James 1:1-4
1 Amens
Before we start I want to ask you to do something difficult. Take that announcement sheet, or some other piece of paper and draw a line down the middle and take a moment to reflect on some of the harder things you’ve had to face in life. Think about them and down one side of the sheet- write them down. Just make a list- some of you will have lists that are fairly short- some pretty long. Take a minute to write and reflect and then we’ll move on.
Now let me ask you something slightly less difficult- as you look down that list and remember some tough situations there… what was some of the worst advice you received in the midst of those tough times? Stuff that actually made you feel worse and not better? Okay- how about the best advice- advice that really helped. I had a sneaking suspicion that when I asked you for the best advice and the worst advice they might sound very, very similar…
Why do you think that is?
Today, we start a book study, our last for a little while. We’re going to walk through the book of James, this summer we’ll spend some time in the psalms, this Fall we’ll walk through some core values stuff and then some passages in Isaiah to prepare us for Advent when we start the Gospel of Matthew.
James was probably one of the first books in the NT to be written- it’s largely Jewish in nature, so probably coming at a time when the church was still largely made up of Jewish men and women who were following Jesus. It’s simple, direct, you could almost say “prophetic” and the person who wrote it was really familiar with the core of Jesus’ teaching as expressed in the Sermon On The Mount- there are a lot of parallels between the two.
But one of the most interesting parts of this book for me is kind of a side-note- there are only four men named James mentioned in the NT- the brother of John, who was martyred too early to have written this book, a father of one of the disciples, one of the disciples who was actually named James- though not many identify him with the author of this book…
Most think that this book was written by the James that the NT labels as one of Jesus’ brothers, half-brother really, who did not believe in Jesus all through his ministry. In fact, the Gospels tell us they thought Jesus had become a little, uh… off. And you could certainly understand that, right? I mean, imagine if your brother or someone else in your family claimed to be the Messiah…
Imagine if you heard your brother time after time say crazy things like “You should love your enemies.” And “You should pray for people who persecute you” and then even crazier sounding stuff like “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me will live, even though they die.” James watched His brother go over the deep end, walking around the country like a homeless bum, dragging all sorts of undesirable people with Him, finally riding into Jerusalem like a King, walking into the Temple and driving out the merchants there shouting something about “His Father’s House.”
And then James watched them do exactly what he always suspected would happen- He watched them kill His brother on a cross like a common criminal.
And that was that.
At least, that was that until Easter morning. Paul says in 1 Cor that after His resurrection, Jesus appeared to Peter and the disciples… and then to James. James his younger brother who had doubted Him, who had thought He was crazy… James, who later became the leader of the church in Jerusalem, the head of the first church council, and… the writer of this short book.
It starts this way…
Vs1
A “slave”… a bond-servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Talk about coming a long way…
“the 12 tribes”- at the point when this letter is written, the church is still largely Jewish, and the persecutions talked about in Acts 8, when people like Paul were rounding up Christians and jailing them or killing them has scattered most of them around the Roman Empire. So James is probably writing from Jerusalem where he and some of the Apostles have stayed behind, and he’s now sending this letter out, not to any one place, but to all them, to be passed around and copied and read as they met in synagogues and under trees, and in houses…
He says: “Greetings!” The word here in Greek was pretty standard- kairen- Hello!
But that word kairen sounds a lot like another Greek word- karan- joy.
So he says
VS 2
And here’s where Bob runs into great difficulty.
Can any of you understand why this is a challenging passage to teach?
The challenge of this passage is to talk about it in a way that in talking about it, we help the most number of people and actually hurt the least amount. To talk about facing tough times in a way that actually works in daily life as we know it. Like I said- huge challenge.
It just seems crazy to say things like “When troubles come your way, consider them an opportunity for great joy.”
Surely James isn’t telling us to be glad life really starts to suck, is he?
How do we understand this idea that we should consider it an opportunity for great joy when we hit tough times?
It seems that what James is really doing here is telling us to avoid one thing by doing another… Difficult times in life have the potential, if we’re not careful, to harden our hearts and make us bitter. James says- don’t even start down that road- because “Trouble”+”hard-hearted and bitter” is not a marked improvement over “trouble.” Rather, he says, drive hard in the opposite direction. “Consider it” is an act of the will.
One thing we can say from James is this: Escapism is not the answer to hard times. Finding ways to numb ourselves when we hit difficulty works nothing in us, least of all any sense of maturity. James points us towards a purposeful leaning in to hard times, hard things in our lives.
