This evening we're going to be looking at James chapter 1, verses 2 through to 8. Enduring Trials with a God-Given Wisdom. From the very outset of this epistle, James addresses the reality of living the Christian life. He does not begin with doctrine, but with the unavoidable experiences of God's people in this present evil world, and their experience is one of trials, temptations, trials. 

These verses confront us with a truth that all of you believers know from past and perhaps present experiences that can be sometimes painful and difficult. The Christian life gives no exemption to trials, to difficulties. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ does not remove Christians from suffering, affliction, or sorrow. 

Rather those trials place you within God's gracious purpose. As the Apostle Paul said in Romans chapter 8 and verse 28, and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose. Although all things work together for good, for Christians, the Lord's people, many of those things are anything but pleasant at the time.

James writes to believers who were scattered, they were tested. We saw an example of that last week in Acts chapter 8, where the Apostle Paul, who at the time was still a Pharisee by the name of Saul, was persecuting the church unto death, and the believers were scattered abroad. Instead of simply offering sympathy in today's verses that we're going to be looking at, James says, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations. 

That exhortation immediately raises the question, how can temptations or trials be regarded as joy? It's there in verse 2, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations. So again, how can trials be regarded as joy? James answers that one by presenting four closely connected truths. The nature of trials, the purpose of trials, God's provision in those trials, and the attitude that is required by us during those trials. 

What can be seen as those truths unfold is the gracious character of God, who does not abandon his people in times of difficulty, but he uses the hardship to mature their faith, and to draw them to himself for wisdom and strength to endure. First of all, the nature of trials. Look again at verse 2, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations. 

James begins by acknowledging the variety and the inevitability of trials with the words, when ye fall into diverse temptations. The word translated temptations does not refer to inward temptations to sin. We saw a lot of that this morning in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. 

We were given these examples of the past with Israel of old, examples for us not to follow, how they gave it, how they lusted after their idols, and this is temptation from within, within their own evil hearts. This is not what James is talking about. He's talking about trials that come from without. 

Trials greatly differ in respect to form, intensity, duration, and cause. They're very different, and because we fall into them according to verse 2, that doesn't mean to say we go looking for them, does it? If we fall into them, they find us. Those trials find us, and they're diverse, meaning various or manifold. 

As such, the trials greatly differ. Some trials can be sudden and short, whilst others, other trials can creep in very slowly, very surely, and perhaps they remain, seem to remain for a very long time. In fact, you can have a trial which will last you for the rest of your days in this world. 

Some trials arise from persecution or opposition for Christ's sake, whilst others arise from bereavement, sickness, loss, disappointment, or financial, relational problems, and heartaches. Those things are the experience of everyone, aren't they? Believers of the Lord Jesus Christ and unbelievers alike. So, in a way, it's worse for us, isn't it, as Christians, because we have trials by virtue of the fact that we are Christians.

Persecution for Christ's sake, which we consider a joy. It's only Christians who receive that, but on top of that, we receive all the other things that people receive, the things I've just mentioned there, the bereavement, sickness, loss, and all the rest of it. So we've got everything.

Far from being a walk in the park, when you think of it like that, being a Christian is anything but a walk in the park. Even so, James says, count it all joy. So he's referring to all trials, whether they're trials because you're suffering for Christ's sake or trials that are common to everybody. 

Consider it as joy. Yet James, he is addressing brethren in verse 2. He's therefore addressing Christians for whom trials are the means by which God sanctifies his people. God makes them holy. 

By telling Christians to count or reckon their various trials as joy, James is not minimising the pain of trials. You don't have to jump up in the air rejoicing if you go through bereavement. As unpleasant as trials might be at the time, they are nevertheless to be seen for what they are, given to you by none other than the Creator God. 

Again, I'm speaking to brethren here, Christians. They're given to you by the Creator God who intervenes personally and lovingly in the lives of his children according to his purpose. We don't always understand that, do we? God's ways are higher than our ways. 

His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. But we could be sure that whatever trials we go through as Christians is for our good, according to God's purpose, even if we don't understand it at the time. The joy is not found in the actual trials, which as I say can be very painful indeed, but in God's gracious dealings with you, in giving you those trials, and indeed being with you in those trials. 

Just think of the three men in the book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, when they were in a fiery furnace. And the king looked into the fire, and he didn't see three, he saw four, with one of them, the fourth one, looking like the Son of God. God is with Christians in their trials. 

And that is really something, isn't it? That is special. It would make no sense telling an unbeliever to count it all joy when he falls into various trials, but it makes perfect sense when the one on the receiving end of the trials is a child of God, is a Christian, and his joy is not something that he is expected to produce within himself when he's just suffered loss, or whatever it is he's going through. The joy is of divine origin. 

It is a joy that is given to him by Jesus, who for the joy that was set before him endured the shame and the suffering of the cross, and is now seated at the right hand of the majesty on high, seated at the right hand of the throne of God. The Christian's God-given joy sits alongside a peace that passes understanding, which he also receives from his Saviour, Jesus Christ, who is the Prince of Peace. We see it in the New Testament, Jesus gives his joy and he gives his peace. 

Again, that joy is of divine origin. Secondly, the purpose of the trials. Look at verses three and four. 

Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience, but let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. James says, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. The trying of your faith, that is the testing of your faith. 

God is testing us, testing our faith. The trials are not random intrusions into a Christian's life. That is not God's purpose. 

He doesn't just give us these trials for the fun of it. They are tests of faith, and they are appointed by God. Faith, like gold, must be tested in order to be proved genuine. 

Trials reveal what faith truly rests on. God knows whether your faith is real or not. You know, God is not giving you and me trials because he's not quite sure whether we're real Christians or not. 

If you're a Christian, God chose you before the foundation of the world, and he, in the fullness of time, he drew you to his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom you now trust as a repentant sinner. So God doesn't give us these tests so that he might know for sure whether you're Christian or not. It's for us. 

The tests are for us. The tests of our faith. And those tests show whether your confidence as a professing Christian is in God, is really in God, or simply in circumstances, comforts, outward privileges, of being part of the wider church family. 

We saw that this morning as well. The house of Israel. I didn't mention it this morning, but it's reckoned, so therefore it's just educated guesses, that God brought out about two million children of Israel from their afflictions in Egypt. 

Two million. But as we saw this morning, their carcasses fell in the wilderness, at least most of their carcasses fell in the wilderness. They enjoyed the outward privileges of belonging to Israel, but they didn't have a genuine faith. 

They were not trusting in God. They were simply trusting in God's provision, the signs and the wonders, but not in God himself. So God graciously gives us trials for us, for our benefit. 

Those trials prove the genuineness, prove to you and me, the genuineness of your faith, or else they expose the insincerity of your profession of faith. God obviously knows those things. God knows who are his. 

Also the testing is designed to refine and to strengthen those who have a genuine faith in Jesus. So the trials show whether your faith is counterfeit or real, and if it's real, the trials strengthen you in your most holy faith. The immediate fruit of tested faith is active patience or endurance under pressure. 

This is seen in remaining steadfast and continuing to trust in God, even and especially when the trials endure instead of quickly passing away. It's a real test, isn't it? When the trials come along, do you evaporate when the trials come? Maybe when something comes your way that's terrible, do you then hide away? I've heard Christians being angry with God as soon as things aren't going right for them. I can never quite work out what's going on there. 

James then presses further when he says, let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. Trials are not meant to be simply endured. That's not the be-all and end-all of it.

God gives us trials. Will we endure or not? Will we, again going back to this morning, will we endure to the finish line and receive that crown, that imperishable crown, incorruptible crown? It's not simply about endurance. The trials are carefully designed by God to complete something in believers, and that something is Christian maturity, spiritual wholeness, integrity, stability. 

Again, it's how God builds us up in our faith through trials, sometimes very painful trials. That maturity does not mean sinless perfection, by the way, but it does mean completeness of faith, a faith that is not shallow, impulsive, or divided. Trials strip away remnants of self-trust that lurk within, and the trials teach believers to depend wholly upon the God of their salvation. 

The Apostle Paul describes this same process in Romans chapter 6, sorry, chapter 5, verse 3 through to 5, where he says that tribulation works patience. Patience works experience, where experience means proof, and experience or proof strengthens hope. So ultimately, when you go through that chain of events, the tribulations or trials that you receive, they strengthen the hope that you have in Christ. 

