James 1:2-8

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. ⁶ But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Last time we looked at the identity test, where we were placing our identity, in our work or His. In Jesus or our jobs. We saw the audience he was writing to, those scattered abroad as a result of suffering, and we were reminded that the picture was one of pain and persecution not comfort and pleasure. Today as we look at verses 2-8 James is going to remind us of why we are tested, revealing not only the purpose but also the treasure in tests. James begins by teaching us a truth about tests that at first seems strange, “when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.”James starts by reminding us that we need to have the right attitude toward tests, he starts with our attitude, because your attitude will determine your actions and if your attitude toward testing stinks so will your actions. It’s back to school time, teachers are excited, kids were wishing we would extend Summer break, and almost all of the Parents are ecstatic. And I’m sure that the reason you can feel all the excitement in the air is because in a few short weeks the testing will begin!! In school, test time is the moment of truth when students prove what they’ve learned. It’s where the rubber meets the road, that time where you “put up or shut up.” The problem is that when it comes to tests most of us have very negative view and that’s because we fail to see the value of tests. When we start to see the value in testing not only will our view of tests change but our attitude towards them and ultimately our actions in them will change. We will start to view tests as a good thing, as a way to prove that we are not only learning but growing. When we start seeing tests as a way for us to learn and grow it will cause us to want to prepare well for them. And preparing well will help us not just to survive them but to pass them successfully. God is not calling us to have joy in the junk, He is not being sadistic, he is being realistic, by reminding us that we are going to have trials and trouble. Notice that James doesn’t say “if” troubles comes but “when”. The goal is not to live a problem free life, but to live life so that you are not only prepared for the problems, but you pass. Many of us fail before we even face the tests because we have a bad attitude toward them. Look the joy is not in the pain but in the purpose. Because it’s here that we discover the treasure in the testing. The first treasure of tests that should cause us to have a joyful attitude toward testing is that testing produces

1. PERSEVERANCE 

We all know the real reason for tests in school, it’s because the teachers are mean, right? Well, that is what some of us believe and it’s a belief that is carried over into our relationship with God. When things get hard, we tend to blame God, instead of worshipping and rejoicing we whine and complain. But God doesn’t let hard things come into our life because He is mean uncaring and calloused, but because He cares, and He wants to grow us. When God saves us, He’s was not finished with us. In fact, in many ways He is just getting started with us. Paul says in Philippians 1:6? “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”Today we want to claim the product of this verse but not the painful process. We want the growth but not the groaning it takes to grow. We want the victory but not the vehicle God uses to get us to grow us. We have become a culture that wants the win but not the work. In many ways, salvation is just the starting point. That’s why Jesus compared salvation to being born again. Has anyone ever been born all grown-up? No, although I have met a few kids who thought they were all grown up. Physical babies grow up fast, one moment they are babies and the next they are off to college. Parents partnering with God to raise His kids is a privilege not a pain, enjoy every moment because as a dad who has raised his kids I can tell you it goes fast. And I think that’s how it should be spiritually, we should experience the same kind of growth. That’s why we need tests, the purpose of testing is to “work” things in us—to make us grow. Without tests we will remain spiritual babies forever. And there is nothing fun about 30 year old babies, or 40 year old toddlers stuck in their terrible twos. Unfortunately, because we have a poor attitude toward testing and we spend most of our lives trying to avoid the tests, because we have made the goal a good life instead of a Godly life, the church in America has become filled with babies and brats. Believers who spend the majority of their time crying and whining and messing their diapers. Instead of praising they spend their time pooping. It’s why I believe so many pastors are struggling and quitting the ministry today. They are stumbling around, bleary eyed, like sleep deprived parents because they are running a day care instead of a church. Pastors are not called to babysit believers who don’t wat to grow up. That’s why we need tests to grow, but what does this growth look like? It looks like perseverance, endurance. When I think of endurance, I think of the long-distance runner. Now let me ask you what would happen if we all decided to go run a marathon later today? By the way, a marathon is a little over 26 miles. I wonder what would happen? I know this I wouldn’t make it and most of you wouldn’t either. Why because we don’t have the endurance it takes. Now, think about what it takes for long-distance runners to build up that kind of endurance. They have to really train hard. Train is actually another word for purposely afflicting pain on yourself. Testing, training builds our endurance, it increases our spiritual fitness so that we don’t flake out and quit. We need endurance so we can endure and not give up. Today we need perseverance more than ever and we need it for at least two reasons. One because we have become a society of snowflakes, big babies that bruise easily. The second reason we need perseverance today is because persecution and painful times are coming. Being a Christian in this culture is going to become more and more of a challenge. If you plan on being a Godly man you better put on your big boy pants because right now its unpopular but soon you will be persecuted. Christians today are falling like flies, why because they have bought into the prosperity gospel, where everything works out well for God’s kids. The problem with this is that God’s Holy Word doesn’t proclaim a Gospel of prosperity in the here and now but rather one of pain and problems.  2 Timothy 3:12 tells us: “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”Why are we shocked when we encounter hardship and go through difficulties, because we have built our faith on a farce, and that farce is this, that being a child of God means everything will be good. Wake up we are in a war, there are going to be wounds, but it will be worth it because we win. Look you wouldn’t suit up for a football game and then get upset because someone tackled you, what did you think would happen. I’ve got news for you, you are going to bet hurt in church sorry, but God’s people aren’t perfect, saints still sin and sometimes their sin stings. Look the God that I am following was flogged, the Savior I serve was stripped and humiliated, the Lord I love was laughed at, the Christ I serve was crucified. And yet we think that following Christ is going to be a cake walk of comfort and convenience. We live in a sin soaked society and we are going to get wet, but that water doesn’t have to drown you. We will prosper but that prosperity will be mainly in the next life, so stop living for the earthly and start living for the eternal. Start living for God not a feel good. You will never toughen up without the trials, embrace the difficult times because they will produce perseverance. But perseverance isn’t just about being tough it also requires that we are tender. The way you harden steel is with heat, but in order for steel to be tough it needs to be tempered. Because a sword that has been hardened by the heat but not tempered will be brittle and break. Tempering brings greater toughness by decreasing the hardness of the steel. Today many of us have let trials harden us but not temper us, as a result we are brittle and break easily, quit. Instead of letting trials make us better we have become bitter. Instead of perseverance there is a poison pulsing through our veins, the blood of bitterness. It doesn’t just poison us but all of our relationships. But if you respond rightly to trials, they with cultivate you instead of callousing you. Enabling you to become tough minded but tender hearted. Hard but not bitter and broken. So, what about you, how are you responding to the tests and trials?

James 1:1 “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Greetings.”

After seeing our identity in the World James now reveals the second aspect to our identity, our identity in

2. JESUS

James doesn’t stop by giving us his name, he goes on to identify himself as a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. What does he mean by that? He means that after all that the world had identified him for, he really is identified by his relationship to the Lord. But notice how he describes that relationship, a slave. Slavery was very common in James’ day but what most of us don’t know is that there were actually two kinds of slaves? One is the slave we always think of, the one who is bought or sold on an auction block and forced to serve. But that is not the word that’s James uses here. The word that is used here refers to a person who upon being set free chose to willingly continue in slavery. The Jewish Christians that James was writing to understood what he meant because they knew about Deuteronomy 15:12-17 where the Law that required that after six years of service slaves were to be set free. Yet if the slave loved his master he could choose to stay and become a slave forever. Verse 17 tells us that the ones who did were marked with a hole in their ear by an awl. This is the kind of servant James called himself. One whose body is permanently marked as a willing slave of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. So how did that happen? What transformed him from being offended at Jesus and calling him crazy to calling Him Lord? Look at 1 Corinthians 15:1-7 with me, “Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ² By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”It is here as Paul gives the Corinthian church an overview of the gospel that we discover what happened with James. James saw the resurrected Jesus. No longer was He just his physical brother but the one who came to save him from his sins. No longer was Jesus just that weird one in the family. No longer was Jesus offensive to him because the offence of the cross had turned to fellowship and freedom in Christ. James didn’t just see Jesus he said yes to Jesus and we see evidence of this transformation in Acts 1:14, “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”There we see him gathered together with the disciples in one accord, in prayer and supplication as they waited for the promise of the Holy Spirit in obedience to Jesus. If you find yourself today just like James was before the resurrection you need to know that you can be saved the same way he was. Believe that Jesus not only died for your sin and rose again but that He ascended and lives to interceding for His kids. Jesus saved James and He can save you. But He didn’t just save James to give him a place in heaven, He saved him to give him a purpose here. This is the third aspect to our identity, our identity in the:

