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Introduction to the Book of James
Turn to the Book of James. We are going to begin a new series today looking at this New Testament letter. If you’re using the Bible, it’s after Hebrews; it’s towards the end, about this far from the end. It’s after Hebrews but before Peter. If you’re using the pew Bible in front of you, or your device, of course, it’s easy to find.
Looking at the letter of James, the quote at the beginning that I gave you:
“If religion stood only in a few outward works of duties, that would make it doable. But to take the soul to task, to deal roundly with our own hearts, to let conscience have its full work, to bring the soul into spiritual subjection under God—that is not such an easy matter, because the soul, out of its own self-love, loathes to enter into itself.”
That’s a great distinction between religion and Christianity. I’m constantly making a distinction between religion and Christianity because religion is just a few, or a thousand, outward conformities, which then can be done properly—or you get an ‘A’ grade—then you succeed. Religion is man’s attempt to please a God, to work and merit my way into God’s graces.
Christianity is radically different than that. It’s God stepping into man’s experience and providing for him that which he cannot provide for himself. And that work dismantles the soul in a way that religion can’t. It helps you get to the heart of the soul, and that’s what we want. Because when we have outward conformity without an inward reality, that produces hypocrisy. And is there anything worse in this world than hypocrisy? Who do we hate more than hypocrites and people who use double standards? I can’t stand it when she does that—I mean, they do that. She didn’t know I was going to say that!
But it comes down to that. It comes down to the fact that we feel the need. And James, the Book of James, speaks penetratingly, piercingly into that experience. We’re going to get into it a little bit, but let some reader read the section that we’re focusing on today: James, chapter 1, verse 1.
Scripture Reading: James 1:1–18
Follow along:
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:
Greetings.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.
Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossoms fall and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give you birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
This is God’s word. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Let’s pray.
Father, be with us today as we look at your word. I pray that you would inform our minds and our hearts. I pray that you would make us aware of, and willing to go to, the depths of our need and to the dark recesses of places that you desire to perfect. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Growing Up in Jesus’ Household
What do you suppose it was like to grow up in Jesus’ household? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. What was it like living in that? We forget the Gospels tell us that it wasn’t just Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. It was Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Simon, and Jude, and Joseph Junior, and James. And probably two or three sisters.
So Jesus grew up in a household of like nine or ten people. What must that have been like? What must that have been in that experience? We forget Jesus had a whole big old family. And usually, your siblings know you best, right? My sisters know me really well. They know I’m Type A. They tell me what the ‘A’ stands for all the time because they’ve earned the right; they’ve lived the experience.
And so here, this book was written by Jesus’ brother. The reason we know that is because we only get two choices in this matter: James son of Zebedee (the apostle) or James the brother of Jesus. In other words, those are the only two people who could have written a letter to the Jews at the time who were scattered, and who could have written it without giving a title like “James, son of so-and-so.” Usually, if it were James son of Zebedee, he would have said, “James, an apostle of Christ.” And he doesn’t say, “James, the apostle of Christ.”
But notice how he starts:
“James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
He didn’t identify himself—his calling card of authority, his calling card of “listen to me, I’ve got something to say”—wasn’t because he was Jesus’ brother. Which he could have said. Instead, he says, “I’m just a servant. I’m just a servant of the same person you are a servant of. I’m just telling you what He told me.”
He didn’t try to make fame, he didn’t try to make hay with being on the inside track. He simply said, “I am a servant of God and Jesus—same person, same God, Father, Son, Jesus Christ.” It’s almost right there: “Jesus Christ, my brother”—he could have, but he didn’t even go there. He went right to, “Listen to me because I’m a servant. I’ve got some things to say because I’m a servant.”
Because that’s, in essence, what leadership is. Leadership in the Kingdom of God isn’t sort of a position you achieve by being better than everybody else, or being holier in some capacity. “If you want to be greatest among you,” Jesus said, what? “Be servant of all.” That’s what He told His disciples on the night of the Last Supper.
He said, “I am, you know…” And just as a room full of men, nobody’s washing anything. Until Jesus finally decides somebody’s got to wash feet. Nobody’s washing feet. If there had been women around, they’d have washed the feet because they think. Men don’t think! Until Jesus says, “Let me wash your feet. Let me serve you. Let me take—I’m about to do the big thing here, but I’ve got to do the little things too.” There’s a sense where Jesus in His, even in His ministry, is saying, “Guys, I’m about to go to the cross. I’m, you know…” And it’s like, I feel like my mother has said this to me, or even my wife has said this to me: “With all the things I’m doing, can’t you just do one thing? Can’t you just do the easy thing? I’m going to do the hard thing—I’ll clean the bathrooms. Can’t you just empty the dishwasher? Simple.” No, they couldn’t.
But Jesus proved what leadership is: service.
The Context of the Scattered Church
So James comes into the situation, and he writes the letter to the churches that have been scattered. They’ve been scattered because of a great persecution that resulted. The church went from a church that was mainstream (Judaism) to a church that is marginalized. And in that marginalization, they are running because of the persecution, but they’re also sort of migrating to new locations.
Whenever you’re experiencing migration, marginalization, and persecution, what kind of life does that provide for you? That kind of transition—it’s just full of unease. It’s full of, you know, when you’re running, if you had to leave an area, if you’re migrating to another area, you don’t have a job, you don’t have your possessions (they are less), you don’t have resources, you don’t have friends, you probably don’t have family. So that’s the context in which he’s writing.
The other thing is persecution. If you’re being persecuted, if you’re being maligned because of your faith choices in these situations, and because the mainstream is controlling the context, they get to decide. So now you’re being unjustly accused, your reputation is at risk, your livelihood is at risk, your connectivity, your bridge-building, the opportunities cease to exist. And when you become marginalized, no one’s paying any attention to you. No one cares about what you have to say.
So in those contexts, this is the context in which James is writing. And he’s going to get at some of what’s going on in the context of that, because in the context of that is where—and in reality, that’s where real life is experienced. We’re experiencing that kind of difficulty, those kinds of sufferings, all the time.
The Different Approaches of Paul and James
What James is coming at, saying—and James is a very different writer than Paul. Paul wrote most of the New Testament, and we’ve run into Paul’s letters a lot. We’re probably familiar with the way Paul writes, and hopefully we’ve studied them enough here, and you privately, and others have explored them in such a way that you get a sense of how Paul writes and we get that in our heads.
Paul, when he’s coming at problems, when he’s coming at advice for growth and beauty and processing, it’s like a plant that’s growing and has bad fruit on it. Paul, the way that Paul deals with the church and the individual, it’s like a plant. Jesus said we’re like plants and we grow up, and “by their fruit you shall know them,” Jesus said. Okay, well, what do we know about a fruit? What is it that we’re supposed to know by the fruit? What is the fruit telling us? It’s telling us what the roots are like, what I’m rooted in. The fruit can tell me what I’m rooted in.
And so when Paul would try to talk about that experience in humanity, Paul goes right at the roots, and he starts right at the bottom. He starts digging it up, and he’s talking about how you’re not rooted in Jesus, you’re not seeing the love of Christ, you’re not experiencing the grace. And then later on in his letter, he’ll talk about how that manifests into the fruit—ping!
James is very different. He’s doing the same thing—he’s doing the gardening. As a matter of fact, he uses a gardening imagery right off the bat! He’s just talking about how—he’s talking about gardening right off the bat. One of his stories says the sun shines and burns up the plants, they wither, and anything that we manifest, it goes away, it dries up. So don’t rely on that in terms of physical things. But James, when he’s talking about nurturing the gardening of the heart, root and fruit, James doesn’t go right at the root. You know what James goes right at? He goes right at the fruit.
That’s how you can get the healthy plant either way, and there’s a sense where you’ve got to do a little bit of both all the time. If you’ve ever worked with tomatoes and you’ve got a black spot on your tomatoes, you’ve got to do a little—you’ve got to cut the fruit off, you can’t eat those. But then you’ve got to figure out and see where it is, and then you’re going to go to the roots, you’re going to get something in the soil that’s not proper in the process. And so, yes, you’re going to do a little bit of both.
But James goes dramatically at the fruit. He calls it out, he comes at it with force, and he comes at it with directness. He is not mincing words, and you get some of that in the early sections here—he’s just very direct. He’s one of these people that you probably think just doesn’t mince any words. He comes in and says, “Well, that’s not right.”
The “Seinfeld” and “Restaurant” Analogies: Facing the Truth
I was re-watching an old clip of the comedy series Seinfeld that some of you may be familiar with. There’s a woman that I think Jerry was dating, and he was wondering with his friends about her attractiveness. It’s an odd, odd story. Please, some of how these series work: she’s kind of attractive, but her nose doesn’t fit her face was really what it was. And so they’re trying to figure out a way—and “that’s easily solved,” they’re saying. You know, I think Elaine says, “It’s easily solved. If you just get a nose job, it’s easy. Everybody’s doing that side of thing, it’s not even a problem, don’t even let it worry you.” Jerry’s worried about all the craziest, dumbest things. And so, “But who can tell her? How can we help her? Because you can’t really say something like that, that’s so horrible.”
