Open your Bibles with me, if you would, to James chapter one. Some of you were not with us last week, and you may wonder why I'm going to begin with verse one. If I began with James last week, well, I did something a bit unusual, something I've never done before. I actually preached a flyby of the book of James, an overview or an introduction to the book. And so this week, we begin with chapter 1 and verse 1. Now, I'm going to read down through verse 18 to set the context, but I'll only be commenting this morning on verses 1 through 8. This is the word of God. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. To the 12 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 in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting. For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation. Because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass. Its flower falls and its beauty perishes. So also with the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial. For when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow. due through change. Of His own will, He brought us forth. By the Word of Truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. Let's pray together. Father, we come to Your Word again this morning. We ask that You would open our hearts and minds to hear and believe and grow in the intensity of our love and devotion to the Savior, who has redeemed us by His own blood. And I pray, God, that we would with James this morning, humble ourselves before you as bondservants of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we might serve you all of our days happily and joyfully for what you have done in saving our souls. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, as we observed in our introduction last week, James, the brother of Jesus Christ, begins this letter in great humility, as I just mentioned in my prayer. He may be related by flesh and blood to Christ as Jesus' half-brother, but he does not count that as being worth anything that's worth boasting about. James' boast is in Christ alone. And so he begins this letter, James literally a bondservant of God and of the Lord, Jesus Christ. not now his brother, but his Lord, as he submits himself to his will and all that he does. James letter is addressed, you'll notice, to the 12 tribes in the dispersion. And most scholars agree that James had a great burden for Jewish Christians, especially those Jews, most likely the dispersion referring to Greek speaking Jews who were dispersed about the Roman Empire. who lived in various places. Many of them were there because of persecution. They were driven there because they had faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Many believers, including those who were Jews, have been forced to leave their home, to give up their homes, to sacrifice their possessions, to flee to foreign lands, often leaving friends and family behind, and many times suffering greatly in poverty. and deprivation, having to start all over again in a new place. It is recognized today that one of the greatest stress factors, you've seen those charts that say if you have these events in your life, the death of a spouse or the birth of a child or moving from one place to another, that this puts great stress on your life and actually may even shorten your life. There's nothing that most of us hate more than moving. We hate to move. We hate everything associated with moving. We hate to help people move. Well, you know, that's just the nature of the game. It's a hard thing to do. We realize that. But when we move, we usually do it voluntarily. So you can only imagine the stress of being driven out, not only of your home, but in some cases, your homeland, just as our pilgrim forefathers were. And those who came to the United States seeking a place where they would no longer be persecuted for their faith, for their desire to worship God in a pure way as God had commanded us in His Word. They were persecuted and many times had all of their possessions stolen from them and had to go through many difficult hardships and endure for the sake of wanting to worship the Lord. Now, in addition to being physically dislocated, the persecution both from without and from within, from the Jewish community itself, was real persecution. It often included jail. The seizing of property and even death was a real possibility many times in many places. And so it's with that in mind that we come to this letter. We ought to be somewhat perplexed and even shocked when we read these opening words of James to these believers. One of the principles I've learned in sales and marketing is that people are often deaf and busy, and they don't hear the marketing message that we're trying to get across. And so with good headlines or good words, you have to reach out and seize them so that they'll listen to the message. And that's a little bit like what James is doing here. If you think about the circumstances and the lives of the people that he's writing to, and the many hardships that they've endured in their life because of the name of Christ. When we read these opening words with that in mind, it literally shocks us out of our seat. Imagine that if in the past year you had to move to another country. You had to leave a small child behind with relatives. You had to start your own new business from scratch with no money and all of this in the wake of real tragedy. As you've heard recently that your former pastor and a close friend in your church had been arrested and fed to the lions because of their faith. Now imagine hearing your new pastor in this new country, in this new dialect that you've learned. Read these words as the weight of your difficulties and the tragedy and sorrow of your loss come bearing down upon your soul. And you feel like Job, that you're under the curse of God. And you're going to be crushed. Imagine hearing these words from James. Count it all joy. my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. When you hear these words, your mind races and you shout within yourself, James, you've got to be kidding me, right? How can I count it all joy when the pain and the stresses of life are so real? I'm not making it up, James. I feel crushed from without and from within. I don't know if I can take it anymore. I