Good morning everybody. Yes sir, turn that air conditioner on. That's good stuff. I try to talk loud. If the air conditioner is loud, that's fine. I'd rather it be cool and loud than the opposite. Share a little story, kind of goes with the lesson today. Not exactly, but I think you'll see how it all fits together closer to the end. Two o'clock this morning, my one-year-old daughter, I have five children. I have a 20-year-old daughter, an 18-year-old son, and then a five, three, and one-year-old. So we've got spanning the age spectrum. Two o'clock this morning, we have a monitor in the one-year-old's room. It's got a little camera on it, keeps an eye on her, you know, and we can hear her if she starts to cry. Well, she normally, and she's been great. She sleeps through the night, just about every night, even from early on. She's been a very good baby. Last night at two o'clock, she wakes me up crying. We don't always just run to them when they start crying. We give them a second to calm down, you know, because sometimes they startle themselves and wake up and they'll cry and then they'll go back to sleep. Well, last night she cried and it didn't stop. So, my... My wife is still asleep. I'm startled and woken up. And I said, well, I'll wait and see if the baby goes back to sleep. Didn't go back to sleep. So finally, it wakes my wife up. And she expects me to go. I expect her to go. And my willingness to stay in bed out bared hers. And so she got up and went to get the baby. Well, when she picked the baby up out of the crib, the baby vomited all over. Now, I want you to know, this baby again, not only does she sleep well, but she doesn't get sick very much. So this was new and different. The baby vomiting on her was a big deal. And so we immediately start cleaning her up, toweling her off, and we said, well, maybe she ate something bad. We'll let her. Let her be fine. Well, we later with us, about 15 minutes later, here it comes again. This time, projectile, all over us. And you'll love that, right? It's a great story to start with, right? So, this is twice in 30 minutes, and now it's like, oh man, this is not good. about 15 minutes later again. You know, it seems like her body just gets rested enough just to get to sleep and then boom, it happened again. It happened about four or five times in a period of about two hours. So my wife and I, in an attempt to save our mattress, get out of bed, take her to the living room where we have a tile floor, and just put towels all over the floor and just say, well if she's gonna go, we're just gonna let her go. And we just stayed in the living room all night. Now, I imagine some of you are fathers. Not all of you, but I imagine some of you are fathers. That little story, and it is true, I did not have a very good night's rest. That little story is one that some folks would say was a trial. That was a difficult night, compared to other nights where I just go and lay down, maybe read my Bible or pray, and fall asleep and sleep for four or five hours, or maybe seven hours if I have a good night, maybe even eight hours if I'm really doing it good. But last night I got about three hours sleep. And we can say that's a trying night. But on the grand scale of life's trials, not that big a deal, right? I might catch a nap later, twenty minutes, and it'll be okay. Now, I want to compare that to a very dear friend of mine. He's a loving man. He's been in our church for several years. And a few years ago, when he was at our church, he had a daughter, 13 years old, beautiful girl, and it was he and his wife's only daughter. I get a call in the afternoon. In fact, I was just fixing to head out with a group of people from the church. We're going to do something. I remember, I don't remember what we're doing, but we're going to go do something. And I get a call. Hey, Kevin's at the hospital. Okay. What's going on? Well, his daughter has been dizzy. Something's wrong. They don't know what it is, but she's dizzy. She's not feeling well. Something's up. Can you come? Yeah, yeah, I'll be right there. So I come to the hospital. By the time I got to the hospital, they had found out that she had a DIPG tumor. A DIPG tumor is an inoperable tumor in the stem of the brain, which means it's absolutely impossible to get to because if you did the surgery, you would inflict death because of where it was located. Over the next year or so, and I don't remember exactly how long ago it was, it was an absolute nightmare for Kevin and his wife. I tried to be there with them as much as possible and I was there with them on the day that she did die. I wasn't there the moment she died, I left just a few minutes before and then I got the call and I turned around and came back. And, you know, the reason why I tell two very vastly different stories this morning is because we're going to look at a place in the Scripture today where James is going to talk about trials. And he's going to use a word. He uses the word various. He says we are going to experience various trials. Some of them are small and relatively meaningless, and we get over with just a little nap. But some of them are going to bring us to our knees and make us have nowhere to look but up. Right? And we're going to wonder sometimes why we have to go through those. And they're going to put all the other ones into perspective. So if you open your Bibles, we're going to go to James chapter 1. We're going to pick up right where we left off last week. For those of you who, I think most of you here, I see a lot of familiar faces. For those who were not here, I'll go ahead and read verse 1, but we're going to read down to verse 4. Last week we only did verse 1. This week we're going to do verses 2 to 4, but I'll read verse 1 to give a context. James, and as we said last week, his actual name is Jacob, but in Latin it was James, and so that's the way we know it. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. To the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. 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 nothing. Let's pray. Father, as we go to the text today and as we deal with a subject that really does have a lot of intense personal agony because we have to think about the trials that we have faced. I pray, Father, that you would first and foremost keep me from error. And I pray that You would open the hearts of these men to the truth. I pray, Lord, that You would speak through me, that Your Holy Spirit would overpower me and overshadow me. Because without Your Spirit, the lesson will not only be wrong, but it will be without application to the heart. So, Father, apply Your Word to the heart. Your Word promises that it will never return void. So may Your Word go out today in Jesus' name. Amen. One of the most common questions that we ask in life is, why? Isn't it? I mean, it can come in different forms. Why me? Why now? Why this? Why him? And even more commonly, I think the most common question that I've had in 12 years as a pastor, five years before that as youth and associate pastor in various ministry jobs in the church, probably the most common question that I have heard from lay people, and by that I mean just regular rank and file church folk, is the question, why do bad things happen? You finished it. Well there was only one good person. Yeah, well that's true. And honestly... And you volunteered, right? Yeah. But isn't that the question that everybody asks? You see the youth group headed home from a missions trip. They're slammed into by a drunk driver. 13 of the 15 people on the bus dead. All because of one night of bad decisions. And you say, why do bad things happen to good people? And yes, absolutely, there are no real good people. And we could follow that route of talking. I mean, we could go down the route of Romans 3. There is none good, no not one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks after God, right? But we understand when we ask the question. Because nobody wonders why bad things happen to rapists. You know, nobody ever asked that question. Nobody ever asked what happens, why do bad things happen to murderers. And that's what we think, right? That's what everybody thinks. Yes? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, and we're going to talk about some of these things. Yes, sir? Isn't this all part of the Adamic nature? Well, the Adamic nature is the fall and the sin, and that's right, and that's why the bad things happen, and we are going to get to that, too. You guys are outrunning my brain. No, no, that's fine. That's fine, because in all of this we have to understand there's a purpose and a plan, and that's really where we're going to go. Yes, sir? Right, and the same kind of topic is what's brought to the table by Job's friends. If God is just, and you're a righteous man, then why is this bad stuff happening? Absolutely. The reason why you're suffering, Job, is you're really not righteous. Or even his wife. Why don't you just curse God and die? Some people use trials, suffering, difficulties, as an argument for the non-existence of God. How many of you have ever heard of a man named David Hume? David Hume, H-U-M-E. David Hume lived in the, well two centuries back he was a philosopher and he did not believe in God. And David Hume's lack of belief in God was based on a very simple maxim or axiom that he had derived or come to in his mind. He didn't believe in God. And I'm going to quote exactly what he said. He said, Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? If so, He is impotent. Is God able to prevent evil, but He's not willing? If so, he is malevolent or evil. Is he both able and willing? Then why is there evil? That was David Hume's maxim. Now how many of you saw Superman vs. Batman? Okay, a few of you. Lex Luthor said it a little easier. So if this helps, Lex Luthor simplified in that movie David Hume's argument. He said if God is all good, He can't be all powerful. And if He's all-powerful, He can't be all-good. Because if God is all-good, and He's all-powerful, then there would be no evil, because God would stop it. You understand the argument now? That's the argument of Lex Luthor, who was simply parodying the philosophy of David Hume, in a movie that wasn't that great. And I'm a fan of Superman. So the point is this, people use tragedy, people use suffering, people use brokenness and hurt as a reason to not believe in God. If God was there, He'd stop it. If God was there, He would do something about it. 3,000 people died when the towers fell. If God was there, He would have done something about it. 200,000 people died when the tsunami hit India. And if God were there, He would have done something about it. Somebody's child dies. If God were there, He would have done something about it. You understand how that tragedy causes people to say, God can't be there. And I want to say this, I believe the entire argument of David Hume, the fictional Lex Luthor, or any of the rest, I believe the entire argument, while it sounds very compelling, is actually a sham. So why is it a sham? Because it presupposes many things that it doesn't prove. For instance, if I said, God can't exist, because evil exists. If I say that, what am I presuming in that statement? I'm presuming there's such a thing as evil. If I say God can't exist because evil exists, I'm presuming, not proving, but presuming that evil exists. And yet, without a standard of righteousness, how then would I know what evil is? Without a standard of goodness, how could I have any standard by which to judge evil? Somebody says, well, we know what evil is. How do you know? You think evil is something that we just come up with on our own? Or is there a transcendent understanding of evil? I'll give you an example. Would you have to wonder if what Adolf Hitler did was evil? If you don't know what Adolf Hitler did, he killed 6 million Jews and many other people who were of physical limitations, he killed people who were Down Syndrome, he killed black people, he killed gypsies, anything! Anybody that he didn't care for. In other words, that was everybody that wasn't like him, that he thought was Absolutely. The pure Aryan race is what they could refer to themselves. The blonde haired, blue eyed, white person, right? And even though he was dark haired. But he saw this pure race, right? This pure race and he said this is what should be so we eliminate everything else in the apprehension of this pure race. And so he was willing to put people into concentration camps. And you go over to Germany. And you will see in the museums piles of boots. These are the boots of the dead that are just piled up. And you can't imagine how many feet filled those boots. How much evil was in that place where they would take people in who think they were getting a shower, and instead of a shower, they were getting gas that was raining down on them and killing them together. women holding their babies as both of them take their last breath. In mid-80s, I forget, I think it was 85, 86, somewhere around in there, a man by the name of Gordon Stein debated Greg Bonson on the subject of the existence of God. And Greg Bonson was the Christian, Gordon Stein was the atheist. And Bonson asked Stein, he said, why was what Hitler did evil? If you reject God, if you reject the existence of a transcendent law, a transcendent law giver, why was what God did evil? Or why was what Hitler did evil? Sorry for that mistake. And Stein thought about it for a minute. And knowing he had to be logically consistent, because he was before a great group of people and he was debating someone who was going to call him out if he wasn't. He said, well, it was evil because it went against the morals of society. And so, Stein, or Bonson, immediately, his response is, but what if it didn't? What if the whole world said it's okay to kill Jews? Would it then be okay? He said, well, no, it goes against our natural instinct. He said, but what if it didn't? What if the evil heart of man said it's okay to murder the Jews? Would there not still be a law that says it's wrong? Would there not still be something greater that says it is transcendentally or higher than us and it's wrong? You see, you can't have evil in the sense of understanding what it is, without having a standard by which to measure that evil. And the standard is God. There is nothing in us that makes a standard, because my standards are different than yours. There are things I do you probably wouldn't do, and vice versa. Right? Because we all live in sort of a moral relativism. I do my thing, you do your thing. But we all know there's certain things we ought not do because God says don't do them. In fact, Romans 14 says that, right? There's going to be things that I do, like I might eat certain things you don't eat. Because you might say, I don't want to eat shellfish because the Bible says shellfish are unclean. I don't want to do that. or whatever, or any of many things, right? But there are certain things, like we would all say murder is wrong, and not just because evolution told us so, not just because Richard Dawkins tells us so, not just because PBS tells us so, but because we have a natural, internal understanding of the Law of God, which says, Thou shalt not take a life unjustly. Which is the very definition of murder. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's something evolution doesn't account for, by the way. It doesn't account for the universality of moral law. In fact, in the animal kingdom, the what's that? Understanding of the universality of moral law. It's universal among men and women. Let's make that simple. Among people. It's not the same in the animal kingdom. Animals murder each other all the time. You know what else they do? Rape. All the time. But we understand those things are wrong, because we're not animals. And by the way, if you grew up learning that you're just a higher level of an ape, you're much different and much more and much greater than an ape. But I digress, I've gone a little bit past what I was trying to say. My point in all of this is to say, when someone says, I don't believe in God because there's evil, say, I don't believe in evil without God. Because to have evil you have to have a standard of goodness, and the only one standard of goodness I've ever been able to find is the God who created all things and is Himself righteous. He is the standard. But apart from the philosophical argument, we still have to deal with the issue of trials. God exists. The argument is foolish to say that He doesn't. But we still have to deal with the issue of what about all the pain that people go through? How do we justify that in view of God who we say is good? We say God is benevolent. That means He's loving. In fact, we say that He is omnibenevolent. He is all loving. The Bible says God is love. And so in the midst of we knowing God is love, hey brother, in the midst of knowing God is love, why then do people suffer? In fact, some people think that if you're a Christian, you don't suffer. You ever heard of the health and wealth movement? Name it and claim it. Blab it and grab it. If you can believe, you can receive. And all you've got to do is send in that money. But wait, there's more. We got a prayer cloth that our pastor sweat on, and we'll send it to you for a small fee. Oh boy, it's just like a relic. You've never seen them sell prayer cloths? They do it on TBN. They sell prayer cloths. They sell, you know, all these different things. This has been prayed over by a group of very sanctified people. And we're going to send it to you. $19.95 or more. Whatever you have in your cookie jar. Go to your cookie jar right now. And whatever you've been saving, we need you to send it to us. Holy water. Yep. What was Jim and Tammy Faye Baker? I remember them back when I was growing up. They kind of won the controversy. What was that? I remember their obscene makeup. Well, yeah, and then, do you know, Jan Crouch sort of took the makeup. She took it to a whole nother level. But I don't remember the exact controversy. I remember Jimmy Swagger got caught with a prostitute. Yeah, literally with his pants down. And then Jim and Tammy Faye, I think it was a financial thing. I think there was, was it? Yeah, it was in, but it wasn't. You know, the same as some of the other folks. Yeah. I think they were the first ones that when the IRS went after them, they were deemed to be so bad by the IRS, whatever money Jim Baker made in jail, they took that too. They did. I don't mean to laugh. It's just like, well, you're so bad, they're taking away your jail money. That's bad. Well, I mean, because of the way he robbed people. Yeah. That's why they did that. It's like a Christian version of Enron. He doesn't just take everybody. Absolutely. Manipulate. And that's why I have no love for health and wealth preachers. I mean, I love them in the Lord in the sense that I pray for their repentance. But I also pray that God would break their teeth so they can't continue to talk their nonsense. So that's what the psalmist says, you know, break the teeth. Or the prophet rather says, break the teeth of the unbeliever that he cannot blaspheme you anymore. You know, that's... Yes, sir? We just bridged into where that's connected to where you started, which is Absolutely, and that's a good point because people will say, well God can't exist because look at who his representatives are. Look at all these evil people who say they speak for God. Do you all know who Ray Stevens is? Some of you older guys might. Old like me. Ray Stevens, old country singer that would tell stories in his songs. Mississippi Squirrel. He did a song one time called, Would Jesus Wear a Rolex? Great song, if you look it up on YouTube or listen to it, would Jesus wear a Rolex on his television show? And he asked, he said, would he admit he's been talking to all those preachers that say they've been talking to him? No, no, because they haven't. I've heard a lot of crazy people say a lot of crazy things, but it always falls down to the same thing. If you come and do what we tell you to do, if you come and listen to me, you're going to be healthy, you're going to be wealthy, and everything's going to be good for you. If you want that best parking spot, that's what I was at Joel Osteen's book. How to have the best parking spot. In his book, what is it, Best Life Now? By the way, if this is your best life now, you're going to hell. Because this life is as close to heaven as you're going to get if you're not saved. And it's as close to hell as you're going to get if you are saved. So if this is your best life now, you're going to hell. Just so you know, Joel Osteen is not a preacher. He's a motivational speaker who holds the Bible and says, this is the Bible. I am what it says I am. I can do what it says I can do. And he twists the Scripture, absolutely. But one of the things he says, God wants you to have everything that's the best. He wants you to have the best parking spot at work. That's in one of the pages of his book. I didn't buy it, but I sometimes stand in Walmart while my wife is shopping and I'll read what's there. And I remember reading that. Best parking spot, brother. You got the best seat in the house. You're right here. You don't even have to look at my face. So, the health and wealth teachers, they say, you live for Christ, financially you're always going to be good, Health is always going to be good. Your family is always going to be great. Yeah, you're going to be a life of prosperity. Now, I want you to juxtapose that, meaning compare that, with what James says in verse 2. He says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. Now some people say, yeah, baby keeping you up at night, vomiting on you, that's a trial. Not really. Because the context of James 1-2 If you remember last week, we talked about the saints of the dispersion. Remember, he said James, he's the brother of Jesus, but he called himself a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the saints who are in the dispersion. You know why they're in the dispersion? Because they've been persecuted. They've been run out of town. They've been pushed out of their homes. Jesus said, if you follow Me, your family may want to turn you over to the court. Your fathers will turn against their children, and mothers against their husbands, and all of these things will happen because they will hate me, and they'll hate you because of me. Jesus is saying. And that's what's happened. There's a dispersion here. There's real persecution happening. Now, I want to say this. I mentioned timeline last week. If you think about the timeline of the first century, you know, 0 to 100-ish, Jesus lived approximately right here, somewhere between, I actually think He was born about 4 A.D., or 4 B.C. rather. Right around 4 is when Jesus would have lived, which would have put the cross right around 29. You say, why do I think that? Because the Bible says, Quirinius was the governor of Syria. So we can look at that as a timeline. Historically speaking, Quirinius was the governor of Syria when Jesus was born. It says that in the Gospel of Luke. And it was around 4 B.C. So, Jesus was born before Christ. What I mean is, our timeline is a little off. But right around 30 A.D., right around 29 A.D. is when the cross happens. The next 20 years or so, up until around 50, the church is going through a massive amount of persecution, and they're being dispersed all around. But it isn't until between 50 and 70 that you start experiencing what's called the Neronic Persecution. Do you know what that is? Under Nero, right? Where Nero would literally wrap people in animal skins and feed them to dogs, vicious dogs and things. They would take Christians and put them inside animal skins and feed them. to animals. They would hang them up and light them on fire. They would dip them in a substance that was flammable. They would hang them up in the garden and light the garden with their burning bodies. Nero was absolutely, absolutely just one of the most craziest dictators in all of history. So that all is happening in here. So that's actually, I think, later because I believe James is written right about here. I believe James has written somewhere between 45 and 50 based on The type of language is used based on the timeline of James' life, based on several other factors. I believe James is one of the earlier books of the New Testament. Thessalonians may have been a little earlier. There's a few books that sort of vie for the first spot. But I believe James is one of the earliest books of the New Testament, right around 45. And it's right there in the midst of that persecution that Paul, Paul is not the writer, that James, sorry, I'm used to talking about Paul, that James would say to his people, Count it joy. Count it joy when you fall into various trials. Meaning, when you're pushed out of your house because everybody hates you in your house. Count that as joy. When you lose your job because no one wants to hire a Christian because you guys are part of a cult. By the way, it was called a cult of the way. You read in the book of Acts that it was called the way. That was identification of a cult. They're part of the way. It's sort of like if we said the Haley-Bopp people. You remember the Haley-Bopp people? Again, talking about my age. Yeah, the group of people out in California, they had a leader. They all took strychnine and died. They were found. Yeah, they believed a comet was coming and they were all going to catch a ride on this comet and fly to glory. And they all died. Jim Jones, you know, 900 and something people, men, women, and children, drank the Kool-Aid. You ever heard the phrase, drank the Kool-Aid? That's Jim Jones. He put the poison in the Kool-Aid, they drink it, they die. Right? So James is dealing with people who are going through persecution, real persecution. They've been dispersed. And he says, count it joy. Count it joy when you meet these various trials. And I want to tell you something. By the way, I have a title. I always title everything. The title of today is The Paradox of profitable pain kind of came to me as I was studying the paradox. You know what a paradox is? It means when something doesn't seem right. It seems like it's a contradiction, but it's not. This really does seem like a contradiction. Count it joy when you have a trial. Count it joy when things are hard. Count it joy when things are bad. That seems very paradoxical. It seems almost unrealistic. It's almost like a pie-in-the-sky type thing, right? You know what a pie-in-the-sky is? Oh yeah, everything will be alright. Just turn that frown upside down. You ever heard somebody tell you, you know? And you're like, what do you mean? Are you being ridiculous? And some people do. Some people look at this and they say, James is not being realistic. I can't be joyful. I can't have joy when things are bad. You can, and that's, yes, you're absolutely right. Look right there. My one little half sheet of notes, I have Bible verses I don't forget, and that's right. But it is tough when you're in the middle of it. It's tough to say to the person who's sitting next to their loved one dying of cancer and say, you know what, you need to count this as joy. It's tough when you're standing next to the child who is 10 years old, who's just lost his mother unexpectedly because she had a brain hemorrhage and died right in front of him, to go up and say, hey young man, you need to count this as joy. In fact, I would say that to do such a thing and to speak such a way is almost abusive because I think it's misunderstanding the point. In fact, I want to share something with you that I've shared with our church many times because I try to make this point a lot. When we talk about the word joy, we often confuse it with a different word. Happiness. That's right. Right? Spelled it, yeah. Okay, that's an I. We confuse joy with happiness. And you said it. Who said it's based on circumstances? Happiness is based on happenings. That's the same idea. Conditional. Yeah. In fact, a few years ago, Christmas Day. A few years ago. I'm ready to have Christmas with my family. I'm excited, right? I go in, flush the toilet. And instead of going with gravity, as the toilet normally does, the toilet comes back up and floods with unholy water my bathroom. And I thought, well, I'll get a plunger and take care of this. And I go in there and I plunge it. Nothing's happening. It's not going down. So I go out to the clean-out, which is right in front of my house. I open up the clean-out and water pours out into my front yard. I call the plumber. Please come and fix it. Christmas Day now! I wasn't feeling very prosperous because all the money I spent on presents was about to be returned to pay for plumbing. Guy comes and puts a camera down to shoot. You know what happened? A bird! You know that little thing that lets air in so that the, I don't know much about plumbing, but I know there's a thing that goes out the roof. Well, mine had gotten open, a bird, and my kids all thought it was funny, they said, Daddy pooped a bird. I didn't poop a bird. What happened, the bird got down there and stuck, and Christmas Day, I'm this far into a pike full of crud, trying to reach and get this junk out so that my kids can poop. Huh? Were you the only person ever living in this house back then? Uh, no, uh-uh. No, this was actually, my uncle died in my house. It's a family house. We've had it since the 60s. But I got my arm in this thing and I'm thinking about this verse. As I said, right now I'm not happy. I wasn't. I wasn't. Now I was trying to hold myself back from using any type of words that would be in keeping with my personal moral character. But they were in here. And I was thinking some words. Huh? Yes. Yes. So I'm there and I'm not happy. But in the midst of elbow deep in crud water. And I've always told my kids, this is why I don't do dishes by the way. I said I did this once. I've done all the dishes I'm ever going to do. They're yours now. I said, if I had my hand in your crud water, you can do the dishes. So, I'm thinking, you know, even in the midst of this crud, I still got Jesus. As simple as that is. I've still got Jesus, even though I'm in the midst of this crud. I'm elbow deep in poop water from seven people. And yet, In the grand scheme of life, and even into my eternity, this means so little. And it's so insignificant. I don't have... I use an illustration at our church, and I don't have a physical rope. But I want you to imagine a rope. You guys can imagine that, right? You got imaginations? I want you to imagine a rope. that goes forever. I'm holding the end of it, but the other end never stops. Imagine it goes maybe down over a cliff, down into a crevice, and the crevice is forever. And it goes on forever and ever and ever. Never stops. Now, I know that can't be. I know that I'm exaggerating the point for the sake of illustration. But I want you to imagine a rope that goes on forever. Have I used this already? Have I talked about this? OK, because sometimes I'll repeat, and I don't want to be too repetitive. This is an important illustration though, because if you imagine that rope, imagine on this, the end that you're holding, there's a little piece of duct tape. You know what duct tape is? It's about that wide and it's wrapped around the end of the rope, right? It lets you know where the end is. If you can imagine in your mind, the rope that goes on forever and that little piece of duct tape, that little piece of duct tape represents this life compared to eternity. That little piece of duct tape represents everything in this life. The good and the bad. The hard and the soft. The love and the hate. The virtue and the sin. Everything in this life is represented by one little strip of duct tape. And then you have eternity. And what's interesting is all that eternity is going to be based on what happens in that little piece of duct tape. So what is happening in that little piece of duct tape isn't insignificant. But when you compare it to what is coming, it is absolutely not to be compared. Romans tells us what? The present sufferings are not to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us. That's in Romans 8, I don't know the exact... Yeah, it's in the midst of Romans 8, when Paul's given that great admonition about there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of sin and death, and he goes on and on, and he says, for the redemption of our bodies, right? And he says in the midst of that, our present sufferings are not to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us. And I think that's the perspective that makes James 1, 2 make sense. Going back to my brother's point. Romans 8, 28. Every one of you knows, if you've been here long enough, I know Mark has mentioned it at least once. God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God. And they're called according to His purpose, right? The part that people don't get, people always say God causes everything to work together for good. Not for everybody. Straight up, not for everybody. If that's all you say is God causes all things to work together for good and you stop right there, first of all, you're cutting Paul off at the knees. Yeah, exactly. You're cutting Paul off at the knees if you say God causes everything to work for good and you stop, because that's not where he stops. But also, it wouldn't make sense. Because if a person lives this life and it's hard, and then they go to hell and that's harder, it's hard to justify God working everything together for good for that person. And that's why it doesn't say that. And by the way, it says God causes all things to work together for good. It doesn't say everything is good. Because you look at the life of Joseph. And you look at Joseph, and man, first of all, he's his father's favorite child. Things are going pretty good. He's living it up. He's little Lord Fauntleroy, right? Everybody loves him except for his brothers. So his brothers figure out a way to get rid of him. Throw him in a well. That doesn't work. They don't want to kill him so they pull him back up and they sell him into slavery. He goes into slavery. He gets over to Egypt. He gets in a man's house. A wife accuses him of rape. Hashtag Me Too. He was right there in the midst of the Me Too movement for 5,000 years for whatever happened. And he's right there getting accused of rape. He didn't do it. But she had evidence though because she took his cloak. So she had the evidence. You did it. I didn't do it. It's okay. You're still guilty. You go into jail. He goes to jail. He's in jail. He's got these guys that are there with him. And he interprets the dreams for the king on behalf of those guys. And he's thinking he's going to get out. Still didn't get out. But he gets to the point where he's the highest in the jail because he's trustworthy. And he's a godly man and he's trustworthy. Even in the jail, he's being favored by God. And there is a sense in which he's receiving God's favor, but he's still going through trials. Finally, he gets to be the second of all in Egypt. Second only to the Pharaoh himself. And then comes the brothers. The brothers who sold him into slavery. They're brought to him. And they're scared to death. Their knees are hitting together, man. Their teeth are chattering because they figure he's got all the power in the world. He's going to kill me. And he doesn't. That's right. What does he say? Yeah, well this is a good verse for you if you want to write it down and remember. Genesis 50, 20. What you meant for evil, God meant for good. Absolutely! And what they did evil, No, it was evil from their perspective. Yes. It wasn't evil from God's perspective. And that's the point. The verb is the same. What you meant for evil, God meant for good. What you purposed for evil, God purposed for good. I don't want to take a right turn and go too far, but if you've ever studied the will of God, you've probably heard that there are two wills Yes, you could say within the will of God there is a division. There is the prescriptive will of God which is given to us in the Bible. Thou shalt not murder. But then there's what some people call the permissive will of God. God permits murder. Right? Even though He prescribes that it not be done, He permits that it is done, and He allows the wicked to go off into their wickedness. Right? So we would say God has a prescription, and He has an ability to permit, and that's the permission. But I use a different term. In fact, in our Systematic Theology class, I'm going to explain this in several weeks at our church. Because even though I do believe it's a permissive will, I don't believe God ever permits anything that He doesn't have a purpose for. And in that, the purpose makes it what I call a purposeful will. Not just a permissive will. Because there are things I permit because I don't have any control over it. Right? A few years ago. Something happened in my life, it was bad, I didn't like it, but I didn't have any choice, so I had to permit it. You ever had that happen? I'm not going to give you the exact details, but you've had many things in your life. Sort of like a police officer going to a drug raid, right? And he walks in and there's all these guys with AK-47s and all he's got is a Glock 19. And he says, you know what? I'm leaving. Because what am I going to do? I've got to permit it because I don't have the power to prevent it. Does God not have the power to prevent it? So why does He permit it? Because He has a purpose for it. Thank you. That's the answer. And that's the key. Absolutely. He permits it because He has a purpose for it. And why does God permit believers, Christians, people who love the Lord, why does God permit them to go through suffering and trials? He tells us right here. that you, yes, verse 3, so that the testing of your faith would produce steadfastness. The word steadfastness there can also be translated patience. Because we go through trials, that makes us, you know, one of the things I've learned over the years, don't ask God for patience. Because if you ask God for patience, He's going to give you something to be patient about, and it's going to be tough. Well, that's true, but you know, I'm real careful about asking for patience. Especially with an 18-year-old son, I've got to be real careful. Because he drives by patience all the time. But he says, testing your faith will produce patience or steadfastness. And steadfastness, when it has its full effect, or other translation, when it's fully grown, will make you perfect and complete. Now, you have to understand something. Perfection in this term, in fact the word is telioi and elakeroi. What's that? Is it mature? It is. In fact the word telioi, the word for perfect, means someone who has grown up. And the word for complete means something that is whole. I do not believe, I want to say this right away, I don't believe Christians can ever attain what's called sinless perfectionism. That was actually a doctrine that was taught by the Wesley's. Do you remember the Wesley's that began the Methodist church? Charles and John Wesley. Now they did a lot of good things. Wrote a lot of great hymns. A lot of the hymns we sing are written by the Wesleys. And so we have tremendous blessing of their contribution. And George Whitefield, one of the greatest Calvinist preachers in history, loved John Wesley and said that that man would be closer to Jesus. Because somebody asked him, will he be in heaven? Because they had a different theology. He said, I won't see him there because he'll be so much closer to Jesus than I will. I mean, that's how he thought about Wesley. Who's that? I don't remember which one died first. Wesley wasn't Armenian. Yeah, Wesley was Armenian. Whitfield was a Calvinist. But my point about Wesley is he did have one doctrine that I would say is dangerous. Even though I would say his Arminianism is wrong, I would say there's one doctrine that Wesley's taught that I would say is dangerous. And that is the doctrine that there is a second work of grace that God does that removes all sin. And you become sinlessly perfect. In this way? Yes. They have a doctrine called sinless perfectionism. But that doctrine is popular in some churches. My mom goes to Holiness Church, and there are some in the Holiness Church who believe that they're without sin. We had a guy come to our church one night. I wasn't teaching. I had another guy teaching on history. So we were doing a history lesson. A guy came into our church. He sat down for only about 15 minutes and then he got up to leave. Well, since I wasn't teaching, I followed him out. I wanted to know what was so offensive or what was causing him to leave. Did he have an emergency or something? Could I pray for him? I kind of wanted to kind of pick his brain. Why are you leaving in the middle of the lesson, right? So I followed him out to the lobby. I get out to the lobby and I said, Sir, can I ask you, you visited with us tonight. You haven't told me your name yet. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? He kind of told me his name and a couple of things. And he said, tell me what you guys are about as a church. I said, what we're about? He said, yeah, tell me what you're about. I said, we're about letting every man know that he is a sinner before a holy God. And that because of that sin, he owes a debt that he cannot pay. And Jesus Christ paid the debt that he couldn't pay. And if he will trust in Him and repent of his sins, he'll have eternal life in Christ. That's what we're about. And that was the simplest way I could put the Gospel in a very quick answer. And he said, but I'm not a sinner! You're not a sinner! So be perfect. Are you perfect? What does 1 John tell us? If anyone says he has no sin, he's a liar and deceives himself. The truth is not in him. So he says, I'm not a sinner. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, the Bible makes a distinction between sinners and saints. And as a believer, I'm a saint. I'm not a sinner. I'm saying, sir, are you saying you don't sin? He said, yes. So it wasn't just he was making a distinction, because I can make that distinction too. I can say believers are saints and they're juxtaposed from the sinner. And in that sense, there's a distinction to be made. But we're still sinners. In fact, Luther said we are simul justus et peccator. We're at the same time just and sinner. He said, we're like snow-covered piles of dung. He said, if you look out in the German fields in the winter, all these piles of dung that they use for manure that's used for fertilizer, it would get covered up with snow. And Luther would say, that's like us. We're piles of crap. Covered with the blood of Jesus. Covered with the white snow. Robed in white. And so, I pushed him. I said, so you've never sinned since you became a Christian or since you received this extra special measure of grace? And he said, I'm not a sinner. I said, sir, I don't want to argue with you. I said, but I'm going to tell you that you're wrong. And here's how. I said, sir, What is the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. I said, from the moment you got up this morning to this very moment right now, have you truly loved the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength without any failure? And he looked at me funny and he said, I didn't say I was perfect. You absolutely did! Because sin is falling short of the glory of God. And you said you don't do that. So, having said that, going back to James, he says you're going to be perfect. Understand, in the mind of the writer, and in the mind of God, our level of perfection in this world is to be translated as maturity. Paul gets on to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 3. Why? Because they were immature. They were acting like children. In fact, he said, I have to talk to you like you're unbelievers because you're so immature. I have to talk to you like people of the flesh. So, to round everything out, I know we're about out of time. To round everything out, James is talking to a group of people. They have suffered severe trials. And he says, you can count these trials joy. Why? Because everything that you go through in this life has the purpose of conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ. Everything that you go through in this life is meant to mature you in your faith. If you're a believer, it's pointing you to Jesus. You guys, y'all have a gym back there, right? How many gymnasiums? I don't know if this one has it. Gymnasiums, you go in, there's a big sign up on the wall. It says, no pain, no gain. Now I know that's maybe silly and a little trite, but it's the truth. You know how they make the greatest sword in history? Samurai sword. You know how it was made? They took a piece of steel and they would heat it, and they would beat it, and they would fold it, and they would heat it, and they would beat it, and they would fold it, they would heat it, they would beat it, and they would fold it, heat it, beat it, fold it, heat it, beat it, fold it, until, and if you've ever seen a samurai sword, a real legitimate samurai sword that comes from Japan that was made by a true swordsmith, you can look at it and you can see where the metal is folded into itself. And the reason why it's beat it, heated, and folded, beat it, heated, and folded is so it gets stronger And when it's finally done, it's polished and sharpened to a razor's edge. And it's the most beautiful and the most deadly of all the ancient weapons because it was beaded, heated, folded and repeated. And if you're going through trials and you're a believer, that's what God is doing to you and your trials. Let's pray. Father, I thank You for Your Word. I thank You for the promise that tells us that we can count it joy. Not because it's always going to make us happy, but because we never can take our eyes off of Christ. And we can know that when You beat us, heed us, fold us, and repeat, that You're conforming us to the image of Christ. And it's in His name we pray. Amen.