[SPEAKER_00]: that moving ceremony that gives us such emotional power and such imports both for the individual and for our country, we note that that act was never done for the metal.
[SPEAKER_00]: The soldier didn't do that saying, I hope someone sees this and takes a selfie of me so I can get that metal.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's really going to make it all worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He did it because it's his job.
[SPEAKER_00]: He did it because it was the right thing to do, and he did it because it was needed or needed to be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: The metal itself is meaningful, but it's only meaningful because of the accomplishment that it celebrates, that it points back to.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were I could find such a metal, perhaps at a swap meter in some other situation, we might buy it for as an interesting historical curio, but to put it on or claim it as our own would be Stolen Valor and most immoral indeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means almost nothing that what it can be melted down to for its component parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's not in the hands of the one who did the work, who did the act of heroism.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reward symbolizes the accomplishment, but the accomplishment is what is truly important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soldiers who fight for awards are bad soldiers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soldiers who fight for their country, for the love, and sacrifice of others are the greatest soldiers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what today's passage is about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we start off in verse 12.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, alternatively, we won't take a poll, but you might have verse 12 attached to verse 11, or closing out the previous paragraph.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might, if you have another translation, see that attached to the following paragraph, and you might see,
[SPEAKER_00]: a change in language from trials to temptations, more on that in a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you might, if you have at least an NIV and I imagine a handful of others, you might have chapter or verse 12, verse 12, as a standalone verse sort of linking together to paragraphs or ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's really important that we recognize that there is a,
[SPEAKER_00]: a challenge, it's not a problem, but a challenge when translating the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, the New Testament manuscripts don't come down to us with chapter and verse numbers, nor do they come down to us with breaks for paragraph and or much punctuation to speak of.
[SPEAKER_00]: because that is not the way that Coin A Greek was written.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's important we recognize that our way of communicating with chapters and paragraphs and headings and such like isn't better or worse, it certainly works for us culturally, but in the New Testament era and in the Old Testament era,
[SPEAKER_00]: They relied more so on your knowledge of the texture, your understanding of the text, to get these ideas that have to do with flow and organization, and therefore the translators are always doing their best to try to find out where the argument breaks, where the align or subject might change in some sense, and it's not always an easy thing to do, and certainly isn't something that we can be hired.
[SPEAKER_00]: terribly dogmatic about in most cases except to say that what comes always relates to what came before it and to some degree to what is going to come after it to another degree.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've got this process whereby we look at the text and we say we might have even a new section heading in between two verses where another person's Bible doesn't have any.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now all of those section headings have been added for your understanding so that you can easily
[SPEAKER_00]: find and sort of separate out the ideas so you don't get overwhelmed with one huge block of text.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anybody's grandma or maybe have that old King James Bible, it was just verse, verse, verse, verse, verse, verse and absolutely nothing, it's just dizzying to see it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So modern editions of the Bible come organized so that you can access it more easily.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it kind of eases the difficulty of reading, especially as it has to do with translation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what we got to ask is where does verse 12 go?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, obviously, it goes between verses 11 and 13.
[SPEAKER_00]: But how do we think of this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And while I would not want to be over dogmatic, and certainly wouldn't want to cast doubt or dispersions on however your
[SPEAKER_00]: translation uses this, I would come into you that first 12 sets as the NIV puts it as a standalone summary statement before making an important clarification in the next setting section.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that because of the specific language that is used, the
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed is the man language seems very summary oriented and it also challenges us with the final and ultimate motivation for living life under trials or at least a very big and important one and it's key that we see this verse for what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've noticed we've done quite a few verses at a time throughout the study and we'll continue to but it felt very much appropriate to take
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there are a few concepts more basic and more important and yet more counterintuitive and difficult in the Christian life than understanding and dealing with trials, sufferings and temptations.
[SPEAKER_00]: difficult that we have the entire book of Job, not speaking just to Old Testament Israel in order to the New Testament Church, but to all of humanity to come to understand the nature of suffering and trials and some of the core fallacies and things that we do wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk about Job a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Job is absolutely on James's mind constantly, not today necessarily, but throughout our study.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, we have three major sections, and the first section will be the battle plan for trials.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just want to get that in your head, because it's so different than what the world puts forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so different than the way that we might cope with trials if we are adjusting or adapting to things or responding to things according to our flesh or according to the world's pattern.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you'd think about it, how did you pick up your algorithm for dealing with a bad day or bad situations or difficulty?
[SPEAKER_00]: Chances are, you watch your parents or some other role model, and you said, okay, so that's the way you deal with difficulty, that's the way you deal with trials, or possibly you figured that out on your own, maybe you read a self-help book or something else to help deal with difficult or stressful situations, perhaps you've got advice from a counselor or some kind or something along those lines, there's many different ways in which ways in which we'll develop our own kind of way of coping with the difficulties and challenges of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's only one way that is truly valid and productive in the Christian life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's exactly what James is saying here, which means that we might all have quite a bit of erasing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Quite a bit of rewriting to do to understand how to respond to and deal with these trials.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to get a battle plan, hopefully together, something that is clear and something that you can utilize every single day.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I love teaching through James Paul writes with all these wonderful, high-minded, theological ideas and James just breaks it right down to where you're at where I'm at right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then we'll look at this important concept of who is blessed and what that means in this context, and then we'll spend our last section looking at the crown of life, a very important concept for every Christian to understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, the battle plan for trials now.
[SPEAKER_00]: We mentioned this before.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to mention this again.
