James 1:1-8
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
When I was a kid my dad and I would play whatever sport was in season everyday
I would meet him with a ball to play the second he got home
But we would get 2 minutes in and he would stop to stretch
it drove me nuts but now that im 41 i get it
I need a warm up before I sneeze now
When you think about James you have to picture the impatient kid who has no time to stretch
James is an old pastor compiling his greatest hits of life wisdom
The letter has no warm up no time to stretch before he hits us with the wisdom of a life lived
He can write it because he has done both
He knows hard days are coming for the people he has poured his life out to show Jesus too
He doesn’t want christianity to be something we simply know
He wants it to be the only thing that matters when the bullets of real life fly
We are going to see a few things in this no warm up start to James
Straight To Who We Are, Straight to the Hard Part, Understanding the Promise
Straight to Who We Are
Straight to Who We Are
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ:
To the twelve tribes dispersed abroad.
Greetings.
Youth sports are insane these days
Parents think there kid is the next big leaguer at every baseball practice I am at
So in the midst of people who never played giving the advice I stop them when they tell me about anything to do with Beau or his swing
Every-time give my credentials before i say a word
I have done this at some of the hightest levels …i have the cred to teach my son please stop
James has the credentials to give his wisdom
He is Jesus’ half brother.
If you have siblings imagine your brother lived and claimed to be the promises of God’s coming to rescue his people
Imagine they claimed to be God
Would you say yea i am in for following you to the point it costs me my life?
You would act like James did in Mark 3
Then Jesus went home, but again a crowd gathered. There were so many people that Jesus and his followers could not eat. When his family heard this, they went to get him because they thought he was out of his mind.
What would have to happen for you to believe?
How about seeing them die them come back to life
James saw his brother back from the dead and it changed everything
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
What the gospel does is create the real credentials
Imagine that room when Jesus showed up
Imagine hearing the conversation
Jesus looked at the brother who hadn’t believed
The brother who mocked him and tried to stop him
And his big brother..god himself says James you are the one i left the 99 to die for
You were the prodigal son I bought back with my blood and my life
You can picture the tears and the awe and the hug
Humble awe in what Christ has done for you in the Gospel is the only thing needed for you to be a voice of hope to a lost world
Who he is doesn’t make up his credentials
What Christ has done for Him makes him a leader
Peter established the church in Jerusalem and when he left for missionary work James became the leader of the Jerusalem church
The center of the christian world and His brother had prepared him to give it all to see the gospel spread
His leadership is talked about all over the book of Acts
When James talked people listened
People knew his credentials but how did he remind them of what the Gospel does?
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ:
To the twelve tribes dispersed abroad.
Greetings.
This is the first case study on what the Gospel does to a life
Sam Alberry says Though James is the younger brother of Jesus, far more important than that biological connection is the spiritual one he enjoys. More significant than being the younger brother of Jesus is being one of his people. And the sign of being one of his people is that we devote ourselves to his service.
But what he calls Christians gives our credentials too
We are saved to be part of a family called the church
The idea of a lone ranger christian is absurd in the bible
No one would stay home and livestream because they had travel galdiator practice in first century Rome
You needed each other
The “twelve tribes” is how the people of God were described in the Old Testament.
Through take overs and persecutions God’s people had been scattered from Jerusalem all over the world
This may not fire you up today being described like this but it should
It means that you are grafted into believing Israel (Not the country of Israel thats a conversation of another day) today and
that means every promise of God in the Old Testament and New Testament is yours right now
What are some of them
Hosea promises when he comes for his people you wont even remember the names of the things that have hurt you and addicted you and wounded you
Jeremiah 29:11 is for you right now…Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
And dispersed means that even when it looks like the bad guys are winning your God has you and you can trust him to get you home
He knows he cares and he is doing soemthing about what breaks us to give us a hope and a future and a home forever where the curse will be no more
Not only does James have the street cred…he is telling his loved church you have the credentials to claim every single hope of Jesus in your life
Intro out of the way here we go
Straight to the Hard Part
Straight to the Hard Part
Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
And here comes the pulled hamstring because we have not warmed up
Its like not doing squats for a year then having a beast mode leg day class
You aren’t going to be able to walk for a few days after this one
The hard parts are in the specific words he uses
Notice James says: “Consider”.
He is not telling us so much how to feel as how to think.
He is not saying: Pretend this is fun. Nor is he calling us always to have a sickly grin or stiff upper lip
He is making us question what is the lens my suffering will pass through when it comes
Because he says - WHEN suffering comes not IF
Paul Tripp says we don’t live life based off of our experiences and circumstances. We live based off of how we interpret our experiences and circumstances
How are you interpreting the circumstances of your life right now
This is real life
As you can tell this isn’t our permanent church home
This is a time of questions and looking for me
I hear what other churches have happen when they find a building and i don’t see it happening for us right now like that
I always interpret it
My flesh says maybe god doesn’t love you as much as them maybe you aren’t worth it to God and on and on
But James says think about that think about how wrong that interpretation is based on the Gospel
James knew his old testament inside and out and knew the psalms were the language we need to interpret our pain
Lament psalms are a prayer expressing sorrow, pain, or confusion
Christopher Wright says this about Laments “Lament is not only allowed in the bible it is modeled in abundance. God seems to want to give us as many words as possible with which to fill out our complaint forms as to write our thank-you notes”
Maybe you grew up in a church and thought you always had to look on the brightside
thats not what the bible teaches
Thats not what James is saying
Thats not what the Psalms say
Psalm 42 is one of those
We see Homesick- Exile like us in a world that isn’t how its supposed to be
There is so much pain form this author’s heart.
He has lost home, community, purpose, presence of God, the show of God’s power to save
My tears have been my food day and night,
while all day long people say to me,
“Where is your God?”
When suffering comes doubt rushes in
The question then for God’s people is how are we going to interpret the experiences we know of a fallen world?
He is saying consider how you are going to interpret real life in light of the gospel because it is hard
Thats what the psalmist does in Psalm 3 in the midst of pain and trial when he is faced with doubt
But you, Lord, are a shield around me,
my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.
I cry aloud to the Lord,
and he answers me from his holy mountain.
Selah
How does the psalmist interpret the trial?
How does he answer the trial of our heart to doubt god and consider where he is and what he is doing in our pain
He says that he has made the decision that God is his glory
That means weight
that means on the scales of suffering and truth God is his greatest weight
And he looks to what James saw that incredible day he saw his brother alive
He looks to the holy Hill
That is where sacrafice for sin was made
That is where Jesus died to take the keys from death and funerals and lonliness and the scars we carry
James is saying if you know what happened on that Hill you can have a greater weight in your life then your trials
James had to have a lens like this to be ready to suffer
How would he interpret who God is when bad things happen?
Church history says the jews were enraged at how many people were becoming christian in Rome
So they took James to the top of the temple and told him to yell to his church to stop following Jesus
Instead he repeated his brothers words to them
You will see my brother coming back as God with the clouds of his glory to absoluetly smoke you and get his people home ..my translation
So they threw him from the roof
Bones shattered but he was still alive so they caved his head in with stones and a mallet
What made James face such awful stuff with such resolve?
Becasue he knew what his brother had done
And he knew what his brother promised to do
How can I trust God right now when there are so many things I dont understand right now
How can I answer the lies that tell me he has abandoned you he always does this to you
I remember that I have been saved like James
I was the prodigal he left the 99 to run after to save
So while I wait and still cry out psalms he is my glory my weight
It is an opportunity to gain the most valuable thing on earth: a faith that is complete and lacking nothing; maturity and depth in our relationship with God
How and Why?
because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
And this hit me in these verses
He uses the words trials and testing of your faith interchangeably
Sam Alberry says James explains this thinking in verses 3–4.
In one sense, his point is straightforward: trials teach us to persevere (v 3). They put us in situations where it is not easy to keep going, and where we will only do so with a measure of determination. And perseverance is the means to a wonderful end: that we be “mature and complete, not lacking anything” (v 4). James is talking about being rounded and formed as a Christian, growing into the very people we were created and saved to be
All testing is a shadow of the real test we will all face
One day something will be too big for our bodies to overcome
We will lose friends and loved ones
Death is the ultimate trial and how will we face it
Will be have considered how the testing now gives us a lens of perseverance and determination
Where we can stand and have the anchor that heaven isn’t a consolation prize for hard things but is this real place and these real bodies being everything they were made to be
Will we consider and know our pain in this life has an expiration date because easter happened
Heaven is coming
And it is the place where everything sad will come unture
It is the real place where we will have all we longed for but never had
Where we will hold again what we lost
If you look at getting maturity and perseverance as a crappy prize for suffering and loss you are missing what James is saying
He is saying the real prize is secure
I will hug my baby cousin again without addiction wrecking our lives
That is for sure
What James is saying is that it isn’t an either or..its a both and
You get a lens to get you there …and you get the real heaven too
If that is our lens to interpret trials through we can have hope even when we hurt
Just like James did
Understanding the Promise
Understanding the Promise
Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord, being double-minded and unstable in all his ways.
The greatest question we ask in the face of pain is why
i think maybe we feel like we could survive it if we knew there was a purpose bigger then the pain
James for You What to Do in a Trial
During times of intense pain, it is common to feel a sense of disorientation, to lose our bearings.
When we are disoriented by what is happening James says to cry out to God don’t close off to Him
He Knows He Cares and He Has Done Something About our pain when it looks like the bad guys are winning
We are too ask God for wisdom to have the right lens to interpret life through
We have to understand the promise and Alberry again is so helpful
James for You Understanding the Promise
There is a difference between receiving wisdom and feeling wise. It may well be that when we pray for wisdom, we feel none the wiser for having done so. But that is not the same as saying we have not received wisdom. Verse 5 is a promise. When we ask with the sincerity of heart that James urges on us, “it will be given”. This means that God’s wisdom will direct us in the decisions we then go on to make. We may not feel any more confident, but God will protect us from folly. Whether or not we feel or perceive it at the time, God will have given us wisdom.
When we lack wisdom, as we often do in the heat of trials, we ask God, assured that he will give what we need to receive. That’s the kind of God he is.
Verse 6 gives the warning though
Doubting here means someone who is hedging there bets
it is someone who is hedging there bets
I’ll take a get out of hell free card Jesus but find a better hope in this life
James for You Doubt and Double-Mindedness
They’ll ask God for wisdom, but they’ll also look over their shoulder to see if anyone has anything better on offer. They’ll check out what the Bible says, but they’ll also check out what the wisdom of the world says. They don’t believe God’s ways will necessarily and always be the best ways. They are double-minded: trying to live in more than one direction at once. They think they can switch between worldly wisdom and God’s wisdom at will and get the best of both
We live in what is called a secular culture
And secular comes from a word that means now
We live in a world of get happy now or get out
That is why divorce and suicide is so prominent
We can’t see past the now and we aren’t encouraged too
James is telling us to ask to see more then the now
Don’t just look at what the Gospel does to your sin problem in the past look at what it has to do with your hope issue right now
You never move on from the Gospel and the hope it gives you
Tim Keller said the Gospel is not the ABC’s of the christian life it is the A-Z
James is saying don’t lose the gospel in the disorientation of pain and trial and confusion
you never stop mining it for all of its beauty and hope
When it is your lens through life you see more and more facets you never saw before
It becomes more and more beautiful and meaning ful to you
The Gospel alone offers what we long for
You cannot do this on your own
When we can’t see in the dark we need a hand to get us out
That is why this wisdom book isn’t written to a person it is written to churches
Small gatherings of people beat up by persecution and trials
Living far from what they once knew and how they thought life would go
This is a community letter because Christianity is a community faith
We need people in this room to call to cry to and ask what God is doing too so we can get help to see
We may not have a building yet but we have something better
We have friends we never would have had without this church
I have people i call when I can’t see
You do too if you reach out
James has started off fast to tell us all of this because he lived it
And he was anchored in the pain with the same Gospel we have
Lets Pray
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