Trust God in Trials

That's a good question. Why are we doing the book of James, right? So we're doing all the rest of the J's that I haven't done previously. So we're going to do the book of James. So it's after the book of Hebrews. So you get past the T's. So keep going. Yeah, we did Hebrews last year. And so we're gonna get to, so right past Hebrews is you're gonna, it's Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, and then you'll get to James. So we're gonna do James, James chapter one.
This is kind of, sometimes people call it the book of Proverbs in the New Testament. So it's very- I thought you said prophecies. Book of Proverbs for the New Testament. So we're going to do verses 1 through 8. Good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. It's good to be with you this morning. We're going to start the book of James, the first 8 verses of chapter 1. Let's have some coffee. I think Nathan's got tea this morning. And we'll pray and we'll get into God's Word. All right, let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your word, and we pray that as we read your word this morning, that your Holy Spirit would give us wisdom. Lord, you are the one who gives wisdom if we ask of you. So, Father, we pray, pleading with you that you would give us knowledge and give us the ability to put that knowledge into action in the right time, in the right place, in the right way. In Jesus' name, amen. Here we go. James 1, the first eight verses. James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting. You wanna read two, three?
My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, but let patience But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. Give to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. but let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. But let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded, unstable man always. He's a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Good. All right, so we got to ask ourselves three questions. A, what is this? B, what's the? Best for us to summarize. And see what are we called to do. All right, so A, what is this about?
So, first of all, there's a greeting, right? Like almost every epistle, every letter, right? Who is the one, right, in our normal parlance, our normal way of writing a letter, right? To my dearest son, Nathan. And then at the very bottom, sincerely, your daddy. But in Greek letters, it would be who I am, who I'm writing to, and then a salutation. Normally, it'd be like here, right? So a greeting, right? So here, who's... That's the same thing here. Yeah. So here, who's the one writing? James. James. And how do you know which James he is?
Ponsor of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ yeah right now that wouldn't that that's a that's a very broad It's probably multiple games Yeah, well, this is actually one of the interesting things, right? He is a bondservant, a slave of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the James that's the brother of Jesus. And it's interesting, he doesn't use his brotherhood, right, that he's the half-brother of Jesus, the son of Mary.
He doesn't use that as a, like, get clout. He actually humbles himself, makes himself Almost like nothing. I'm just a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus, right? Not like he's not like he's writing big. Hey, yo, listen up to me guys All right. Hey, hey, I'm the brother Jesus. All right, so you got to shut up and listen, right? That's not what he humbles himself He says I'm a slave of God and of not my brother Jesus The Lord Jesus Christ Who's he writing to?
The twelve traps Yeah, the 12 tribes, which are scattered abroad, right? This is commonly called the diaspora, right? So he's just writing to Jews kind of spread out all throughout. I do kind of find that funny that you put that as like, loss number one.
Well, yeah, the verses were just an invention of the medieval church. It's just helpful for categorizing. It's not inerrant, it's not inspired, it's just, you know, somebody put them there. And then the normal Greek way of writing a letter. Greetings. Okay, and then, He kind of gets right into it, doesn't he? In this first section. So we've talked about the introduction. Now he's going to kind of just launch right into it.
Who's he writing to? My brethren. All right, my brethren. So he's clearly talking to other Christians, right? So my brethren, and what does he want them to know in verse two? Carnal joy when you fall into troubles. Yeah, right. There's trials, there's tribulations, there's troubles, there's difficulties in their life, and how are they to respond to it? Count it all together. Why? Why would they count it with joy? Verse 3. Yeah, let's test our faith. Alright, he's testing your faith, producing what? A good fruit. And what's a good fruit here?
Patience. Patience. Suffering, trials, tribulations in our life has a purpose in God's plan. The purpose is patience. And so, what's he say about patience in verse four? Let's see. Patience hath its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Okay, so patience needs to work in your life, and as patience works in your life, what does it do in you? Let's see. This is the second half of verse four.
I don't know. So patience has to work in your life, so it has a work to do, that it may be, or that you may be, Perfect and complete all right, so you're never gonna sin you're gonna be absolutely perfect never do anything wrong, but that's what that's what trials and temptations are doing No You're never in this life going to ever get to it, but Yeah, right, but to the fullness of what God's plan is for you, right? So mom and I were actually talking about this yesterday. We went out on a date and we were talking about the difference between declarative sanctification and progressive sanctification, right? God has declared you are holy, right? If you are in Christ, you are holy. But do you feel holy all the time? Do you live like you're holy all the time? But is God making you holy?
Yeah, He's conforming you more and more to the image of His Son, isn't He? And one of the ways He does that is through trials. Teaching us patience. And this is where Romans chapter five comes in, right? There's different trials we go through, produce character and character hope. And hope never disappoints, right? And so that's what he's stirring up in us. Good, so when we go into trials, right, we got something that we are able to say, okay, well, God's doing something. All right, so verse five then. What does he get at in verse five? What's that about? Verse five, let's see here.
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives it all liberally and without any reproach, and it will be given to him. All right, so you're going through trials. You're going through different hard things that are making you learn patience and character and hope. And as you're going through these, you might not know what to do. So what should you do when you don't know what to do? Ask God and what will he give? Wisdom. What's wisdom?
Sometimes you have all the resources there. It's like if you had a building, you have the plans right there, you have the materials, you have all the construction workers, but you don't actually have somebody, you don't actually know what to do with them. Good. It's not going to benefit anybody. Yeah, good. So you can have all the trials, you can have all the providential difficulties in your life that should produce character and patience and hope, but you don't actually know how to make that come about.
So Proverbs will teach us that the beginning of wisdom is a fear of the Lord, right? And so it starts with fearing the Lord. And so if we reverence the Lord and we're lacking wisdom, what can we do? Go to the Lord. Good lord and he's gonna go You can really come to me again. Don't you know better kid? Come on. I've given you the stuff do the work. Shut up Is that how your Heavenly Father's gonna treat you? No, what's he gonna do? But he's only gonna give it to you like in a little bit right just a little bit liberally. Yeah, right. Like a whole bunch of it. Good. So he'll give it to all liberally without reproach.
He's not going to make fun of you for it. And he's going to give it to you. He's a father who wants to give us good gifts. And so he's given us in his providence, these trials, and he wants us to come to him to get wisdom. So verse 6 But let him ask oh now interesting If you're gonna come to God, you're gonna ask for wisdom.
What do you have to come with? Look at verse 6 You have to come with faith and not a Look at verse six again, right? Faith is, you can come with one thing, but not another. You come with faith, but not with... Doubting. Doubting, why? Why not with doubting? Because... Look again at verse six. What's he say about this doubting?
It's like a wave. Yeah, well, is doubt like a wave? The man who has doubt is like a wave, always double-minded. Yeah, he's tossed all about, right? He's double-minded. He says, God, I believe you can give me wisdom. But then he acts like maybe God actually can't. This is about a certain amount of confidence in who God is and what he promises. You got an itch or something?
No, you keep pushing your leg on my cut. Okay, I'm sorry you keep kicking the trash can and we're trying to help each other here. Sorry Yeah, so we want to come with faith and not with doubting Right because if you are doubting you're a double-minded man Double-minded man unstable in all his ways, right? Don't think you're gonna get something from the Lord if you're asking like that, right? so this is where right we're gonna come to his throne of grace with bold confidence and Lord, if this is your will, I know you're able to do this. So God, please give me wisdom. You're wise. You're good. You're holy. God, I'm in Christ.
So please teach me what I'm supposed to learn from this. Book of Proverbs is kind of a book of James. It's kind of a different book in that a lot of the about is also the calling Right, so but let's just be calling. What do you think is the be best verse? What do you think is the best verse? That you would underline in this Five six, I mean we just five. Oh, okay. Oh Okay, so you wanna underline verse five about asking for wisdom and doing it without doubting?
Yeah, I would actually think that that's tied to, in my Bible, verse two, about various trials. There's difficulties in life and out of those difficulties, God is doing something and teaching me I need something and teaching me not to do something. And that's where I'm gonna go for calling. I know something. Trials serve a purpose. I need something Patience and wisdom.
I need to do something ask God for it. I need to not do something doubt All right, so all right, let's go ahead and talk about see calling real quick. Let's wrap this up How what does this teach you about calling and in most of all how does it teach you about Jesus Christ? And I think the calling is to huh, what is the call it was like it's like asking God for wisdom or something Okay.
Okay. So you need to, so when you're struggling with stuff, you were calling that you're, you're saying to them, the Spirit's giving you here that you need to ask God for wisdom. Right? Mine is more for patients and trials, right? Sometimes like things are going crazy at the house or there's difficulties in life or there's disappointments that I have, or there's conflict, right? I need to learn that. Okay.
God's using this somehow. It's easy to get bogged down by, Oh God, I just don't want to deal with this. i need to learn like no god's grace is sufficient for me i need wisdom how to grow through this so uh okay what about jesus christ how does this lead us to christ um i think That leads us to Christ. On our own, we shouldn't get wisdom from God because we don't have, we by ourselves are sinful and so our requests would always have sinful nature built into them. And with Christ as a mediator, Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you're saying when Christ is our mediator, we know that our prayers are going to be able to make it to the father. Good. Good. I didn't even think about that.
I was thinking more in my mind as I was thinking about how does this teach us Christ? Christ is the wisdom of God incarnate. Right? And so as I think about God's wisdom and I think about Jesus facing various trials in his own life, even death on a cross and seeing how he lived his life and trials and hardships and difficulties and circumstances, weren't, you know, a surprise or away from God's plan, but even His tempting in the wilderness, His trials there, God was using it for purpose, right? And so I could look to Christ and I can learn from Him, not just as a moral example, but as my hope. So, hey, you ready to pray? You want to pray? Or you want me to? Okay. Now God, we thank you so much for this day. What a blessing it is to have gotten to spend time in your word together. We thank you for the gift that the book of James is to us.
Lord, we pray that you would please use your spirit to teach us, Lord, how to suffer well, to go through trials and learn patience. Father, we do need wisdom. God, even today, I face something that I need wisdom, I need words to speak and a heart to love, a path forward. Father, so we trust your Holy Spirit that you can do this. Lord, we trust you that you can raise us up to not doubt, but to have faith in you and your goodness. And so, Father, please help us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. May the Lord bless you. May you walk in the joy and peace of Jesus Christ, and we'll see you next time. Bye. Adios.