[SPEAKER_00]: The trials are misunderstood.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what James and Job and other passages of the Bible give us is an understanding that suffering is a result of sin in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't suffer every time because God is getting at you or getting even with you for some sin or something that you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the most basic and wrong idea that most people get.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reality is, is that man rebel against God, sin entered into this world, and with it death, decay, sickness, sorrow, warfare, bloodshed, and all manner of difficulty.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will experience pain, loss, difficulty, tragedy, heartache, and much of it will be simply because there is sin in this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, suffering can be a result of God's punishment.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see that this in the upcoming Tribulation period and in expressions of God's wrath throughout the Old Testament where it is absolutely punitive in nature is an expression of God's justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we see this at the flood and again, we'll see this again in the final judgment in the Tribulation period where God's wrath is poured out against sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: against the sins against an almighty and perfectly holy God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there is no punishment to anyone who is in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, punishment having to do with justice was entirely taken at the cross, and there is no condemnation for anyone who is in Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: For to do so would say that Christ's sacrifice was insufficient.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's only a few places that sin could be paid for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the best place to see sin paid for is where God desired it to be paid for, which is at the cross of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perfectly, fully, it is finished.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other place that sin can be paid for is by an assault, spending a turnity and hell apart from God in a terminal punishment.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no middle ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no just bottom-warming version of God's justice that just a little bit of payment, just a little bit of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you place faith in Christ, all your sins, past, present, and future must be paid for, because you do not have the capacity to pay for even one sin, even one wayward curse word, or even one misaligned thought, consent a person who sined thus against Almighty God, to an eternity apart from him, to why it's so important theologically that we understand the completeness of Christ's sacrifice a little bit more on that later.
[SPEAKER_00]: but suffering can be a result of God's discipline.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, your sins, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, are paid in full, but God, as we're gonna see, does not abandon you to abandon us to whatever lifestyle will choose and like any loving father, he will take corrective action, even allowing suffering and trial and difficulty into our lives with the expression.
[SPEAKER_00]: express purpose of bringing us back into line to a place of humility, to bring us to a place of confessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Lord, I was out of line in that action and that behavior and that attitude and know that there is always restoration of cleansing and restoration available because of the permanence of our position in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: So God will lovingly discipline as Hebrews 12 says it is an action of a loving God.
[SPEAKER_00]: who failed to discipline his children.
[SPEAKER_00]: Discipline is a good thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not always to do with something done wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our fathers, mentors, coaches, leaders, figures, are all designing and have plans to develop discipline within those whom they guide, lead, and teach.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a false kind of thought about discipline that it's always a bad thing happening to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord desires all of us to grow and become more disciplined believers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so discipline can be positive, teaching someone the right habits to, you know, who could say an athletic context, the right training habits to succeed in their sport, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a discipline.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also can have that negative disciplinary action that says, you know, you perform poorly, you disobeyed whatever was, and respond to that in a way that gets our attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suffering can be caused by our sin, that is to say that we bring most of our troubles on ourselves, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Having done hours and hours of marital counseling, I've found that universally,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always their fault, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always the people in the relationships fault.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually one won't take any responsibility or neither will take any responsibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the end of the day, the error or the problems in their relationship have everything to do with how they treat each other and very little and really how they focus on Christ or not and very little to do with the external circumstances that might seem to have influenced the situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our suffering can be caused by our sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: you can do all sorts of things that are unwise foolish even sinful and your body will ultimately respond to the consequences to that, whether that's through sinful relationships to food or drugs or anything like that effect even, being too addicted to coffee might result in the ulcers that cause you great discomfort and it's not God's fault and it's not discipline, it's your dumb.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm dumb too, but realizing that oftentimes our suffering is not God doing anything direct with us, it is the simple natural consequence of our sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many people who struggle to maintain relationships or have good positive relationships fail to realize it is because they are self-absorbed or that they are
[SPEAKER_00]: self-focused, or hurtful to others, or abusive towards others.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is their sin that causes their suffering, their loneliness.
[SPEAKER_00]: But additionally, we can suffer as the result of the sin of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't earn it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't choose it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the sin of others can cause us to be in great pain, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just as a person, whether intending to or not, can be not paying attention?
[SPEAKER_00]: and cause a car accident that is fatal to an innocent bystander, so it is in every aspect of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone else's sinfulness or someone else's spiritual maturity can cause you great pain and suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, suffering could be a natural consequence of our actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I only want to point this out, because some of our actions, we might say, was that particularly sinful, no, but it did result in this situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, you're uncynfully, you could say, you know, quit your job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, don't be surprised if it's tough to make a living, right, of that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: because you've made a natural choice or choice that has a natural consequence that changes your status there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it's really important that we have this understanding because as we mentioned before, we're most naturally going to look at the entire world as being entirely focused and centered upon ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is wrong, and we're going to look at everything that we suffer as some sort of grave injustice against us or some direct action of God, where that is only at certain points, the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: and we need to understand the way that the Bible looks at suffering in order to have that biblical perspective, to deal with it correctly, because when James says count it all, count it all joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: these various trials, all of these, in a sense, might qualify with some minor exceptions perhaps.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to give you some simple steps, just repeating what James says.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, as you encounter a uncomfortable or enjoyable situation, even a painful or tragic situation,
[SPEAKER_00]: starts by counting.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the part that we easily, especially in Western culture, give up on.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, you have authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have power over your thought process.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have responsibility for how you choose to perceive and respond to every situation that comes your way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so James is here challenging you to see that trial coming or see it hit us, if we might say, as we experience it, to choose how we account for it, how we think about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a major step that we oftentimes totally overlook.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would think of ourselves and there are various forces that would desire us to think of ourselves as simply being victims to the stream of time and things that happen as they flow past.
[SPEAKER_00]: And certainly there are many things that will happen to you that are totally out of your control.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what is absolutely and always in your control is where your gaze is focused.
[SPEAKER_00]: How you're going to choose to respond to this circumstance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So James tells you to stop worrying about all the things that are out of your control, whether the trials will come, what's going to happen, if this happens, I'll do that and if that happens, I'll do this as C.S.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lewis so well, pointed out that might be the greatest trial of all, is imagining all of the possibilities of things that could go wrong and what we'll do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So instead of falling on one sword, we fall on a thousand when we could have simply trusted,
[SPEAKER_00]: and what he would have us do in that situation, and what he would be doing within us in those trials and difficulties as they come.
[SPEAKER_00]: It begins with this, are you ready to take responsibility for how you perceive what is going on in your life?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you going to let the natural flow of things and that reactive, responsive way of going through life overtake your existence and how you think about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: But doing a person who's able to undergo great trials and bring glory to God and the one who is embezzered by it, who struggles, who runs through life, saying it's not fair, it's not, I've been cheated, I've been shorted.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it starts with a willingness to respond to the Word of God and call these things what they are according to His perspective instead of what they might be according to our perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is being followed by knowing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You meant to know something, this is a big, because we don't naturally necessarily know this, although we observe it naturally, and that's that trials bring perseverance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perseverance, this quality of being able to endure underneath evidently is developed through testing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is developed like physical strength is developed through exercise, every trial from light trials and small trials to terrifyingly large trials, all are enable or develop or grow in the believer, mature in the believer, this sense of ability to endure underneath, to be in that sense able to push through and move through those trials.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, we're meant to know
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, maturity is a thing that we don't necessarily highlight or value in a culture, in our culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, quite to the contrary, it is pathetic.
[SPEAKER_00]: How frequently we put up for our heroes or our, you know, figureheads and things we look up to, are the most immature, emotionally, spiritually, and personally, relationally, deeply immature.
[SPEAKER_00]: We watch films and movies that seem to idolize, immature behaviors.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are
[SPEAKER_00]: Obsessed with the stories that come forth and immature reactions and responses to things, but God calls us to something better.
[SPEAKER_00]: To say, what do I want to be in three years and five years?
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you want to be more mature than you are now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to decide if that's a worthwhile goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's God's goal for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you share it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want that maturity that is able to respond to every situation with praise to God?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or do you just want more stuff?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want what you want?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does God get to decide who you're meant to be or do you going to decide that?
[SPEAKER_00]: So now, we count, we've taken responsibility for how we perceive and how we're gonna respond.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that every one of these is going to bring about this result if we're relying upon the Lord through them.
[SPEAKER_00]: to bring us to maturity, and then we pray, praying, asking God for wisdom before you ask for deliverance, did I say that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did I start?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ask for wisdom before you ask for deliverance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever that trial is, whether or for whatever specifically brought that on, if you can calculate out how much of it was the natural consequences of your choice, how much of it might have been personal sin, how much of it might have been the sin of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before you go through all of that, ask God for wisdom so that you can respond to this trial.
[SPEAKER_00]: before we immediately rush to say, Lord, take this pain away, take this difficulty away, take this financial challenge away, ask Lord, what is it that you'd like to teach?
[SPEAKER_00]: Effectively, and we're reminded that it's only worthwhile if we ask in faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we don't trust the Lord through this trial, then we're not going to be very attentive to the wisdom that He provides.
[SPEAKER_00]: So James is very clear and even almost a little bit threatening it sounds like, but there's no threat at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's simply that if you ask God for wisdom, just like if you ask another person for wisdom, but you don't think of them as terribly wise, then you can't receive anything meaningful from them because you think they're not wise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you believe that God?
[SPEAKER_00]: has power to turn this to good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you believe that God has the ability to turn this trial into your maturity and to his ultimate glory?
[SPEAKER_00]: So ask in faith knowing that God is God that you're not, and they're gonna choose to worship Him and submit to Him regardless of whether or not you understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're allowed to ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: for that wisdom to understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, consider, as we look at, trials are personal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of one of the difficult things within the body of Christ within life, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone comes along and they're absolutely heartbroken because something has happened to them that you don't even, wouldn't even register to you as being all that frustrating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all different.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have different things that are going to bring us pain, frustration, and humiliation.
[SPEAKER_00]: the difficulties of those in poverty, differ from the difficulties and challenges and trials of those who have great riches.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point of that was not to say that rich is bad, or to be poor is bad, or to be rich is good, or to be poor is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point is to respond to every trial in the basis of where the Lord has positioned us and recognize that there is personal growth to be had.
[SPEAKER_00]: in every possible situation, which means that we don't need to judge others by the trials that cause them or temptations that cause them the most difficulty.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the greatest hypocrisy of Christianity is that I'm very permissive of the sins that I struggle with in others, but I'm absolutely impromisive of the things that I don't struggle with in others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we judge very harshly those things that are hard for someone else, but we expect quite a lot of grace in the things that are difficult for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can hopefully have the wisdom to look beyond that and say that the same things are not difficult for all of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some situations that one would find challenging and other might find unnoticeable.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't mean that the Lord is not at work in either or both.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, hopefully you can embrace these four simple steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a trial, as a difficulty comes, as simple as having to wake up for a work tomorrow or as horrifying as that news may be, be ready to count that, be ready to face that head on with an attitude of faith that's ready to count call that what it is, the absolute joy of having an opportunity to go closer to the Lord
[SPEAKER_00]: No, trust that this will be brought to the most important end of your life, which is your personal growth and maturity, pray for wisdom for the Lord, from the Lord to understand that, and consider it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Consider how this is going to individually bring you to growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, when it comes to counting your trials again, it's very unusual, this is not scripture, I'm going to be very clear about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: This just kind of helps me think about some of these different trials that we go through in a given day, week, month or a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, I want to call minor annoyances.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are daily growth opportunities.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we want to note that they actually can be far more destructive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some ways, it can be easier to deal with a great tragedy like a loss of job or whatever than to deal with a splinter that's just constantly annoying you all day, at least in terms of the practical experience of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe you woke up and everything was going wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a trial.
[SPEAKER_00]: though maybe a small one by comparison.
[SPEAKER_00]: That one person at work or in your family that you just can't get over, annoys you so much, it's so hard to forgive them, it's so hard to love them, you just can't even imagine how it would be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: That task or that thing that you just don't wanna do, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: that thing that just keeps on happening and just can't hand it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What about that clickbait news article that eats up your attention?
[SPEAKER_00]: You were doing fine but then you mistakenly have stupidly pulled out your phone and you looked at it and you saw that new news article about that thing that just drives you up a wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: or daily temptation to sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether those are the small secret sins of your internal life, your mental attitude, or they are the temptations to more outward and expressive sins of wrath, anger, hatred, lying, slander, or whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are daily temptations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to call all of these.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to put these minor annoyances in what I'll call a focused test.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the types of little things, the little foxes that will come and nibble at the corners of your life to keep your eyes or take your eyes off of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the question is, will you let them take your eyes off of Christ?
[SPEAKER_00]: A child is a beautiful thing, and especially as they start walking, because you hardly have to push them at all to make them fall over.
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't it great?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, a fully grown adult, you have to shove pretty hard to get them on their back.
[SPEAKER_00]: But with a kid,
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they're immature, they're not stable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Lord wants us to grow to the point where these minor annoyances don't remove our focus from Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So every day you wake up and experience dozens of trials and temptations, minor annoyances, a focused test that's gonna ask you, moment by moment, is this gonna take your eyes off Christ?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this gonna take your eyes off Christ?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great, confess that, come back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Put your eyes back on Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we got medium trials.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are an event or occurrence that's out of the ordinary.
[SPEAKER_00]: More than just the average course of affairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's an argument or a fight with someone that just changes and kind of puts a sour cloud over your entire day, or something that goes wrong at work or with someone that you love, you just hear bad news and that kind of taints your perspective, your mood at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I call these reliance tests.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can carry that problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can let that burden you, you can let that weigh on your conscience, or you can choose to entrust that to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it doesn't mean that you wouldn't continue to think about it, but when it comes to the burden of it, we have the choice to trust in the Lord with those special or medium trials.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, we have minor annoyances that are a focused test, medium annoyances that are a reliance test.
[SPEAKER_00]: and great trials.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the true tragedies of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope and pray that these are not common, weekly, even monthly for you, but one a year would be more than enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when they stack up, boy, it can get rough for us psychologically, personally.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, true tragedies of a major loss of job, death of a loved one, serious illness, financial wounding or problems that will not easily recoverable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd put anything in this category that would put you in that place of saying, life will never be the same again.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've all had those events, sometimes for the good and oftentimes for the bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: That thing that happens and you realize, I'll never talk to them on the phone again, or I'll never, my life will never be what it was before.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are what I like to call contentment tests.
[SPEAKER_00]: They force us to realize or recognize that the Lord truly is enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Prior to these types of events, we can theorize, we can assume, unless we are lived under great hardship all of our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can hope that that is our conviction, but these tests, just like they did with Job, bring forth the true character of our faith and help us realize.
[SPEAKER_00]: that you've lost, once you've lost everything, or feel as if you've lost everything, you answer the question, is the Lord enough?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the answer, of course, will always be yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So hopefully as we consider and continue to think about this, I really am burned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if this church family begins to put this into practice, we'll begin to have people ask about the hope that is within you.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what's really different.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as much as we love proactive evangelism, Peter seems to imply that the most important evangelism is that which someone else sees something different in you and wants to know how they can have what you have.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is a big deal for you personally and your growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a big deal for the opportunities that are given to us to share the faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a big deal for the glory of God here and now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So having looked at that, let's look at a verse today in verse 12, sort of a long run up to our point.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it begins with verse 12, 1, 12, A.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter 1, verse 12, A, would you please read with me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed is the man who endures temptation.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so there's two words that are translated blessed, I'm blessing, that are pertinent to our discussion today at least.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them is Ulogitas.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the word that we learned and studied in Ephesians last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is to be spoken well of, or towards God, that means praise.
[SPEAKER_00]: And towards us it means God speaking, his good gifts or something are our new position upon us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's used in Ephesians 1, 3, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir, thrir,
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not what James is talking about here.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just where Macarius, which means happy, or enjoying a favorable circumstance, or we might say very simply, in a good place, that someone is in a good place.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just to get an understanding of what James is invoking here, we need to look at at least two passages.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please open in your Bibles to Psalm chapter one.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were with us just a few weeks ago, you got to study this with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we have the opportunity to go through it today.
[SPEAKER_00]: very, very briefly."
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm chapter 1 says, Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the end godly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night.
[SPEAKER_00]: He should be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in season.
[SPEAKER_00]: whose leaf also shall not be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whatever he does, shall prosper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed, happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man, this guy's in a good place who has a right relationship with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a big statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: These kind of Maccara's blessed statements are of tremendous importance.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to say what the right thing where the right place to be, or where the best place to be is in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it that we ought to aim for or shoot for?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it financial prosperity?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it to be ultimately entertained and distracted at all times as to be artistically expressive in the perfect degree?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is there something else?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, James is telling us,
[SPEAKER_00]: just like the book of Psalms.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the same word Maccarus is used in the Greek Old Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now come with me to Matthew chapter 5.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have another very familiar passage with this language.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this may have been what was ringing in Jesus or in James' ears.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would wonder how.
[SPEAKER_00]: because he was not among the disciples as the brother of Jesus, but as Jesus gave these sermons many times throughout his ministry as any itinerant minister would, it's very possible that he heard it from the lips of his Savior and brother Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse five and verse three says, blessed are the poor and spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: For there's the kingdom of heaven, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,
[SPEAKER_00]: for they should be filled.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed are the pure and heart for they shall see God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness's sake.
[SPEAKER_00]: For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rejoice and be glad for great is your reward in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: For they persecuted the prophets.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here, the same word of macarios, which could mean simply happy, but here is used to invoke a far greater sense of being in a spiritually blessed, being in the right place when you could be in the wrong place.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we saw with both James and Jesus, and to some, maybe to them, lesser to read the Psalm 1, that this accepts our expectation.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Jesus says, Blessed are the poor and Luke, or Blessed are the poor and spirit, as is recorded in Matthew, to say, Blessed are those who are humble and destitute before the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would be shocking, the opposite of what we did so Blessed are the rich, Blessed are the wealthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, happier those who are humble before the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here, James is getting the same information.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed is the man who endures temptation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, in other words, when you see that person undergoing great difficulty and you're tempted to say, they're in a bad place, you're wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our perception is wrong, I'm in a really bad place right now, I've dealing with some struggles, difficulties, trials, hardy, whatever, temptation.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're lying on the Lord,
[SPEAKER_00]: then you're in a good place.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Antonyms of Maccarus are miserable, pitiable, and ratchet, in other words, you are not miserable, pitiable, and ratchet.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you might seem or feel most miserable, pitiable, and ratchet.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is again, allowing the Lord, the Word of the Lord, the truth of God, to overcome the lies and deception of our perception and experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, let's just ruin everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here is one of those cases where we have blessed is the man and you might have blessed is the person.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we usually expect to see the word Greek word Anthroposper behind here, which is often and very easily lends itself to being humankind.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is on air, this is the word for male or specifically for male.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly the same word because James is quoting the Old Testament in Greek.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly the same wording used in the Greek Old Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed the man, the male.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our culture is hyper-sexualized, and our language has been spoiled past the point of intelligence on into mundane stupidity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And dangerous ideologues and fools have brought us to think about language unreasonably.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, of course, while the word male is expressly used, it is clear contextually that this applies to absolutely any person, male or female, and that's the way it would have been understood if the way we understand it now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't hinge upon which Greek word is used per se.
[SPEAKER_00]: It hinges upon the absolute reality that he's talking about universal spiritual truth that apply to all.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, if you are offended by the fact that James used the word man to describe people, stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the way they communicate it then.
[SPEAKER_00]: If your translation corrects that to something that is more palatable to modern thinking or modern language, wonderful, you get the point.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is another critical point as we read through and study through the Bible is that it wasn't written 15 minutes ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, it does not acquiesce to all of the insane demands and qualifications of a culture that has creamed so far from thought, reason, or wisdom that it can barely talk to itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just a, a, a, a, a, a ready reminder to to understand the Bible in the way it was written not in the way that we might try to reinterpret it, but as we point that the man who endure is so here's our word endurance against the same word used before in James one two through four and it means again to remain to last through this is a different kind of strength than many other pictures of strength that we might use or utilize.
[SPEAKER_00]: different pictures of strength might be in terms of going to war and battle and overcoming the enemy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if anybody's ever seen the movie Cool Hand Luke, it's my favorite picture of this kind of enduring strength.
[SPEAKER_00]: As he allows himself to be beaten again and again just to a pulp but to continue to get up to the point where the person who'd taken not a single hit surrenders at some level before him in a very real emotional sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Strength can be measured by what you can overcome, but it really is measured by what you can endure through and it throughout.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he says, blessed is the man who endure or is enduring this kind of temptation or this kind of difficulty, this kind of trial.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Rocky, when he decided as we used the illustration earlier, when he decided that he couldn't beat a copolych read, but the most he could do is go the distance, last all 15 rounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a marathon runner, which were told is beyond or surpasses essentially the limitations of the human body, which means that those last miles are all on the will of the person.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or a tooth extraction, it hurts and it hurts and then it's gone and it's out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The picture here is that blessed as a person who is surviving and survives that trial.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes, oftentimes, a trial is meant to be and dored rather than overcome in the sense that you don't win.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might come to great loss through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But your blessed, if you're doing that in faith, as we'll see.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, some of our bibles will have some variety here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Certain translations move to temptation here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others will continue to use the word trial,
[SPEAKER_00]: whatever possible third term you might have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the question here is why is there a switch?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why switch in some from testing to temptation?
[SPEAKER_00]: And if yours doesn't do it there, it's going to do it probably a couple more verses down.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk about why right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But does it always mean one or the other?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Parismos is the word here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means to try to learn the nature or character of someone or something by submitting such to thorough and extensive testing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this word that is used throughout this chapter is the same word, and it has two shades or nuances of meaning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, we could argue a few more.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's used of the Pharisees, testing Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: They came to one who claimed to be in a sire and threw their quiz questions and their ability or their desire to try to catch him in some kind of a contradiction or a moral failing, they were testing the quality of him to see if he was the Messiah.
[SPEAKER_00]: While they did not believe most of them that he was the Messiah put faith in him, they could not prove by their testing that he was not because he showed himself ready to be wise and righteous.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 10, 13 uses the same word to say no temptation or testing has be fallen you, except, except such as common to man.
[SPEAKER_00]: to this idea that your temptations and your testings or trials are sort of one in the same, or can be considered as part of the same concept.
[SPEAKER_00]: Second Corinthians 13, five encourages believers to test our own faith to make sure that we have trusted in the true gospel of Jesus Christ and not the works of our own hands or the dogmas of our own churches or past or what someone said.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an important thing to mention repeatedly.
[SPEAKER_00]: because going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than being in your garage makes you a car.
[SPEAKER_00]: You must choose to trust Christ for yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Apart from good works, from communion, from baptism, apart from anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is that simple faith and Christ for the payment of your sins, the work that he did on the cross in his resurrection that brings salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Test your faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: yourself, your actions, the work of some church or church body or the work of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, Luke 412 is used of not testing the Lord, being commanded not to, and this will be a major part of next week's message, but not choosing not to test the Lord, but rather to trust the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: The single Greek word covers both English concepts for testing with a trial and tempting to sin, and they both display the quality of the thing through the discomfort, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So here is where we get to the question, why change and what change needs to be made?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as we're going to see going forward, the discussion changes very much more so to us being tempted to sin directly as intended to do something by volition that is dishonoring
[SPEAKER_00]: rather than something that is simply a trial that might cause us or provoke us to a lack of faith in the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, what do we do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it right to change here, from trial to temptation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it right to never change?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it right to choose one or the other?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the simple and obvious nuance of the word always makes sense is that every trial, whether it is a trial of personal difficulty, something external happening to us, or it is a trial of temptation, which will get again a great discussion of coming up, that is ultimately testing or has an opportunity to show that reality of our faith and grow us towards true maturity, but the real question that you might not be asking just yet, is who's running the test?
[SPEAKER_00]: is God running the test.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is Satan running the test?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it just the course of affairs as they have them?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you want to read ahead, you'll know, but otherwise, tune in next study for more information.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here is what we want to walk away from this brief point about this statement, this powerful statement, blessed as the man who endure his temptation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That I am in a place of blessing whenever my eyes are
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in a good place, regardless of how bad my circumstances might be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I rarely do this with anything that's scripture, but I do have enough confidence in the statement to invite you to read and affirm it for yourself, please read along with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am in a place of blessing whenever my eyes are on Christ in trials and temptation.
[SPEAKER_00]: re-work the way that you think about your bad days.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, our final point here has to do with the last portion of this verse, and because well, because it's so encoded in the entire verse, we'll just read the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please read along with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed is the man who endures temptation.
[SPEAKER_00]: For when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So approval, very important, first and foremost, is not an issue of salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what Paul is talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Justification is not talking about the faith you placed in Christ for salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christians are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone period and of sentence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Romans 3 through 5 tells us that justification, which means to be declared righteous, before God eternally, is by faith alone in Christ alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there is no other way to attain justification.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way or amount of action that could ever justify you before a righteous Almighty God.
[SPEAKER_00]: No works before, after or in the middle, will win, earn, prove, keep or maintain salvation, not at all salvation is not a work of man.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a work of God received by grace to faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: We cannot help this salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: We cannot improve this salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: We cannot add to the salvation nor can we take anything away from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't remove it, drop it, lose it or return it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is part of the sovereign will of God that anyone who places faith in Christ receives this new life, this salvation, it is absolutely a hundred percent God's doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: To earn salvation, you would have to be righteous before God, impossible.
[SPEAKER_00]: to lose salvation, you would have to overpower God, who has placed you in the hands of the Son and into the hands of the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is central to the faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when he talks about approval here, he's not talking about approval unto salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's talking about approval as an ongoing reality of God's assessment of the Christian life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Christian life is not a robotic responsive affair.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've trusted Christ, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to make any right choices there.
[SPEAKER_00]: After you still have a volition, you can still be.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, you still are, we still are just as foolish silly and dumb after we've trusted Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we were before.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are new factors working, but we still have that ability to make personal choices.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can live a life that God approves, as James here is looting to.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word is documents, it means to be approved after testing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or we could live a life that God disapproves.
[SPEAKER_00]: He still loves us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is still a part of that salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: We still retain or maintain that same position in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was done by Him or as Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 3, we've got a foundation that can go nowhere, even if everything else burns up more on that in a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: here to recognize the security of our salvation and the immense consequences of how we choose to live with that salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, a person can be saved for given and continue to make earthly or sinful choices.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that will have earthly consequences.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them is not loss of salvation, but many of them are broken relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: continued frustration, the physical pain that we might bring upon ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could wind up in jail, we could wind up in various situations that we wish that we weren't in, all as the earthly consequence of our sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even worse yet, if we choose to walk in sin, and we all will from time to time, or part to part, I hope it's the exception, not the rule, but even if it's the rule, there's the personal consequence, which is far greater.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the worst thing that could happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe that Jesus cried and wept and swept blood because he was afraid of the outchies that he would sustain physically.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe it was because that moment of broken fellowship between the Father and the Son, when the Son took the sins of the world on himself, was the most horrible, horrifying thing that ever happened to him, and Jesus Christ is right.
[SPEAKER_00]: The worst thing that can happen to you is not that you would lose your mind or your health
[SPEAKER_00]: or your life, the worst thing that can happen to a believer is you can spend a moment out of fellowship with God and yet we do it with such cavalier readiness that it's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that would be reason enough to constantly choose against sin, against faithlessness, to trust in Him through these trials.
[SPEAKER_00]: But finally, we find there are eternal consequences.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not just waiting it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're being prepared to rule and reign with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a work ahead to glorify and honor and build things up.
[SPEAKER_00]: We say, oh, I thought I just got to go on vacation once I went to heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: Quite the contrary.
[SPEAKER_00]: There will be more to do than ever before and praise the Lord, anyone who's ever,
[SPEAKER_00]: taking two weeks off knows how boring it is when you don't have something truly valuable or meaningful to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why people unretire all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: They find out that they didn't even like golf when they had to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Golf is only fun when compared to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people love golf.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the idea is that ultimately these eternal consequences
[SPEAKER_00]: our ability to glorify and serve God in a turnity future.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that's a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: every believer will reign with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's because it's based upon your position in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the King, your position in Him, your part of His administration, your part of His reign, your part of His rule, your concluded.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just you, in fact, all of the Old Testament saints, as well as all of the tribulation saints, will all rule and reign in that wonderful kingdom and administration for a thousand years that move into the new heavens.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the new earth that is a part of what God has done in His grace, package, and Christ, it is a part of His transformation of you from what you were a hopeless, lost sinner into being a child of God and an heir and a coer with Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is immobile, that is unchangeable, that is absolutely off the table as being something that you can risk losing because it's about what He's done, it's about His glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, we see that there is a future judgment ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to note that this beam-a-seat judgment, as it's called in Scripture, is not towards or regarding salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone standing before the beam-a-seat judgment has already had their eternal destiny fixed by trusting in Christ, just as anyone who stands before the Great White Throne has already had their destiny fixed towards hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: only believers stand before this judgment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next thing we find is that sin is burned up or removed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is no longer the issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's already been paid for by the work of Jesus Christ and now in reference to our lives, it's all those moments that we wasted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ paid for all sins, past, present, and future.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to suggest that they needed a secondary payment is double jeopardy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes God unjust, demanding double payment for sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is a judgment towards the rewards.
[SPEAKER_00]: All your failures and shortcomings immediately remove.
[SPEAKER_00]: We find out what is left.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some believers will be highly rewardable and will be so rewarded.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every moment of faith, every action, every sacrifice, every work that you did to build up and encourage other believers to share the gospel will be rewardable and it will be recognized and rewarded.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others will be moderately rewarded.
[SPEAKER_00]: or moderately rewardable and so rewarded.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others will ultimately have a lot to look back on in life and say, oh, boy, that first half, that first 50 years before I trusted Christ was kind of a waste.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was unrewardable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or all those years that I just forgot about my faith and lived for myself, what a waste from eternity's perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some were told, we'll have no rewards at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: The deathbed conversion, the child who's aborted in the womb, these people will exist and have an important powerful part in the kingdom and in service.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no rewards to show from their time on this planet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will note, because the doctor and the idea that the concept of rewards is very important, but oftentimes people get obsessed with the rewards rather than the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many in the body of Christ have grown obsessed with prizes, and they make this the primary motivation in the Christian life, and I warn you strongly against that, as our study last year in Grace Motivation calls.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their lives become sad, their faith hollow, they're motivated by their own glory, and they miss the point altogether.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're waiting for the applause that is coming to them, and they will sadly find that no applause is coming to us, that all glory will go to Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: They live a Christianity by comparison.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're desire to feel better about whatever it is that they believe that they are is only encouraged by trying to compare to others and be better than others in some meaningful way to them that is meaningless inside of eternity.
[SPEAKER_00]: James intentionally gives no metric here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's important, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bustards are going to endure his temptation, once?
[SPEAKER_00]: Twice.
[SPEAKER_00]: 70% of the time?
[SPEAKER_00]: What if you did it all the time?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you failed at the last?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my.
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that work out?
[SPEAKER_00]: How can I be sure?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to get this, how many times do I have to endure under trial and how many failures will discount it from that or could disqualify me from that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it best two out of three or perhaps just the last ten years?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I just got it right in the last five years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe I just passed that one final trial trusting in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would that be enough?
[SPEAKER_00]: This kind of thinking obviously shows itself as being totally absurd and misses the mark.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if that all misses the mark and that's where many believers I've encountered, think about this, what hits the mark?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, here's what hits the mark.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every trial or temptation is a potentially rewardable moment in God's perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why the vagueness is here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every moment is an opportunity
[SPEAKER_00]: that God longs to and is able to reward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time you are tried and as an opportunity to gain reward with and before God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this reward is very specifically told as a very special crown.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, when you hear the word crown and English, it is so wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: that we need to change our translation.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, cross-off that word crown and write Stefanos or metal or gold medal, whatever it is, because a crown always makes us think of a king's crown.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has to do with ruling and reigning authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: This has nothing to do with any of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a medal of achievement, like the Medal of Honor.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a laurel-reath that was given to an Olympic victor, and it would sit along an oriob military victor.
[SPEAKER_00]: It meant someone had one something, someone had passed something, someone had had had had had chock-complished, achieved something as a glorious recognition of what was done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Lord longs to give these crowns to believers.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're given two qualifiers here, which I think is very interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is the approval of the Lord and the other is that is promised to those who love him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we also have another mention, if it's indeed the same crown, I think it likely is, of this same crown in Revelation 2-10.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus speaking to the church at Smyrna, a church under intense persecution.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, do not fear any of those things which you're about to suffer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested, and that you will have tribulation 10 days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if we become again, that kind of closed, small-minded, like, penny-counting, penny-counting, believe it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we're going to line up with some weird conclusions, like the only way to get this is to be faithful into death.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, some of you even called this the martyr's crown as a result, but its inclusion in James seems to at least expand the possibility or potential for earning that crown.
[SPEAKER_00]: The willingness to face physical death for faith might seem like a scary thing, but the promise of eternal life would have been absolutely meaningful, both to James' audience as well as to Christ's audience in Smyrna.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is ultimately the thing that we're meant to take from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing that you sacrifice or lose for Christ or in faithfulness to Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll mean anything in light of the reward that is coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a faith commitment that we're being asked to make by Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clearly, eternal life is not conditioned upon works.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've already said that, but rests upon faith, to John 3, 16, John 5, 24, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 5, Ephesians 2, 8, 9, we could go through this all day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clearly, this is not talking about the gift of eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a gift that is not something that's earned.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this crown of life seems to have import.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep your eyes fixed on Christ, serve Him, trust His character, as a rewarder of good works done by faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rewards for every moment of faith in trial and tribulation of resisting temptation, everyone, as we are, again, trusting on Him will be real, will be substantial,
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a positive motivation, not a negative one, that the God of the universe who sees every moment of your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's ready to reward you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He longs to reward you, to see his children succeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not up there carrying decimal places and counting out, to see if you just passed out, just didn't quite make it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's other five crowns that we know of.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would argue that there is a substantial amount of necessary unclarity in this because, again, I don't think we're meant to define our lives around trying to gather up as many of these as possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there will be other rewards that are unknown or at least unlisted and unnamed.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, this crown of life
[SPEAKER_00]: clearly is related to endurance and trials and persecution.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first Corinthians 925 is an incorruptible crown that seems to be related to discipline and self-control.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a crown of righteousness in Second Timothy 4.8 that has to do with loving, Christ's appearing longing for His return.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse Peter 5-4, a crown of glory that comes to fate for faithful shepherding within the context of the church, the crown of rejoicing in 1st desolate in its 2019 for winning and building believers, soul-winning and discipleship crown, is this all?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think this is all.
[SPEAKER_00]: There'll be more to reward than just these five aspects, but it does give us five at least aspects of things that are priority to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it says to those who has promised to those who love him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whenever we come to this important issue of love and faith-based obedience, I want to take some time.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, we have to understand that none of us are naturally lovers of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: In our sinful estate, that is not a part of our core makeup.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God changed all that when he sent Jesus Christ into this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Romans 5-8s has but God demonstrates his own love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did not know God, we did not know his love, but Christ demonstrated that love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thus we can respond by trusting in him.
[SPEAKER_00]: by reciprocal love, as first John 419 says, we love Him because He first loved us.
[SPEAKER_00]: John 1421 gives us a practical application of that love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And He, as my commandments and keeps them, it is He who loves me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And He who loves me will be loved by my father.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I will love Him and manifest myself to Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a relationship between love of Christ and obedience to Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's important that we recognize, because you could try to keep his commandments without loving Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many live or attempt to live the Christian life totally apart from faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Having never trusted in Christ for salvation, they try to do the right thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Show how much they love God, but in fact it is not the love of God that motivates their steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just the things we do, it's the motivation that matters to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The question is, how will you respond to the one who loved you so much?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you struggle with obedience?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you struggle in temptation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to humanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: What will bring you past that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Come to know how much he's loved you.
[SPEAKER_00]: come to trust how great His love is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep your eyes fixed upon Him and watch as you go through trials, temptations and situations because you trust in the one who loved you so much that it gave His Son to die on the cross for your sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've looked today and hopefully a practical battle plan for trials.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully you have understood what a tremendous statement it is to say that we are blessed when we're in our most difficult situations.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are blessed when we have an opportunity to rely on Christ and temptation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully you're encouraged by the incredible thought of future eternal rewards of incredible value of unspeakable worth that will enable you or grow you to be mature in your eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: and your service to him, and it all just demands a simple change of perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every child who has ever tried to learn math asks the fatal question that no math teacher has ever been able to answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do I have to learn this?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really hard question to answer, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone who has ever tried to, well, you know, you might be an engineer someday, interestingly.
[SPEAKER_00]: No teacher was stupid enough to say that to me, because I was stupid enough to know that it would never be the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: when those grown-up teachers would also say, well, you won't always have a calculator around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: It shows what they knew I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't convince you about why it's important for you to learn calculus, but I can absolutely promise you that when it comes to the trials and difficulties, temptations of this life, the answer is absolutely clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every difficulty, every trial, every broken shoe lace, every car accident, every moment where
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pay-artable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ is going to pay out any eternal rewards for temporary difficulties.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only way that trials can be a waste is if we waste the opportunity to trust and Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go to the Lord and prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, are we praise and thank you for your tremendous provision for us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, no person on earth has ever had this incredible blessing to be able to look upon life's trials and say they're not just too bad, so sad, but they're of eternal value and worth.
[SPEAKER_00]: that you're going to bring them to the greatest, the highest good that we can suffer for a moment and enjoy reward for eternity adds nobilt, nobility and value to every moment no matter how uncomfortable, how painful, how frustrating it gives us encouragement to live with fidelity.
[SPEAKER_00]: and to resist temptation at every moment, because we know that you see all and you know all, that you root for us, you've provided for us, you encourage us, and you hold before us the promise, not just of eternal life, of salvation, from sin, of forgiveness,
[SPEAKER_00]: But an opportunity to be conformed to the image of Christ, to be maximally rewardable before you, to bring you glory on into eternity future.
[SPEAKER_00]: We praise you, and we thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We look forward to that with great joy, I pray for each of us the wisdom, Lord, to understand, to be able to catch ourselves and regard our trials in the way that your word makes clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: and to be, or wise enough, to choose, to grow through these trials, or rather to allow you to grow us, rather than to be resentful and bitter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please forgive us where we failed, give us wisdom to make a better step tomorrow in Christ and we pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.