JAMES 1 HOW TO RESPOND TO TRIALS2017 Teaching by Jerry B Simmons

Teaching Transcript: James 1 How To Respond To Trials

You are listening to Fervent Word, an online Bible study ministry with teachings and tools to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. The following message was taught by Jerry Simmons in 2017.

This past week at the Pastors Conference, we had a really great time just sitting with the Lord and hearing from the Lord. And I've been describing the conference a little bit as I've had opportunity to share a little bit here and there on Wednesdays and with people individually. And I've been describing it as I went into this Pastors Conference on a spiritual stretcher.

I went in just really in need of the time away with the Lord and really in a need of hearing from the Lord. The past couple of months for me have been very intense and very difficult. And by no means would I attempt to say that I have the most difficulty of anybody ever or anybody even in this room.

We all have different trials and different difficulties. And that's what James is talking about here in chapter one.

And for me, this past season has been very difficult and very intense and been a lot of discouragement and a lot of pressure and stress and incredibly long hours and just a real intense time.

It brought me to a point where you've heard it described and maybe you've experienced that idea of hitting the wall and brought me to the point where there was just days of just no energy, no motivation, no will, no desire for anything and just trying to push through and be faithful in the midst of all of that.

And then on a stretcher, I went into this Pastors Conference. And there during that time, the Lord really ministered to my heart and refreshed me. I was discharged after a few days in ICU, spiritually speaking, and sent home with some spiritual therapy, not physical therapy, but spiritual therapy with some exercises to do.

And the Lord is really just continuing to do a work. And I'm thankful for that. And it's appropriate considering this passage that God has before us as we talk about these trials. And it really speaks to me personally about where I'm at and what the Lord wants to do. And now as we go forward, we're in the month of November.

Again, it's the month of Thanksgiving. And I wanted to share with you one thing that I'm thankful for. You know what I'm thankful for? I am really thankful for meat thermometers. I don't know if you're thankful for meat thermometers, but I really am. My skills in the kitchen are legendary,right? You've heard stories.

You've heard tales of my exploits in the kitchen. They're not victories. They're other kinds of legends where I can't believe you tried to cook with that in the kitchen in that way and put Saran wrap in the oven. Janine was just reminding me of that just yesterday, I think it was, or the day before. But it's the stuff of legend.

But one thing that's great about meat thermometers and the reason why I'm so thankful is even though I'm so terrible in the kitchen, I still have to cook. But at least with a meat thermometer, I know we won't die. Even if it doesn't taste good, even if it's burnt or overcooked, at least I know we're not going to die because the food has not been cooked properly.

With a thermometer, even I can tell when something is done. And as I think about that in the context of our lives, there is a thermometer that the Lord has that is he can seeright into where we are. He can seeright into our hearts. And he looks at me and he says, you know, Jerry, you're not quite done yet.

You're not quite done yet. You're not quite finished in the work that I want to do. And he doesn't need a thermometer to see because he can see. He knows where I'm at. He knows what's going on in my heart and the things that need to take place in my life to bring me to completion. But I'm not there yet. I'm not done yet. And that's okay because God's not done yet.

That is, God's not done cooking me yet. He's not done with the work that he wants to do. I will be done. That's the promise of God that he will bring to completion those who have believed in Jesus Christ. And when God is done, then I will be done. But in the meantime, God is still doing some cooking.

He's still doing some preparation. He's turning up the heat and bringing me to the point of completion. And he does this in our lives through the useful tool called trials. And we all experience trials.

We all have things that we face in this life that are difficult or hard or painful, the things that bring heartache, things that are very stressful, things that bring great worry and anxiety, things that we experience, again, with the broad brush of trials.

And it might be in our finances. It might be in our marriage. It might be in our workplace. It might be in a variety of things. And it might be in all of those things all at once. We experience these trials. And it's not so much that God has to think of creative ways to bring difficulty into our lives.

The reality is we live in a sinful, fallen world, and we are sinful and fallen ourselves. And so hurt and difficulty and pain, it's just a part of life. And what God does is he uses these things that exist and these difficulties that are happening around us. He doesn't have to invent them.

They're already happening because of our sinful condition. But he then takes those things that the enemy means for evil, and he does something good with them. And he uses trials in our lives to work in us. It's like putting us in the oven to bring us to the correct temperature, to bring us to completion.

And so God allows these things because he can use them to help us grow. As we look at James chapter one this morning, I've titled the message, How to Respond to Trials, How to Respond as the Heat Gets Turned Up, as things are facing us that are very difficult and tough for us.

And like I shared at the beginning, not necessarily that we need to compare our trials to each other because it's all relative to what God knows we can handle and where we're at and what we need. And we can be going through incredibly difficult things at any point in our lives, no matter if we're young or no matter if we're old,

we will have these trials that we face because, well, God is continuing to work. And so we need to know how to respond to them well. We need to learn how to relate to these difficulties and these heartaches and these hardships that we face.

And so James here gives us some very practical ways, some practical things that we can do in responding to the trials that we face. And we'll look at three responses that we need to have to these trials. The first one is found in verses one through four. The first response that we have is to rejoice that God is working on you or working in you.

Rejoice that God is at work in your life. Looking again at these verses, it says in verse one, James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad, greetings. My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials,

knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. Here at the beginning of the letter, James introduces himself. He is a bondservant or a slave of God. We also know that James, however, is the half-brother of Jesus. Joseph and Mary, after Jesus was born, went on to have other children.

James is one of them. Jude, the other letter that we'll look at in a few weeks, he was one of them, one of the brothers of Jesus. And so here we have James, and he introduces himself as a slave. And he was not a believer during the life and ministry of Jesus, but after the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus appeared to James,

and James turned to Jesus Christ, and he became a follower and became really an important part of the church in Jerusalem and the leadership of the church. And so as you read about James, like throughout the book of Acts, this is that James, that leader in the church, that half-brother of Jesus. But one of the things that we recognize about James is his practicality.

He was a guy who just got down to business. I mean, he just wentright into it. And you can see this here. Sometimes when you read Paul's letters, his introduction is like eight verses long, but it's one sentence. But it's eight verses long. It's thought upon, thought upon, thought. James here says, look, I'm James. I'm a slave of God.

I'm writing to the 12 tribes. Greetings. Now count it joy when you face various trials. Got that out of the way. Finally, that took too long. Sorry, my introduction was so long. But let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Let's get down into the meat of this. Count it all joy when you fall into various trials. He jumpsright into very practical.

This is the way that James is throughout his letter. You can see that. And he says, here's what you need to do. You're facing trials. You're facing difficulty. You have issues in your life and hardship and things that are extremely painful. What do you need to do? Count it all joy.

I think if I was in the midst of a trial and James came up to me and said, hey, count it all joy, Jerry, I'd be like, whoa, you need to step back. Can you be more gentle? But here he is writing to these people in the midst of trial. And he says, you need to count it as joy, not in a harsh way and not even,

I would say, in a compassionate way, but just here is the exhortation and here's what we need. And even if you're in the midst of trial this morning, here is something that you need to hear. You need to count it all joy. It's not easy instruction to follow, but it is necessary instruction.

You need to learn. I need to learn to look at life's difficulties and not become bittered by them and not to become soured by them, but to count them as joy. And he's not saying you have to pretend to be joyful even though you're hurting. He's not saying you shouldn't be hurting.

He's saying, look at the trial and evaluate what you know and take joy from that. Notice he says in verse three, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. Joy is not the normal response to trials. It's not the first response. Even if we've been around and we know that's what God wants,

it's still not our automatic response. But what James is saying is, look at what you know. Look at the things that you know about your life and about the working of God, and then count it as joy because of what you know.

My brethren counted all joy knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. I think maybe another way to say this, James is saying, do the math. Do the math. We do the math all the time. We're doing calculations in our mind.

Let's say you're going to upgrade your phone. And in upgrading your phone, you're going to be doing some math. Now, of course, when you're upgrading your phone, you can get the just cheapest thing available, or you can spend some money and get something different.

Now, why would you spend money or more money when you could spend less money and get a phone? Why would you spend more money and get a different phone? Well, there's different factors that you're evaluating.

If you're going to go buy a car, sure, you could just go buy the cheapest car, but then you'll end up with what I have parked on the street next to my house that doesn't move anywhere. You could just spend a little and not get hardly anything for it. Or you could spend some more money and get something that's more reliable. And there's calculations that you're doing.

There's math that you're doing. Sure, you could just get the cheaper one, but perhaps it's worth it to spend a little bit extra on this one because it's going to last longer. If I have to buy this cheap thing twice, then maybe it's actually cheaper to spend money on the more expensive one. We're doing the math. We're calculating things and we know how to do that.

Well, James says, look, when you're experiencing hardship and trial in life, you need to do the math. Nobody likes to spend the money, perhaps, or nobody likes to experience the trial or the difficulty. But here's what you need to understand. There's more than just the pain in this thing that you're experiencing.

In fact, there is a working of God in your life in the midst of this trial. And so you can count it all joy because of what you know, that you know that the testing of your faith produces patience.

Patience, well, might not be your favorite thing. You might not go, oh, patience. I can get patience. Oh, great. Well, that makes it worth it. You know, with that sarcastic tone,right? Like, no, that's not worth it. I was listening to Pastor Raul Reese teach this passage, and he got to this verse. He was talking about patience. And he said, you know, I hate patience.

You know, I think we can all relate to that. Everybody knows you don't pray for patience,right? Because how does God give you patience? The testing of your faith produces patience. Yeah, God will give you trials. This is the idea, you know, because that's what produces patience. And it's one of those things we know we need it, but we don't really want to get it,right?

We want to have it, but not to get it. We don't want to go through that process. That word patience, it could also be translated endurance. It's that quality that does not surrender to difficult circumstances. Pastor David Guzik describes patience this way.

Patience does not describe a passive waiting, but an active endurance. It isn't so much the quality that helps you sit quietly in the doctor's waiting room as it is the quality that helps you finish a marathon. And think about the difference between those two things. Now, there is a patience that's required,

and I think that's something we also are all familiar with. It was just last week that Kim and I were in the waiting room for, I don't know, it was like eight hours at the doctor's waiting for results and things to find out whether she was experiencing a kidney stone or appendicitis. And it turned out to be a kidney stone, which was, praise the Lord.

But there was a lot of waiting, and we had to have patience. She more than me because she was the one in pain, but I still felt like it was harder for me than it was for her,right? Patience. But then there's also the kind of patience that says, I got to finish this marathon. It's an endurance that says, I'm in pain.

My feet hurt. My joints hurt. My muscles are tired. I'm thirsty. I'm hungry. There's a hill ahead of me. There's all these reasons why I should just quit this marathon, but I'm going to persist and to carry on and to not quit and to finish the marathon. That's this quality that is being described here.

This is what is produced in us in the midst of trials. It's not the only character or quality that God is working on, but James mentions it. This is one of the highlights.

This is one of the key characteristics of what trials and difficulties produce in our lives, that endurance to not quit no matter what. The author of Hebrews says this is an important quality. He says, for you have need of endurance so that you have, after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise.

You need endurance so that after you've endured and finished the marathon and waited the eight hours in the waiting room, that you receive the promise that God has given to you. You see, we need patience so that we make it to the end and receive the promises that God has for us.

We need to persist. We need to press on. We need to carry through. And the way that God develops that in us is by allowing these trials and difficulties and hurts and hardships that we face. And God is at work in the midst of it, producing in us this patience that we desperately need.

In verse four, he says, but let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

So he says there's this patience that's being produced, but there's a responsibility that you and I have in this, in letting patience have its work. Because we all know what it's like in the midst of a trial, in the midst of a difficulty, in the midst of pain and heartache.

Our first objective many times is to get out. And sometimes through means that God has said, you shouldn't go that way. We want to satisfy our need to get out of the pain by any means necessary. But God says, no, follow these parameters.

Here's my guidelines for your life. Stay within these boundaries, even though it hurts. And we're looking this way. We're looking that way.

And James says, no, no, you need to stick to what God has said and let patience have its perfect work, even though it's hard and even though it's painful, even though you don't want to be here, be there where God has you and let patience finish the work. Because the end result is that you'll be complete and perfect and lacking nothing.

Now, that doesn't describe me yet. I'm not done yet. You stick the meat thermometer in me. It's still at like 10 degrees. There's a long way to go before I'm complete, before I'm done. And I need patience.

And so God is developing that. It's produced in trials. It's produced in affliction. It's produced in the midst of hardship. And in the midst of that, I need to let patience have that work. I can fight against God and I can try to run from God. And there is temptation. I've thought, I've even told the guys,

like, hey, maybe we should just shut down the church, just walk away. It'd be much easier, kind of, except for Jonah found out how hard it is to run from God, didn't he?

There needs to be the pressing on, the pushing forward in what God has called us to. And we can fight against God and we can try to get out of the trial, or we can be persistent and let God work. It's just like putting something in the oven,right? You put all the ingredients in, you get it all prepared, you put it in the oven,

and now it's just the matter of time. It needs time in the heat in order to finish cooking. And that's where we are. We have all the ingredients. We have what we need in Christ Jesus. We have what we need. And God has provided for that. He's put everything together. And now he just puts us in the oven.

And we just need to sit there with these ingredients that he's given to us and to carry out the time and to let that come to completion instead of running from it. Now, this is a work that God does because of his love for us.

The author of Hebrews and Hebrews chapter 12 talks about chastening. And we often think about chastening as like, you know, direct penalty, like, hey, you did something wrong. Here's a spanking.

But chastening is that idea of training, that molding, that shaping, which again is something that God does oftentimes with the trials and afflictions and pains that we experience in this life. And in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 11, the author of Hebrews says this, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present.

And all God's people said, amen,right? No chastening is joyful for the present, but painful. None of us immediately take joy and say, oh, thank you, Jesus. Car accident. It's what I've always wanted.

I've always wanted to be yelled at like this. It's just, oh, such joy,right? No, no, no. It seems painful. It's painful. Nevertheless, afterward, it yields a peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. God is training us. Again,

he chastens us because he loves us. And so here's what James is saying. You can rejoice in the midst of trials. Here's how to respond.

Respond with rejoicing, not because you like the pain, not because it's so fun to be going through this, but because you've done the math and you understand

God is working in my life. That's why I'm experiencing difficulty and hardship and pain. We sometimes get it backwards. We think we're experiencing difficulty, and that means that God's abandoned us, that God's forgotten about us. He's given up on us. And no, in fact, the opposite is true.

Count it joy because of what you know. And sometimes in the midst of trial, there's a lot of things that we don't know,right? Why am I going through this? What's God going to do in this? How is this going to work out? There's a lot of things I don't know. And sometimes there's great temptation to let the unknown steal the joy. But don't do that.

Don't let the unknown steal the joy. Count it all joy because of what you know. God is at work, and he loves you so much that he is going to be working in your life to do what's best for you. He has eternity in view, and we'll talk about that in the final point. He has eternity in view,

and he's doing what's best for you for all of eternity. And it's in your best interest, the things that God is bringing you throughright now, and he can meet you where you're at. And so count it as joy because God isright there with you and working in your life. Not only is there the thermometer,right, when you're cooking,

but there's also the thermostat where you're setting the temperature. And when you're cooking a turkey, perhaps you're setting the temperature to theright degree, and then you're checking it with the thermostat to make sure that it's cooked all the way. Listen, God, he doesn't really need the thermometer because he can seeright through. He knows exactly where you're at.

The thermostat, he has his hand on that. And a thermostat is, well, a thermostat on our ovens are probably not very precise, but the thermostat that God uses is incredibly precise. That is, that God uses just theright amount of heat. I mentioned Jonah earlier.

Think about Jonah for a minute. In the book of Jonah, we find that God speaks to Jonah the prophet and says, allright, Jonah, I have a message for you. Here's a people. Go deliver this message. And Jonah, the prophet of God, says, I don't want to deliver that message. And he runs the opposite direction. He gets on a boat.

He heads the opposite way. And now he's going to experience some chastening. It tells us in Jonah chapter one, verse four, that the Lord sent a great wind and there was a mighty tempest so that the ship was about to be broken up. And I find that really interesting.

A great wind, a mighty tempest.

And the ship was about to be broken up. It brought the shipright to the brink of destruction. It didn't completely destroy the ship, but it brought it to the place where it was about to be broken up because God has his hand on the thermostat.

He was controlling exactly the ferocity, ferocity, ferociousness, was something like that, how vicious that storm was. He was controlling it exactly so that it would only bring the ship to be about to be broken up. And then as they work through that, the sailors and Jonah and Jonah convinces them, it's me, you know, just cast me overboard.

And then the sea is calmed because God is the one who has his hand on the thermostat. So now the sea is calmed and Jonah's in the sea. It tells us in Jonah chapter one, verse 17, the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. God still has his hand on the thermostat for Jonah. And he's prepared.

He's designed. He's put together a specific great fish to come and swallow Jonah. And he's going to spend three days in the belly of that fish, which brings him to the point where he calls out to God in repentance. Now, God used that whole situation to reach the sailors.

It tells us that they worshiped God after this.

But notice all of this was God working in Jonah primarily. God was working in Jonah. It was his love for Jonah. And God was going to use Jonah to, well, reach these sailors to reach Nineveh. But God loved Jonah.

And so he wasn't going to let him just run off. He was going to reach him. And he did so.

He put him in the oven with this storm, with this great fish, with just the exactright amount of heat necessary for Jonah to come back to where he needed to be. When we experience trials and difficulty, understand it's not more than you can bear.

It's not like he Nebuchadnezzar. Remember when he got upset with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? And he's like, allright, light up the furnace seven times hotter than before. God doesn't do that. Just like wipe them out. No, he, because of his love for us, he does allow the trials and the hurts and the difficulties,

but he's got his hand on the thermostat and he's saying, okay, just the exactright amount. That's all that's necessary for this patience to be produced. God's working in your life. You can count it all joy.

Well, the next thing that we do in responding to trials found in verses five through eight is that we need to follow God's instructions. As we experience trials and we learn to count it all joy and to rejoice in the fact that God is at work, well, we need to continue him to allow him to do that work by following his instructions.

Check out verse five. He says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. If any of you lacks wisdom now in the midst of a great trial, that is one thing that we all feel, that lack of wisdom.

What do I do? How do I handle this situation? How do I handle this pain? That wisdom to know how to go forward and how to deal with the things that we're facing. Oh, we desperately need wisdom in the midst of trial. And so if you lack wisdom, he says, then let him ask God.

And God has wisdom for you.

God has, you could put it this way, a recipe for you. As legendary as my skills in the kitchen are, I actually can follow a recipe. I just need it to be very detailed. You can't make any assumptions. Souffle this or marinate that or whatever. Like, no, no, no.

Like more deep, like put juice on this and this amount, not a pinch, not a sliver, you know, but like how do you measure that? I need, Kim calls me her sous chef, but sometimes I'm really frustrating because I'm like, okay, but specifically, and she's like, like, you know, like half a cup. I go, okay, well, where's the half a cup measure?

No, no, no. Don't measure. Just pour half a cup. How do I pour half a cup if I don't have half a cup? I don't, you know, I just don't work that way. I can't do that. But if I have a recipe, I could mostly follow it. I might need some help here and there. Listen, God has a recipe for you. You can ask God for that recipe.

He has specifics. He has details about how to bring this together. Listen, you come to me with your trial. I don't have the recipe for you in the kitchen or out of the kitchen. I don't have the recipe for you. Now, I do have some great principles found in the word of God.

I do have some lessons that I've learned from experience and walking with God. These are things I would describe as ingredients for your recipe. There's ingredients that, yeah, this, you know, is part of that and this is part of that.

But the exact recipe of how God wants to use all of these elements of your life and these elements of the scriptures and these elements of his character and nature and how God wants them to bring them together for you to walk a certain way in the midst of this trial. I don't have that exact recipe for you. And you know what?

The person next to you doesn't. And the expert, you know, selling his face on the billboard, he doesn't have the exact recipe for you either. Again, there's some ingredients and we need those things and we need counsel from one another. But nobody has the exact recipe for you except for God.

He says, if you need wisdom, let him ask of God. I don't know if you saw this painting in the news this past week. It's an amazing painting of Colonel Sanders from KFC and some guy named Mike Edget.

Now, this came about because Mike Edget realized he was looking at KFC's account on Twitter and he says, you know, it's interesting. KFC only follows 11 people. Now, if you're not familiar with Twitter, that's kind of unusual, especially for an official KFC account to only follow 11 people. And so he started checking it out and he thought it was interesting.

Wow, this KFC account follows five Spice Girls. I don't know if you guys remember the Spice Girls way back in the day, huh? Five Spice Girls. And then the rest of the people he follows are named Herb or Herb. And he realized, hey, it's 11 herbs and spices.

Nice little marketing scheme that KFC had going there. So he announced that and shared the news and they rewarded him with a painting of himself on the back of Colonel Sanders and a year's worth of KFC. And so he tweeted, dreams do come true.

It's not my dream. I don't know if it's your dream, but for him, it was a dream. And his love for KFC paid off in dividends. 11 herbs and spices. Now, listen, if you gave me those 11 herbs and spices and some chicken and even the equipment that KFC uses, I still could not make you fried chicken. I would need the recipe.

I would need the instructions. I would need the details of step by step how to put, I can't just use the ingredients. I need to know how to go forward. In the same way, James says, if you lack wisdom, ask of God. He gives to all liberally and without reproach. Without reproach means you come to him saying,

Lord, I don't know what to do in this situation. He doesn't smack you and say, you stupid. How come you don't know what to do? No, he doesn't rebuke you because you don't know. He gives liberally. He gives freely. He wants you to know what's best for you in this situation and how to go forward. He wants to give you the wisdom that you need.

So ask God again. He is the only one who has the exact recipe for you. Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher, puts it this way. He said, we are all so ready to go to books, to go to men, to go to ceremonies, to anything except to God.

Consequently, the text does not say, let him ask books nor ask priests, but let him ask of God. And we do a good job of that, don't we? Asking a lot of people for their ideas, trying to come up with our own ideas about what to do and how to handle. And to a degree,

there's nothing wrong with that. And that should be encouraged. You should be seeking ways to handle the situation you're in. You should be seeking counsel from others and receiving that wisdom. But nobody has the exact recipe for you. There's ingredients and the Lord will use those to contribute to your list of ingredients.

But then it's the Lord who takes those ingredients. And, oh yeah, Trinidad gave you this word. And, you know, this guy gave you this word. And there was this over here and this and that. And then, and then God brings it together and says, okay, now here's how to put all that to work in your life. Here's how to take the next step. If you lack wisdom, ask God.

Ask God. He gives liberally. When you ask, notice this comes with a promise to ask of God and God gives. As Jesus said, seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. When you ask, God will speak.

It doesn't always happen instantly. It's not always in the exact moment that we prefer. But when you ask for wisdom, God will speak. And as God speaks to you, follow his instruction. That's what James is saying. Follow his instruction. Check out verse six. He says,

but let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Ask for wisdom.

You will get wisdom, James says, but you need to ask in faith and without doubting.

Now, it's not so much doubting in the sense of, well, I don't know if God exists, but what he's talking about when he's talking about asking in faith without doubting, he's really talking about putting to practice the things that God gives us and the things that God speaks to us. And doubting, sometimes we hear from the Lord,

but we don't follow through with the instruction that he's given to us. And the end result is we are double-minded. He describes it as being unstable in all of our ways. Think about it this way. Let's say you go out to your driveway tomorrow morning to get into your car to head to work.

And you notice there at the end of your driveway, the neighbor has parked there and is blocking your exit. And so you can't get to work. And so you're frustrated. And so you go to the neighbor, you knock on the door. Excuse me, neighbor, dude, you parked in front of my driveway. You need to move your car so I can get to work. He moves his car. You go on to work.

Then the next day you go back out there and you're ready to head out, but you notice there's this car again parked in your driveway, blocking your way out. You're like, well, Jerry said we had to ask God for wisdom. Okay, God, so what do you want me to do in this situation? Because I'm really frustrated. And God says, love your neighbor. Oh, okay.

Okay. You go knock on the door. Sweet voice. Hey, neighbor. Good morning. I really need to get to work. Could you please move your car? Sure. No problem. He moves his car. You go on to work. The next day you come out again in the morning, there's the neighbor in front of your car again. Knock on the door.

Bleepity blink, blinkity blink. Stupid neighbor, move your car.

Next day you repent. Neighbor's car is there. What's his love your neighbor? Hey, neighbor. Good morning.

Now your neighbor is absolutely convinced you're schizophrenic. Back and forth, back and forth, sometimes loving, sometimes cursing. What is going on with this neighbor? Unstable, double-minded, back and forth. That's how it is so many times in our lives. The Lord does speak to us, but the things that he calls us to,

we need to carry out even when they're difficult, even when they're hard. And we can go back and forth and we know what God wants us to do, but we're not actually doing it. And so we're, well, we're not following the recipe. Imagine if you did that while you were cooking. I put it in the oven. The recipe says for this long, I think I'll do it for this long.

Okay, maybe I better put it back because it's not done yet. Okay, I'll put it back and I'll bring it out and put it back and bring it out. Open the oven, close the oven, you know, back it, like changing your mind. I'm going to follow the recipe. I'm not going to follow the recipe. I'm not going to follow the recipe.

I'm not, you're not going to end up with a good meal because it's not the instructions that were given.

In the same way as we receive instruction from the Lord, we need to follow God's instructions. You know, for me personally, as I shared at the beginning, I was in great need to hear from the Lord as I headed into that conference. And God did meet me there and he gave me some instructions.

And now I need to do my part and follow the recipe and press on and go forward with the instructions that God has given in order for that work to be completed. I need to let patience have its perfect work as I follow the instructions that God has given to me,

follow his recipe for the life that he has set before me. Well, finishing off, the final response found in verses nine through 12 is to respond with glory in God's promises. Even in the midst of trial, even in the midst of difficulty, we can find glory.

This is another way of saying rejoicing in God's promises. Verse nine says, let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation, but the rich in his humiliation, because as a flower of the field, he passes away.

For no sooner has the sun risen with a burning heat than it withers the grass, its flower falls and its beautiful appearance perishes. So the rich man also will fade away in his pursuits. Now, James here in verses nine through 12 begins to talk about the rich and the poor.

And I would suggest this morning that he's using this as illustration. He's still talking about the same topic of trials. So don't get too distracted by the finances part of it. Although, of course, finances are a big part of our trials and the things that we face in this life.

He's still talking about dealing with and handling the trials. In fact, you'll see that in verse 12 as he goes on to say that, blessed are you when you endure temptation. So same topic, same subject. The word lowly, as he talks about the lowly brother in verse nine, it speaks of being low. It speaks of being abased or in the midst of a trial.

And then the word rich, literally, it just means to abound. And of course, that could mean abound financially, but it also could speak to that, just that abounding in life that you're not facing those afflictions and difficulties and troubles like the person who's in the midst of a trial.

And so as he speaks about those who are lowly and those who abound, he says, here's what you need to do. You need to glory in the things that are yet to come. And this is really important for us because in this life, as we're evaluating the things that we're experiencing, whether good or bad,

we don't always value things correctly. There is a tendency for us to evaluate the absence of problems or the abundance of wealth or the abundance of things or the abundance of anything as God's blessing and God loves me and God's pleased with me.

And then when I don't have that abundance, God's upset with me. God's displeased with me. And so wealth is God's blessing. Poverty is God's displeasure. And we can come to that conclusion and have that opinion. And that was what the Jewish people believed in the time of Jesus.

They thought the rich people were the ones that God loved and the poor people were the ones that God didn't love so much. And we can think when there's no trials in my life, when I'm, you know, things are just kind of running smoothly and things are going along well, man, God must be so happy with me. And then when things are really difficult, God must be so upset with me.

But that's not the reality. That's not the way that God works. We don't value things the way that God values things. Of course, you can look at Job as an example of that. We look at Job and we recognize he is the ultimate example of one who experienced trial. But as you look at his life,

you recognize the Lord declared at the very beginning, all the way to the end, Job was righteous.

This wasn't God punishing Job because he did wrong things. Job was righteous. This wasn't God upset with Job or angry with Job. God was proud of Job. God was pleased with Job.

And we have a tendency to look at affliction or lack of affliction and think that that speaks to whether or not God's pleased with us or loves us or is happy with us. And they're completely different things. They're not related. And so what James does here is he calls us then to look not at the situation itself,

but into eternity to help us evaluate things in a much better and more accurate way. He says, the lowly brother should glory in his exaltation. The lowly brother should glory in his exaltation. Now the lowly brother is not exalted because he's lowly.

So what's this exaltation? Well, again, he's talking about the future. He's talking about the promises of God. This is another way of saying in verse, like you said in verse two, count it all joy, glory in the exaltation, that there is a work that is going on. There is a work that God is doing.

There's a promised future, a promised exaltation that God has given to the lowly, to the humble, to those who are hurting.

And so in the midst of a trial, you need to look at the promised blessings in the future. But then James talks about the abounding brother and what's he to glory. And he says, but the rich in his humiliation. So the lowly glories in his exaltation.

The rich needs to learn to glory in his humiliation. And he gives the illustration of a flower. It blooms. It's nice, but it fades. We see this in the foothills around us,right? In the rainy season, they all turn green and it doesn't take long. The sun comes up in the summertime and then boom,

they're all brown and dead again. We see that. We recognize that it doesn't last very long. And here's what James is saying.

He's saying, look, the rich, well, they need to look into eternity because the things of this life will not last, just like the grass and the flowers in the field do not last. He says at the end of verse 11, so the rich man also will fade away in all his pursuits.

And so there's a fading away. In the place of abounding, there is a tendency to lose sight of eternity.

There's a tendency to forget about that because, well, we're so satisfied with the abundance that we get in this moment, in this time of life. And James says to the lowly and to the abounding, you both need to look to eternity. Both conditions, being lonely, lonely,

lowly, or lonely and abounding, both have their challenges. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 19, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. They both have challenges. They both have real difficulties. It's easy for someone in a lowly position to look at someone abounding and think they have it so much easier.

You know, I would much rather, Lord, let me struggle with the abounding, you know, difficulties. And the Lord may. You might remember the apostle Paul. He said in Philippians chapter four, he says, I know how to be abased and I know how to abound. Everywhere in all things, I've learned how to be both full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. And then he goes on in the next verse to say,

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Paul experienced both sides. I know abundance. I know what that's like. And that has struggles. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I also know what it's like to suffer need and to be hurting and to be lacking. And well, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

As you look to the Lord, as you look to the promise of eternity, it sets things in the proper order as we experience trials specifically. And so he says in verse 12, blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him.

Blessed is the man who endures temptation. Now the word for temptation here is the same word for trial in verse two, trial and temptation. There are some things that we could talk about, perhaps, you know, about the differences between trials and temptations, but there's also an aspect and an element of,

well, they are the same thing, trials and temptations. Now, of course, the enemy wants to use all of these difficulties and afflictions for you in your life for evil. But what the enemy desires to use for evil, God desires to use for good.

And so there is an element of trial and temptation in all of this. But the point is endure it.

Endure it. Rejoice that God is working on you. Follow God's instruction and glory in God's promises.

One of those promises being, if you endure, when you've been approved, you receive the crown of life. There's a reward. There's eternal reward and value in holding fast to the Lord in the midst of lowliness and affliction and difficulty. He says, the Lord has promised to those who love him.

There's a promise. And James is saying, glory in God's promises, glory in what God has promised for eternity, glory and focus on that. If you glory in this life in your abundance or maybe just a little that you have, you know, whatever, if you're glorying in this life, if you're glorying in yourself,

if you're glorying in the things that are temporary, well, you're going to be double-minded. You're going to be rocking back and forth. You're going to be all over the place. But if you glory, if you set your hope on the things of eternity, you will endure to the end and receive the crown of life.

Now, again, we can look at the lowly and the abounding and think, man,

why can't I just be blessed and have the abounding? Again, I would encourage you to consider. Wealth doesn't mean God's pleasure or God's blessing necessarily. It doesn't. I think about it this way.

Advanced classes are not classes for better students that are easier than everybody else has it. Right? You're a really amazing student. So I'm going to give you the advanced class, which means you don't got to study. You just got to kick back in school. And listen, school's easy if you don't do the work.

Well, maybe it's kind of hard because you still got to sit there the whole time, but still it's easier,right? Advanced classes are harder.

Listen, if you're going through the advanced classes of life, the advanced courses of affliction and trial and difficulty, it doesn't mean that God says, you know, you're a bad student, so you're going to have to suffer. God's saying, no, you're a good student. I'm going to do good things. I'm producing patience.

I'm doing a mighty work. That means, yeah, you got to work harder. But it's because he loves us. It's because he's at work.

And again, we can look with envy at those who aren't struggling with stuff, but God says, look, I'm putting you in the advanced class. You're a good student. I want to work in your life. I've got great promises for you. Glory in God's promises,

whether you're in a heavy trial or not, you can hold fast to those promises of God, being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the call,

the according to his purpose. And our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Fix your eyes on the unseen, on the promises of God and glory in those promises. God is at work in your life. He will finish that work. And as much as that trial and that hurt and that pain screams at you and tells you you're miserable and God hates you and God's done with you and God doesn't want to work with you anymore,

recognize what the Bible says, recognize what God has declared. The opposite of truth is true. And you can rejoice that God is working in you. You can rejoice. God is at work in your life. It doesn't feel joyful at the moment. It's painful. But God is at work in your life because he loves you.

So follow his instructions. Ask him for the recipe and then carry it out. Ask, ask him for, for, for those insights and that wisdom that you need and then live it out.

And set your joy, set your glory, set your hope, not on these temporary things, but on the promises of God and trust him enough to go forward, believing him at his word. That's how to respond to trials.

Amen. The worship teams that come up and close us in a song. And as they do, I would just encourage you to ask God for wisdom, whatever you're facing. I don't know what you're going throughright now, but now's a good time. We can call out to the Lord, ask him for wisdom, ask him for instruction, and let him share with us the things that he desires.

And then let's respond to those trials that God has allowed in our lives with rejoicing, following his instruction and glorying in his promises. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word.

Thank you that we can hold on to these things, that we find these truths to be steadfast and immovable in knowing, Lord, that you are on the throne and your hand is on the thermostat and you don't allow more than what we can bear, but you, Lord,

allow just the exactright amount of difficulty and affliction in our lives that we might become the men and women that you've called us to be and know that we can be. And so, Lord, I pray that you would help us to trust you enough to let you do the work that you desire to do, not to fight and run away from these trials,

from these recipes that you've established, Lord, but, Lord, that we would rest in your work in us. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. We pray you have been blessed by this Bible teaching. The power of God to change a life is found in the daily reading of his word.

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