Paul emphasises the pressure of suffering during trials in what he says in Romans chapter 5. He emphasises pressure where the patient endurance of the pressure fans the flames of hope. You go through those painful trials, whatever they might be, and you find that, what are you doing? Instead of cursing God or hiding away or whatever, you're enduring, and you're looking to God all the time to get you through that trial, to be with you in that trial. That is experience. 

You're literally experienced. That is your faith being experienced by you. It's very real. 

Others might not understand what's going on, but when you go through a trial, and instead of falling apart, you're trusting in God throughout. That is real, and then that leads to the flames of hope being fanned and strengthened your hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, whom you are looking to through the trials, but it's painful at the time, and that is what Paul is emphasising in Romans chapter 5. Whereas James emphasises the testing of the faith during trials which, as has been said, shows whether faith is genuine or not. 

It's not about building up the hope, although that is there. It's showing, quite simply showing, if you've got a real faith in the first place. Either way, and together, what James says in chapter 1 here, what Paul says in Romans chapter 5, together they present a picture of God's gracious design in trials for his people.

Showing his people, yes, your faith is genuine. You're not just trusting in yourself or in things being all nice all the time for you. Your trust is in me. 

So you've got a genuine faith, and also, boy, what a way of building up the hope that you have in Christ Jesus. Thirdly, God's provision for those trials. Look at verse 5. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. 

Having established the nature and the purpose of trials, James now turns to a practical concern. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God. Trials very quickly expose our lack of wisdom. 

We do not instinctively know how to respond the right way in trials. Left to ourselves, again, we may fall apart, we may curse God, be angry with God, or run for cover, do all sorts of things that we really shouldn't be doing. Left to ourselves, we're prone to confusion, bad decisions, bitterness, and utter despair during trials. 

The wisdom James speaks of is the spiritual discernment and the ability to see trials from God's perspective, and to respond in faith and obedience. It is a wisdom that is grounded in the scriptures. Not a worldly wisdom, but grounded in scriptures. 

A wisdom that trusts God's purposes and submits to his perfect will. James directs believers to God as the giver of this wisdom. It says it there in verse 5. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not. 

God does not ration wisdom, nor does he reproach his children for their continual need of it. Therefore, trials are not the evidence of God's displeasure with you when you're going through a trial, you needn't think straight away, oh dear, you know, God's punishing me here. But they are occasions for believers to seek him more earnestly as they look to him for godly wisdom. 

Again, it's about casting yourself before the throne of God's grace. Your heavenly father, no less. This invitation to ask for wisdom highlights the gracious nature of God. 

He is not reluctant, distant. He does not begrudge giving you wisdom. He delights to give what his people need in order to endure what he has given them. 

Wisdom is not earned through endurance. It is graciously given by God through the prayerful reading of the scriptures which speak of the Lord Jesus Christ, who according to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 30 is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption. I've mentioned this before going through our series in 1 Corinthians when that verse was first showed to me when I became a Christian, that Jesus is my wisdom. 

In fact, when you look at that verse, I'll say it again. Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. In other words, dear Christian, Jesus is your everything, your wisdom and everything else. 

Here the contrast and the division between believers and unbelievers becomes crystal clear. Trials come to everyone but only believers are to seek wisdom from God with the promise of receiving it and unbelievers not going to cry out for God for wisdom, for discernment, the Christian will or at least ought to. In Christ, trials become occasions for communion with God. 

As you cry out to God for wisdom, as you cast yourself upon God, you're having communion with God and you're growing in grace. Fourthly, the attitude that is required in trials, looking at verses 6 through to 8, but let him ask in faith, nothing wavering for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. 

A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. James now addresses the manner in which wisdom must be sought when he says, but let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, that is without doubting. Prayer that pleases God is marked by faith, trusting in him. 

To ask for wisdom while doubting God's goodness and faithfulness undermines the very thing that you're praying for and what you're asking for. Why would you pray to God when you're not trusting in him to give you what you're asking? James describes the doubter as being like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed and that depicts the person who, according to John Gill, is unsettled and is easily carried away with every wind of doctrine, temptation and lust. James continues by saying a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. 

