Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: “Count It All Joy”
**Reformation Covenant Church**
**Pastor Dennis Tuuri**

Well, I hope you’re singing that song in your homes as we continue to use it during the season of Lent. You know, the nice thing about chants—and the hard thing about chants—is that they’re chants. The nice thing about chants is you actually memorize those particular texts, and so it’s easier for me, at least, to memorize the Beatitudes by being able to sing them, and I hope that’s what you’re doing as well.

Today we’re going to begin a series going through some portions of the Book of James, and James has a lot of connection between what we see in James and what’s in Matthew, and specifically between the Beatitudes as well.

So this last Beatitude that we just sang really is today’s message: count it all joy when we counter various persecutions. The sermon text for today is James 1:2-8. And the topic is count it all joy. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

James 1:2-8: James, a bond servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve 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. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

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. 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 that man not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your most holy word. We thank you that we have been brought to life through your word, and we pray that you would increase us now, Lord God, in our sanctification by this word. Transform us by it. We know that it is unlike every other book. It has this power to change and transform us as the Holy Spirit ministers to us through it, and we can’t understand it like any other book without the aid of the Holy Spirit. So we pray, Lord God, that you would bless us as we consider this text, that we’d understand it and be transformed by it.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

So my wife and I were gone on vacation for a week. That’s why I wasn’t here last Lord’s Day. We spent last Lord’s Day in the afternoon in Las Vegas, and after we went to church that morning, we went out to the Valley of Fire State Park. It’s about an hour outside of Las Vegas—a lot of volcanic rock formations that are quite interesting and beautiful, a lot of red rock and red sand. We got out at one of the places, one of the points of interest, and you were supposed to walk for a mile round trip to this place called Mouse’s Tank, and it said that there would be petroglyphs—you know, ancient carvings from Indians.

So, you know, I’m freshly recovered from my situation with my tendon. So we’re walking carefully. The ground is like rock covered with this red sand, so it’s a little tricky, and there’s rocks jutting up everywhere that you can trip on. So we’re being very careful, right? We’re watching our feet and we’re kind of walking along and being careful because we want to get to this place at the end of the trail and see these petroglyphs. So we get down there and we look around and say, “Gee, we don’t hardly see any petroglyphs. What’s the deal here?” And there was one way up high my wife saw, and I couldn’t see it at all.

So we thought, “Well, okay.” So we started to walk back, and as we began to walk back, we realized that the sides of where we were walking were covered with petroglyphs the whole half mile of the whole walk. And so we were walking back looking at all the petroglyphs and realizing we were kind of, you know, so earthbound, so to speak, so focused on our potential difficulties and our walking that we missed all this beauty on our way there.

Fortunately, in the providence of God, we saw it on the way back out from the end of the trail.

Well, you know, that’s kind of like our lives. We kind of, you know, are so concerned about things we’re doing and we’re all thinking about the stuff that’s going on, and we kind of fail to see the heavenly, the upper image of what it is we’re going through.

The purpose—one of the purposes—one thing that happens in worship: you know, I walk up this middle aisle, I process in, and the idea is you’re supposed to be seeing yourself and me together. I represent the church at that point, and we’re ascending into God’s throne room. And in that throne room, He’s going to do lots of neat stuff for us. He’s going to forgive us our sins. He’s going to send us out with a benediction. He’s going to give us the blessing of peace. He’s going to have dinner with us—Lord’s Day dinner, right?

And the other thing He’s going to do is He’s going to have a little chat with us before we eat the dinner. We’re going to have a chat in the living room. And in that living room, God will give us—He’ll tell us that there are petroglyphs on the sides of the places that we don’t look up and see. We’ll see a heavenly perspective, a higher perspective on our walk through life, and it will change us. And when we leave here, we’ll start to look for those kinds of things more. It will change us and transform us.

So it’s a heavenly perspective on our walk. And it’s one that will transform us from being so concerned about all our trials and tribulations—that will give us joy through this heavenly perspective.

Now, that’s what we’re going to do. And today we’re going to start going through this Book of James, and we’re going to look at a very simple commandment: count it all joy when you encounter various tribulations. So it gives us a heavenly perspective on the difficulties and struggles that we have in life.

Okay. So in a couple of minutes, we’re going to start here and we’re going to look at verse one, just the introductory information that’s given us there. And after that, we’re going to have really two parts to this sermon. The first part is the simple command to count it all joy. And then secondly, you know, God says that, you know, He doesn’t tempt us and He’s not going to make us sin, but with temptation, He’ll provide the means of escape.

So He’s going to then tell us how we do that. In fact, I think from one perspective, the entire Book of James is how to do that, how to fulfill that first commandment to count it all joy. And we’ll look at the Book of James from that perspective over the next month or two. But right away, after He gives us that command in verse one, He tells us reasons why we should count it all joy. And those will have three reasons in that second half of the sermon.

And the first will be the development of our character. The second will be the incredible giving nature of the God we serve. And the third reason to count it all joy will be that God is accomplishing victory—the thing our souls cry out for. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for justice in the world.” We’ll see as we go through James that’s exactly what God is doing as He causes us to go through trials and tribulations.