I said last week that often, when God doesn’t act the way that we think He should, the first thing we tend to question is God Himself, rather than our assumptions about Him.
In the same way, when our lives hit troubles, the first thing we tend to question is God’s care for us, His concern for us. And I want to suggest that in doing so, we’re not too far off the mark- slightly, but not too far. I think hard times should make us question God, but not in perhaps the way we first think of that… He says
VS 3-4
When bad things happen, what’s the first question we tend to ask?
WHY? We take these lists and the longer life goes on the longer the list gets and we hold them up to God and we shout WHY?
James gives us a slightly different approach… He suggests a question, but a slightly different one… What would James have us ask first and foremost?
WHAT?
God, what can you do with this? What good can you bring out of this? How can this be used in my life, in the lives of those around me? How can this situation be redeemed? How can you work maturity in my life through this?
The human tendency is always to ask “why.” And I think that you don’t necessarily have to answer the question of “Is God doing this to me?” or even “Why is this happening to me.” You can simply say- God use this. Please bring something good out of this… And here’s an especially hard prayer to pray: God, please don’t let this present difficulty, this present suffering be wasted in my life.
See, I don’t think James is advocating a type of spiritual masochism here- What he’s really talking about is conservationism, stewardship- letting nothing go to waste- even the garbage in our lives.
When I think about all the suffering in my life that I allowed to be wasted… wasted because I let it work bitterness and hardness into me, or wasted because I refused to look at myself and even ask what I could learn through it… wasted because I indulged in escapism rather than having my eyes open to what God might be able to do in me and to me, I want to cry. I had to go through all that stuff- that’s life in a fallen world. I wish I had seen more good come out of some of it, though…
It’s interesting to me that the book in the Bible that James is most often compared to is Proverbs. There’s not so much a distinct literary flow- it’s more a loose collection of thoughts and sayings. And like Proverbs, we need to recognize that “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy” is a more proverbial statement- it’s not a rule to be obeyed without exception, but rather a direction to aim for.
If you find yourself in the midst of hard times and find it difficult to have any sense of joy in the middle of them, understand- this is not to say that you are doing it wrongly, and that you should be ashamed. It is to say- be careful. Be careful that you don’t allow the circumstances of life to work out a hard heart and a bitter heart in you.
What God wants worked in you is maturity and growth. Endurance- the ability to hold up under what life will bring you later. And to that, I say “Yes!” God, even if it comes through difficulty, please make me mature. Even if it comes through suffering, give me endurance- the ability to keep going in this life.
So- let me say this:
To the half of you that are doing great (those of you who are in the midst of hard things right now, hang on… we’ll talk to you in a second)
But those of you who are doing great right now: Be very careful about telling people that are in the midst of suffering that God can use it. Learn to be a good listener who knows how to help shoulder the load of pain and hurt with someone.
We all want to fix one another- at least I know I really struggle with that. When someone is in the midst of difficult times, do your best to put that temptation aside and just be with them.
And understand, if you are in the half of the room that is doing great now, that situation can quickly change.
So, take time now- while things are good, to prepare.
Prepare for suffering that is as of yet unnamed. So that when it comes…
How could we do that? How does one prepare for suffering that is as of yet unknown and unexperienced?
Have a realistic view of this fallen world. Understand that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Ask God to deliver you from evil, not simply hard times.
Help others prepare by sharing stories of past suffering and the good that came out of it. For some strange reason, we think the best time to tell someone a story of our suffering if when they are suffering. We're hoping somehow to make them feel better- which is a really good instinct, but maybe a mis-timed one. I'd like to suggest that we tell those stories more in the good times in between suffering, that we invest our stories of how God comforted, strengthened, taught, and matured us through hard times with each other- and that when we share those with one another in good times, we're helping to prepare each other for bad. Building up a reserve of confidence that no- regardless of what it sometimes feels like in the midst of things, God does not turn his back on us, but is a very present help in time of trouble, and uses that hard things of life to work things out in us- to give us maturity and character we otherwise would on no account have had. To make us into people that we would not otherwise be.
