True Faith Perseveres
What does true faith look like? What should characterize people that have faith in Jesus Christ? What should their life be like and how should they live? How do we know if we are truly disciples of Jesus and not consumers of what he can offer us? This series, starting with True Faith Perseveres will discover that. James is clear all throughout his letter what true faith is supposed to look like.
I picked the book of James for this series because the book of James helps us to see the relationship between faith and works. Our faith without works is dead, but also, our works don’t earn us our relationship with God. Martin Luther, “salvation is by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone!”
Macon has more churches per capita than any city in the country. Do you know how many churches we have? 400! So how do we know what true faith looks like?
This book of the Bible is a letter written by James the half-brother of Jesus. He has a strong emphasis on faith in his letter, it is mentioned 14 times. There are also a lot of commands in this letter. Out of the 108 verses, 56 are commands. Obedience is everywhere. Genuine faith acts. Genuine faith works!
Often today when we hear preachers talk about works and how we should be active in our faith, people will say they are being legalistic. James is advocating here that for your faith to be genuine, for your faith to be real, it has to have works; it has to have feet. Feet that move with the readiness of the gospel. Feet that carry the good news to the lost, live on mission at school, work, and in our neighborhoods. Faith is alive. True faith. That is what James is all about, and that is what our series is all about.
Today, our focus is on faith in the trial. Persevering when times get tough. In this passage we see words like trial, tempt, tempted… David Platt sums up James 1 like this: “Trials and temptations are both inevitable, and God intends both to deepen our faith. Sometimes we face trials on the outside, and sometimes we face temptations on the inside, and how we understand them and respond to them has everything to do with our faith.”
God is in control during our trials (2-12)
Following Jesus isn’t always rainbows and Reeses cups. This healthy and wealthy prosperity gospel teaching you see on TV and in some media circles is a false teaching. Following Jesus doesn’t give you the good life, it gives you a God life.
“Consider it a great joy” is a command. A challenge to go beyond your feelings and get the right perspective. I think all of us in here can testify that trials aren’t joyful in and of themselves, but they are joyful when we understand that they are under the authority of a sovereign God who is accomplishing his purposes through them. You can’t grow on the mountain top, only in the valley.
Verse 3 says through this testing, we learn endurance. How else do we learn endurance if we aren’t being forced to endure? Many love the top of the mountain but hate the climb. The climb is where the fruit is. The climb is where the work on our hearts is done.
Think of a trial in your own life (whether it’s big or small): if the goal is just to fix your circumstances, then you are setting yourself up for constant frustration. Oftentimes in life the circumstance won’t get fixed like you want it to. And sometimes it won’t get fixed at all! And if it ever does get fixed the way you want it, something else will come up. You will live in constant anxiety.
But if your ultimate goal is not to just fix your circumstances but to know God and to grow in God, then rejoice because no matter what your circumstances, you will achieve your goal. God has designed trials for your growth in godliness. Write this down: “trials are joy when God is our goal.”
Learn to live for Christ’s reward instead of the world’s promises. Verse 12 says that those who endure trials are blessed. What is your definition of blessed? The house with the white picket fence, 2 kids and a dog? Or enduring the trial, becoming like Jesus, and learning to be in true awe and adoration of him and wanting him to say “well done” more than anything else?
Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 4:17: “For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.”
Write this down: trials are never outside of God’s control. God is in control. Relax. Some of you who are worriers are the biggest false prophets in your own life. The Bible doesn’t speak too good about false prophets! Trust in the Lord, don’t live in anxiety and fear. Freaking out is not a fruit of the Spirit. God doesn’t want you going to bed with a helmet, a cup, and a firearm. He wants you to trust him. HE is in control, not you.
We have responsibility in our temptations (13-15)
All over scripture, God tests his people for their own good. But testing and tempting are two different things. In verses 13-15 we are assured that God does not tempt us.
Every trial brings temptation with it. When we face financial difficulty, we are tempted to distrust God’s provision. When someone dear to us dies, we are tempted to question God’s love. When we experience unjust suffering, we are tempted to question God’s justice. But know this: God may test us, but according to verse 13, He does not, cannot, and will not tempt us. We are responsible in temptations.
In this section of scripture we learn that God is entirely sinless. James holds up the mirror in your moment of temptation and says, “friend, it is you.” We have no one else to blame but ourselves for our sin. And this is a really important point for us to make this morning.
It is easier to put the fault on others, blame our upbringing, our friends, our family, our government, our condition, or anything else we can think of. This doesn’t mean different factors don’t affect us all in different ways, but the teaching of Scripture is clear: the fault for my sin lies with me. There is a problem at the core of who you are and who I am. In the words of Paul in Romans 7:18, “For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh.” So what is the answer to our predicament?
God is faithful for our salvation (16-18)
So, what do we do during trials and temptations, when we are so prone to fix our eyes on our circumstances that we miss what God has in store? What do we do in the midst of temptations, when we are more open to being dragged away and enticed by the desires of our flesh? We remember that God is faithful for our salvation.
With God, James tells us in 1:17, “there is no variation or shadow cast by turning.” In your trials and temptations, don’t believe the lies. Remember that God is good, so very good. And He wants that which is good for you. Eve made this mistake in the garden and we as humanity have been living on repeat ever since.
Questioning God’s goodness and his salvation turns our hearts to false saviors. So trust Him in your trials, and turn to Him in your temptations. He is the source of everything good (v. 17). This passage teaches us three different aspects of God’s goodness:
His goodness is unchanging. God is perpetually, constantly, consistently good. He never gets in a bad mood. He never changes for the worse, and He never changes for the better because He is already perfectly and ultimately and wonderfully good in every way, and you can’t get any better than God. If He could change for the better, that would mean He wasn’t ultimately good in the first place, but He is.
His goodness is undeserved. Verse 18 says that God chose to give us birth through the “message of truth.” We’re going to see a lot about works in James, but the foundation is all about grace. God has given us new life based not on our works but on His grace. He chose to give us birth! He chose to take His Word and write it on our hearts, hearts that were sinful to the core. This is the gospel, the message of Christianity—anything good in you is because of God’s undeserved goodness toward you! God is the source of every good thing in us. Were it not for Him, everything in us would be bad. We need His undeserved goodness to change us from the inside out. This is what faith relies on at every level.
His goodness is unending. We are the “firstfruits of His creatures” (v. 18). The picture of firstfruits carries the idea of a foretaste of that which is to come. What God has done in our lives to change our hearts by His goodness is only a preview of the day to come when He will make all things new in all creation. And the work He has done in our new birth will one day lead to a new heaven and a new earth where there will be no more trials and no more temptations.
Conclusion
Friend, if you get anything from this message let it be this: just because your circumstances aren’t good doesn’t mean that your God isn’t good either. It actually means, according to James 1, that you have an incredible opportunity to experience the might and the power of your savior in your life. You have the chance to grow and to change and to become more like him.
Unfortunately, many take those opportunities to grow in a different way: to grow poorly. To take on the pain and become painful and rotten to their own core. But it wasn’t a God who is bad who brought that pain, it was an adversary who desperately wants to keep you from seeing the goodness of your creator.
Do not allow the smokescreen of your trial to keep you from preserving and becoming a blessed and more mature believer in Christ. James tells us to consider it joy when these things come… because they will. Good and bad people, just and unjust, trials will come. Who are you letting it create you to be?