James 1, 2-4 as we began our sermon series last week on the book of James walking verse by verse through it in our series entitled Loving Wisdom and Living Well. This sermon is on James 1, 2-4 and it is entitled Facing Trials with Enduring Joy. Facing Trials with Enduring Joy. Beginning in verse 2 of chapter 1, 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 in nothing. This is the Word of God. Let us hear it. Let us heed it. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord will stand forever. You know, as we survey the Christian life, one thing we recognize is that in Christianity, there is not merely a gate to be entered in Christ, but also a path to be walked. To enter the kingdom of God, a person must be born again. Jesus said that. That we must be born a second time, born from above by God. That this new birth or regeneration is a God-wrought, Spirit-empowered act upon the individual whereby he is converted or saved. but conversion is merely an opening act, as it were, in an individual's journey of salvation. That person enters the realm of saving grace through actively embracing Christ by faith and then begins, as an infant Christian, to take his first steps in the newness of life. And it's not long before this newly converted Christian realizes that reaching Christian maturity is a long and difficult road. As one commentator says, it is seemingly uphill all the way, even to the very end. Alec Mortier writes, this hard road, however, has a glorious destination. the wide, the easy path. It leads to destruction, but this road leads to life with Christ. Christ has indeed lifted the burden of sin from off our backs. We stand forgiven. We stand accepted before Him. He's broken the power of sin that enslaved us and held us under its dominion. He's placed around our neck His light and easy yoke. We find in Jesus the rest. from the impossible labor of trying to earn our own righteousness before God. The believer, moreover, has been granted the gift of Christ's Holy Spirit. By grace through faith in Christ, we have been declared righteous by God and also set apart by God as holy. That is to say that every genuine Christian is presently justified and positionally sanctified. But the Lord, who began a good work in us, is not finished with us yet. The Lord's goal is not merely to declare us righteous, but also to make us righteous. He doesn't just place us in the status of holiness, but also in the process of holiness. And the pathway to Christian maturity is laden with trials of various kinds. It is only through many dangers, toils, and snares that we will enter into the heavenly glory. God the Judge is also God the Sculptor. To conform His children in the image of His only begotten Son, He must, and oftentimes, take out His hammer and His chisel, instead of taking out the imperfections in our lives. Every saint must walk the sanctifying road of suffering and sorrow. The character of the Christian is forged through enduring calamitous circumstances. Pain produces pilgrims that proceed with patient perseverance and in turn are being perfected. Trials and tribulations transform us into tested, trained, and triumphant warriors for Christ. Like surgery. Sometimes we must endure more pain before the healing can begin. And the Lord is a master physician, and He speaks to us through James, diagnosing our circumstances, prescribing for us a course of treatment. His diagnosis is this, that trials are unavoidable, yes, but they are also purposeful. And then here's the prescription, that we can't control the trials that come our way, but we can control how we respond to them when they come. As Christians, we must realize that every trial comes from the sovereign hand of God. And He sends them our way to test us, and to grow us, and to strengthen us, and to mature us. So we must face trials with a resolve to endure them with joy despite the pain and despite the sorrow. This is the essence of what it means to trust and to glorify God. I want to look at this passage in four things. First of all, I want you to see, actually three things. I want you to see the promise. the promise that Christians will face trials. Trials and suffering are part of life, right? They're common to all and not simply unique to us as Christians. It's important to note that the Bible teaches explicitly that faithful and mature Christians will live lives that are characterized by trials. Mortier says that Christians are a special people, but they were not a protected species. Christians are not exempt from trials. Jesus told his own followers, in this world, you will have tribulation, right? He then said, to take heart, I have overcome the world. Paul exhorted the new believers in his early missionary journeys that it is through many tribulations that we must enter the kingdom of God. And again, Paul tells the church at Philippi, it has been granted to you for the sake of Christ that you should not only believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake. Likewise, Peter writes in 1 Peter 4.12, beloved, do not be surprised when the fiery trial, when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. So the message then presented to faithful Christians, therefore, has very little in common with the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel spouted by so many popular word of faith teachers on TV channels like TBN and Daystar and other places. It is incumbent upon us as Christians that we learn how to suffer well. And that's especially true for us American Christians who know very little about how to suffer well, right? Who are so devoted to our own comfort and have probably the farthest to go in this regard. And so our passage teaches us, first of all, four things that I want to address about the promise that Christians will face trials. The first is the priority of confronting trials. We look there at verses two through four. I'm struck with the fact that James, without warning, shows up, announces his presence, says hello, kicks his shoes off, and immediately jumps into the deep end of the pool. That he introduces himself, he addresses those to whom he is writing the letter, James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes of the dispersion. And then he greets us with a single word, greetings. And then, count it all joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of any kind. So he directly launches into his exhortation. that we count it joy when we meet these trials of various kinds. Absent is any kind of traditional prayer for the people. Absent is any kind of blessing in the name of God for them that are so common in the letters of Paul, for instance. James does speak to the believers warmly. He's not mad at them. He calls them my brothers. These are Christians through faith in Christ. They have the same father. And so he dresses them as brothers and sisters, saying, my brothers. But my question is this, that I want to briefly consider. Why does James talk first about the Christians need to face trials with enduring joy? Is it not because enduring trials is an important part of the Christian life? and without the maturity that responding well to trial brings, the Christian is ill-equipped for service to God. There is no way that a Christian can religiously serve the Lord in a pure and undefiled way without learning how to joyfully endure hardship. No one can care for orphans and widows in their distress or keep one's self-esteem from the world who hasn't yet learned how to remain steadfast in times of trial. And remember, I'm reminding you that James calls this pure and undefiled religion. Moreover, James is a book of wisdom about how to be wise. Knowing how to react and interpret the trials that inevitably come our way is a major part of that wisdom. Secondly, I want you to see not only the priority of confronting trials, but the inevitability of confronting trials. I'm secondly struck not just at the priority of that, but just how realistic James is about these things. You say, well, he's telling us to count trials as joy. How realistic can he be? He's not fooled by that. He knows how we normally think about trials. He knows about the reality of the Christian life is that we will face wave after wave of trial, that the Christian life is not problem-free. It is not pain-free. Yes, if we've got something that we can cure, we should cure it rather than endure it. But that you and I, in every season of our life, face these trials. You know, when you're little, you think, if I can just get to this age, then my life's gonna be perfect. I'm gonna think, things are gonna get better if I can get to here. And then when you get to that place, you think, if I can just get to this place, then that's going to be the real sweet spot. My kids are learning this. And then once you get out of that, let's say you get out of college, you think, if I can just get married, or if I can just start having children, then things are going to be great. and then you get to the next season, and the next season, and the next season, and you think, if we can just get the, but every season has its own trials, doesn't it? There's no part where the trials let up. They just become different, and sometimes even harder. So every season has its own trials, and we live in this world where we're facing these trials constantly. Doriani says, we live in a world that is a place of constant testing, peace is rare, almost abnormal, and trials are common. So I'm struck with the fact that James recognizes. He's not unsympathetic or unrealistic about this. Thirdly, I want you to see the variety of trials. that we will confront. He doesn't just say if you meet trials, but when you meet trials, and then when he says these trials are of various kinds, right? Not just this word for various is manifold, multicolored, it's variegated. The word for count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, it's the same word when you meet, when you fall into trials, it's the same word as the guy who was walking down the road in the Good Samaritan parable who fell among robbers, who met up with robbers. This was an unexpected, unsought, unwelcome sort of meeting. And trials are often that way. We just fall into them. One after another. There's various kinds. Poverty, persecution, sickness, loneliness, bereavement, anxiety, depression, disappointment, accident, injury, accusation, slander, abandonment. We could go on and on and on. There are all sorts of trials, and they're different intensities, aren't they? I mean, there's poverty and then there's poverty. I mean, there's money problems and there's poverty, right? We have different trials and different intensities of the various trials that we have, but we all have them. The other thing that I want you to see here is the ambiguity of the trials that we confront. When we meet with trials of various kinds, and we will, We often ask, why? But we don't know why. And James doesn't necessarily give us a full answer why here, does he? He gives us some hints about what the purpose of these trials are, but not specifically why these trials have fallen upon us. And so we don't get this full understanding Just like Job didn't get the full understanding of why this has happened to him, why he's gone through these things. We don't know. Why has God allowed the righteous to suffer? James's answer is incomplete in that regard. And the ambiguity of the trial remains. So that's kind of the diagnosis there, the promise that we will face trials as Christians. I want you to, secondly, you see the purpose in Christians facing trials. The purpose in this, he says, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. You're probably noticing that I've skipped the count it all joy part. We're coming back to that, all right? But I want to put this other stuff to talk before we get to that. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. The purpose in Christians stating or facing trials When we face those trials, they're often occasions for us to doubt, aren't they? Bad things happen to us, and so they cause us to doubt the existence of God, perhaps. They may cause us to doubt the goodness of God, to doubt the sovereignty of God, to doubt the favor of God in our lives. Doriani again explains, trials seem like random evils that fall upon us. But our sovereign God oversees the trial itself and oversees us in the trial so that it strengthens and deepens our faith. What James wants us to see, and he doesn't say this as if he's all-knowing and wise and has the secret to life here. He says, you know this. You know this. As Christians, we know this. What is it? That God sends the trials, God is sovereign over the trials, and God has a purpose in the trials. That these aren't a surprise to Him. that these aren't random acts of evil that have fallen upon us, that no, there is some ambiguity. We don't know why he doesn't tell us all the answers or all the answers to the questions that we wanna know, and yet, there is a purpose in the pain that we may not even understand or ever get an answer to this out of heaven to. but he wants us to see that these trials, whatever they test our faith to produce perseverance, that perseverance or steadfastness will have its full effect, that we might be perfected through them. What this means is threefold. That the purpose is that encountering trials prove our faith. You know that the testing of your faith. So this is a that these trials are tests. The word for trial, or in this case, is used variously by James. It has various semantic range in Greek as well. It can be used for an inner temptation or an external test. And James uses it both ways. He's going to later on talk about the inner temptation aspect of this trial playing off the other side. But here, these are clearly external tests to us. And even the same events in our lives can be used by Satan to tempt us into doing evil and inner temptation, whereas from God they are external tests. The same event can have different purpose. But these encountering trials prove our faith. They prove it's genuine. They test faith's authenticity. They refine faith's purity. More at your rights. He says, we've all met people who would concur with the sad words of one elderly man. This man writes, I used to go to church, but five years ago, my wife and my only daughter died within six months of each other. And after that, it didn't seem worth the bother. And Mortier says, we can sympathize with this man. We understand the hurt that he must have gone through. But he then goes on to say, we say that we believe that God is our Father, but as long as we remain untested on this point, our belief falls short of steady conviction. Suppose the day comes, as it does and will, when circumstances seem to mock our creed, when the cruelty of life denies His fatherliness, His silence calls into question His almightiness, and the sheer haphazard, meaningless jumble of events challenges the possibility of a Creator's ordered hand. It is in this way, he said, that life's trials test our faith for genuineness. They prove it. They show it. You and I know that Jesus talked about the parable of the sower and he gave four soils. He said that as the sower sowed seed, some seed fell along the path and the birds came and devoured it, that other seed fell on rocky ground. where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Jesus then went on to explain what the parable, or what the soil that was rocky soil was like. He says, these are the ones sown on rocky ground, the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy, and they have no root in themselves. They endure for a little while, and then when tribulation, trial, or persecution arises on account of the Word, immediately they fall away. They fall away without producing any fruit. Nothing. Nothing demonstrates the reality of your profession of faith like the way that you face trials. The way when you get that bad news, when you're going through that pain, how you respond in the middle of that, nothing says more about the reality of the faith that you claim to have than that. It is a test of that faith. And that test not only proves, but purifies the faith that we have. Not only reveals the reality of our faith, but it refines the purity of that faith. Peter talks about this in 1 Peter 6 and 7. He says, in this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by what? Various trials. Same word, various trials. so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes, though that it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Douglas Moos says that the difficulties of life are intended by God to refine our faith. Heeding in the crucible of suffering so that impurities might be refined away and so that it might become pure and valuable before the Lord. That the trials are able to slough off the dross and purify the reality of the faith that is there proving its existence. Not only do these encountering trials prove our faith, but experiencing trials produce steadfastness. Do you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness? Many a Christian can know a lot, but live it very little, right? Enduring joy amidst trials is not the result of great intellect or years of doctrinal study. It is the product of childlike faith. Trusting God in the difficult times. Steadfastness is more than just patience. Some of your versions may translate it as patience. The word means more than just patience because patience seems to indicate a passivity. We're just allowing these. Steadfastness deals with actively enduring these things that we experience. It means that we're actively engaged in the experience. It's a militant patience. It involves fortitude, staying power, strong consistency, constancy, stickability, and endurance. Mu says the picture here is of a person carrying a heavy load for a long time. I was talking to somebody earlier, I power wash the back of the house and the drive on the back of the house yesterday. And I'm so weak, I do that kind of manual labor so very little, that just gripping that darn power washer the whole time, my hand's cramped up today. Now, I thought, even as I was doing that, I was switching from one to another, getting sore, doing this little bit of, you know, it's not hard, but you do it over and over again. And so I'm sore today because of that. I thought, well, if I did this every day, though, I would never be sore. It would be so easy if I did this or whatever it is. And that's true of anything, right? You lift over time, lifting, holding weight, enduring weight. The cross-country runner that wants to run three miles fast runs five miles hard, right? And do that time and time again, and it becomes easier. And this is what he's saying, that enduring these trials that we face, with faith, with enduring joy over a little while, over time, it produces a steadfastness in us. It produces a strength that we didn't have. There's a maturity that comes about through years of this. Endurance is faith stretched out, one person said. James in verse 12 is going to say blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial for when he stood the test he received the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. In chapter 5 in verse 11 he's going to say behold we consider those blessed who remain steadfast. You've heard of the steadfastness of Job. And so he talks again and again about the purpose of steadfastness. Romans in chapter 5, verses 3-5, Paul agrees with James here. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering what? Produces endurance. That endurance produces character, character produces hope. Hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has given to us. Peter in 2 Peter 1 verses 5-8 says, for this very reason, make every effort. So this is not be passive. This is not let go and let go. This is not complete surrender. No, this is make every effort. to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love, For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So one of the things it's saying here is that when bad things are happening, when you're going through these trials, that you confront them with steadfastness. You don't wallow in pity. You don't wallow in woe is me. This is happening to me. You confront these with steadfast enduring joy. We'll talk a little more about that in Hebrews. The author of Hebrews says, Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, sometimes being partners with those so treated. for you had compassion on those in prison, you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. for yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed. We are those who have faith and preserve their souls. Thirdly, I want you to see that enduring trials perfect the believer. That when He says here, they test your faith, they produce steadfastness. The ultimate goal is not steadfastness. The ultimate goal is mature perfection, right? That perseverance itself is not this ultimate goal. That maturity in the Christian life. Let the steadfastness have its full effect. So don't just endure for a little while. Endure and keep enduring. Endure and keep enduring. Let it have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. This is not saying that we as Christians never fail to endure. We as Christians do fail to endure or respond to the trial rightly quite often. We don't continue in that. maturity or being perfect or complete. It states it positively that we're complete, we have every tool in our belt, that we're fully armed soldiers for the battle, so to speak, that we're also negatively lacking in nothing. We have all that we need being in this letting steadfastness have its full effect. That we may be perfect and complete, whole, unbroken, useful. There's a aspect to this that's for this life, that we become mature Christians in this life. We know that we don't reap perfection here. But there's also a preparation for heavenly glory, that where we will be perfected by God. The point of this is for us as Christians, that the goal of the Christian life is not maximum pleasure, it's mature perfection. We are striving for faithful endurance and not a pain-free life. The goal is to glorify God, to honor Him with our lives, and not to live our best life now, or even to become the best and most authentic version of ourselves. Self-actualization is not the goal. Mortier says, there is no trial, no great calamity or small pressure, no overwhelming sorrow or small rub of life outside the plan of God whereby it is a stepping stone to glory. So you'll hear of teachers, preachers, pastors today that act like holiness is easy. I'll give you five key concepts to holiness or holiness with this program or this technique or whatever it is that it'll happen. Or that you just sit by and let God make you holy. That's like trying to run a marathon by sitting on the couch. It's just not happening. So lastly, our posture as Christians toward facing trials. Given the fact that we will face trials, and given the fact that God has a purpose in those trials, to prove our faith, to produce steadfastness, to perfect us as Christians in this life, that God sovereignly has it, then, because