And this is why community is so important- in the same way that a child who is never around other kids ends up being more susceptible to sickeness rather than less, those of us who isolate and neglect community and fail to share our stories and listen well to the stories of others- we are more susceptible to bitterness and despair because of difficulty in life- because we have no reservoir of shared experience in the goodness of God that we can draw on. I need to know how God has shown up for you. I need to know how the words of James have worked out in your life, how God worked made you more mature, how He was able to use the garbage like found art and make something beautiful. So please- don’t be stingy with your stories of how God showed up, how God redeemed certain situations, and don’t be so cynical towards hearing how God has worked in others lives.
And for the half of you that are doing awful- I’m sorry. I know some of your situations, I have no idea about others… All I can do for you right now is tell you that in the middle of everything, God has not forgotten you, God has not abandoned you. And whatever you are facing, you don’t have to face it alone- here’s a whole room of people willing to walk beside you in that.
Ask the God of all comfort for a little bit of it. Ask others to walk beside you- lean on them. And ask God to use what you are going through- to not let it be wasted in any way- lean on the knowledge that God is big enough to do that.
And most of all, lean on the one who not only suffered on your behalf but through what we heard about last week, through Easter, defeated suffering and death and will someday set all things right, will judge the evil in this world that causes your suffering and will, in the end, wipe every tear from our eyes.
Lean on Christ.
Listen- I want to be very careful with these words from James and use them wisely and at the right times, but… I’m not going to be apologetic about these words- these words that have sounded to many of us at times cliché and trite because I know, I know that for many of us they have been an anchor- God can do something with this pain. This suffering does not have to be wasted. Even in the midst of all this God is still very present, very much at work, and what He is working is to my good and His glory. And the reason I tell you that now is so that I won’t have to remind you of that later. I tell you that now, so that later on you will remember, and in the face of a blowing storm you won’t immediately jump to why God might be allowing something in your life, but you’ll begin to process all the stories of others that you have heard, remember all the times that God has been a refuge, a rock… and rather than asking why you’ll be able to ask “So what can you do with this, God.” Show your power and creativity and love for me by bringing something good out of this.
Now, on the other side of that paper- I want you to write out some good things, whether real or potential, that came out of the stuff you went through. And if you can’t see anything good that came out of one or another, that’s okay- move on…
Maybe you can see some good that could have come out of the situation had some responses just bee slightly different…
But most of all, focus on the ones that you are presently facing and ask the question- “what?” God- what have you brought of things like this in other people’s lives? What could you possibly do with something like this in mine? Are you really big enough and powerful enough to use stuff like this and make anything good come out of it?
Read MoreNow let me ask you something slightly less difficult- as you look down that list and remember some tough situations there… what was some of the worst advice you received in the midst of those tough times? Stuff that actually made you feel worse and not better? Okay- how about the best advice- advice that really helped. I had a sneaking suspicion that when I asked you for the best advice and the worst advice they might sound very, very similar…
Why do you think that is?
Today, we start a book study, our last for a little while. We’re going to walk through the book of James, this summer we’ll spend some time in the psalms, this Fall we’ll walk through some core values stuff and then some passages in Isaiah to prepare us for Advent when we start the Gospel of Matthew.
James was probably one of the first books in the NT to be written- it’s largely Jewish in nature, so probably coming at a time when the church was still largely made up of Jewish men and women who were following Jesus. It’s simple, direct, you could almost say “prophetic” and the person who wrote it was really familiar with the core of Jesus’ teaching as expressed in the Sermon On The Mount- there are a lot of parallels between the two.
But one of the most interesting parts of this book for me is kind of a side-note- there are only four men named James mentioned in the NT- the brother of John, who was martyred too early to have written this book, a father of one of the disciples, one of the disciples who was actually named James- though not many identify him with the author of this book…
Most think that this book was written by the James that the NT labels as one of Jesus’ brothers, half-brother really, who did not believe in Jesus all through his ministry. In fact, the Gospels tell us they thought Jesus had become a little, uh… off. And you could certainly understand that, right? I mean, imagine if your brother or someone else in your family claimed to be the Messiah…
Imagine if you heard your brother time after time say crazy things like “You should love your enemies.” And “You should pray for people who persecute you” and then even crazier sounding stuff like “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me will live, even though they die.” James watched His brother go over the deep end, walking around the country like a homeless bum, dragging all sorts of undesirable people with Him, finally riding into Jerusalem like a King, walking into the Temple and driving out the merchants there shouting something about “His Father’s House.”
And then James watched them do exactly what he always suspected would happen- He watched them kill His brother on a cross like a common criminal.
And that was that.
At least, that was that until Easter morning. Paul says in 1 Cor that after His resurrection, Jesus appeared to Peter and the disciples… and then to James. James his younger brother who had doubted Him, who had thought He was crazy… James, who later became the leader of the church in Jerusalem, the head of the first church council, and… the writer of this short book.
It starts this way…
Vs1
A “slave”… a bond-servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Talk about coming a long way…
“the 12 tribes”- at the point when this letter is written, the church is still largely Jewish, and the persecutions talked about in Acts 8, when people like Paul were rounding up Christians and jailing them or killing them has scattered most of them around the Roman Empire. So James is probably writing from Jerusalem where he and some of the Apostles have stayed behind, and he’s now sending this letter out, not to any one place, but to all them, to be passed around and copied and read as they met in synagogues and under trees, and in houses…
He says: “Greetings!” The word here in Greek was pretty standard- kairen- Hello!
But that word kairen sounds a lot like another Greek word- karan- joy.
So he says
VS 2
And here’s where Bob runs into great difficulty.
Can any of you understand why this is a challenging passage to teach?
The challenge of this passage is to talk about it in a way that in talking about it, we help the most number of people and actually hurt the least amount. To talk about facing tough times in a way that actually works in daily life as we know it. Like I said- huge challenge.
It just seems crazy to say things like “When troubles come your way, consider them an opportunity for great joy.”
Surely James isn’t telling us to be glad life really starts to suck, is he?
How do we understand this idea that we should consider it an opportunity for great joy when we hit tough times?
It seems that what James is really doing here is telling us to avoid one thing by doing another… Difficult times in life have the potential, if we’re not careful, to harden our hearts and make us bitter. James says- don’t even start down that road- because “Trouble”+”hard-hearted and bitter” is not a marked improvement over “trouble.” Rather, he says, drive hard in the opposite direction. “Consider it” is an act of the will.
One thing we can say from James is this: Escapism is not the answer to hard times. Finding ways to numb ourselves when we hit difficulty works nothing in us, least of all any sense of maturity. James points us towards a purposeful leaning in to hard times, hard things in our lives.
I said last week that often, when God doesn’t act the way that we think He should, the first thing we tend to question is God Himself, rather than our assumptions about Him.
In the same way, when our lives hit troubles, the first thing we tend to question is God’s care for us, His concern for us. And I want to suggest that in doing so, we’re not too far off the mark- slightly, but not too far. I think hard times should make us question God, but not in perhaps the way we first think of that… He says
VS 3-4
When bad things happen, what’s the first question we tend to ask?
WHY? We take these lists and the longer life goes on the longer the list gets and we hold them up to God and we shout WHY?
James gives us a slightly different approach… He suggests a question, but a slightly different one… What would James have us ask first and foremost?
WHAT?
God, what can you do with this? What good can you bring out of this? How can this be used in my life, in the lives of those around me? How can this situation be redeemed? How can you work maturity in my life through this?
The human tendency is always to ask “why.” And I think that you don’t necessarily have to answer the question of “Is God doing this to me?” or even “Why is this happening to me.” You can simply say- God use this. Please bring something good out of this… And here’s an especially hard prayer to pray: God, please don’t let this present difficulty, this present suffering be wasted in my life.
See, I don’t think James is advocating a type of spiritual masochism here- What he’s really talking about is conservationism, stewardship- letting nothing go to waste- even the garbage in our lives.
When I think about all the suffering in my life that I allowed to be wasted… wasted because I let it work bitterness and hardness into me, or wasted because I refused to look at myself and even ask what I could learn through it… wasted because I indulged in escapism rather than having my eyes open to what God might be able to do in me and to me, I want to cry. I had to go through all that stuff- that’s life in a fallen world. I wish I had seen more good come out of some of it, though…
It’s interesting to me that the book in the Bible that James is most often compared to is Proverbs. There’s not so much a distinct literary flow- it’s more a loose collection of thoughts and sayings. And like Proverbs, we need to recognize that “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy” is a more proverbial statement- it’s not a rule to be obeyed without exception, but rather a direction to aim for.
If you find yourself in the midst of hard times and find it difficult to have any sense of joy in the middle of them, understand- this is not to say that you are doing it wrongly, and that you should be ashamed. It is to say- be careful. Be careful that you don’t allow the circumstances of life to work out a hard heart and a bitter heart in you.
What God wants worked in you is maturity and growth. Endurance- the ability to hold up under what life will bring you later. And to that, I say “Yes!” God, even if it comes through difficulty, please make me mature. Even if it comes through suffering, give me endurance- the ability to keep going in this life.
So- let me say this:
To the half of you that are doing great (those of you who are in the midst of hard things right now, hang on… we’ll talk to you in a second)
But those of you who are doing great right now: Be very careful about telling people that are in the midst of suffering that God can use it. Learn to be a good listener who knows how to help shoulder the load of pain and hurt with someone.
We all want to fix one another- at least I know I really struggle with that. When someone is in the midst of difficult times, do your best to put that temptation aside and just be with them.
And understand, if you are in the half of the room that is doing great now, that situation can quickly change.
So, take time now- while things are good, to prepare.
Prepare for suffering that is as of yet unnamed. So that when it comes…
How could we do that? How does one prepare for suffering that is as of yet unknown and unexperienced?
Have a realistic view of this fallen world. Understand that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Ask God to deliver you from evil, not simply hard times.
Help others prepare by sharing stories of past suffering and the good that came out of it. For some strange reason, we think the best time to tell someone a story of our suffering if when they are suffering. We're hoping somehow to make them feel better- which is a really good instinct, but maybe a mis-timed one. I'd like to suggest that we tell those stories more in the good times in between suffering, that we invest our stories of how God comforted, strengthened, taught, and matured us through hard times with each other- and that when we share those with one another in good times, we're helping to prepare each other for bad. Building up a reserve of confidence that no- regardless of what it sometimes feels like in the midst of things, God does not turn his back on us, but is a very present help in time of trouble, and uses that hard things of life to work things out in us- to give us maturity and character we otherwise would on no account have had. To make us into people that we would not otherwise be.
And this is why community is so important- in the same way that a child who is never around other kids ends up being more susceptible to sickeness rather than less, those of us who isolate and neglect community and fail to share our stories and listen well to the stories of others- we are more susceptible to bitterness and despair because of difficulty in life- because we have no reservoir of shared experience in the goodness of God that we can draw on. I need to know how God has shown up for you. I need to know how the words of James have worked out in your life, how God worked made you more mature, how He was able to use the garbage like found art and make something beautiful. So please- don’t be stingy with your stories of how God showed up, how God redeemed certain situations, and don’t be so cynical towards hearing how God has worked in others lives.
And for the half of you that are doing awful- I’m sorry. I know some of your situations, I have no idea about others… All I can do for you right now is tell you that in the middle of everything, God has not forgotten you, God has not abandoned you. And whatever you are facing, you don’t have to face it alone- here’s a whole room of people willing to walk beside you in that.
Ask the God of all comfort for a little bit of it. Ask others to walk beside you- lean on them. And ask God to use what you are going through- to not let it be wasted in any way- lean on the knowledge that God is big enough to do that.
And most of all, lean on the one who not only suffered on your behalf but through what we heard about last week, through Easter, defeated suffering and death and will someday set all things right, will judge the evil in this world that causes your suffering and will, in the end, wipe every tear from our eyes.
Lean on Christ.
Listen- I want to be very careful with these words from James and use them wisely and at the right times, but… I’m not going to be apologetic about these words- these words that have sounded to many of us at times cliché and trite because I know, I know that for many of us they have been an anchor- God can do something with this pain. This suffering does not have to be wasted. Even in the midst of all this God is still very present, very much at work, and what He is working is to my good and His glory. And the reason I tell you that now is so that I won’t have to remind you of that later. I tell you that now, so that later on you will remember, and in the face of a blowing storm you won’t immediately jump to why God might be allowing something in your life, but you’ll begin to process all the stories of others that you have heard, remember all the times that God has been a refuge, a rock… and rather than asking why you’ll be able to ask “So what can you do with this, God.” Show your power and creativity and love for me by bringing something good out of this.
Now, on the other side of that paper- I want you to write out some good things, whether real or potential, that came out of the stuff you went through. And if you can’t see anything good that came out of one or another, that’s okay- move on…
Maybe you can see some good that could have come out of the situation had some responses just bee slightly different…
But most of all, focus on the ones that you are presently facing and ask the question- “what?” God- what have you brought of things like this in other people’s lives? What could you possibly do with something like this in mine? Are you really big enough and powerful enough to use stuff like this and make anything good come out of it?
Comments:
Login to post comments