Now, we already know that here, at least if you remember what I preached one, two, three weeks ago, we were in Luke chapter 4 as we began, kind of—I jumped the, you know, I got into the season of Lent before we got there—but so I started three weeks ago talking about Luke 4, Jesus’s 40 days in the wilderness. And so what was it? It was a time in which He conquered the devil. And He conquered the devil through the word.

And then He goes out of the wilderness and He goes on a victory tour through Galilee and says, “Well, you know, Jubilee has come. Justice is being brought to victory. Everything’s going to be changed and transformed. The new creation has arrived.” And so that showed us that Lent, if you want to do a consideration of Lent, is kind of a, you know, a stylized reflection on persecution or suffering. And Lent is always intended to show this: at the end of a period of suffering, at the end of Jesus’s 40 days, victory has been accomplished.

So suffering isn’t suffering just for suffering’s sake. It’s suffering to give us victory. So it’s important as we look through the text today to see first of all the commandment and then secondly the reasons why we are enabled or empowered to fulfill the commandment. And those reasons are character, the nature of God, God and the victory that comes through suffering. So that’s what we’re going to look at in a couple of minutes.

And first we’re going to look at verse one. But before we get to that, a couple of other brief points. There’s a handout on the table called the Book of James, and this is kind of a traditional conservative evangelical sort of take on the book. And we’ll differ with this at points, although a lot of it’s very good. So I commend this to you. I hope you picked one up this morning. On the back of this, there’s actually connections between James and the Book of Matthew, including some of these connections to the Beatitudes, which we’re singing and reciting during this season.

So that should be useful for your family worship, your own personal worship time and devotional time and study. And so I would commend you to pick this up. There’s also some Lenten devotionals out there written by C.S. Lewis that we’ve used before at this church. Again, I would encourage you to take those and make use of those if you have an interest. And so we’ll differ at some points and today we’ll differ a little bit as well, in just a minute.

One other point before we get going, and that is that what we just sang for our hymn of praise today is called the Lorica. It’s St. Patrick’s Breastplate. Well, what is it? It is the confession that St. Patrick wrote—confession of what he believed, right? This is his confession, and then later it was kind of versified and put to song, which we sing, and it is a powerful hymn of victory. And the basis for the victory is that everything in the created order—we’re now rightly related to that through the work of Jesus.

And so everything, when God renews covenant, He wants us to see ourselves as binding everything for our well-being in Jesus Christ. And that includes sufferings and trials.

Now if you don’t know the story of St. Patrick, I would encourage you tomorrow on his day to read about it a little bit, and you’ll see that today’s sermon, “Count It All Joy,” is what we would understand by looking at the life of St. Patrick. He was captured. He was a missionary. He was captured, bound in irons, enslaved, and then when he finally got free, he went back to free the people that had enslaved him from their own pagan ways—to preach the gospel of Christ to them. And he did it. So it’s the same sort of thing. Suffering resulted in victory, a victory in Ireland for the gospel of Jesus Christ that we commemorate every year, whether we know what we’re doing or not, on St. Patrick’s Day.

So I would encourage you to kind of think about those things as we begin this series going through James. So the idea is troubles and trials and how do we handle them? And we’re going to talk about that today.

But as I said, first we’re going to talk about verse one.

Okay, verse one. And it’s difficult. Sorry, but it’s going to be a little confusing, but it’s just the way the Lord wrote this thing for us.

“James, a bond servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve which—who are scattered abroad. Greetings.”

Okay, so what can be complicated about that? Why would that be difficult? Well, who’s James? Well, this publication says this is James, the brother of Jesus. James, the brother of Jesus, was sort of—took the lead role in the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, was prominent, right? He was one of the pillars of the church that Paul talked about. He was not one of the original twelve.

The James, actually, there were two Jameses in the original twelve. James the son of Alphaeus, but he’s not really mentioned anytime. Okay. So it’s likely not him. But the other James is the son of Zebedee. And of course, when we talk—from Luke 4—about the calling of men to be fishers of men for Christ, James was part of that group. So he had James, John, and Peter—the three mighty men that Jesus had. And so we got James, one of the twelve, who was a mighty man, very significant in the church.

And then we have James, the brother of Jesus, who after this James was martyred in AD 44 or so, becomes prominent in the church as well. We don’t know who wrote the book—is what I’m saying here. Yet I think the church might, as we continue to study and think and look at how these things work, but we really don’t know. This text says, without even considering it, that it’s James, the brother of Jesus. And there’s various lines of evidence that I could get into, but I don’t want to bore you with it.

All I want to tell you today is we don’t really know who this James was. But I wanted to point out something interesting about this name. Do you know what James is in the Greek? What was that? Who said it? Jacob. That’s right. This is Jacob. Actually, it’s Iakobus. It’s the Greek for Jacob of the Old Testament. So why is it James in English? Well, I don’t know. Somehow Jacob became James in the development of English language.

So, you know, it may be a proper translation, but actually it’s telling us Jacob wrote this.

