Steadfast Under Trial

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word, a word that is so much more than just words on a page, but a word that is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, a word that is able to penetrate through our calloused, hardened hearts and expose our motives, our intentions.

It's not even powerful enough to correct those motives and intentions. Holy Spirit, would you take that word now and do with it what needs to be done in our minds, in our wills, in our affections. We pray it all in the name of Jesus Christ, the living word. Amen.

You can be seated. If I were to summarize James' main point in the verses we've just read, I would say it's this. The only way to win the prize is to finish the race. The only way to win the prize is to finish the race. Now, I realize that in this everyone gets a trophy sort of world in which we find ourselves. That assertion that James is making is not obvious to everyone, but in the real world where cause and effect are inseparably linked, where if you don't plant the seed, you don't get the fruit, the only way to get the prize is to finish the race.

The only way to receive the crown of life, James calls it, is to remain steadfast to the end of the test. I ran track when I was in elementary school, and one of the events that I ran was the grueling 440. I think they call it the 400 meter now. It's a quarter mile race, one lap around the track, so it's too short to be a distance race, but it's too long to be an all-out sprint.

It's just a miserable length of a race. While I wasn't that great at running the 440, neither was my buddy. We often found ourselves at the back of the pack. One particular track meet on a Saturday morning, I remember my friend and I were about three-quarters of the way around this race, and we were in second to last place and last place respectively. We were coming around that last turn, and I reached deep down inside somewhere and found a little bit of a kick for those last few yards of the race. The next thing I knew, I had crossed the finish line and promptly ran onto the infield and threw up right there in front of all of the spectators.

It was one of my life's shining moments. But then I glanced back to see how my friend was doing, and he wasn't even there. He actually never finished the race. Instead, he had veered off the track going into the last turn and headed over to the concession stand, and he was already buying a hot dog. He realized he was going to come in last place anyway, so I guess he thought, you know, what's the point?

The concession stand's right here. If I finish the race, I have to walk all the way back to get my hot dog, so I'll just save myself some steps. Needless to say, my friend did not receive a prize for that race.

Why? Because he didn't finish the race. If you don't finish the race, you don't get the prize. Now, of course, James is not speaking of athletic races here in chapter 1. He's speaking metaphorically of the trials of life, those trials of various kinds that we talked about last time. We remember from the first three or four verses of James that trials, these hardships, these difficulties that come up in life are not capricious events that just randomly happen to us for no reason. No, these trials are designed by God for the good of his children. They're trials with purpose. The various hardships we encounter in life are tests of faith that chip away aspects of our character that are contrary to godliness. Trials shape and mold us in good ways. They wean us from what is harmful.

They produce in us what is good. But if we don't endure the trials, we won't receive the benefit. And ultimately, we won't receive the prize. The thing about trials is that they are, by definition, trying. If trials were easy, then we wouldn't need to be exhorted to remain steadfast through them, would we? Evidently, we, like James' original readers, are easily discouraged. We just want the difficult things to be over with already.

But that's not how it works. We must go through the test, complete the trial, finish the race if we're to receive the prize. And so we need encouragement. We need motivation.

We need reassurance that God has a purpose even in our suffering. In the text before us tonight, James gives us four motivations to help us remain steadfast under trial. How do you finish the race? You finish the race by longing for something, by avoiding something, by acknowledging something, and finally by experiencing something. So let's consider each of these motivations that we're given as we try to answer the question, how do you finish the race?

You finish the race first by longing for something. We see this in verse 12. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. There are two different Greek words for crown. One refers to the crown of a royal personage. It's a royal crown, a king, a ruler. That sort of crown represents the power, the authority of someone who is in charge. The other word for crown refers to an athlete's crown, a victory. Sometimes it's translated as a wreath or laurel, so you can picture an Olympian with a wreath on their head.

This sort of crown doesn't represent power and authority. It represents victory. It represents success, successful completion.

It represents achievement. It's the reward of a race well run. James says those who remain steadfast under trial, those who finish the course of life having kept the faith, receive the crown in this second sense, the reward of eternal life. Now, the concept of reward in relation to the Christian life well lived, I think can be confusing because we tend to think of a reward as something that's earned, that seems contrary to grace in our minds. If an athlete puts in the proper training, applies himself diligently enough, he will win the race, he'll be rewarded for his hard work, and so we think of reward as a merit-based thing.

But this is where the analogy that James is using breaks down, and that's okay, analogies are limited. We know that when it comes to the Christian life, any reward we receive from God is not and can never be merit-based. Sinners deserve nothing but judgment because we've already lost the race.

We can't even run the spiritual race before us because we're nothing but corpses lying at the starting line, incapable of any good thing. Nevertheless, James and many other New Testament writers clearly speak of a Christian's reward and they repeatedly call Christians to even contemplate those rewards as motivation to faithfulness in the Christian life. We have to understand this reward, this crown, not in terms of something we've earned, but as something that God graciously gives in spite of us and based solely on the merits of Christ in us. God gives the prize, the reward, for a life well-lived, but if we have lived the Christian life well, it can only be because God has enabled us to do so. The concept of reward for Christian faithfulness, then, has to be understood as a motivating reward, not as a merit-based reward.

But there are also those who think of this unmerited crown of life as a reward that is given simply to those corpses that are lying dead at the starting line of the race. Salvation entails so much more than that. God doesn't merely give undeserving sinners the prize of eternal life. He actually changes the nature of those undeserving sinners. He regenerates spiritually dead racers. He resurrects them. He gives them running shoes.

He gives them strength in their legs and strength in their lungs and He gets them across the finish line. The Christian life is supposed to be actually run. By grace, yes, but actually run. Without faith in Christ, without love for God, without the filling of the Holy Spirit, and the life of trending obedience that goes with it, a person will not receive the reward. They must finish the race to win the prize. But the running of the race and the finishing of the race and the crown of life received as a result of running and finishing the race is all of grace. That being said, James holds up this crown of life, this reward of eternal life as motivation for us to keep on running, to press through the hardship of trials and to finish the course.

Now think about it. If you don't love the reward, it's not very motivating, is it? If you don't love the crown of life that's being promised, you won't be motivated by this crown to endure the trials. But if you love that crown, that reward, then every trial you encounter in life becomes an aid and a help to spur you on across the finish line. James is calling us to long for something.

He's calling us to long for the reward. To long for an eternity spent in the presence of Jesus Christ. He's calling us to desire heaven so much that the hurtful things people say to you or the disappointment of deferred hopes, the fears of chronic illness or the anxiety of financial shortage, all of those things that fall under the category of trials of various kinds, none of that deters us from our pursuit of the finish line. I can't help but think of Paul's words in Philippians 3 where he says, One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Have you learned to love Christ so much that no amount of earthly comfort or prestige, no amount of earthly trouble and pain will deter you from your pursuit of him?

If you haven't, then learn to long for heaven more. Spend time contemplating the reward God offers to those who love him. How do we finish the race? By longing for the crown of life. James then gives us a second motivation to aid us in remaining steadfast under trial. We finish the race first by longing for something, but secondly, by avoiding something. If verse 12 describes the right attitude we ought to have during the trial, then verse 13 describes the wrong attitude, an attitude, a thought process that ought to be avoided. Verse 13 says, Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. So the thing to be avoided is blaming God for my propensity, my inclination towards sin. If we find in ourselves a tendency to veer off the track and head on over to the concession stand for a mid-race hot dog, and folks, we all have that tendency in the trials of life, if we find that tendency in ourselves, then we'd better not think that God is responsible for that tendency. Just because God is the one who resurrected me at the starting line and gave me the legs of faith to run doesn't mean that my poor running is God's fault. That's what James is telling us to avoid. Now, I should point out that the word trial in verse 12 and the word tempted in verse 13 are from the same Greek root.

One is a noun, the other is a verb, but otherwise, they're the same word. That can be confusing to us. What I want you to realize is that some of the trials of life are morally neutral. Verse 12, they happen and they are genuinely difficult hardships, but they aren't the result of some sin that we've committed.

Things like the death of a loved one, diagnosis of a chronic illness, the loss of a job, perhaps even the sting of a relationship that's broken because of someone else's sin. These are certainly hard things to endure, but they're the kind of trials that are not the result of moral failure on your part. However, some trials are the result of moral failure on your part. Verse 13, a marriage that falls apart because of your infidelity, financial struggles that result from foolish spending, sickness that is brought on by licentious living. These are also trials, but they're brought on or exacerbated by our own sinful choices.

The same Greek word is used to describe both of these types of trial. The general hardship brought on by life in a fallen world and the specific hardship brought on by personal sin. God uses both kinds of trials, by the way.

But James is exhorting us not to ascribe causation to God. Flip Wilson used to say, the devil made me do it. Well, sometimes we even say, God made me do it. God made me this way.

The woman you gave me took an aid of the fruit and made me eat. This sort of reasoning is wrong, and it's what must be avoided if we are to finish strong. One theologian explained it this way. He said, while God may test or prove his servants in order to strengthen their faith, he never seeks to induce sin and destroy their faith. Thus, despite the fact that the same Greek root is used for both the outer trial and the inner temptation, it is crucial to distinguish them. So the outer trial and the inner temptation, a crucial distinction.

The outer trials mentioned in verse 12 refer to the circumstances of life that test our faith, but the inner temptation mentioned in verse 13 refers to the wicked desires in us that lead to sin. God is responsible for the first. We are responsible for the second. God may allow there to be a concession stand alongside the track in order to strengthen our resolve, but our desire to bail out of the race and head over to the hot dog stand is not God's fault.

It's the result. It's caused by our own inner sin nature. Now, some of you may be thinking, all right, what about those scripture passages that say God gives certain people up to a reprobate mind or delivers them over to shameful lusts or hardens their hearts like Pharaoh?

John Calvin provides, I think, a helpful answer. He says, when scripture ascribes blindness or hardness of heart to God, it does not assign to him the beginning of this blindness, nor does it make him the author of sin so as to ascribe to him the blame. In other words, God doesn't deprave or corrupt our hearts. Our hearts are already depraved and corrupted.

God simply gives some people over to those corruptions, and that's far different from causing the corruption. We have a cat named Maggie at our house. Maggie lives outside most of the time, but occasionally she slips in the door when someone opens it. We also have a parakeet. The parakeet lives inside the house in a cage a safe distance away from Maggie, but sometimes we will catch Maggie after she's slipped in. We'll catch her licking her lips and staring intently at the parakeet in the cage. Now, we all know that if left to herself, Maggie would kill and eat the parakeet, right? She's only prevented by the fact that the bird is in its cage out of reach of her feline claws.

If I were to remove the cage from the situation, we would have a dead parakeet on our hands. But my point is I would not be causing Maggie to be a carnivorous hunter simply by removing the impediment. Maggie's already a carnivorous hunter.

That's her nature. I'm simply controlling that nature, limiting that nature for the safety of our bird. And just as I can allow or not allow our cat to live according to her nature, so God can allow or not allow us to live according to our nature, to act on the impulses and desires that already exist in our hearts. He doesn't make us sinners.

We're already that. That's James' point. Now, I know I'm getting dangerously close to a theological cliff here in trying to understand God. I'm getting very close to questions that have no answers, at least not in this life. So let's avoid the temptation to speculate further and stick to the text that's before us.

Let me ask you this. Why would James caution us to avoid blaming God for our own propensity to sin? Well, evidently, he cautioned just because we have a tendency to do that. We want to blame God for the blackness of our hearts. Why would we want to blame God for the blackness of our hearts? I think the answer is probably obvious because if God is responsible for my sinful inclinations, then I'm not responsible.

I have an out. It's really amazing, isn't it, how resistant we are sometimes to the idea of the sovereignty of God when we're talking about the salvation of sinners, but when we're talking about the sinfulness of sinners, we're eager to let God be sovereign. James says, don't do that. Don't blame God for your sin nature. James then gives two reasons why we ought not blame God for our sinful inclinations. The first is related to God's character.

The second is related to his actions. First, he says, don't blame God for your sin because God cannot be tempted by evil. God cannot be tempted with evil. Then he says, don't blame God for your sin because God himself tempts no one. If it is not even in God's nature to be tempted, then it would not be consistent with that nature for him to go around soliciting sin from those who bear his image, who reflect his character by tempting them.

If it is not in my nature to tweet like a bird or walk on all fours or be nocturnal, why would I want my children to tweet like birds and walk on all fours and be nocturnal? So both in God's character and in his actions, he keeps himself from anything that is sinful. Well, if we were to finish the race well, there's something we need to avoid, and that something is the wicked tendency of blaming God for our sin nature because that will simply mask the real reason we fall prey to sinful temptations, and this brings us to the third point. How do we finish the race?

We finish the race, thirdly, by acknowledging something, by acknowledging something. Verses 14 and 15 say, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

We need to understand that desire is not innately bad. There are good desires, but in this context, James is referring to fleshly, selfish, illicit desire, the bad desires, and desire in this sense is at the root of our tendency to yield to temptation. Now, James gives us a couple of analogies to illustrate the path into sinful behavior, which is the opposite of remaining steadfast in the trial. The first analogy relates temptation to fishing. Our desire for sin makes us susceptible to the bait or the lure of temptation. Sin is alluring and enticing precisely because we have a preexisting desire to sin that's already there when the temptation strikes.

If we take the bait, we get hooked and eventually are dragged away. Sin often takes us much further than we want to go, but James' point is that the initial taking of the bait is rooted in an individual's desire for the bait. We want the sin.

That's what our sin nature does to us. The second analogy in verse 15 has to do with birth and delivery. The mother, which refers to our sinful desires, those original inclinations within us, the mother is allowed to conceive and that conception leads to the birth of a child. That child represents the sinful actions, external actions that are spawned by those wicked internal desires. The child of these sinful actions grows and matures and eventually gives birth to another child, which is the grandchild of the original desire, and this grandchild is death, the ultimate wage of sin. So we learn in verses 14 and 15 that rather than God being the cause of our sin, we are the cause, and more specifically, our desires are at the root of every outworking of sin in our lives. Now, don't be confused and think James is saying that sin isn't sinful until it manifests itself in some external action. He does call the outward behavior sin, but that doesn't mean the desires driving that outward behavior are not themselves also sinful.

They are. Sinful desires kept internal may not have as devastating a consequence as sinful desires that are acted upon, but those internal desires are nonetheless just as sinful, and they ought to be mortified. They ought to be put to death. This is the point of the Sermon on the Mount, isn't it? Matthew 5. Jesus lists several of the Ten Commandments, and He points out that both the external action of murder and adultery and bearing false witness and the internal motivation behind those external sins are to be mortified.

They're both wrong. They're the external action as well as the internal desire or thought process that is driving those external actions. James is telling us that if we want to finish the race, we need to acknowledge where our sinful actions come from. They come from a heart that is inclined to do evil. And if my susceptibility to temptation is rooted in a heart that wants to do evil, then, church, I need to keep my heart in check. If I'm to remain steadfast under trial, I need to take the fight against sin to the realm of my heart desire. I don't need to wait until my sin erupts in an ugly display of visible behavior. I ought to be killing it in the privacy of my own affections and thoughts and motives.

Resisting the hot dog stand needs to happen long before the last turn of the race. We need to acknowledge our sinful inclinations and address those inclinations at the level of desire long before the lure of temptation ever enters the picture. The fourth and final exhortation James gives us is that the way to finish strong is by experiencing something.

By experiencing something. Verses 13 through 15 indicate what God does not give, but verses 16 through 18 indicate what God does give. And, church, everything God gives is a good and perfect gift. If our life gives birth to sin and death, we are the source and the cause. But if our life gives birth to righteousness and eternal life, then God is the source.

God is the cause. He is the giver of every good and perfect gift. Verses 16 and 17 say, Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

And just as God's inability to tempt man is grounded in his sinless character, so his benevolence in giving good things is grounded in his unchanging character. Verse 17 is the only place in the Bible that describes God as the Father of lights. This is a reference to God as the creator of astronomical bodies, the Father of lights, the sun, the moon, the stars. James is comparing God to these astronomical bodies that he has created.

Think about it. These bodies up in the sky are constantly changing. The sun rises and sets. The moon waxes and wanes. The stars twinkle and die out. Sometimes all of those heavenly bodies are covered by clouds.

They're not even visible. But God never leaves. God never waxes or wanes. He never dies out.

He's never covered up by atmosphere that's beyond his control. Unlike the lights that he has created, God never changes. So one of the good and perfect gifts that God gives is the heavens, the sky and everything it contains. The heavens declare his glory, Psalm 19 one.

But one of the ways the heavens reveal God's glory is by reminding us that God, unlike the heavens, never changes. This past Tuesday, I had stayed here at the office pretty late. I was on my way home. It was dark. The moon had just come up over the horizon. It was a huge, beautiful moon, one of those moons you can't just ignore.

Tuesday had been a discouraging day of following the news, keeping track of election results. But as I drove home, I started thinking about the age and constancy of the moon. Do you ever have these deep philosophical introspective moments that come out of the blue? I just started thinking about how old the moon is. And the thought occurred to me that the moon has been up there in the sky for millennia. Abraham looked at that same moon that I was looking at. Alexander the Great looked at that moon. Pilate and Nero, Augustine and Pelagius, Hitler and Churchill all looked at the same moon that I was looking at that night.

That same moon marched across the sky during the Crusades, during the Protestant Reformation, during the Battle of Gettysburg, both World Wars, and now it's marching across the sky on this November night in 2020. And James' point in our text is that God, the Father of that moon, the Father of lights, is even more constant than the ancient moon which he made a few thousand years ago. If God can create and sustain that mutable heavenly body that swells up and shrinks down every month, then this immutable God can well take care of me and my family and my church without so much as a struggle.

But not only do we find stamina for the race by looking at God's unchanging nature, we also find stamina by looking at God's actions on our behalf. Verse 18 describes the most wonderful of all God's good and perfect gifts to us. James says in verse 18, of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

The phrase word of truth occurs numerous times in scripture and every time it refers to the gospel. So what is it that God brings forth? What is it that God births into existence through the power of the gospel? It's Christians.

It's us. It's the church. It's saved sinners. James is describing here the process of God the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit and upon the merits of Jesus Christ birthing saints from sinners. And he says this miraculous birth is motivated by the sovereign will of a God who never changes. That it's brought about through the instrument of God's word, the gospel which never changes and that this good and perfect gift is only the first installment, the first fruits of the many gifts yet to be given.

Y'all, that's exciting. If we were to finish the race, there is something we must experience. We must experience the regenerating work in our spirit that only the Holy Spirit can accomplish. If we experience that, then we can be certain that we will remain steadfast under trial, that we will finish the course, that we will persevere to the end, and that that end will be far more glorious than anything we can imagine. As we conclude tonight, notice that God's provision for us through the testing of our faith includes regeneration and conversion at the outset.

It includes instruction on how to fight temptation and how not to fight temptation in the midst of the test. And it includes eternal promises of reward after the test as long over. God meets us before, during, and after the trials of life. Folks, that is grace, sweet, sweet grace. And this grace gives us motivation to stay in the fight until God has accomplished exactly what our tests of faith need to accomplish in us.

If we want the blessing of being able to say at the end of our lives, I've fought the good fight, I've finished the race, I've kept the faith, then we need the long more for heaven and long less for the passing pleasures of this world. We need to avoid ascribing blame to God and start taking responsibility for our own sin through sincere repentance. We need to acknowledge that at the root of my sin problem and my lack of perseverance are heart desires that are wicked and that make me vulnerable to temptation, desires that need to be put to death every day. And we need to experience the regenerating, empowering work of the Holy Spirit that produces in us all sorts of spiritual fruit through the power of the gospel, that word of truth that is living and powerful. Pursue these things, church, and you will remain steadfast, immovable, faithful under trial. Amen? Let's pray. Lord, would you make us steadfast, would you make us faithful to the end so that you might be glorified in how we run the race that's set before us and so that in the end we might enjoy the blessings of heaven, that we might enjoy your voice saying to us, Well done, good and faithful servant. We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen.