(We have been having difficulties with our streaming service, so in place of the video of this sermon, I am posting the text of the sermon.)
In October of 1941, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had attended Harrow School as a teen, was there for an afternoon concert. He had been at Harrow ten months earlier, during the Blitz, when the Nazis bombed London for 57 consecutive nights. Now, he was back with a message for both students and faculty. He spoke for only two or three minutes, yet one line of that speech is still remembered today.
Churchill told Harrow’s faculty and students: “…surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
If, in the Spring of 1941, England had given in, what might the world look like today? If today you or I give in – to temptation or despair, or to the promise of ease at the cost of integrity – what will our lives look like tomorrow?
The early church didn’t give in. They understood the critical importance of perseverance. Jesus displayed it and required it of his followers. In his letters, Paul used the word in its noun and verb forms 21 times. James highlights it. The Revelation features it. There is no success in the Christian life apart from perseverance.
The early church prized perseverance, but that is not the case today. Our age prizes the entrepreneurial spirit more than it does fortitude. We celebrate success, not endurance. We dream of prosperity without adversity, and happiness without holiness. We value self-actualization and forget character. We applaud creativity and overlook constancy. We live in a shortcut society.
But there are no shortcuts in the Christian life. It takes time to produce godly men and women. It also takes adversity and endurance. You don’t become godly by listening to a podcast. Life is a crucible for producing saints, and saint-making takes a lifetime.
If you give in when marriage gets hard, when money gets tight, when people get mean, when you get tired and sad and hurt, you will miss out on what God has for you. And what he has for you – it is critical that you understand this – is not a thing or an experience; it’s a person. It’s you—the person he is making you to be in the crucible of life. The reward is not some extraneous thing like a mansion just over the hilltop. The reward is getting the chance to be you – the you that you were meant to be.
When you have become that joyful, grateful person, you will appreciate other people for who they are, and you will no longer feel the need to compare yourselves to them. But how do you become that person? By perseverance. There’s no other way.
Perseverance is a major theme in the Book of James or, more precisely, it is the binding that holds the major themes in the Book of James together. The three major themes in James are all introduced in the first chapter, beginning with the believer’s relationship to testing—testing that brings joy and produces blessedness. The second theme is wisdom, especially as it is revealed in a believer’s speech. The third theme is the Christ-follower’s relationship to wealth (or the lack thereof). The three themes move to a summary in chapter 5 that pulls them all together. In verse 11, James concludes: “…we consider blessed those who have persevered.” That idea holds the Book of James together.
Let’s read our text, which is found in James 1:1-8: “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Greetings. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.”
After the traditional greeting in verse 1, James issues what might be the most mystifying command in the Bible: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” This is not comfort Christianity. This is radical stuff. Try telling someone who has just lost a spouse, lost a limb, been diagnosed with a serious illness, or is going through marriage problems or money troubles to count it pure joy. They’ll call you heartless or think you’re crazy.
So, maybe you shouldn’t try telling someone that; tell it to yourself. But understand what it means and why there’s value in it, otherwise you will never be able to do it. James knew from experience that this is possible, and if we can learn what he knew, we will be able to do this too.
The Greek word translated as “consider” is important. It has two basic and interrelated meanings. The first is “to lead” or “guide.” The second is “to think” or “to regard.” James wants us to regard (the word’s second meaning) our trials as an occasion for joy because he wants us to be guided (the first meaning) by that idea.
Whenever we face trials (or fall into them, as the Greek has it, since trials frequently take us by surprise), James want us to consider it pure joy. Notice that he does not tell us to feel pure joy. Feelings cannot be commanded like that. Feelings follow thoughts, and so we must begin by considering our trials joy.
You should know that this verse could be translated, “Consider it pure joy…whenever you face temptations of many kinds.” In Greek, the same word means both “trials” and “temptations.” There is a reason for that. Every temptation is a trial: our trust in God goes on trial when we are being tempted. And every trial is a temptation – a temptation to give up on God and trust something or someone else in his place.
The trial of a difficult marriage may become a temptation to unfaithfulness or to bitterness. The trial of chronic illness may be a temptation to envy or despair. The trial of poverty may be a temptation to complain or to steal. Every trial comes preloaded with a host of possible temptations.
Likewise, temptations become trials. Unrelenting temptations not only wear us down and crush our spirits; they put our faith on trial. They bring to light what it is lacking.
To describe these trials, James uses an adjective (this is the word NIV renders “various”) that is composed of two roots: “many” and “colored.” Trials come in various colors and hues. Some are blue – full of sadness and pity. Some are red – full of heat and emotion. Some are gray and threaten us with despair.
But for every color of trial, there is a matching shade of grace. We see that in Peter’s first letter, where he used the same adjective to convey a different idea. He wrote: “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10). Let me reword that last phrase: “faithfully administering God’s many-colored grace.” For every color of trial, God has a corresponding color of grace to give his needy child, often through someone in the church. The grace he has given me to administer might be heaven-made to match someone in a “blue” trial. The grace God has given you might perfectly serve a person in a gray trial, or a fiery red one. In his wisdom, God has given us “everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3), and that “everything” includes our church family.
But how can God expect me to consider the trial I am suffering through right now pure joy—the sickness, the relationship trouble, the job loss? I hate the sickness. How can I consider it pure joy? The job loss cost me my house. Why should I consider it pure joy?
Because the trial itself does something for me that neither health nor house can do. If I will persevere, the trial will carry me closer than I have ever been to becoming the amazing person God intends me to be—and that is a great joy.
Now, don’t miss this: you simply won’t be able to consider the trial you are experiencing pure joy unless you know that God is using it to bring about great good in your life. In other words, the “consider” of verse 2 is dependent upon the “know” of verse 3. Unless you know what James knew, unless you are guided by the truth he understood, you will never consider your trials pure joy. Apart from that knowledge, considering them pure joy would be a sign of mental impairment. But what if you knew something about those trials other people did not know? What if you had inside information?
There was a great story a few years ago about a Dairy Queen employee in Minnesota who saw a customer filch a $20 bill that belonged to a blind person. When that customer came to the counter, he told her he wouldn’t serve her unless she gave the $20 back. She denied stealing the money, swore at him, and then stormed out of the store, taking the money with her. So, he took a $20 out of his own pocket and gave it the blind man, who didn’t know he’s been robbed. The story only came out because an anonymous customer saw what happened and wrote a wrote a letter to Dairy Queen in praise of the 19-year-old.
For the sake of illustration, try to picture a situation in which you would consider it pure joy for someone to snatch $20 from a blind person. What if the person taking the money knew something no one else did: the blind man was the leader of a three-person ring of thieves who filched cash and phones, which they passed on to him, knowing he would not be suspected. The woman who discovered what was happening only took the money so she could return it to its rightful owner. Once you knew the inside story, you would consider it pure joy that the blind man got his comeuppance, but if you didn’t know the true story, you would be outraged. It would all depend on what you knew.
That is the case here. Considering trials pure joy is crazy, unless you know the truth about what is happening in the trial, which is what James lets us in on. We can consider a faith-testing trial pure joy because we know it is producing perseverance, which is what catalyst for metamorphosis into Christlikeness.
Before we go any further, we need to answer an important question: Perseverance in what? Unless we know the answer that question, we might persevere in the wrong things. We can keep hitting our heads against a wall and call it perseverance. We can stay in a situation God wants us to leave and call it perseverance. We can refuse to back down from a stand we never should have taken and call it perseverance, when it’s really just pigheadedness.
James is not saying we need to persevere in everything we undertake. He wants us to persevere in trusting God; this, don’t forget, is the “testing of your faith.” To persevere in trusting God means to continue doing things his way, even when it is hard. We don’t take shortcuts. We don’t ignore God’s word or abandon his ways to make things easier for ourselves.
When we persevere in trusting God through a trial, remarkable things happen within us. But they don’t happen just because we persevere; they happen because we persevere in trusting God. When we do that, we become mature and complete, where “mature” means we have reached the end for which we were made, and “complete” means we aren’t missing any important components. James is not talking about developing certain virtues – say patience or kindness or generosity. He’s talking about putting all the virtues together as a package. He’s talking about becoming the person God had in mind when he designed you. And there is no way to become that person – to become yourself – that doesn’t involve perseverance in trusting God through trials.
People who persevere in trusting God through trials do not (verse 4) lack anything that they need to be everything God calls them to be. That includes the wisdom they need (verse 5) to endure trials in good and God-honoring ways. People who continue to trust God in a difficult marriage can ask God for wisdom about how to proceed in that marriage and receive it. People who persevere in trusting God through a debilitating illness can ask God for wisdom about to how to serve him and find joy and purpose even when they feel lousy. People who persevere in trusting God through a relational conflict can ask for wisdom about how to approach the person with whom they are having trouble, and God will give it. You get the point. The wisdom in verse 5 is not for everyone. It is for the persevering person of verses 2-4.
I stress this point because we can easily miss it. We start out on some quest or project and believe we need to persevere because that’s what the Bible teaches. But perseverance in certain endeavors may have the opposite effect God intends. It may make us stubborn and bitter, whereas perseverance in trusting God makes us hopeful and better.
Now let’s go back to the phrase, “the testing of your faith.” Notice what is, and what is not, being tested here. It is “your faith,” your trust in God, that is tested, not your intelligence. Not your moral superiority, or integrity, or Bible knowledge. It’s your faith. What is being tested here – whether in the trial of poverty or the temptation to adultery; whether in the ordeal of illness or the impulse to lie – is your faith in God. Will you trust God and do things his way? If you will, perseverance will catalyze your spiritual formation and accelerate your development into the person you long to be.
So, understand: the trial you are suffering through right now is a test of your faith. The difficult marriage is a test of your faith. Will you trust God and dare to relate to your spouse as he has instructed? The illness you are going through is a test of your faith. Will you trust God to bring good out of it? Will you obey him without excuse and serve him in the midst of your pain? If you will, God will do remarkable things through you. The financial trial your family is going through is a test of your faith – not of your worth or your smarts or your success. Trust God, use the money he has given you as he instructed, and see what he does!
In most tests, an easier way becomes apparent. It’s easier to throw yourself into work or into fantasy than to approach your spouse with honesty. It’s easier to use deceit than to confess your sin or your failure. There’s always a way that seems easier than trusting God, a fork in the road you can follow that doesn’t require you to trust and obey.
But remember what is being tested: it’s not your ability to generate a certain outcome. Not your finesse in managing a situation. What is being tested is your faith. Pass that test, and it will open new doors for you; opportunities you have not imagined will present themselves. Pass that test and your will find it easier to pass the next one. And the one after that. Persevere in trusting God, and you will be on your way to becoming the person God intends you to be and that you will love being. That will not happen if you take the shortcut. The shortcut may help you sidestep what you’re eager to avoid, but it won’t lead you where you want to go.
The author of Hebrews gives us this word about trusting God in the test you are now facing: “… do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.” (Hebrews 10:35-36). Let me put that another way: When it comes to trusting God: “Never give in. Never give in, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty” – never stop trusting God.
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