Turn with me in your Bibles once again to the letter of James. This evening we'll be looking at the first chapter of that letter, specifically verses 12 through 15, although we'll actually be reading verses 12 through 18 as a unit before we begin. And that text can be found on page 12 of Well, it's the Apostle John to whom history has awarded the title, the Apostle of Love, and rightly so. But to those of you who have read the book of James many times and meditated on its content, the question I want to put to you is, would you call James an apostle of love as well? Not perhaps the preeminent apostle of love, but an apostle of love nonetheless. even when your heart doesn't feel the warmth of, say, 1 John when you read James, and instead only feels the piercings of James's just criticisms of you. Well, I would contend that if you really know what love is, that you have to answer yes to that question. As we all know, we live in an age where true love has been reduced to little more than a sad substitute of it. A sort of cheap kind of saccharine niceness where we sort of smear Vaseline on our teeth and tell everybody that they're great and they're superstars no matter what they do. But James, in his letter, gives us a kind of love that we need to be thankful for, because it teaches us that love, if it's really true, often has to come to us with a brutal honesty and sternness. And we also have to thank God that we don't always get the apostolic love that we may want when we turn to the epistle of James, but we often get the kind of love that we need from it. So with that being said, let's read the letter of James, chapter one, verses 12 to 18. Let's pray before we begin. Lord God, we come to your house of worship week in and week out, but Not often do we come to your house and receive your word with the humility that we ought. Not often do we receive the rebukes and the reproofs that are found in your word as we ought. So help us to receive these words from the Apostle James tonight, knowing that faithful, the wounds of a friend, and able to cleanse. So help us to just be cleansed by this word and enable to just cut away the sin that so easily entangles and hinders us from running the race marked out for us with endurance. We just ask all this in your name and for your sake. Amen. Again, James chapter one versus 12 to 18. Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial, for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord 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 by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then, when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is accomplished, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of his will, he brought us forth by the word of truth so that we would be a kind of first fruits among his creatures. The grass withers and the flower fades. It was just a few months ago that I was driving back home to my house, and it was nighttime, it was dark outside, and I was driving through Wilkinsburg, and as I was getting closer to home, just something caught my eye out of the corner of my field of vision. I sort of did a double take, and I looked over, and sure enough, there was just the body of a man just laying in a parking lot. So I just reacted and I pulled over and went up to the man. It took just a few minutes to determine that this gentleman, an elder gentleman, he was drunk. To make a long story short, he had fallen and he couldn't get up. And I just, I looked at this gentleman, just sort of in the dim light of the lamppost, and I don't know where this came from exactly, but I just looked at him, and I just said, brother, where have you come from, and where on earth are you going? And immediately I thought, yeah, this is good, because I can kind of use that to sort of talk to him about where he's ultimately going, and this will be a great apologetic encounter. And somehow, in... And wouldn't you know this, this old drunk was actually, he was actually lucid enough that he actually kind of grasped the sort of spiritual metaphorical import of my question. And he just like looked up at me bleary eyed and he said, brother, you don't even have time for me to answer that question for you. And I said, I was like, no, like I wasn't going to let it, let it end that easily. I said, no, I mean, come on, you know, tell me, you know, I want to listen. I want to hear your story. And he began to get out a few sentences. And actually, as it turns out, I actually didn't have time to listen to a digitized answer, because actually an ambulance rolled up about 30 seconds later and actually picked him up. So maybe somebody else had seen him and called it, but unintended prophecy, I guess. Those questions, where have you come from and where are you going? Those are two incredibly important questions that we need to ask ourselves. And those questions aren't just important in mundane areas of life, like taking directions. They're not just important to the reprobate. They're important to us as believers as well. And this passage before us in some sense answers both of those questions, albeit not in exactly that order. James tells us that we've been born from above by the imperishable word of God's truth. and that those who've come from that father are all destined for a day where we can stand before the King of Kings and be crowned with the same life that he has in himself and be clothed with the perfect righteousness that he won for our sakes as his beloved children. But until that day, as the scriptures say, we know that it's through many trials and many tribulations and even temptations that we have to enter the kingdom of God. In the passage before us, James has sort of set himself to the task of arming us with the necessary attitudes that we need in order to run the race before us with endurance. And the first of those is simply this. You need to stand firm because God is never against you. Read in verse 13, let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself does not tempt anyone. It's often pointed out that James is writing self-consciously from within the tradition of Hebrew wisdom literature. It may be that in the back of James' mind as he writes this is Proverbs 19.3, which says that a man's own folly leads to his ruin, yet his heart rages against the Lord. When we think about our own failure to withstand the temptations that beset us, oftentimes we seethe with anger towards God because we claim that or believe that God has somehow tested us or allowed us to stumble into temptations that were beyond our ability to resist. But James takes us back to the simple truth that for God to tempt someone to sin would be contrary to his very character. In verse 16, where he, or rather I should say, as the apostle John testified, that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. And as James reminds us in verse 17, every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there's no variation or shifting shadow. God himself cannot be tempted by evil, and so it follows that he cannot be tempted to tempt. See, for God to tempt us with evil, he himself would have to have some taint of evil within him. And of course, this just can't be the case. Our God dwells in unapproachable light, and sin can't even approach his being, let alone be absorbed into it. But we know that God is not only not against us in our temptations to sin, he's also actively working for us and offers us assistance in the midst of those temptations. As we read in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul writes, no temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man. And God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. But with the temptation, we'll provide the way of escape also so that you'll be able to endure it. That's why of all the means of preservation from sin at our disposal, the most necessary one is simply the importance of believing that God can and will provide us with an escape from our temptation. And that's also why verses five through eight of this chapter in James figure so importantly in James's argument, because there he insists that anyone who would doubt God's character and promises is not in danger of becoming unstable or double-minded, but in fact already is, and frankly, shouldn't expect anything to change for the better, even through his prayers. Now God does sovereignly send us external hardships and testing, and he does even permit temptations to come upon us in order to both prove and to improve the faith of his children. But God's intention in these ordeals is never to entice his faithful into sin. See, when we are plunged into temptations that aren't necessarily of our own willing, God's great desire for us is that in that temptation is to draw forth and to confirm our faith. God seeks to draw faith out of you that he might be glorified by it and you might grow by it. And that's an important point to remember because when someone places us in a trying ordeal, his intention in putting us through that ordeal matters a great deal. For example, just consider the obvious difference between the way a pitcher of an opposing baseball team will throw a ball across the plate at you versus the way a father will pitch the ball to his child to teach him how to hit. The action is the same, at least from our perspective, but the intention of the pitcher in both cases is completely different. The opponent wants to strike you out. The father wants his child to knock it out of the park. And in this passage, we can see that God is a little bit like that father. He's throwing batting practice to his children. He throws us all sorts of different pitches throughout our lives, some easier to hit, some harder. And sometimes it might actually seem as though God is playing for the other team. But he's not. He may throw you a difficult pitch from time to time, but when you hit a home run, he's actually celebrating right along with you, along with the rest of your team. God wants us to hit those pitches of temptation out of the park when they come our way. And if a temptation comes our way by his providence, then it's a curve ball that God has sent our way, not to strike us out or defeat us, but so that we might glorify him by turning to his instruction and turning to his assistance and enduring faithfully as the trials and temptations come our way. Next, James cautions us to stand firm because sin lives within you. We read in verse 14, But each one is tempted when he's carried away and enticed by his own lust. People often say that stress doesn't build character so much as it reveals the character that was there to begin with. You might also say that temptations don't cause us to sin. They simply reveal the bitter roots that are still sunk so deeply in our hearts. As Cornelius Plantinga once wrote, The evil one gains no ground that we do not give him. Satan seduces only those who are in the market for seduction. Satan deceives only the self-deceived. And that's how sin works, doesn't it? It doesn't just bark orders at you like a drill sergeant. It butters you up and charms you with persuasive, plausible reasoning about the deed it wants to get done in order that you would walk hand in hand with it, as it were, on your way to transgression. Now, the question naturally arises, what exactly is the fertilizing seed that causes our desires to conceive our sins? What causes us to be dragged off and enticed by our lusts? Well, it seems that for James, self-deception is likely that fertilizing seed. First of all, snares and bait, the images that James is playing off of, these things are always, in the nature of the case, false and deceitful. Furthermore, self-deception is a major theme in verses 22 and 26 of this chapter as well, where he says, prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. And if anyone thinks himself to be religious, tongue, but deceives his own heart, this man's religion is worthless." And so here, in this short passage, verses 12 through 18 even, we see that the two chief heads of all theology, the knowledge of the character of God, and also knowledge of ourselves, is our greatest bulwark against the deceit of sin. It would be nice if we could overcome the deceitfulness of our own hearts by resolving to simply read and memorize more scripture and just leave it at that. But we have to say more because, as we all know from experience, the pleadings of sin are so subtle and devious that it's often the verses that we know by memory that we can use most easily as proof text to condone our own disobedience to God. We use God's law and his commands against him. If lack of contentment or materialism turns us into workaholics and we neglect our duties to our spouse or our children, we can say, hasn't God said, six days thou shalt work? And he who provides not for his family is worse than an infidel. So we always have to be watchful of how easily we can support our vanity with appeals to scripture and also of how effortlessly our worldly desires can clothe themselves as necessity. One of our most common tactics in giving sin the upper hand is that we acknowledge the authority and the goodness of all God's laws in the abstract, but we always find some ingenious way to explain why our particular case represents an exception to one of God's general rules. John Calvin pointed out this particular tendency of men in his institutes when he wrote, The intellect is very seldom mistaken in the general definition or essence of the matter. But the deception begins as it advances farther, namely when it descends to the particulars. That homicide, putting the case in the abstract, is an evil no man will deny. And yet one who is conspiring the death of his enemy deliberates on it as if the thing was good. The adulterer will condemn adultery in the abstract and yet flatter himself while privately committing it. The ignorance lies here, that man, when he comes to the particular, forgets the rule which he had laid down in the general case. And we know that this is the case. If we're tempted to cheat on our income taxes, and if our conscience starts to rebuke us, we'll say something like, Lord, you know better than anyone how oppressive and unbiblical my tax rates are, not to mention where those tax dollars are spent. And so you know more than anyone how badly we need to do our part to starve the Leviathan down there in D.C. And so when we do this, we use one of our most common rationales, which is simply to use God's omniscience against him. We'll say something like, Lord, I don't want to commit adultery, but you are omniscient, so you above all people know how impossible and how unloving is, and so you can't help but have sympathy if I seek comfort in the arms of another. That's how our minds work under the influence of our unsanctified desires. It works like clockwork. Absolute divine order goes in, runs its course through our hearts, and voila, an exception to policy memorandum comes out the other end, signed by Commander Self. The heart's an inscrutable, unpredictable thing, and no one can understand it. But on the other hand, some of these patterns of self-deception are so regular that the heart is basically predictable in its output when those desires and lusts begin to gain the upper hand. And even if we have learned enough of God's words that it hedges us in on our right and our left, and we just can't bring ourselves to crank out that exception to policy memorandum, we still have more than enough methods to give sin a foothold in our heart. See, it's not merely that when we entertain sin in our hearts that we start to give blatantly false answers to the right theological questions. Rather, our sinful inclinations often prompt us to ask the wrong questions Joe Bikian, one of his books, tells the story about a number of years ago in the 1800s who needed to hire a coach driver to drive his daughter over a somewhat precarious range of mountains where oftentimes the track was quite dangerous and came close to the cliff. And so he went around and sort of canvassed a number of the different coach drivers in town to see how good they were at coach driving. And he went up to each one of them and said, I want to know, tell me just how good of a coach driver you are. How close can you get that wheel of the coach to the edge without actually going over? First one said, oh sir, I'm such a good coach driver. I can keep that. I can keep that wheel just a foot off the edge the whole time without going over the edge. He went up to the next one. He said, oh sir, I'm such a good coach driver. of the coach, I can keep it three inches from the edge of that cliff the whole time without ever going over it. He went to the third one, and then the last one he went to said, I'm not going to get anywhere close to the edge of that cliff the entire way through the mountains. You see, and that guy got the job. That guy drove the daughter through the mountains. And that just underscores just another tragic aspect of the way we sort of begin to ask the wrong questions about our desires and about our sins. Because most of the time when we begin to ask questions about our sins, the question is always framed such that we kind of ask, how close can I get to the line of sin without actually going over it? Instead of asking, what can we do to stay as far away from it as we possibly can? And the most tragic part of all this is that when we finally do reap the bitter consequences of our sins, we almost reflexively still have the audacity to blame God for our lot and play the fool of Proverbs, ruined by his own folly, but in his heart still raging against God as though God had some complaint. One last thing to note before we move on to the next verse is to simply note the sort of conspicuous absence of Satan from James' discussion of temptation and sin here. As one commentator put it so well, He said, were there no Satan, there would still be wickedness. And were every prospect pleasing, human nature would still be vile. The enemy is not only within the camp, within the heart, the enemy is the heart itself. As we move on to verse 15, we see that sin is not only fertile, but it's also fatal. In verse 15 we read that, then when lust has conceived it, it gives birth to sin. And when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Sin is never the end of sin. The end of sin is death. This really is one of the hardest facts for us to recognize. It's especially hard for us when we're young and our physical bodies still enjoy the bloom of youth, so to speak, with all of our health and our eyesight undimmed and our vigor unabated. At this point, it may be worth reflecting on the gospel accounts of some of the various demoniacs that Christ encounters and to see what sin does to them when it's nearly unrestrained by God's grace. Demoniacs are thrown into the fire, the gash and the tear of their own flesh. And even this sort of ruthless evil was restrained in some sense. The moment that Christ cast the demons into the pigs in the region of the Gerasenes, they instantly brought the pigs into the ocean and drowned them. And this is exactly the thing that sin would do to you left unrestrained by God's grace. Now, the death that James is referring to here is most likely not just physical death, but the second, the spiritual death. And nonetheless, the physical deterioration of death that we receive as the wages of sin is merely a prelude to the ultimately hopeless punishment of the second death, where those who oppose Christ will suffer eternally and hopelessly in their bodies for their sin. Because all we've ever known, though, is a world of sin and separation from God, it's hard to really behold its effects as we should. There are some practical ways that we can help ourselves to do that. Mainly, we need to always be thinking of those things that make God more desirable, more glorious, more lovely, more awesome, more attractive to us. And also those things that make obedience more beautiful and desirable as well. On the other hand, we have to keep at the ready those thoughts that have a power to make sin utterly vile, heinous, and despicable to our hearts as well, and to dwell on them. Consider the example of Joseph when he was tempted by Potiphar's wife. When she propositioned him, Joseph immediately recoiled from even the thought of sin. He responded, how then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? See, he guarded his heart with an accurate awareness of the vileness of sin and also of the goodness and holiness of the God against whom he'd be sinning in such an act. We should do the same in the midst of temptation and flee from it as fast as we can. Show God that we value our own soul more than the passing pleasures of sin. Now, some of us may say that the things that tempt us the most are simply the thoughts of our own imaginations that just pop up there without our asking for them or without our prompting. And to that, I think the best answer is an answer that often my counseling professor down at seminary gives to this issue, which is basically, he says, from flying over top of my head, but I sure can't stop him from landing and building a nest on top of it. In other words, we can grant that this side of glory every believer is going to have on godly thoughts or images flit across their minds. It's probably still not going too far to say that where the danger really lies is not in that or in the fact that our imaginations will never be perfectly sanctified in this life. but that the danger really lies in the way that we allow those ungodly thoughts to come into our minds and make a home there, and the way that we secretly delight in entertaining those thoughts. Temptations are kind of like a, our temptations often are like a mangy stray dog or a stray alley cat down on our soul that starts to circle around our hearts and beg it for something that can satisfy it. But the cause of their frequent visitation is no great secret. They're only there because you keep feeding them. Just like with a real life alley cat, you can easily start to feed something long enough that you start to develop an attachment to it that you never had before. You make it a habit to put something out for it to eat every morning so that it doesn't have to go hungry. And once that attachment is there pretty soon, you don't know how not to feed that temptation anymore because the habit is so ingrained in you. This is precisely why it's so important that we never even begin to reason with the flesh, but instead to shut it down at its very first promptings. We could say much more about sin and its consequences, but we'll move on to verse 12, where James teaches us finally to stand firm, because a crown of life awaits you. In verse 12, James says, blessed is a man who perseveres under trial, for once he's been approved, he'll receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him. Here in this verse we see that the previous pattern of lust, sin, and death stands in a stark contrast to the chain of testing, endurance, and life that's established here in verse 12. In scripture, there's a diversity of metaphors that describe our salvation. There are metaphors of renewal, such as washing, recreation, resurrection, regeneration. There are metaphors of family life, such as marriage, adoption, or inheritance. There are metaphors of deliverance. There are legal metaphors, cultic metaphors, like sanctification, purification. Finally, there are athletic metaphors, one of which is here before us in verse 12. In some of these metaphors, the emphasis is on the already aspect of our salvation. For others, the focus is put more deliberately on the already aspect of our deliverance, which we've already received. Some metaphors emphasize the not yet aspect of our salvation, those things which we have yet to receive or experience. Some arguably comprehend both aspects in their imagery. But this metaphor of the crown of life, however, clearly speaks of one aspect of salvation that we'll receive only upon entering glory. We might ask, however, what exactly is this crown of life that James speaks of? Some interpreters maintain that this crown is something bestowed upon those believers that go far above and beyond the call of duty and their walk with Christ, some sort of elite upper echelon of disciples that not all believers will necessarily attain to. This interpretation is not very likely, though, for a few reasons. The phrases crown of life, crown of glory, crown of righteousness, all seem to be used more or less interchangeably in the New Testament to speak of the eternal inheritance that awaits all believers. In Second Timothy four, Paul wrote that there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award to me on that day. And not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing. That same crown of righteousness that Paul longed to receive was something that all believers are to love and to long for as well. And it seems that Paul made this clear in the context of Second Timothy. And it also can't be the case that in Paul's thought, loving the Lord's appearing is also something characteristic of some believers, but not others. And that's not to say that believers will never sin or never stumble in the midst of their trials in this life. But it is to say that a true believer will never stumble so as to fall completely and fail to endure to the end and forsake Christ for the sake of relief from our trials. See, in the conceptual world of the writers of the New Testament, to fail to endure trials for the name of Christ is tantamount to falling away or apostatizing. in mind as he's writing here are the demands from either Jewish or Roman authorities to renounce the name of Christ, often upon pain of death. And thus, enduring trials for the sake of the name is not something optional for believers. It's something that all believers do. And because all the elect, by God's grace, will persevere to the end through thick and thin, it makes little sense for any apostle to speak of a special reward for those that do persevere. Ultimately, the imagery of the crown is put there simply to press upon us that eternal life is something worth running for, something worth striving for, something worth winning. And if we endure for the sake of that crown, we endure because we love. We don't love simply because we endure as a matter of dry duty for his sake. The crown of life is not a reward of works, but that which God has ready for those who love him. Just as it's written in 1 Corinthians 2 9, things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which haven't entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him. If we endure it all, we endure because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us. And although our desires seek to exercise control over our hearts, to entice them and to drag them away, we have to always be calling to mind the truth that although we're often tempted by desires, we're also indwelt by the warrior spirit of King Jesus Christ, and that his spirit wages war against the flesh so that our love for God might control us and guide us into a more perfect obedience in our trials and temptations. As we conclude, I can't help but come back to a few passages from Paul. The first one from Philippians 3 where he wrote, not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. The other passage comes from Paul's closing words in 2 Timothy, which I mentioned earlier, where Paul wrote, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith, and henceforth there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day. When we really, really, really want something, what do we often say to ourselves or to others about that thing? It doesn't matter what it is, an athletic championship for a long time, maybe just a thick, juicy steak that we can't wait to sink our teeth into. Whenever we look at that thing, we say to ourselves, that thing's got my name on it. See, whenever we utter that phrase, it's kind of like our stamp of ownership on what we desire. When Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians, that prize still lay ahead of him. As Paul put down his pen for what was probably perhaps the last time in his life, and as the ink was slowly drying on that section of the scroll that he was about to send off to Timothy abroad, I can't help but think that at that moment, he could just close his eyes and almost see that treasure that the Lord had waiting for him, and with a kind of solid satisfaction in his heart that few of us can even imagine, whisper to himself, I know that that's got my name on it. And until my change comes, the Lord is keeping it right there for me. As exceptional as Paul was in many ways, the truth is that every one of us has every reason to adopt the same attitude toward our eternal reward as he did. Because if you've come to know the Lord and have placed your trust in him for salvation, then you too have a crown and a treasure and a home with your name on it. And if so, then do as Paul did and press on for it until you finally receive it. I mentioned earlier the importance of dwelling on those thoughts that are most able to make sin utterly vile, heinous, and despicable to us. And when we meditate on the crown of life that awaits us all, we'd be remiss not to remember a very different crown at the same time. It's the crown that Christ was awarded just before he died. And remember that the cost of the crown of life was the crown of thorns. And that crown of thorns was the crown of the curse, as we all know from Genesis 3. But here's the beauty of the gospel, right here, that as those Roman soldiers were pressing those thorns down on the scalp of Christ, piercing his skin, they mocked him and they laughed at him because they had no idea what they were doing. Because with every drop of blood that they drew from Jesus Christ, they were wringing every last drop of vitality and strength out of that curse. So brothers and sisters, as many times as you come to these scriptures, never think of your crown of life without remembering that Christ put on the crown of the curse and death and separation from the father so that we might put on immortality and righteousness and glory forever and ever. Let's pray. Lord, we just thank you so much that Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was willing to wear that crown of thorns, that crown of the curse, so that we might be able to one day wear that crown of life that you have waiting for us. And so until that day comes when we put that crown on, help us to put off the old man with its deceitful desires. Help us to set our hearts and minds on things above where our life is hidden with Christ. Help us to consider and treasure all the rights and all the privileges that are ours as children of God. Help us in all things to press on through every trial. We might receive the crown of life that's ours in Christ Jesus. We just ask all these things in your name and for your sake. Amen.