And then in walks Kramer. Kramer walks in, who is sort of this esoteric vagabond, as it were. He jumps into the conversation and it comes up, and he only knows her a little bit and meets her again, and says, “Well, take so-and-so over here. She’s really attractive. The only thing messed up about her is her nose.” And everyone else in the room is like, “Oh my God!” He said the thing. He said the thing! He just said it, and now it’s out there. And now what do you do?
James just says the thing. James just says the thing so that we don’t make any mistake over what the thing is. Kramer says, “No, it’s fine!” and then he goes on because everybody’s in an uproar and she’s feeling sort of, “No, no, no, you’re fine, everything’s fine. It’s easily fixed.” It wasn’t that he was trying to be personal, he wasn’t trying to be convicting, he wasn’t trying to be off-handed or judgmental. He was simply saying a true thing in his sense. James is the same way. He’s not trying to get change through a different method; he’s simply saying the thing that needs to be said so that we know it’s as plain as the nose on your face.
And sometimes we get into a situation where we can’t see the nose on our face, we can’t understand it. There’s another series that I casually watched a bunch of years ago called Restaurant Stakeout or something about restaurants, where a guy would come in and he would take broken-down, unsuccessful restaurants and turn them into great, wonderful, newish restaurants. The one thing—I read a review about the series, and the review said that one thing that’s common about all the restaurants he would go into (and he would go in and sort of, soup to nuts, close it down, experience the restaurant first, then go back in, clean house, and he was one of these sort of hard-liner, very James-like, very Kramer-like entrepreneur types)—he would go in, and the review said the one thing that was common about all the restaurants that needed to have this sort of dramatic change was the smell.
He would go in, and all of them had an off-putting smell. In a world where you’re dealing with food, that’s important because the olfactory is how we enjoy that experience. As a matter of fact, when you’re eating, the nose, the scent, is the most powerful part of the taste process, as science will tell us. And so he would go in and always uncover a smell, but nobody in the restaurant smelled it. Why? Because after a while, when you’re living in a place, when you’re working in a place, when you’re doing the same thing over and over again, you get “nose-blind” to the whole what’s-going-on-here.
James comes in and goes, “You know, you’re nose-blind to some things, and I need to tell you something because you have just gotten so used to it.” My wife will tell you I have a very heightened sense of smell. Her sense of smell was ruined when she was a child, it’s a long story. But I’m always conscious, trying to make sure that our home smells fresh, it smells normal, it doesn’t have oddities. And as we get older, I don’t want my house to smell like my grandmother’s house smelled. I think that had to do with her getting older, because I don’t remember smelling it when I was a kid. So you know what I’m dealing with.
But it happens over a period of time. You live in a place, you engage a place long enough, and you’re in the space. When I moved to Hanover, every time I drive through Spring Grove, I’m like, “Whoa.” Summertime in Spring Grove, man! Because they use the sulfurs and the chemicals, and that would fill the air. And let’s just talk about Hanover Foods, which is in our own town, has the name on it. When they’re canning asparagus, it is not a good day. So let’s just be clear. But you live in a place long enough, you get immune. In Spring Grove, they get immune to that smell because you’re not going to get over it, so you have to just get immune to it.
But in a place where you’re supposed to be smelling beautiful things—in a restaurant, you’re supposed to be smelling beautiful things and cookies and garlics and paprikas—and it doesn’t smell like that, but then you stop detecting the bad smell? James comes in and says, “Let’s find—let me show you some smells that we have to get working on.” Because otherwise, you’re acting like you’re a restaurant that’s giving a good experience when, in actuality, you’re hypocritical to that promise. You’re being hypocrites. You’re talking one way, you’re preaching one way, but you’re not living the other way.
And the problem that the culture has, rightfully so, if the culture in our world points out the hypocrisy of the church, that’s right on. We ought to encourage that, we ought to acknowledge that. The culture doesn’t have a problem with the church being hypocritical because everyone’s a hypocrite in some fashion or other. The problem the culture has with the church is that they’re hypocrites and act like they’re not. That’s the real problem.