3. CHURCH

When you look at who James wrote this letter to, you might not think that has much to do with his identity. But this doesn’t just reveal who James was writing to, but why. While we know who James was before he was saved and we know that God saved him, what did He save him to do? For those of you who are saved have you ever ask yourself that question? What did God save me to do? Because if you are saved and you’re still here God has a purpose for you. Not only has He got something for you to do but you need to know that it is connected to His church. We were not saved to be selfish but to serve. You see when we were saved, we were given certain gifts that God intends for us to use in our service to Him through His church. We were not saved to be Lone Ranger Christians; we know this because the gifts that He gives you aren’t for you. They are for the building up of His body, the church. God gifted James to be a pastor not for James benefit but to bless the body. Of all the books written in the New Testament, James is really the only one written by a full-time, long-term pastor. Even Paul wasn’t really a pastor, the longest time he was in a church was at Ephesus which was only three years. Paul was really a church planter who started a church got it going and handed it off to a pastor. James was the pastor of the church in Jerusalem. While Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 started the church, James was the one who became the leader using the gifts that God gave him to pastor the people through thick and thin. He pastored them through times of plenty as well as poverty. Through the phenomenal growth in Acts 2 when the church was growing by the thousands upon thousands, as well as through the pain and persecution, when Stephen, one of the first deacons was martyred and many of the believers fled from Jerusalem. James is preaching to the persecuted here, those who have been scattered abroad. He had a pastor’s heart and with it he carried a pastor’s pain, even though they weren’t right there in his congregation, he still cared for them. Because he cared about their spiritual well-being, he wrote them this letter. God saved James for the purpose of pastoring His church in Jerusalem. Every time he is mentioned in Scripture after the resurrection, it is in regard to his involvement in the church. God saved James to serve Him by serving His church, gifting him for the particular way He wanted him to serve the church. Which means God saves everyone to serve Him by serving His church. He might have blessed you with the gift of teaching, preaching, encouragement, administration or mercy. But regardless of however He’s has gifted you, you need to use it in His service. James did and his service to the Savior became his identity. His service to the church was so legendary that history gives him two nicknames, both of which reveal his pastor’s heart, James the Just and my personal favorite “camel-knees.” Because James spent so much time on his knees praying for his congregation that his knees became callused to the point of looking like the knees of a camel. What about you how fully are you using the gifts God has given you? Are you too busy to serve Him? Are you too distracted by all the business around you to serve Him? Are those the things you’re identified by, because Scripture calls those things wood, hay and stubble which all be burned up by fire. Or are you identified by your service to God by serving His church. What is your identity today? Is your identity wrapped up in the world? If it is, you need to see Jesus for who He is and turn from your sin. Or is your identity in the Lord, but not in His church? I’ve got news for you, heaven is not just going to be you and God, but His body the bride. Being a Christian means being a part of His church, so are you an active, living, working part of the body? Or are you withered and atrophied from lack of use? If you are saved, you need to realize that God has gifted you for His service. He expects you to use the gifts He’s given you. So, what is your identity wrapped up in?