Double-mindedness describes a heart that is not fully trusting in God. There's nothing like a trial to expose that condition and bring it to the surface. The Lord Jesus Christ talks about professing Christians whose profession of faith comes to nothing when it is tested. 

With regards to the seed that is sown onto stony ground, in his parable of the sower, Jesus says, but he that received the seed onto stony places, the same is he that heareth the word and anon with joy receiveth it, yet have he not root in himself, but endures for a while. For when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. At which point you say goodbye to him because he's gone.

The warning about being double-minded is very solemn. James does not say that God is unwilling to give wisdom, but that a divided heart cannot receive it. Faith must be wholehearted and entirely in God without hedging your bets and perhaps having a plan B or perhaps even a plan B and plan C up your sleeve. 

Trust in God. Lean not on your own understanding. Fifthly, a word to the unbeliever. 

Trials, as we have seen, come to everybody from the least to the greatest, yet the unbeliever faces them without the promises of God, without wisdom that is of divine origin, without those trials being given by a loving heavenly father for the good of the one who's receiving those trials and in accordance with God's purpose. In fact, for the unbeliever, the pain and the suffering of trials are nothing more than the consequences of living in this fallen world and the consequences of having not been reconciled to God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a terrible thing to be in this world without having been reconciled to God.

Obviously, someone doesn't know that until they become a Christian, but speaking for myself, as a Christian now, I can't, the very thought of living one moment in this world without knowing Jesus is the most horrible thing. But we do have Jesus and we look to him during the trials. In Ephesians chapter 2 verse 12, Paul describes this miserable condition of being an unbeliever and undergoing trials as being without hope and without God in the world. 

Yet trials can serve another purpose. By the grace of God, they may be used by him to expose the emptiness of a life which is apart from Christ and which amounts to nothing more than a miserable existence. Not the same for everyone. 

I would have to say that when I became a Christian, things were going pretty good for me at the time. Life has its ups and downs. As far as it goes before becoming a Christian, I was on a high. 

But for some people, it can be that trial that God gives that results in them, by the grace of God, showing repentance toward God, beating the chest and saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Those trials may be used by God to strip away false refuges and drive sinners to seek true refuge, which is in God, which is God. In conclusion, James calls on those who are trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ to rejoice, not because their trials are pleasant, but because their God-given trials test and strengthen their faith. 

They produce endurance and they mature believers. Again, it's not just about enduring to the end. Obviously, that is important to reach the finish line and to receive that incorruptible crown. 

But that will happen because God will preserve you if you belong to him. It produces endurance and most of all, it is a way of building Christians up, maturing their faith. All of you who are baptised in Christ can be confident that the God of your salvation is faithful to supply wisdom and grace for you to endure all your trials without a shadow of a doubt.

Even the final trial of dying, that's the biggest trial of all, isn't it? Being on your deathbed. When in God's time, you reach the finish line of the race that God has set you and his grace is sufficient for you during that trial. Your confidence then is not to be in your ability to endure, but in God's faithfulness and his provision, as was the case with David, the Psalmist.

An example of David's trust in God in the midst of trials is given in Psalm 57 and verse 1, where David, who had fled from his life from King Saul and was hiding in a cave, prayed, Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in thee. Yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge until these calamities be overpassed. That's a lovely example of trusting in the Lord during times of trial. 

Your hope is not to be in your wisdom, but in the wisdom that God freely supplies through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the infinitely wise Son of God. Again, he is the wisdom for all who are trusting in him, and there is no greater wisdom than to have Christ. Your assurance does not come from resting in your perseverance, but in Christ's perfect obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, where he paid the penalty for your sin with his own precious blood. 

Count your trials all joy, not that they are enjoyable, but because the end is absolutely certain, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is leading you, is faithful to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. Finally, to anyone who is still enamoured with this present world and not Christ, the call of scripture is clear. Turn from your evil ways and live. 

Repent and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom all the promises of God have their yay and amen. Jesus alone brings his people, not merely through the inevitable trials of life, but he brings them all the way home to heavenly glory to be with him forever and ever. Amen.

Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai)