Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: James 1:1-4 | Date: November 1, 2020 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Turn with me, if you will, to James chapter one. Tonight we have the very cheery subject of trials. Well, joy in trials, okay? James chapter one. Let’s look at the first four verses:

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion: Greetings. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Let’s look to the Lord in prayer. Father, this is a subject that eventually touches us all. There is none of us who will escape suffering of some kind in this life. We pray that you would help us to take this exhortation from your Word to heart. We pray that you’ll shape us by it so that we may more faithfully live for you even in trying times. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.

My first funeral as a young pastor of 24 years old—my first funeral was for a family who was just related somehow to the church. I hadn’t known them before the funeral. They had a two-year-old daughter who was out playing in the yard. Her dad had changed a broken window the day before and the broken glass from the window was out in the trash can out by the street. The two-year-old got into the trash and the glass cut her jugular vein. Within a couple of minutes, she was gone.

My grandparents, my dad’s parents, had a five-year-old son. His name was Fred—Fritz, they called him, in good German fashion—my dad’s younger brother. He was sick. Dad and Fritz both were sick. And Fritzy, they called him, took a turn for the worse one night. It was late one night and Grandpa had to run out and find a place with a phone so he could call the doctor to come out. And by the time the doctor got there, it was too late and Fritzy was gone.

I had a pastor friend who was preaching one evening in a Sunday evening service and wasn’t able to finish; he had a terrible, terrible headache. As it turned out, it was a tumor. And within a few weeks, he was gone. I had a good friend in the church who complained of indigestion and checked it out. Within three months, he was gone. It was cancer.

I had an older lady in the church, a dear friend of ours years ago, who went to the doctor for something—I forget what it was now exactly. He prescribed some medication. She was not able to sleep, not able to sleep, not able to sleep for several weeks on end. She ended up having a stroke. After the fact, they found out the doctor prescribed a medication that was conflicting with the previous med that he had prescribed for her. For a couple of years, she lay in a nursing home, unable to talk, until finally she died. I have two friends who suspected something of their wives, and so they tapped their own phone lines. Sure enough, in each case, the wife was cheating on them.

When You Meet Trials Of Various Kinds

Well, I could go on and on with cheery stories like this, but it brings us into the atmosphere of verse two: “whenever you meet trials of various kinds.” It happens all the time. Life is going just fine until it isn’t. And in fact, the translation that we have here in the ESV is a little more polite, maybe: “when you meet trials of various kinds.” If any of you have the old King James Version or are familiar with it, you’ll remember: “when you fall into various trials.” That’s a more literal translation here.

And that’s the idea here. You think life is good—and generally it is for those of us in our society; generally life is good. There is prosperity, there’s general health, there’s peace, there’s safety in the main—and then out of nowhere you fall into a trial. Where did this come from? That’s the idea of verse two. And that’s life. We have learned to see that in a fallen world. Life is good, we’re happy, we’re healthy, we have a degree of wealth in our society more than most, and then suddenly something throws it all for a loop.

And James here doesn’t even say, “count it all joy if you fall into a various kind of trial.” It is when. And if you’d like to know, the original Greek reads the same way: “when you fall into various trials.” And he’s not even specific here as to what kind of trial—just “various kinds.” You’re walking along and boom, you’ve stumbled into a new trial of some kind. That’s the atmosphere James brings us into in verse two.

The Testing Of Your Faith

And in fact, what he goes on to tell us is that these sufferings that we fall into are not just sufferings. In verse two, he calls it a “trial.” And then in verse three, he calls it a “testing.” Both words are similar enough; they have to do with determining the character of something. Suffering is a test to determine the character of something. He tells us that in verse three. He calls it “the testing of your faith.”

That’s the nature of any affliction, of any kind of suffering. It’s an occasion of the testing of our faith. Do we really believe that God is good? Do we really believe that God is using them to some wise and right purpose? And do we really trust God in the outworking of His providence? It’s a testing of our faith. That’s the first thing that comes up when we suffer.

In fact, very often it’s the first thing that comes to mind: “Why does this have to happen to me? Why is God doing this?” And sometimes it’s even shaped like a dagger, like we’d throw it at God. “Why is He doing this to me?”—as though we deserved better. And it’s a testing of our faith.

Jesus refers to this in the parable of the sower in Matthew chapter 13. He speaks of that one seeming believer: the seed falls into the ground and rocky soil, and because there’s not much depth of earth, the thing sprouts up and it looks like it makes a great show of faith. But then the sun comes out—persecution, suffering, whatever kind—and it withers and dies. This really wasn’t much of a faith after all. And suffering has a way to do that. Until our lives and our faith are tested, it’s never been proven.

And James in verse three calls it then a “testing of your faith” to prove its reality. And as I say, this is often the first thing that comes to mind when we suffer. Why does this have to happen? Why is God doing this? And often it’s the greatest part of the struggle. We wrestle with this with reference to God.

More than once I’ve had to sit with people who are suffering in some terrible way, and you want to give them space. You understand where we all fall apart and we have emotions. You’ve got to give space. But at some point, if it continues in the complaint—”Why is God doing this to me? Why is this happening to me?”—at some point, you have to gently remind them: Why should this not come to you? This is the common lot of all of us living in a fallen and a cursed world. Don’t let this rock your faith.

But that is a great part of the struggle very often: our suffering, not just grappling with the suffering itself, but grappling with the Godward side of it. When my grandparents’ son died—this would be 1935, something like that—Grandpa was a new Christian. They hadn’t been saved terribly long, and he became bitter. He had exactly that kind of struggle, a testing of faith. “Here I’ve given my life to Christ. I’m taking my kids to church now, trying to serve Him, and this has to happen.” And there was a period where he was bitter.

I remember he was telling me about it. One night while lying in bed, he couldn’t sleep, and a verse of Scripture came to mind that he had memorized in the brief time that he was a Christian. It was 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 19: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” And he said he began to see things in larger perspective. And he turned to the Lord in repentance for his bitterness. But suffering does that to us. And that’s verses two and three. We stumble into some suffering; it comes in an unexpected way very often. And what it is, is not just a suffering; it’s a testing of our faith.

Now, a “test”—it’s not really a bad word. You can be put to the test for a good or a bad reason. And given who God is, He doesn’t do it for a bad reason. He tells us that later in the chapter. We’ll see; He doesn’t tempt anyone to sin. Instead, God tests us to demonstrate the reality and the quality of our faith. But still, tests, by the nature of it, are testing occasions. And generally, tests are difficult. And that’s the idea here, of course.

Count It All Joy

And what they have in common—our trials, our testings, whatever word you want to use—is that they’re not happy. They’re unpleasant. It’s the kind of thing that can make grown men sob. It’s the kind of sufferings that he’s talking about that can stick with you the rest of your life. And the last thing you want to hear when you’re in the grips of something like that—the last thing you want to hear is some preacher saying, verse two: “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials.”

And you think at that point, if ever there were such a thing as “preacher talk,” that’s it. I think it’s a terrible expression, “preacher talk.” It’s, you know, what the preacher says, but everybody knows it’s not real. It’s a terrible, terrible expression, given what a preacher is supposed to be doing. But when we read a passage like this and we’re in suffering and it says, “count it all joy when you fall into various trials,” that’s what we feel: “Get real.”

So we just have to talk about this a little bit. First of all, notice he’s not saying here, “be happy about the suffering.” Be glad that you’re suffering? The Bible never does that. The Bible never comes to us and asks us to pretend that suffering is a good thing in and of itself, that these should be happy occasions. The Bible never does that. It recognizes suffering as suffering.

When Paul, for example, says “we do not sorrow as those who have no hope,” he isn’t denying that we sorrow. He’s saying that our sorrowing is not without hope. Peter can speak of the heaviness of our hearts for a season. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews can tell us that “no chastening for the present seems joyous but grievous.” And in fact, the Lord Jesus Himself in His trial said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful. If it be possible, let this pass from me.” So no point is served by those who exhort us to “be happy for this trial.” Pretend and make a manufactured kind of smile out of it? No. Trials in themselves considered are not good things; they’re awful things, and there’s no sense pretending otherwise.

But still we have to reckon with what James says here in verse two: “count it all joy.” And at this point, it would be good, I think, to recognize that the Bible does make some distinction between joy and happiness. I’m not sure those words are always used in that distinction, but there is that distinction, isn’t there? Happiness—there might even be a linguistic connection. Happiness is circumstantial. If things happen to happen happily, we’re happy. And if they happen to happen unhappily, we’re unhappy. It’s dependent on the moment.

Joy is something other than that. Joy is something deeper and that’s not grounded in the immediate. And in the Scriptures, we’re commanded always to have a joy that’s grounded in something massive and something eternal. And so it is something that transcends any temporal suffering. So, “count it all joy when you fall into various trials.”

When we recognize that he’s not saying “be happy, this is pleasant,” while we can say we are not to take pleasure in the suffering itself, there is evidently room for us to say that we should have joy despite the suffering. So that despite the tears, we’re not going to fall apart, but we’ll remain stable. We’re not going to despair of life. We’re not going to give up. We’re not going to run from the Lord and fall apart.

And if that sounds like “preacher talk” to you—something that’s beyond realistic and something that’s not really possible in real life—well, then just recall that the Christian church has a great heritage of this very thing. We have it all the way back to the book of Acts. We find Paul and Silas in prison singing. We find in Acts chapter 5 the apostles; they’re whipped for preaching the gospel and Luke tells us they went away rejoicing that they were worthy to suffer for the Name.

The book of Hebrews tells us that many of these Jewish believers came to Christ at great cost and they “took joyfully the spoiling of their goods.” Paul writes to the Thessalonians and reminds them that they had received the word with “much affliction and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Paul tells us himself in 2nd Corinthians—he described his ministry and all the suffering that happened as a result of it, and he says he is “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,” and even glorying in tribulation.

We have in the history of the church examples of martyrs kissing the stake when they are about to be burned. I have seen this myself in pastoral work many times over. I think of one time meeting a family at the graveside. They had just lost their baby. I meet them at the car. They get out of the car, and I’m trying to think of words to say to offer some kind of encouragement. They get out of the car: “Oh, Pastor Fred, God has been so good.” And you think, “Okay, something’s going on here.” Something wonderful, something supernatural. And yet that is the regular experience of the Christian.

And this is what you’ve heard me call many times the Christian enigma. A Christian is one who’s able to rejoice and have a deep-seated kind of joy, even in the midst of suffering. It’s simply one of the realities of Christian experience. And notice here that James is not calling us to look back after the fact. “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials.” Whenever it happens, count it all joy. When in suffering, evaluate the suffering, recognize it for what it is, and recognize that in the suffering there is some ground, some cause for joy.

Produces Steadfastness

What is it? Well, he tells us in verse three: “count it all joy when you fall into various trials, because you know…” Let’s just stop right there before we go on. “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, because you know.” Our joy is grounded not in what we feel, but what we know. When you fall into trials, take a sober assessment of it, get a hold of your emotions, and remember what you know. Remember what you believe. Remember what God has taught us in His Word. Pull these things together and shore up your mind and shore up your emotions because of what you know you ought to be able to have joy through this. God is still good. God is still God. God is still wise. God is still sovereign over it all. He is still working out His good purpose. Shore yourself up with all these things that you know.

Now, in particular here, he is telling us to count this joy when you fall into various trials because you know—and he has this in particular focus here—”you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” That is, you’re already aware that this difficulty, somehow in the end, as you come out the back end of it, it’s going to have been good for you. The particular good that he says it will be is that it “produces steadfastness.” Not just a passive submission to circumstances, but a bearing up under them—a strong kind of challenging response to the suffering that’s determined to overcome it, determined to grow by it.

So trials, on the one hand, can be an occasion of stumbling, or trials, on the other hand, can become a proving ground that actually strengthens faith. And we come out of it with a more robust trust in God and a firmer faith in His providence. That is, you’ll have this suffering and it’ll make you more of what God has called you to be.

It’s kind of like, you know, when your baby is playing with a balloon and the balloon pops and the baby cries—it’s just the end of the world. And you know, “That’s just preparing you. There’s worse than that coming.” And a little later, he cries when his toy breaks. And that’s another learning ground. And pretty soon, after these various trials, they’re steadfast and able to deal with things that really hurt. And what he’s telling us here is that we shore up our minds with what we know: that God is at work in this to make us what He’s called us to be. It produces steadfastness.

Perfect And Complete, Lacking In Nothing

And then verse four: “Let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” Now notice that comprehensive kind of language: “let it have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” In other words, in our suffering, God has a way of developing in us the kinds of graces He’s determined to work in us. And not only to have those graces—all of them—but to have all of them in a fully ripe sense. That’s the imagery here. It’s all ripened and fully mature.

So what He’s after is not only that we have a little of this grace and a little of that virtue and maybe another here and another there, but in all of them, fully developed. He’s talking about a strong, stable Christian. And He says that is what God accomplishes through our sufferings. God is not interested in a faith that survives by fits and starts. God is interested to develop in us a faith in Him that is robust, a patience with people that is patient even when they rub us wrong, a compassion and a kindness for people and their suffering. He wants to develop in us virtues and graces that honor Him.

And this is one of those occasions where we have to recognize that God is more concerned to develop these graces in us than He is for our momentary happiness. Now for us, our momentary happiness is everything. But God, as much as He does not want to see us hurting, has a higher priority, and that’s to make us like His Son. And there are certain virtues that just cannot be developed sitting back in a rocking chair.

As one of the Puritans said: “There are certain graces, Christian graces, which simply cannot grow except in a soil through which has gone past the deep plowshare of affliction.” All right—picturesque language to tell us that certain graces just don’t grow except in suffering. And so somehow in God’s hands, suffering becomes a means of grace.

You read your theology books and you have a section on the means of grace, and it’s going to be the word—the ministry of the word, study of the word, memorization of the word—prayer, Christian fellowship, the ordinances. All through all of these ways, God ministers grace to us. Suffering is another means of grace in God’s hands. Well, we’ve all found that to be true: that there are certain graces that we just couldn’t have learned except in suffering. And that’s his point here. When we’re finally stripped of our blasphemous self-sufficiency, it is only in those times that we learned to trust God in the good times as well.

Now, this is not just “preacher talk.” That kind of faith that he’s talking about here is alive and well today. I’ve heard plenty of Christians tell me, “As awful as this has been, Pastor Fred, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” And again you think, “What’s going on?” God is at work. And so James says, “count it all joy when you fall into various trials,” because at the other end of it, you’ll come out more of what God has called you to be.

A.W. Tozer sums this up well in a statement he writes: “When I understand that everything happening to me is to make me more Christ-like, it relieves a great deal of anxiety.” So count it all joy when you fall into various trials. Brothers and sisters, it’s going to happen. This is the world we live in. I have the happy responsibility to tell you that you will suffer. If you are not suffering now, you will. It’s going to happen. And these kinds of passages are given to us ahead of time. Get a grip, pull together what you know about God and about His purposes and what He has revealed. And in that, be joyous.

And I might say, just on a practical note: What’s the alternative? Would you be happier if you didn’t count it all joy when you fall into various trials? What are your alternatives? You could fall all apart and make yourself miserable and everybody around you miserable. You could fall into despair and despair of life. Is that going to be better? You could complain—”Why does this have to happen to me?”—and make yourself and everybody else around you miserable again?

So what James is telling us here is it’s not like there’s a better alternative. But for our own sake, for our own sanity’s sake, as well as in order to honor God, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. When the trials come, can you sit back and say, “Okay, let’s get an assessment of this. Who is God? What has God promised? What are His purposes that He has revealed? Even if I don’t know what He’s up to in this particular circumstance, what are His purposes for me?” And pull ourselves together and trust Him in a way that honors Him. Nothing honors God more than a robust trust.

The bottom line, then, is that God calls us to trust Him. We live under the care of a good, all-wise, all-sovereign God who has purposes to work out in our experience. Can we trust Him in that or not? “Count it all joy, my brothers.” This is not an impossible demand. He’s not telling us “enjoy the troubles, enjoy the suffering, be happy.” He’s telling us to recognize that God has purposes that are good and rejoice in that. We’ll pick that up again next time in the following verses.

Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, we need this kind of exhortation when suffering comes. We are weak and it is like us to fall apart, to complain, to despair. God, forgive us even to complain against You. We pray that You would help us, give us the faith, give us the strength to take a sober assessment of the situation when we suffer and suffer in a way that honors You. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.