of that, When we face those trials, we can count it all joy. We have an attitude. He is not telling us that he doesn't understand what a trial is. You can't say to James, but you don't know what I'm going through, James. He knows very well how painful and sorrowful the trial is that you're going through. I may not, but he does. God knows how painful the trial is. But he's telling, and he's not just telling you to smile through it. This is not even a stoical kind of imperturbability that he's calling for here. He wants to revolutionize your thinking about the trials that are happening in your life. Because what we usually think of is that God doesn't love me, that these are happening to me by some evil that's befallen me, that God's not good, that there's no purpose to this, all sorts of things. Doubt and depression fill us when we are coming through in these trials. So he wants to reorient our mind, revolutionize our thinking. That's why this word count is a rethink about these trials. Consider them, put them in this category. And it's not the trial itself that you're to be joyful about. This is not happiness necessarily. Happiness is based upon our circumstances, from the word happenstance. Joy is different than that. Joy is not merely an emotional state. It is more than that. Joy may be defined as a settled contentment in every situation, an unnatural reaction of deep, steady, and unadulterated thankful trust in God. So James is not trying to be ignorant of our pain and sorrow. He doesn't mean to downplay or to dismiss it. Let me say something else, because sometimes when you're going through these trials, some of us, even pastors, can do this. We can tell you when you've just, you know, found out some horrible news, that they come to you with James 1 to, you know, count it all joy when you face trials of many kind. And you're thinking, That's not helpful right now, because that's not helpful right now. James 1-2 is not for the hospital room necessarily. It's not when your farmland just got flooded. It's not for all sorts of, when the tornado just ripped your house down. It may be for that in a few months, but this isn't the first word on your suffering that God goes to. This isn't the first thing that we're to bring to somebody's mind, you know, that you should really count it all joy. It is a reminder though that when we meet trials, And it's not just those major crisis moments in our lives, but the everyday mundane things that we all face as well, that we are to reorient our thinking. And when those crisis moments comes, that we confront that pain and that sorrow that we're feeling, rather than wallowing it, we confront it with enduring joy. with faith that God has a purpose and a plan in this. That I'm going to trust him despite what I don't understand about all that's going on and all of the heartbreak and pain that I'm feeling over it. It is a reorienting our minds and our thoughts about that because the opposite of this count it all joy is that we become bitter. And not just that we let this bitterness come in like a root and grow and grow and grow in our lives, but that we also blame God and other things and become the victim here in all of this. Whereas A.T. Robertson says, this is the joy of the soul that is at peace with God in Christ and has also more than earth and hell can take away. It is the peace that passes all understanding. And sometimes we're tempted as we are down here enduring these trials to think God doesn't know what it's like. God doesn't understand what we what we're facing but yet we see Christ and it is for the joy that was set before him that Hebrews tells us that he endured the cross despising it saying and then sat down It is not the cross that He enjoyed, but the fruit of the cross, what was being accomplished, what God was working in and through, this pain that He was enduring, this trust that God was at work, His Father was working in and through Him, that He could endure this painful trial to the very end. for us and for our salvation. And Christ is an example for us of the way that we are to face these trials, knowing that God is sovereign, knowing that these are changing us and transforming us, maturing us and perfecting us, that in these trials, we're getting stronger. And we could go through, many of you, and y'all could stand up and give testimony this morning. of a trial that you never wanted to go through, but that God made you stronger through, that God changed you through, that God helped you through, that you're different on this side, your faith is stronger as a result of that. If you're here this morning and you do not know Christ, then it's difficult to have hope in the midst of those trials. Never do I feel more helpless as a pastor than when I'm preaching a funeral that I'm almost certain that person didn't know the Lord, and trying to comfort that family. I have the gospel for them, but it was too late for the person that's there. And that's a trial that every one of us is going to face. And you need to be prepared on the front end for that one. The tested genuineness of that, having hope in the midst of that, being able to offer that hope. I'm thankful that if you are Christ, Christ has made you acceptable, made you righteous, that he is empowering you to endure through these trials. This enduring joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit in your life. It is a fruit, it produces joy, patience, self-control. These things, how we face trials, are proven and shown, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life are shown in the way that we do that. come to Christ, find hope, find forgiveness, find just the relief of this burden and despair, because there are trials that are far bigger than you can ever endure. Let's go to the Lord in prayer.