As a matter of fact, when I’m out talking with people who tell me those sorts of things, I go, “You know, you are absolutely right.” For instance, I’ll tell them, and then we go through a list of things that I think the church universal is hypocritical of. They’re shocked! But they’re in agreement. And I say, “And I’m one of them.” And so, yeah, that’s part of our—and sometimes people will go, “You know, I would have never thought you’d say something like that.” And I go, “Yeah, well, it’s true.” Why would they have never thought I would say something like that? Because the rest of Christendom is out there going, “You know, no, we’ve got Jesus, we’re doing all right, follow us, do the thing, we’re not guilty of that.”
But see, this is where James comes in, and he wants to be able to say: If you’ve got a bad smell, admit you have a bad smell! And then let Jesus save you from that bad smell and change it. If you need wisdom, if you’re not living wisely in this system, ask God! He’ll give it to you. He gives without issue, he gives without preference to everyone. Just ask Him, and He’ll get rid of the smell. Just ask Him, and He’ll point it out and He’ll show you. It’s as easy as that. It’s not like he’s trying to—he’s not using guilt to get them to change; he’s using honest confrontation to point out what you need help with, to ask from above, wisdom from above. He’ll give it to you!
Finding Joy in the Refining Process
Then he calls them out. It’s interesting what James calls out. What’s the first thing he calls out? He says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers.” First problem he has is they’re not joyful. You are living in a culture that is not training you. Your restaurant smells joyless. Do you know that? Have you smelled the lack of joy here?
And if you’re not—and here’s the thing, if you don’t have joy, he says, “Whenever you face trials of many kinds…” So when you’re going through these trials—remember how I told you how these people are persecuted, they’re marginalized, and they’re migrating—in all that sort of suffering that goes on in that context, and in those experiences of life, what he’s saying is, when you’re going through that kind of suffering, that kind of hardship, those kinds of trials, you should smell like joy.
And you don’t. When you don’t smell like joy, what do you smell like? You smell like envy. You smell like bitterness. You smell like fear. You smell like accusation, among the other scents that are out there. Because it’s not like you don’t smell like anything. Nothing smells like nothing! Right? I have a heightened sense of smell, as I’ve told you before.
There was once, I don’t know if I’ve told you this story. When we lived in Baltimore, we had a townhouse, and it was multi-levels. I came home one day from the front door, and it smelled like something had died. And I thought it was a mouse, and I wanted to find out where it was. I went upstairs, and I didn’t smell it up there. I went back down to the foyer, which divides into the two places of the house because it was a split foyer. I went upstairs, I didn’t smell it. When I’m in here, I could smell it. And then I go downstairs, and okay, so it’s down here. And then I went into this part—no, don’t smell it over there. And then I come over here, and I smell it. There was an open child’s marker behind a bunch of boxes in the furthest part of the basement. And when I picked it up, I went, “Oh, that’s it.” Because you can—nothing smells like nothing.
There’s a smell. And what James is saying is, if there’s no joy, if you don’t smell like joy, if you’re not expressing joy, then what are you letting out? If you’re in suffering, and if you’re in a time of trial, and if you’re in a time of hardship—which James says, make note, he says “when,” whenever you face trials, not if ever. But whenever.
The nature of suffering—this is part of the smell, this is part of what he’s challenging—suffering is not something gone wrong; it’s something gone right. This is part of where the joy comes from. He’s saying, and we don’t live in a culture, we don’t live in a society that acknowledges this. We don’t live in a society—this is why the culture and society as a whole, that restaurant thinks suffering smells bad. It doesn’t train us, if we’re living by the popular way to live, suffering means a bad thing. So if I’m suffering at work, you know, I’ve got to find my personal peace. I’ve got to look out for my own peace, I can’t live in this suffering.
James is trying to help them understand, and what James wants us to understand, is that suffering is a part of life. It is the very nature by which—it is the building block by which God makes us better, brings out the beauty. It’s a refining process. It brings up the imagery of sort of smelting gold or iron, any sort of precious metal. The reason we smelt it, the reason we put it in a furnace and turn up the heat, is so that the impurities burn off and the beauty of the metal rises to the top. And only through that heated process, only through that acknowledgment of when the heat gets turned up and things start getting hot and messy and molten lava, then we start getting to work to bring out the shine, to bring out the beauty. And the impurities either burn off or they rise to the top.
We’ve said any number of times: if I bump your cup, what’s coming out of it? Whatever’s in it!
When Jesus’ cup got bumped by persecution, when Jesus’ cup of his own life got bumped at the cross, what came out? At the cross. On the cross: “Father, forgive them. Forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” At the cross, Jesus says, “John, my mother—I’ve got to take care of my mom. She has no one now. Who’ll take care of my mom?” This is what, when Jesus at the highest place of his own—his Father is leaving him, he’s utterly alone, he’s completely enduring the wrath of the punishment of your sins and mine—he’s concerned for the people who need forgiveness, who are bringing about his suffering. He’s concerned for the safety and well-being of his mom.
When his cup was bumped, what came out was what was in it. And what comes out of you is what’s in there. Discovering what’s in there is what suffering and trials produce. You don’t know what’s in there, just like the quote I gave you. You don’t know what’s in there, you and I don’t desperately want to know what’s in there. I don’t want to do business with my heart because, number one, it’s scary down there! You ever been down there? I’ve been partway down there, and you don’t want any part of it. There’s stuff down there.
Conclusion: Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus
The other day, I had a disappointing moment. I was getting my hair cut, and my normal—the woman who normally does my hair—I had inadvertently, due to my own failure to check the system, messed up the appointment. And I wasn’t able to get her. I couldn’t come back on the day I had scheduled inadvertently. She arranged for me to get with a woman who was free during that time to do it that day, which was very gracious.
It wrecked my sense of vanity. It wrecked me in a way—and I say wrecked, I mean, I’ve been wrecked by other things much worse, but I’m just saying it wrecked me in a way I don’t like talking about. It’s embarrassing to say that having to go from one person who I really think gets my hair and really understands how I like it, and we’ve just started working on a pattern of this whole thing, and I go from that to another person. Where does that come from? That comes from deep in my heart, and I don’t like to admit the vanity I’m living with in that moment. That I can get stirred up and have a moment—I’m having a moment. Why? Over a haircut. It’s going to grow out! It’s going to be fine. I’ve certainly had worse haircuts in my life and lived through them.
But you think after 60 years on the planet, I would understand this. But my heart isn’t where it needs to be. And the mini-suffering of moving from one—and who created the suffering? Me. Me! Because I didn’t schedule the appointment right. She didn’t do it, the world wasn’t out to get me. I did it. And so that mini-suffering points out a mini bad smell in my life. There was no joy in that suffering.
God got me there, I’m telling it to you now, there’s joy that results. But it’s a refining process. Suffering is the process of refining. But the culture we live in thinks that suffering is bad and we need to eradicate it at all costs, or hide myself from it, or not admit it. We don’t want to go down the depths, take it where suffering is meant to take us.
Suffering began in the garden. It began when we sinned; it was the just consequence of sin. Suffering, hardship. Before sin came, God said in the garden, “Just work the garden, and it’ll produce for you. It’s going to blossom under your care. Work is going to be such a wonderful experience. You’re still going to sweat, but it’s going to be great because what you put in, you’re going to get more out. You put in 10, you’re going to get out 100.”
Now, sin comes in, and death and suffering result. And now, you put in 10, and you get negative 10. So now you’ve got to work harder to get less. That trial came because of sin. And James is saying even God is using that process—the consequences of our cosmic sin—He’s using the consequences to actually renovate the human heart.
What an amazing God. What a beautiful God who can take that sinful consequence, that due judgment that God gave us in the garden, and use that process of suffering, trial, and hardship to actually mold us into more beautiful creatures than we ever imagined.
This is where sometimes religion gets in the way. God isn’t just trying to make us perfect. Perfect is one way of understanding what He’s trying to do, because He is perfect. But perfect makes it sound moral, and certainly morality has a lot to do with this, but He’s trying to turn us into the beautiful creatures of humanity He began with. It involves morality, but more than that, it involves joy.
What are the fruits of the Spirit? Talking about fruit and root, Galatians says what the fruit is: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Nine different fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy. Joy. So James comes in with his directness: “I don’t smell joy here. Where is the joy in the trials?”
Joy is a part of the refining process of God. God is making you beautiful again. And you can’t find joy in that? Now, lest you think I’m saying that your first response when you have a difficulty is that you should be like, “I’m so happy!” No. He’s not turning us into that either, because that’s another level of hypocrisy that makes the church look icky to the rest of the world, and they are right. It makes the church look icky to me; I don’t like that sort of sanguine, syrupy, Bible-verse-plastered-over-wounds kind of thing. No.
But what he’s saying is, the joy is this deep sense of satisfaction, this deep sense of hope, this positive nature that no matter what I’m going through this moment, I can trust in the One who’s leading me through it. And that ultimately, it’s going to be for my good, and that I don’t have to be afraid of it. And that sometimes suffering isn’t a result of something I’ve done wrong, it just might be something as a result of the world has gone wrong. And because of that, I don’t have to blame. Because like we said, if I’m not joyful, the other smell that results is accusation, vindictiveness, impatience, bitterness. A lot of that is directed at God, but often it’s directed at others. And so those bad smells—really, if I’m joyful in suffering, even though I might be sad (sadness isn’t a sin, but because we’re afraid of sadness, I can’t change sadness, sadness is very hard; grief, another no sin in grief)—but I can’t get out of those things. So in order to get out of them, I create other emotions, secondary emotions like fear and anger and accusation. Because they are powerful, and I don’t have to sit in sadness. I don’t have to lament. I don’t have to yield. I don’t have to trust in grief.
But trusting in grief and sitting in sorrow produces joy. That’s the ground, that’s where the seeds are planted, and that’s what the Spirit does. And also, when you’re not experiencing joy, what does he go into? Verse 13, “When you’re tempted…” When you’re going through these times of hardship, he says, “Blessed is the one,” verse 12, “who perseveres through all this, yes, yes, yes.” And then, “When you’re tempted, when you’re going through these difficult times, don’t think God’s tempting me.” Don’t start blaming God. God’s not tempting you. God’s not trying to get you, God’s not tricking you. Don’t start—this is where he’s pointing out the lack of joy, you’re going to automatically become accusatory towards God. Don’t raise your fist at God and go, “You know, tempted.” No.
And then he goes on a little excursion, he goes on a little thing, he says, “Let me tell you how temptation works. Let me tell you how sin works. Here’s how it works. Where does it start? With your evil desires.” And he doesn’t even start on the outside; he goes right at the heart of desires now. He started on the outside—there’s no joy. James is kind of a little sort of—I think he just has a lot to say. As you can tell, when I have a lot to say, I get a little disjointed. James is a little disjointed too because he goes through to talk about the joy to begin with, and then he jumps into how the rich are oppressing the poor, and don’t do that. And then he starts talking about humble versus proud. So he’s going at humility, he’s talking about how they use their wealth, he’s talking about how to treat each other of different classes. He’s going through that, he’s going to get into some more of that. But then he goes down to say, don’t start, just because you’re not joyful, and when you’re not joyful, don’t start blaming God. That’s the other thing that results.
But here’s how temptation works. If you want to start where that starts, starts with your desires. You desire it, it’s inside of you. God wants to not just change what you do, but in wanting to do what is right. He wants to change your “want to,” not just the thing. That’s religion and bad versions of Christianity that just want to change what I can see, the fruit. But Jesus desperately wants, the Gospel is trying to change what I want to do, not just what I do. And until we get to the “want to,” we’re not done.
And what James is saying, from a different angle: if you’re going to change the “do,” you have to start in, you have to focus on the “want to.” Desires. And then you’re enticed, your desires entice you, and then you’re sinning, and then when sin keeps going, then it’s going to lead to—ultimately, that pathway that starts with desires leads all the way, it’s going to kill you.
And what he’s trying to say, help us to understand, is that there is a beauty that God’s trying to bring as a result of His people. And that’s what he ends this section on. He says, “Brothers and sisters, every good and perfect gift comes from above.” You can’t—you can’t create this in you, you can’t make this in you. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of heavenly lights, because He chose you and gave you birth through the word of truth. In other words, birth—he’s saying this life, this heavenly blessing, this good and perfect gift comes from above, it’s life-giving in you. You’ve got it in you! Everything you need is there. There’s life already there, just—we’re trying to let it out, is what James is saying.
The joy is there, let it out! And if you don’t feel like you can let it out, ask Him, and He’ll give you wisdom. He’s trying to focus their attention on his brother, on Jesus. Hebrews, the book right before this, says:
“Fix your eyes on Jesus, who is the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross.”
The very thing James is talking about. He’s describing, he’s alluding to in this context. The good and perfect gift comes down from above, the father of heavenly—the heavenly life that he gives us comes through Jesus. And as we fix our eyes on Jesus, as we fix our eyes on Him who is the essence of joy in suffering, joy in the midst of enduring a cross, that is the only way that you and I will ever be able to endure suffering with joy. It’s the more we see Jesus enduring suffering for our joy, and his joy.
Let’s pray.
Thank you, Father. Thank you for Christ. Thank you for his life of joy, a life of great joy exhibited in many fashions. But Lord, his joy—how could anyone endure the life of rejection, and pain, and suffering, and loneliness, and abandonment by you in wrath, consider that joy, if it were not for the fact that it was his relationship with you and his desire to gather us to himself. We are his joy. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.