Now that opens up some interesting biblical theological sort of dimensions for us. You know, you remember after my long period of tribulation with my leg, when I first came back to preaching again, I preached on Jacob, right? And he—his struggles at Peniel and how he limps into victory, right? I mean, Jacob is the guy if you want to think of the Old Testament and troubles and trials, he’s one of the guys. Job is too. Job is mentioned later in this book. But Jacob sort of lines up.

How many sons did Jacob have? Well, he had twelve sons that became the twelve tribes of Israel. Who is this written to? It’s written to the twelve tribes, right? So Jacob, you know, should come to mind.

And as we go through the book, he’s going to warn us not to engage in killing of each other and brother killing. “Brothers” is mentioned, I don’t know, eighteen, nineteen times in five chapters. And of course, Jacob is the character from the Old Testament quite familiar to us as struggling with his brother that eventually become resolved. He might have been tempted to kill Esau. He was certainly Esau was going to try to kill him at one point.

And I’m jumping the gun a little bit on the reasons, but one of the reasons why we’re supposed to count it joy when we go through trials and troubles is that it brings us to a perfect state, which means not sinless, but it means a mature goal of what God has for us in our life. We’re perfect men and women as we endure these things.

Okay. Well, who is Jacob? He’s one of two or three guys in the Old Testament who was called perfect. Before the troubles that he has, after he goes away, the Bible identifies him in contrast with Esau as a perfect man. And Esau is kind of a wild guy. Now, don’t think that Jacob’s troubles began when we read of that account with him and Esau. What we know from that account is Jacob had a father who favored greatly the son who really had no regard for the covenant.

So Jacob undoubtedly had lots of trials and tribulations even before all the trials and tribulations we read about him in the rest of the Old Testament. And what had that made him after sixty, seventy years? Yes, that’s how old he is in the account of Jacob and Esau. He gets married when he’s about sixty or seventy. So take hope you older fellas. But you know, so he’s gone through trials and tribulations with the dad who has kind of gone apostate. Isaac, I don’t know what’s going on, but something has happened.

And what has happened to Jacob as a result of the trials? Well, just like he’s going to tell us, James is going to tell us, Jacob—his life. He became a perfect man.

So I think we’re intended by God, yes, to consider who the actual author was, which James it was. We’re supposed to think about that. But I think we’re also supposed to make this connection to Jacob.

You know, this is the providence of God that this book is written by a Jacob and all kinds of things start to line up, right? He writes to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, and we don’t know what that means either. Really, we don’t.

You know, it could mean the twelve tribes—these were, no matter what we think of the dispersion, these are probably almost surely Jewish Christians. This is, I think, pretty assuredly I can say it was written quite early. It might have been the first book of the Bible written or the first of the Book of the New Testament written after Matthew. Matthew is first, then this book probably comes second.

So it’s written quite early. But we don’t know what is the dispersion. Well, it could be, you know, after the exile, you know, through Assyria and Babylon—not everybody went back. Of course, most of them didn’t. And so this term is actually used in other places in the scriptures to talk about the nation of Israel, the twelve tribes of Israel scattered abroad—that’s where they’re living now. They’re still living in Babylon or this place or that place, right?

So, and this term could be referring to that—he’s just writing to Jews who live outside of Jerusalem. Or more likely, it’s referring to the Jewish Christians who had converted in the immediate ministry of Christ and who then, according to Acts 8 and following, were the subjects, early on, of a great persecution that drove them out. And so more likely the dispersion of those that went up.

But we really don’t know. Again, if God wanted to make it clear, He would have. Maybe we’re just not mature enough as a church—I mean, the church universal—to get there. Maybe we will in a couple of thousand years. But for now, we don’t really know.

But what we do know—so why does God write it then? Well, one reason He writes it is to talk about people in exile. Whether they’re exiled because of persecution, to the Christians in Jerusalem in the early years of the church, whether they’re exiled still because of the exile of 720 and 587 or whatever it was BC, it’s exile.

Was Jacob ever exiled? Well, yeah, he was, right? Jacob had to flee for his life. And it’s when Jacob comes back from exile that he wrestles with God and he realizes all his trials and tribulations have been wrestling with God. God’s behind every one of them. And God blesses him and sends him forth, yet he makes him limp—dependently, but he walks—not into a sunset. He walks off after that encounter in Genesis into a sunrise.

So again, it’s like Jesus’ forty days—victory. Jacob goes into exile, comes back, a rich man, wives, twelve kids, thirteen kids, whatever it is, and he walks into victory, right? So exile, which we normally think of as a bad thing—we don’t like exile. We want to be home. But God is using exile to produce victory for His kingdom and expansion and blessing, right?

So right away in the first verse, we’re set up with some stuff that’s going to help us interpret what follows. Okay? We have a character right away in our minds that we can think of who would help us to see illustration of how trials and tribulations and difficulties actually are used to make a person perfect—to develop his character—and to bring him into a position of victory in the long term.

So, you know, verse one is significant and it’s got mysteries in it. No doubt about that. But the mysteries themselves lead us then to consider things that we wouldn’t necessarily consider if we didn’t stop and pause and think about it. And so as we get that introduction to the book, that helps us then to think about what actually comes into the book.

Okay. So now we get into the actual sort of first content sermon, a portion of the sermon based on these verses, the first set of verses. And as I said, the outline is very simple. If you’re a young man taking notes and you know who you are, write down, you know, part one: command. Part two: reasons for the command. And under reasons, write down character, write down the God we serve, and write down victory. Those are the reasons why we’re to obey the command.

Okay? Have you written that down, young people, older people? That’s the outline. You got to work at it. Not printing them anymore. Well, I might return to printing outlines, but today write it down: two parts, simple, remember, easily remembered.

Okay, so let’s talk first then about the simple command.

The command is a simple one. It’s an imperative, right? What’s an imperative? It means it’s something that God tells us we have to do. I mean, it’s not good advice that God gives us here. He’s not saying, “Well, you might want to count it all joy when you encounter various trials or tribulations.” That’s not what it says. What it says is my brethren—He loves us.

This word “brethren” is used throughout this thing too, throughout the epistle in huge numbers—seventeen, eighteen, nineteen times in five chapters. And there’s other reasons for it we’ll talk about later. But at least for now, what He’s doing is God—what God is doing is before He gives us the imperative, He reminds us that we’re brothers. That this imperative is set in a context of you know, family love and fatherly love, specifically, since this epistle comes from the father.

So He puts it in a context—you know, when we talk to our kids, this is a good thing to do: son, please do this, right? You remind them of who they are as part of your family. And God reminds us at the beginning of our worship service: your sins are forgiven. You’re here united to Jesus Christ. Now, if we drop that out and just give the imperative, we kind of get it mixed up.

So He starts by saying, “Brethren, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.”

Command. What is the command? Is the command to feel joyful? No, the command is to count it as joy, to consider it a joyful thing.

Okay. Now, I don’t know, you know, now this is probably talking about persecution of Christians by the Jews. It’s probably what it’s talking about—by the unbelieving Jews. Persecution of Jewish Christians by unbelieving Jews. And so it’s immediate, you know, interpretation, I think, is persecution when we speak out the gospel of Christ to people. And before we get to the application to you, it’s good to ask yourself if you’re getting any persecution—and maybe of this sort.

And maybe it’s because you’re not opening your mouth. Are you talking to anybody about Jesus that might result in them not being happy with you? And if you’re not, you see, this is essential to who you know Jesus. In Luke 4, Jesus defeats the devil with the word—a properly understood word—goes on the victory tour, puts together a team of guys to conquer the world, right?

And they’re going to conquer the world through becoming fishers of men. Okay? And so He tells them that’s their essential identity. You know, they got other things they’re doing. We got other things we’re doing. But disciples of Christ are those who are following Him and creating victory, bringing justice to victory in the world. And we do it through large part through talking about Christ.

So number one, maybe you need to think about whether you’re witnessing to people or not, or whether you’re holding back because you don’t want the persecution. This is probably talking about that kind of persecution, but it actually says “various trials.”

Okay, so different kinds of trials, tribulations, afflictions, and I know you’ve gone through some of those in the recent past. We all do. This is a fallen world. This is just what we have to deal with. And so I know you’ve encountered various trials and afflictions.

My question for you is: did you count it joy when you stubbed your toe? When you had that fight with someone, when that misunderstanding happened, when you got, you know, canned from work, when you got misunderstood at work, when you, you know, whatever it is, when you had that difficulty, that trial, tried and tested.

If I had an AV system like the church I visited last Sunday, I would have in before the church started show the Bruce Cockburn song, “Tried and Tested.” Tried and tested. That’s what God is doing.

So my question for you is: And my question to myself: when you were tested this last week, when you had a problem, when you realized people didn’t like you as much as they should, when you realized you don’t have any friends, when you realized your parents don’t understand you or your kids just won’t obey you, whatever it is, did you count it as joy?

You know, the Bible says, “Be anxious for nothing.” A command. George Scipione—when he was here—said this is probably the most violated command in the whole Bible, because we’re anxious for everything. Another Bruce Cockburn song—he says, “I get up every morning and I’m nervous.”

You know, we’re anxious, and we got to confess it. It’s sin. It’s a command. Be anxious for nothing. And then God tells us how to relieve the anxiety.

So this is a command. Count it all joy when you encounter various trials or tribulations. Now you could, you know, quickly confess that sin to God. I do, right now, that I didn’t do that. It’s a command.

So first of all, we have this command. And you understand then, right? If you’re a young man here, you understand. You had problems this last week. You’re going to have problems this week. When those problems happen, okay? When things happen that are out of your control that create a trial, a testing, a hard time for you, what are you supposed to do according to today’s word for us?

You’re supposed to count it as joy.

Not feel joy. I’m not asking you to feel joy when somebody persecutes you. But that’s what we just read in the Beatitude, right? “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad.” Jesus says when they persecute you for who you are, right? “Rejoice and be exceeding glad.”

So we’re to count it all joy. That is the command. So that’s the command. And it’s not to feel joy, but it’s certainly comprehensive to us in terms of who we are and what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to count it all joy.

Now, as I said, the rest of this book, I think, will be more of the how to do that. It’ll give specific things, warnings to put off, things to put on that’ll help us to accomplish this head.

I think the beginning and really the summation of the book is to count it all as joy. So we’ll get to that. But right now, what we’re going to do is get to some of the reasons, the thoughts we’re supposed to have when those tribulations happen.

You’ll remember, from those of you that were here and have read Crucial Conversations, right? What’s one of the most important things that book teaches you? Master your stories. Okay? So something happens—you get angry or you get depressed, whatever it is. But Crucial Conversations reminds us that actually, while it feels like somebody does something to you and you get angry, there’s something in between those two. And that is a story, an interpretation of the data.

The data is what it is. The guy hit you or swore at you, whatever it is, it’s data. But how you interpret that data will result in whether you get sinfully angry or what your emotional state is over here. And so in this counting it joy, what God’s going to do is help us to master the story. He’s going to help us to understand why these things happen. And so if we apply ourselves to the remedy, right, to getting the story right, that will help us tremendously to do what God has commanded us to do.

She didn’t just give us a bald commandment here and not tell us how to fulfill it. And one of the most significant ways, the beginning way, to how to fulfill it is to interpret what’s going on correctly. And that’s what He’s going to do for us here, right? He’s going to tell us—now how to interpret it.

So now the reasons—this second part. First the command, now the reasons. And there’s three of them. And again, write it down, young man. You know who I’m talking to. Write it down.

The first one is what? Maybe you already have it. Character. The second is what? It’s the nature of the God we serve. God is a one-word thing for that part of the outline. And the third, victory. Victory. Okay, this is not stoicism we’re talking about. There’s a goal for all of this.

Okay, so the first reason he gives us is character. And that’s in the next verse. Knowing—interpreting it this way—”Know this. This is God speaking to you, right? This is the word of God to you. You’re supposed to know that the testing of your faith produces patience. And let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect—like Jacob was perfect, Moses was, or Noah was perfect.

By the way, next week, no James. We’re going to do Noah to help you get your head straight about what the Bible says about Noah before you go to that movie with Russell Crowe. So we’re going to do that next week. Then we’ll get back to James in two weeks.

But perfect, okay, and complete, lacking in nothing.

So He says first of all, the way to interpret trials and tribulations is that the sovereign God of the universe—He controls everything, right? He didn’t need to let that guy be mean to you. He didn’t need to take away all your friends. He didn’t need to get you in that jam with your boss at work, right? He’s sovereign over that stuff, right?

And what is He doing when He brings that stuff into your life? What He’s doing is creating character in you. You know, we’re concerned with our finances. God is concerned with our faithfulness, right? You know, we’re concerned with what we want right now. And God is concerned with building us into beautiful, character-filled creatures who for all eternity will manifest that character.

Okay? He’s got an eternal perspective. We got a short-term perspective. God wants to build you—is going to use the trials and tribulations in the life of His people to build your character. And there are two specific things talked about.

The first is patience. Now, this word “patience” here—it’s not, again, it’s not stoicism. It doesn’t mean just, oh, things are bad, I’ll patiently endure. Doesn’t mean that. It’s got an active sense to it. And it really might be better translated “endurance” or “strength to persevere.” It’s active, okay? It implies an intentionality to what you’re doing in relationship to the trial, knowing that God is producing this character in you. And that’s the character He’s producing.

Okay? So first of all, these trials and tribulations produce character. And specifically, it’s producing an active—not a passive—an active, patient, enduring, a continuing to do the right thing as your calling, of wherever God’s called you to be, in spite of the trials and tribulations, okay?

And then secondly, it says, “Let that have its perfect result, that you might become perfect, mature, complete. You might get to the goal.” And the idea here is kind of an incremental building up of who you are in Christ. He’s got a plan for your life. He really does, okay?

And that plan is what He’s working as He brings these problems into your life.

Now that changes everything.

Now, if we don’t believe in a sovereign God, then we can’t believe what we just read. It doesn’t work, because, you know, if God isn’t sovereignly doing this stuff, and instead people are just doing whatever they want to me, and God’s not in control, well then I don’t know if it’s going to produce patience and longsuffering and endurance or not.

But since God is sovereign, this is what He’s doing. This is the petroglyphs on the wall. We’re busy looking down here and, you know, struggling along through the trials. And God says, “Look up. Now understand my plan for your life. I made you with no friends this week because I want you to have endurance and perseverance and following me and becoming mature. You’re going to be stronger for it.

You know, children—it’s one thing for us to suffer. It’s quite another to watch our children suffer. And parents, you know what I mean. And probably those of you that aren’t parents, you got, you know, relatives that have little kids. Who wants to see them suffer? And what do we tend to do as parents? We tend to—when they start to suffer, we get right in there. I want to correct the thing and tell this other kid, “You leave him alone,” blah blah blah. Get it all worked out.

Well, you know, sometimes that’s an okay thing to do, but a lot of times it isn’t, because what’s being said here is “let patience have its perfect result.” And another way to say that, I think, is don’t cut short the trial. Don’t sinfully cut short the trial. The trials are there to perfect us, to make us better, to make us bright shining lights for Jesus.

Why would you want to get in the way of that?

What do I mean by, you know, cutting short of trial? Well, we can just give up, become passive, go to our room instead of continuing our life. God wants us to have an intentionality to continue to mature in active participation and endurance through trials, not to run away from them. We don’t run away from them. We go through them because they’re the annealing oven and that God is making us better with.

That’s what happened to Jacob. Look at all the trials. Was it Laban that was trying to kill him in the middle of the night at the river Peniel? Was it Isaac come to get him? Maybe it was Esau. He always wanted to kill him anyway. And then what Jacob comes to an awareness of is that when he was struggling with his dad or struggling with a brother that didn’t love him or struggling with Laban who was trying to cheat him or struggling with trying to figure out what to do now that he got wives switched on his wedding night—as he was struggling through all that stuff—it was actually God doing it all.

And God was doing it because He wanted Jacob to be Israel, the one who was ruled by God and who rules for God, to walk into the promised land and have victory. And the first thing He does, He brings peace with his brother, Esau, who wanted to kill him. Maybe converts him. I don’t know. But something interesting happens. The victory starts to be worked out immediately with a production of peace between two warring parties that could have had war.

So this is what God is doing.

There was an old movie—I’ve mentioned it before. I’m not necessarily recommending it. A little bit of nakedness in it, blah blah, and but it’s a dark, brooding sort of movie. Some of you have probably watched it. It’s called Character, and it’s based upon a Dutch book that I think most Dutch kids used to read in high school or something. And the main character, I think his name actually is Jacob in this movie, Character.

And Jacob has this guy—a rich guy who’s one of the powerful figures in the town—always working against him, making sure he doesn’t get the job he wants, getting in the way of, you know, whatever love life he’s got going on. This guy is just, you know, a trouble to him, a horrible trouble. And most of you won’t watch this movie, so spoiler alert. Plug your ears if you are, but or if you care about this stuff. I like knowing what’s going to happen in a movie, by the way.

Anyway, but what you find out as the movie goes along is this guy who is giving Jacob heck on earth, right? Just being a horrible person to him—it’s actually his father, through an improper relationship with the kid’s mother. He doesn’t know his dad. It’s actually his father. And his father, after he dies, and the police charged Jacob with his murder—he didn’t do it—after he dies, his will, he gives everything to Jacob. He gives it all to him.

What he was doing was producing character in Jacob so that he would utilize the resources of his father at his death, the tremendous wealth that he had, properly. That’s what God’s doing with us. When you go through a trial or tribulation, isolation, difficulty, persecution, problems of whatever sort—marriage difficulties, whatever they are—what God says, “Count it joy, because I am preparing you for great wealth and responsibility and dominion. Maybe not monetary wealth, but you see the point. The exercise of dominion in greater and increasing levels. And you get there through letting the trial play itself out and not cutting it short by running away, or for instance, a financial problem, by entering into debt to try to take care of it, or by taking up the sword, right?

So Peter’s there—big trial. Jesus is being arrested. What does he do? He tries to cut the trial short by cutting off the servant’s ear. Tries to defend Jesus physically. Jesus said no. And this—if this book is written for the persecuted church, you can imagine this was a temptation to him to strike out in violence, to join the insurrection, right? To join the revolution against those horrible Jewish leaders.

And so this is always a temptation to us too. And we have difficulties in our country. What should we do? Some people take up terrorism, insurrection, whatever it is. But what did Jesus do? He says, “Peter, don’t do that.” He heals the guy’s ear.

Now it’s an ear. I think that’s interesting. When we cut the trial short through physical violence, right? And you can do that through bullying, too. Of course, when you do that, people don’t hear you anymore. Communication, the word, the incredible godly ability we have to speak peace, right? And to speak as a ministry of grace—that’s stopped. You cut the guy’s ear off when you engage in violence.

So what does Jesus do? He restores his ear so that the servant can hear, right? Because it’s through the word of God, it’s through communication, that the kingdom will come. And so, you know, we don’t want to cut short the trial. We want to let it have its perfect end.

So that’s the first reason. There’s a second reason here that’s quite important.

Second reason: Verse five, “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.”

Okay, so part of this maturation is development of wisdom. Why do we want wisdom? Because “by me men rule.” So the key to increasing dominion and serviceability to the Lord that we’re serving is wisdom. And so wisdom is tied in with this ability to see trials and tribulations and develop because of them.

But what I want to stress here is He says “ask God, right?” You ask God, and He says this: God who gives to all men without, you know, without reproach.

Now, the way the verse reads—so the second reason, the second interpretation of trials is they’re coming from a God not only who is sovereign, but who loves us more than we can imagine. And this is a God who loves to give things to you, okay? It’s kind of counterintuitive when you’re going through a trial, because it seems like what He’s given you isn’t good. But that’s the whole point.

Remember that what you’re getting from God is coming from the God who loves you more than you can know, who provides everything for you, and who graciously and generously gives to you because that’s His very character.

Now, now the verse says, “God who gives to all liberally and without reproach.” And actually in the Greek, those words are actually adjectives describing God directly. Peter Leithart translates it—translates it how? Just a minute. Okay. Peter Leithart says the better translation, keeping in line the adjectives, is this: “the generously giving without reproach God we serve.”

So that’s the second reason here is the nature of God. He is the generously giving without reproach God. Ask of God who—ask of the generously giving without reproach God. God is a giving God. It is the nature of God to give. We know that in this church. We know that’s what the Trinity is all about. The Father gives to the Son. The Son gives to the Father. The Father gives to the Spirit. The Spirit gives to the Son. It’s all giving. It’s not selfish. It is the nature of God to give.

And it is the nature of our God, who our Father in heaven, to generously, graciously give us things. And so the second reason to patiently endure trials and tribulations, to count it all joy, is because of the nature of the God that we serve. This is who God is.

Later on in verse seventeen—or sixteen—says, “Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”

Okay. Again, He makes the point: what we’re receiving when we have difficulties is God transforming our character, and we’re getting these things from the God whose very essence is graciously giving, generously to us. That’s who He is. This is the God we serve.

And so when we go through trials and tribulations, we’re to remember the character of God. The character of God reminds us—it tells us the right story. It helps us to interpret the event accurately.

Why? Because we’re likely to be deceived. This deception thing is a big thing in James. What’s the nature of the deception that Satan pulls on us in the garden? And ever since then, what’s the nature of the deception?

Do you remember? What does he tempt us to believe? He tempts us to believe that God is not for us. He tells Eve, “Well, hey, I know what he might have told you, but he’s just selfish. He doesn’t have your well-being in mind. Eat from the fruit.”

That’s the nature of the temptation. And so James, over and over again, here in this first chapter, says, “Don’t be deceived. Understand that this is the Father of lights who graciously gives you all things.”

When you have a trial and tribulation, during Lent, particularly, remember this: that God’s building character, and don’t be deceived. Don’t think satanically that God doesn’t have your best interest in mind.

The sovereignty of God without the love of God doesn’t bring you to the place where we want these trials and tribulations to bring you to—count it all joy. We count it all joy when we remember the character of the God that we serve.

Interesting. Martin Luther, in his Smaller Catechism—you know, one of the aspects of Luther’s Smaller Catechism, He goes through the Apostles’ Creed, right? And so we read under the First Article—well, He says first of all under the Creed, “As the head of the family should teach them in their simplest way—in the simplest way—to those of his household.”

So the point of Luther’s catechism is giving directions to dads how to teach their families—dads and moms how to teach their families—the truths of the Creed. And then He says under the First Article, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. What does this mean? It means I believe that God created me and all that exists, and that He gave me my body and soul, my eyes, my ears, all my members, my mind, and all my abilities.

And I believe that God still preserves me by richly and daily providing clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, spouse and children, land, cattle, and all I own, and all I need to keep my body and life. God also preserves me by defending me against all danger, guarding and protecting me from all evil. All this God does only because He is my good and merciful Father in heaven, and not because I have earned or deserve it.

For all this I ought to be thankful and praise, to serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true.”

It’s wonderful, isn’t it? A catechism that mentions shoes. And so the idea is to teach little kids, God is a giving God. He gave you those shoes you got on today, right? And to repeat them over and over again to get the nature of God down. He is a gracious, giving God. He’s not a stern, autocratic God.

That’s not why He’s sending the particular temptations and trials into your life that you suffer through. Sometimes they’re for your chastisement, but we’re talking now about temptations and trials that don’t really based on chastisement. They’re the normal stuff of life. And God is giving you those the same way He gives you shoes, because He loves you.

And the text draws us to the graciously giving without reproach God. And if we’re going to ask God for a proper understanding of these things and wisdom, we got to remember who we are in Jesus Christ.

You know, I get a little—sometimes I get a little, you know, everything can be used the wrong way. And so one of the things we’ve talked about in the church is the Dave Ramsey thing: “How are you doing?” “Better than I deserve.” That’s okay. That’s good to remind us of grace. But we’ve got to remember who we are in Jesus Christ. We are not the ones who deserve all damnation anymore, in Christ.

In ourselves, we do. But in Christ, we have confidence to approach the throne of grace, right? We’re humble, but we’re also bold in our relationship to God, right? That’s who we are. We got to remember who we are. And we got to remember who God is: that He graciously gives to us without reproach.

And that’s the second way that we get this down and are able to count it all joy when we encounter various troubles.

Now, He goes on to say, don’t doubt, right? That’s what the text goes on to say is “let him not doubt, because if you doubt, you’re not going to get anything. You’re like a double-minded man.”

What with that? Well, I think what that means is when we doubt, what we’re doubting is the nature and character of the gracious God and His provision of all we need through Christ. That’s the doubt that’s being talked about here.

And so if we’re going to ask something from God, don’t doubt that He’s gracious and good and is a gracious giver without reproach. Don’t doubt that He’s brought you into relationship with Him. And when you doubt those things, well, then yeah, you’re not going to get a proper understanding of your afflictions and trials.

So there is a human side to this as well as getting our mind straight.

Third thing—quickly—the victory.

So why do we count it all joy? Well, He’s building character. Don’t cut the trail short. Secondly, because it’s coming from the God who graciously and generously is a giver of all good things to us, and He doesn’t do it with reproaching us. So God—this is a gift from God to develop our character. So we remember that we’re developing. Remember the kind of God we serve. And then third, we remember the victory that’s going to be accomplished.

In James 1:19 and 20, we read this later in the first chapter: “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. For the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

The wrath of man doesn’t produce the—What do we want? We hunger and thirst for justice in the world. Why are we tempted, you know, to strike out in anger against whatever government official or church official we think is being unjust—because we really do desire justice. Jesus really does want us to do that. He wants us to hunger and thirst for bringing justice to victory in our homes, in our businesses, in our communities, in our cities, in our state, in the nation, in the world.

He—we should want to see God exalted throughout this land, right? And we want that. And that’s a proper thing to want. And James never tells the people that are suffering that they shouldn’t want that. He does just the opposite.

What He’s telling us here is your means of accomplishing what you really should want—the righteousness of God, the justice of God in the land—aren’t effective. And He’s saying by implication that the effective way that God is accomplishing that is through your suffering. It’s through the trials and the tribulations. And it’s through the production of character and mature—Jacob was the winner. He walked into the blessing of owning the land because he went through the trials and tribulations.

So when you go through difficulties and trials, you can count it joy—not just because you’re developing personally, but because what you want more than anything else, I think, is the glory of God to be seen and magnified and submitted to by the whole world. That’s the way it happens.

You know, at the end of men—stuff. It says “they left everything and followed him.” Remember, we talked about that three weeks ago. When you walk out those doors, you got to follow Jesus. That doesn’t just mean, you know, following him kind of passively or whatever. It means being like him.

And what does He say? You know, “Blessed are you when you’re persecuted and reviled, because they persecuted Christ. That’s what they did to him. If you’re going to follow Jesus, you’re going to go through the same kind of progression, right? You’re going to go through trials and tribulations the way he did. He said that very thing. But you’re also going to follow him into victory, right?

Right after the forty days comes the final victory against the serpent. And He walks into the world and declares His victory and starts to cast out demons and heal people and bring righteousness to victory, right? Justice to victory. That’s what He does.

So the third reason to count it as joy is this is the very means by which the victory of God is accomplished.

Elijah, right? He’s mentioned again later in the book. He had an exile, right? He was in the land, had to run away over to Sidon, that region. God has him run away. But what’s he doing? He’s cursing the people that he left. And he’s blessing Elijah. Where does Elijah go? He goes to Zarephath in Sidon. And what does he do? He embraces and visits a widow and her son. And what does James say true religion is? To visit widows and orphans in distress.

That’s just what Elijah did. And he did it out there in gentile land.

Okay? All the experiences of exile in the Bible—and they are repeatedly everywhere—they all are in the grand plan of God to bring victory to the world, to bring resurrection life to the widow’s son, to bring her to faith in God. And Jesus says in his great victory speech, I believe in Luke 5, that, you know, Elijah only went to the widow, this gentile widow over there. He didn’t go to the rest of the people of Israel, because they were under judgment.

So Jesus draws this connection. James draws the connection. Elijah was suffering, and God had to supernaturally feed him. He was suffering trials, tribulations, persecutions. He went into exile. But the purpose of that was not loss. It wasn’t defeat. It was that God’s victory might be extended out to the other nations.

Why are they in dispersion, you know? They’re not there just because God was trying to save them from the persecution in Jerusalem. They were to take the gospel to the four corners of the world. That’s what Jesus said they had to do.

So the third reason to embrace trials and tribulations—you know, it’s not just about you. It’s about you being developed by the graciously giving God to be part of the way that he brings victory, brings justice to victory in the whole world. That’s what exile is all about.

Now, how does he do it? Well, He did it through Jesus, leaving his home, coming here for us, saving us. We were the widows and the orphans, right? That he visited and redeemed. The Bible says “visited and redeemed.” Visited doesn’t mean he just hung out with us. He did something for us. And we’re going to celebrate that at this table. But that’s what it’s all about.

So this week, this season, let’s train ourselves to be observant of our trials and tribulations and afflictions, and let’s interpret the data correctly from God’s perspective. Let’s have that heavenly—seeing the petroglyphs up here and finding joy and amazement in what God is doing from a heavenly perspective this week.

Let’s interpret those trials and tribulations as being God’s gracious gifts to bring us and the world to maturity and blessing and to bring justice to victory so that the world would manifest the righteousness of God.

I think that’s what James is about. And I think that the rest of the Book of James will continue to teach us how to accomplish that kind of victory in our own lives, personally, and then in its effect in the broader created order as well.

Let’s pray.

Father, bless us now, Lord God. We know that Your word always demands a response—a response of faith. Help us to believe the goodness and greatness of who You are and the gracious giver that You are. Lord God, help us to see that our lives, right down to the shoes we wear, are the gifts of You. Help us to remember that when we encounter various trials this week, help us to remember Your character. Help us to remember Your purposes as well.

That Your purpose for us is not just that we would have a better life or more money or a great group of friends. Your purpose for us is to make us into really shining lights for the Lord Jesus Christ—to build our character. And Your purpose in the broader sense is to bring justice to victory in this world. And we thank You, Lord God.

Forgive us for violating this plain command of Yours to count it all joy when we encounter various trials. And help us this week, Lord God, to quickly repent when we don’t do that, and to embrace a proper interpretation of what’s happening so that we can respond correctly with our wills and who we are.

In Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen.