power,
the disordered desire
for security,
a disordered desire
for comfort or pleasure,
and a disordered desire
for approval.
So if you take power,
pleasure,
approval,
or security,
and you want those things
more than you want God,
that's the real core
of epithumia.
That's what's at the bottom
of all of our souls,
giving birth
to actionable sins
all throughout our life.
And you can think about
Genesis chapter 3,
Eve.
This is just,
I think James here
is just teaching us
Genesis 3.
It says that Eve
saw that the fruit
could make her
like God,
wise like God.
So those epithumia
were triggered
with an opportunity.
And it says,
it tells us that she saw,
she delighted in
the opportunity.
She reached out her hand,
she took,
and it gave birth
to death.
And James says
the same thing.
Your deepest desires
see an opportunity,
it conceives,
you let it grow,
and then it gives birth.
And when you reach out
your hand and you take,
death has entered the room.
The psychology of sin,
it's the way it works
every single time.
And he's specifically
bringing it to the lens
of suffering and saying,
when we're walking
through trials and suffering
in our life,
and we keep grabbing the fruit,
grabbing the apple,
keep chasing that same thing,
we say we're faced
with the test of faith,
and it's a,
boy,
is it suffering.
Yes,
it is.
It keeps coming back,
the same temptation,
and we keep reaching out.
He's saying,
who did it?
You did.
Not God.
God puts you in the test
to grow you,
but when you fail,
when you struggle,
it's me,
it's you that struggle.
It's our sinful desire
at the bottom.
There's a golem,
there's a golem
at the very bottom.
That's what he's saying.
And what can you do about that?
And what you can do about that
is, I think,
just one or two things,
because we can't say everything
that could be said
about what to do about it,
but today,
in the passage,
what can you do about it?
He says,
blessed are you
when you use trials
and suffering
and even your failures
to actually understand yourself.
So I think one of the things
you can do today
is realize,
he's calling me here
to self-knowledge.
What are my deepest desires
that are giving birth
to sin in my life
when I face trials
and suffering and tests?
Do you know them?
Do you know yourself?
Do you know
what your deep idols are?
Do you know
what your deep idols are?
One of the ways
you can learn
is in the midst
of your own failures
and your struggles
to ask,
to do a sort of
removal process.
So,
do I really crave power
or security
or pleasure
or approval
more than the other four?
Right?
So you can almost
take them away
and say,
I know I can,
I won't spill the beans
on my own,
but,
you know,
I can look at my life
and I can say,
I know that it's not
security that I love most.
I know it's not,
it's not comfort
that I love most
and I can whittle down
to what it really is
in the bottom of the soul.
Have you done that?
Have you,
have you looked
at your idols?
That's what,
that's what tests
actually show you,
self-knowledge.
The second thing
he tells you to do
is he says,
instead of saying,
what is God doing?
He must hate me.
Instead,
he said,
you've got to do
some theology
and you've got to say,
God is never doing wrong
by me in this.
And so you'll see
in verse 13,
remember,
God tempts nobody.
He never creates
a desire in your life
to sin
because he cannot
desire evil.
He can't desire sin.
So he would never
give you a desire for sin.
No,
not at all.
It comes from you.
But then secondly,
in verse 17,
cognitive reframe.
Instead,
verse 17,
he is giving you gifts
in the midst
of this process
of learning.
And what are those gifts?
Now,
as we read our English Bibles,
as we kind of do
a day-by-day reading plan,
and you're reading
through James,
in verse 17,
you would read this clause
very quickly.
Every good and perfect gift
is from above.
But you've got to slow down
right there and realize
that when he says
every good gift
and perfect gift,
he's talking about
two different types of gifts.
So it's a temptation
just to say,
oh,
every good and perfect gift.
It's all from God.
Good gifts there
are what kind of gifts?
They are the sunshine
and the rain
and the food that tastes good
and music
and Spotify
and, you know,
all the good gifts
that we have
in this life.
Right?
Every good gift
is from God.
And he's saying
that first category,
remember,
what do you got to do?
You got to realize
all the good gifts
in your life
are coming from God.
He's not tempting you
toward evil desire.
That's coming
from your heart.
Instead,
in the midst of that,
you got to realize
that the only reason
you even know
you're suffering,
the only reason
you know you're suffering
is because you're being
lavished with gifts.
You're in the context
of being surrounded
all the time.
You know,
you might be in the midst
of trial,
but did you eat today?
Did you drink water today?
Do you have a friendship?
Do you have a church?
Yeah.
You're being lavished
with gifts all the time.
That's the only way
you can even know
you're suffering.
You see?
He's reframing
and helping you see.
If you're a materialist,
secular materialist
in the room today,
you got to think about it.
You got to say,
do you say,
it's not fair?
I hate my suffering.
But if God doesn't exist,
if there's no gift
coming down from on high,
the lion doesn't care
when he eats the gazelle.
And cancer doesn't care
when it eats up your body.
But if you're really committed
to materialism,
you've got to say
the same thing.
I don't have any right
to be upset about this.
This is the ordinary
process of nature.
But you're not.
You're not happy with that.
And the reason you're not
is because you know
that your life
is being lavish with gifts.
You know that you
weren't made for suffering,
that that's not what
true humanity
is meant to be like.
And so you struggle with it.
You wrestle with it.
But it's not just good gifts.
He says,
then it's perfect gifts.
And the word perfect there
is the same word
as in verse 4
when he says,
your suffering
can make you perfect.
So he's saying,
what is he saying?
He's saying that
when he gives you
trials and tests,
they are gifts.
They're perfecting gifts.
So he's saying,
you've got to reframe
and realize that your life
is being lavish with gifts.
But when suffering
does come,
the Christian can say,
that's a perfecting gift
in my life.
God is actually using that
to grow me.
He's testing me.
And I've got to see it that way.
I've got to reframe
my life in that way.
God never gives you
desire to sin.
And he doesn't hate you.
He loves you.
He wants to grow you.
Why?
Because he is the God
with whom there is no shadow
due to change.
He gives you a little metaphor.
He says,
look,
God never changes.
And that means that the God
who gave the suffering
into Job's life
in order to grow him
is the same God
who's giving this suffering
in your life
to grow you.
It's the same exact situation.
He's never changed.
He's the God
of the sun,
moon,
and stars.
stars.
And as he shines,
you know,
he doesn't have a shadow
due to change.
What does that mean?
It means that when you
stand outside
and the sun is shining,
the sun shines on you,
it casts a shadow
on the ground.
And if you turn,
if you turn one way
or the other,
the shadow turns,
right?
He's saying God
never casts a shadow.
In other words,
he's not a creature.
He doesn't turn
right or left,
or he doesn't,
the sun can't hit him
and cast a shadow
on the ground.
He doesn't change.
The God
who has given suffering
in the life of Job
to grow him,
the same God.
He's doing the same
exact thing in your life.
Now, finally,
and very briefly,
just a couple minutes.
Thirdly,
our suffering points us
to the blessed man.
And here's how.
Verse 12.
Verse 12 tells us
as we close,
blessed is the man
who remains steadfast
under trial.
Now, this has all been
about how you can be
blessed in suffering.
And you might say today,
can you say today with me,
some of the things
I listed in that ordinary week
at the beginning
of the service,
beginning of the sermon,
happened in my life this week.
Maybe they happened
in your life this week.
You know,
the ticket that comes
in the mail
or the bus that doesn't run
or you can't find your keys
or whatever else it is.
And you say,
in the little annoyances
and the big things of life,
I have not faced the test
in the trial
with wisdom in every way.
And I have been frustrated
with God
and I have wondered,
does God hate me right now?
And I have wondered
if I have any value.
And, you know,
I think suffering shows us
that if we use it
in Jesus' metaphor,
our house is not entirely
built on the rock.
It's sort of on the rock
and halfway onto the sand.
And when suffering comes,
you know,
I realize I've got to
shift my life
a little more on the rock
because right now
it's 50% sand underneath.
And that's what suffering
does for us.
I told you last week
that when you're reading James,
one way to realize
is that James doesn't mention Jesus
but two times
in the whole book.
But he's teaching
Jesus' teaching
all throughout.
When he says
in verse 12,
blessed is the man
who remains steadfast
in all trials.
He's been talking
the whole time
about brothers and sisters,
the beloved plural,
but then he uses
this masculine singular,
blessed is the man.
And what is he quoting there?
He's quoting
from the Beatitudes,
Matthew chapter 5.
And he's drawing us
to see something
that when you're walking
through suffering
and trial in your life,
what do you need most?
You need beloved
brothers and sisters.
You need to know
that just like
the first century
people James was talking to,
they didn't suffer well
all the time.
You're not suffering
well all the time.
I'm not suffering
well all the time.
You need to know
that the blessed man
has already walked
the road that you're walking.
The blessed man
has already faced the trial
and he was steadfast.
The blessed man himself,
Jesus Christ,
has run the race for you
and now you are following
in his footsteps.
You need to know
Jesus lover of my soul,
you are with me.
You need a person.
And that's what verse 12
is pointing us to.
He's saying that
when you know
that he has walked
through every trial for you,
he stood in the fray
on your behalf,
he went to the cross for you,
you can say,
now I'm walking a road
where the rock
is already secure.
He's not going to leave me.
I'm going to get
across the finish line.
He's going to take me
all the way to the crown of life.
And crown of life there
is not what we think of.
It's not diadem.
It's the athlete's wreath.
It's not the crown
of a king or queen,
but it's the woven athlete's wreath.
You run the marathon
and the king leans over
and puts the athlete's wreath
upon your head.
He's saying,
because he has already
walked the path,
you will receive
the crown of life.
Finish with a story.
The Christian life
is a lot like this
in the midst of our suffering.
I don't know
if you've come across
the video.
If you are a person
who scrolls,
you will undoubtedly
have come across
the video of Derek Redman.
And Derek Redman
was an athlete,
U.S. athlete,
in the 1992 Olympics.
And he had trained,
he was a favorite
for the 400 meter sprint.
And he got about 100 meters
into the 400 meter sprint
at the 1992 Olympics.
And he pulled his hamstring.
And maybe you've seen it.
And he goes down
to the ground.
And he tries to get back up.
And he hobbles, you know.
And everybody else
has already finished the race.
And his dad,
his father,
jumps over the barriers
and runs out
onto the Olympic track.
And he picked,
and the security guards
are trying to get him,
you can't come out here.
And he pushes him away.
And the dad picks his son up,
Derek,
and he puts his arm
over his shoulder
and he carries him
all the way
to the finish line, right?
And they're weeping.
And he carries them across
and he gets the crown of life,
the athlete's wreath.
That's the Christian life.
You're going to pull
a hamstring this week.
Maybe literally.
But figuratively, definitely.
And Jesus Christ,
the blessed man
who has already
walked the road for you,
he will carry you
through your suffering.
You might,
some of you will sprint,
some of you will crawl,
some of you will walk fast.
You will grow
to different levels
of maturity,
but Jesus will take you
all the way.
Will you grow with him?
Will you become like him
in that?
That's the question.
Let us pray.
Father,
we ask
that you would train us
to be mature
in our sufferings like Jesus.
And we thank you
that we have a blessed man
who has run the race before us.
So help us to trust in him today.
We pray in Christ's name.
Amen.