believe in this passage, James has two goals. The first is to comfort us in Christ when we are afflicted. And the second is to afflict us when we're getting too comfortable. Today I'm going to deal with the first part of that. James has a goal here of providing for us comfort in Christ when we're afflicted from all sides, both without and within. Now, let me say, first of all, what James is not saying here, what James is not saying here is that we should think about difficulties and trials and tribulations as if those trials and tribulations were in and of themselves a good thing. The fact that Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise and forced because of their sin to labor in difficulty by the sweat of their brow and to suffer the great pains of childbirth was not a good thing. Cannot call that a good thing. It is the curse that was laid upon them, not the blessing of God because of their obedience. Now, all of those difficulties came about not because of obedience and righteousness, but because of sin and rebellion against God. There are many preachers today who stand up in the pulpit with a big smile on their face. They say with a big grin things like, the seed of adversity in your life is nothing more than the seed of opportunity. Now, when I hear things like this, I just want to say, well, throw up. It's not true. I mean, I'm having real difficulties and real sorrow in my life, and you want me to go on through these things with positive, giddy feelings inside me, like everything is just going to be fixed by my positive attitude. Brothers and sisters, this is not at all what James says here, and this is not what he means. When he says, count it all joy, when you encounter various trials, different kinds. What James intends here is that we are comforted through the sorrows by what Christ has done for us in redeeming us from our sin and all of the curse of sin that was upon us. We are to rejoice not in view of the stress itself, not in view of the trials themselves, but in the view of the possible results that God will bring in our lives as a result of His difficult providence. What God will bring in our lives is not a positive opportunity for change, but rather real growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. He'll bring real conformity to the image of His Son. He'll bring real maturity that results from the true knowledge what God is doing, what God has done. This is exactly what James says in verses 2-4. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. Why? For you know that the testing of your faith does what? It produces something. It produces steadfastness or endurance. And let steadfastness have its full effect. You'll notice that James often uses words that are related to something that comes to fruition, something that comes to maturity. He uses the same kinds of words here with trials and temptations that he uses later on in this passage, dealing with our own lust and our sin. When we allow our lust to run rampant within us, and our greed for what we want, then it gives birth to sin. He'll tell us later. So you can see in James' ideas here, this idea of development. He has in mind here the notion of the maturity of things. And so you have the maturity of your soul. You have the maturity of the moral direction that God gives us in His word in your lives as you look to Christ. Or you have the maturity of sin, as we'll see later on in this passage. He says, let steadfastness have its full effect, in order that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Now, if you saw over the past week some of the images of that terrible tragedy in Joplin, Missouri, some of the horrible effects of that tornado that obliterated so much of that community, You may have noticed that many of the trees were literally just ripped up out of the ground and cast like so many toothpicks across the landscape. But you also may have noticed that there were some of the older trees that were stripped bare. Their limbs were broken. Their leaves were scattered to the wind. They just looked like big skeleton trees, and yet they were old trees, and they stood fast. They weren't pulled up by that massive hurricane. This is the comfort we have in Christ. Although we may be beaten and battered by the winds and even the tornadoes of adversity, we have the assurance from God that through it all, He will bring us to full maturity. This is exactly what James means when he says that we must become perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. He's not speaking here of sinless perfection. Many men have made this error and have used that verse to try to justify a doctrine of sinless perfection, as if we could attain to such a thing. Well, there is no such thing in the Scripture. If any man says he has no sin, John says he's what? He's a liar. He's not speaking here of that kind of perfection where we no longer have any sin in our lives. What James simply means here is maturity. He's speaking of conformity to the image of Christ and growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't always see it for what it is, because our eyes are clouded by sin, sometimes just immaturity. Listen to these words of Hebrews chapter 12, verses 10 through 11. For they, our earthly fathers, disciplined us for a short time has seen best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, so that we may share in his holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful. You see, there's the caution that we have in Scripture against those prosperity teachers who say, look, you have to look at the adversities in your life as if they're a joyful thing in and of themselves. Because in your own power, you can turn them into opportunity. That's not what the Scripture teaches us. says that they don't seem to be joyful. Why? Because they're not joyful. It's not fun to go through the difficulties of our lives. It isn't pleasant to endure sickness. It isn't pleasant to watch those that we love die before our very eyes. It's not a good thing. I hate it when I go to funerals and I hear preachers say, well, it's a wonderful thing because they died a dignified death. And I always want to scream out to them, no, it's not a wonderful thing. Because death is not a dignified thing. It's the most indignified thing that has ever happened to human beings. It's a curse of God upon the world. Someday we'll be raised up with Christ to live forever and ever. So we don't come to adversity. with some false sense of joy, but with true joy, being able to see through the adversity for what it is that God will deliver us from it in the end. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, he says, but sorrowful. Yet, to those who have been trained by it, afterward, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. I love what the Puritan Thomas Boston said in his little book, The Crook and the Lot. The sovereignty and wisdom of God displayed in the afflictions of men. By the way, that wonderful little book, the latest edition of it that I saw come out had the two twin towers on the front cover of it. And I thought how appropriate that was in such a time to read of God's providence, both his difficult providence and his good providence, but that God is in control. of his world. Thomas Boston said, everyone knows what is most pleasant to him, but God alone knows what is most profitable. All men are liars, so all men are fools too. But he is the only wise God. Because God is the only true wise one, and because of sin, we're often so foolish in our thinking, James implores us in verses 5-8 to do what? Ask God for wisdom. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting. For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He's a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways." Now, what I don't want you to do is get the notion in your head that James is presenting God here as some kind of divine therapist. When he says, ask God for wisdom. You know, you get in some trouble in your life, some difficulties. You encounter some trials and tribulations. So you go down and you sit with God and you say, God, can you help me out a little bit here? I'm in trouble. Can you give me some good wisdom and advice to help me solve my problems? And that's the problem with so much of what is called counseling today, it's nothing more than man-centered human wisdom. Rather than being what it ought to be, biblical counseling and biblical wisdom is to speak the truth. And that is that we sin, and many of the problems we have in our life are the result, either directly or indirectly, because of sin. And we need to order our lives according to the truth of God's Word. bear the consequences if necessary. Trust the Lord with our lives. True wisdom comes from God. As in Proverbs 1.7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. True wisdom from God is, as Proverbs shows us, personified. If you go back and read Proverbs 1 in your afternoon devotions this afternoon, you'll see that wisdom is personified. Wisdom calls out in the streets. In other words, God portrays His Word of wisdom as if it's a person who is speaking. And in fact, it is. You see, true wisdom from God is the living Word of God. In other words, it is the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is the wisdom of God come down out of heaven. Christ speaks to us and we learn. When we fear God and heed the words of Christ, then that is true knowledge. Apart from me, Jesus said, you can do what? Nothing. Apart from right understanding of who I am and my words, you can't understand anything. And so when James speaks of wisdom here and the maturity that it accomplishes, what he's really talking about is developing a biblical worldview. What is the biblical worldview? It is first that we have sinned against God, and because of our sin, we bear the curse of sin in our lives. The good news, however, is that Jesus Christ came into the world and manifested or lived out the fullness of the wisdom and the righteousness of God. And because Christ never sinned, he became in his death the perfect sacrifice and atonement or covering for our sin. Furthermore, in the wisdom of God, God vindicated Christ and raised him from the dead. Christ ascended to the throne where he is seated at the right hand of the Father. But even more than this, the wisdom of God in Christ is that We who have believed upon Christ also died with Christ, died to Christ to our sin. We've been buried with him and we've been raised up with Christ and seated with him in heavenly places. So when we grow and are strengthened in this worldview, this Christ centered worldview, it is then That although the trials and tribulations never disappear, and they will not disappear, we are able to endure them with hope and perseverance. We believe. What God says he will do, he will do. We believe what we read in Revelation 19 this morning. That Christ will vanquish his enemies. That Christ will conquer the nation. He will win. It's been written in advance. Christ has won. He has nailed to the cross the declaration of His authority and His dominion. Isn't this exactly what Paul was saying in Romans 8, verses 17-19? Listen to these words. And if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. You see, Paul had developed in his thinking a biblical worldview, a Christ-centered worldview, that if Christ has died and been raised from the dead and ascended to the Father, where he now rules over his church and declares that the day will come when he will vanquish all of his enemies, he has proved it by being raised from the dead. If that is true, then Paul says, you know what? When I suffer with Christ in all of the earthly sufferings that I endure. When I count all of these things for what they are. When I see through it to the victory that God will bring on the day when Christ returns. And I can see it for what it is. It says, it's not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed. And so James says, in essence, because God has given us the fullness of His wisdom in Christ. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting. For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that's driven and tossed by the wind. If you don't think rightly about your life with the wisdom of God, then ask God for more wisdom. And this is his promise. He will give it to you. He also gives us this warning in verses 6 through 8. We must ask in faith with no doubting. The person who doubts must not suppose he will receive anything from the Lord. He's a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. When you ask God for wisdom, ask Him in faith, believing that God will do what He really says. Now, what does a doubting person look like? Well, when I think back in my own life, I think about the times when I doubted God's wisdom, when I doubted the efficacious sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. I ran away from hearing what I needed to hear. I didn't want to go to church. I didn't want to read my Bible. I didn't really want to be accountable to other believers, etc. That's what doubt usually looks like. We run away from what we know we need. We run away from the sweet rebuke of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's ironic I think that James uses this metaphor here. He says, a person who doubts is like a wave of the sea that's driven and tossed by the wind. As I was thinking about this, I thought, what is a wave? It's nothing more than just water. And water it is that brings life. In fact, it's the furthest thing that you could imagine from a mature tree that is planted by springs of living water, as the psalmist puts it in Psalm 1. The key is that the tree is planted by springs of living water. It stays there, it matures there, and even though it will be battered by winds of great adversity, it is actually because of the winds of adversity that its roots sink down deep into the soil, and the tree becomes in effect steadfast and immovable. When you doubt, however, you're like a maverick wave upon the sea, blowing here, blowing there, foaming up and crashing down. If you think and live like that, don't think or suppose you'll receive anything from the Lord. Because as He says, you're a double-minded man. You're unstable in all your ways. Just think about a wave. It's completely without any grounding. It's completely without any steadfastness. It's always moving. It's always going up. You never know where it's going to come. And then it crashes down and it seems like it's gone. I love the way that Thomas Manton put it when he asked this question, what do we need to remain steadfast and immovable? He says, a clear conviction of the truth or certainty of knowledge, a rooted belief or well-grounded persuasion, not some fluctuating opinion about it. A half light maketh a very uncertain course. And so he quotes from First Thessalonians 521 that we must first test all things and then what? Hold fast to that which is good. Hold fast to the truth. Christ will bring you through to the very end. Hold fast to the truth. God will never lead you into the sea and leave you unanchored without Christ. Hold fast to the truth that the winds are going to hurt when they blow against you. The pain and the adversities of life are going to be real They're going to pierce down even to the deepest part of your soul. But hold fast to the truth that if your roots sink down deep into Christ, down below the bedrock to the water that gives life, that you can remain no matter what God in His difficult providence brings into your life. That's why James says, brethren, count it all joy here. Because you saw the One who went before you, the Lord Jesus Christ. He was beaten like none of you will ever be beaten. He was blown about by temptation like none of you will ever know. For He Himself was carried up onto the mountain in the face of Satan himself. And tempted with a view of all of the kingdoms of the world. It is temptation that you will never have to endure. Christ Himself was battered by every temptation known to men. But He stood fast for joy For the joy of knowing that God would bring from that seed that falls to the ground a fruit of a tree of a kind that no man has ever known or experienced, a whole people of God in every nation and tribe of the world, that Christ would see the travail of His soul and be satisfied. For the joy set before Him, right? Endured the cross. despised the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Did he enjoy his tribulation? No. Father, if possible, will you remove this cup from me? There was no joy in the pain. The joy was in knowing that God would keep His promise. God would bring the fruit of it all the way to the end. I want to conclude today with these words from 2 Peter chapter 3. as you think about not only the faith that He says we must exercise, but the hope that God gives us as we look through the pain to the promise. He says, according to His promise, we're waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, Be diligent to be found by Him without splot or blemish and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all of his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. But there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant..." See, there's the double-minded man. unstable in all his ways, the ignorant and the unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. You, therefore, however, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you're not carried away by the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus, of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Count it all joy, brothers. Christ is endured for your sake, that you may also endure to the very end. Take care to put your faith in Christ alone. Let's pray. Father, It is indeed hard. It's difficult. And I'm certain that there are some in this room who have experienced pain more than any of us can imagine. I know that all of us have experienced difficulties and tribulations in our life that are hard for us to express the depth of what they've done to our souls and how they've scarred our thinking about life. God, we thank You that Christ has endured far more than any of us could ever think or imagine. That Christ bore in Himself the wrath of God poured out upon Him, the penalty for our sin, the hatred of men, the crushing of His body by You, His Father. But we thank You that He bore this with joy, knowing God that you would bring to fruition, out of the travail of his soul, that you would bring a people for your own name that will glorify and honor you forever and ever. God, I pray as we endure the sufferings of Christ in this life, that we would look unto Christ, who is the author and finisher of our faith, that we would trust in him alone, knowing that you will also bring us to the end. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.