James 1:1-4

Tom Shrader begins a new series in the book of James, focusing on the opening verses that command believers to consider it all joy when encountering various trials. He explains that James, likely the half-brother of Jesus, writes to scattered Jewish Christians facing persecution and difficulties. The teaching emphasizes that trials are inevitable and multicolored, but they serve God's purpose of producing spiritual endurance and maturity in believers.

“Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials, knowing the testing of your faith produces endurance.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Blue Jean Theology (2011)

Recorded: 2011

Duration: 39 min

Themes: suffering, joy, trials, endurance, faith, perseverance, maturity, testing, facing persecution, going through hardship, new believer, struggling with doubt, experiencing loss, dealing with crisis, feeling overwhelmed, questioning god

Scripture: James 1:1-4, James 1:22, Psalm 17:3, Psalm 26:1-2, Psalm 139:23, Lamentations 3:40, 2 Corinthians 13:5, Matthew 1:27

Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, biblical trials, providence, perseverance of saints, spiritual growth, christian endurance, divine testing

Full Transcript

We have 11 weeks until summer break. So I was trying to put together a couple of series, some one-offs, and it probably is a perfect extension of what we just completed. I decided we'd take a look at the book of James. So when you get to your Bible, over where it says the letter of James, I would write trials plus faith equals endurance. That's, in a way, the message of this book.

The book of James is interesting in that, chronologically, it's the first book written in the New Testament. So we see it tucked away at the back, and we tend to think of it as probably fitting there, but it's the first book written in the New Testament. One author writes this: the epistle sternly insists upon Christian practice consistent with Christian beliefs. It heaps scathing contempt on all empty professions and administers a stinging rebuke to the reader's worldliness. There's something about the book of James that, if taken seriously, is extraordinarily convicting.

The Nature of James

There's an old saying that if you want to screw up your theology, read the Bible. Well, the book of James does that. It's a little bit different in the way that it's organized, in the sense that it's not a letter that necessarily flows consistently, logically through, like you might see in Ephesians or Romans. It's more along wisdom literature. It's more a series of proverbs. So if you're reading along in the book of James, you get this start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. That's why it's filled with passages and verses that are really familiar to you.

But if we had to pick one, if we had to pick the key verse in the book of James, it would be chapter one, verse 22. We come back to this again and again. "Prove yourselves to be doers of the word, not merely hearers who delude themselves." James is saying, I don't want you to walk along saying, I know all this Bible stuff. James, as much as anybody, is saying, I should be able to see your faith. Most of the commentators will point out that James, maybe more than any of the other New Testament writers, reflects the teachings of Jesus. In terms of preparation, I found a lengthy chart taking the book of James and the Sermon on the Mount and literally laying them side by side.

The Author Question

That might get us some sort of an answer when we look at the author of the book of James. There are four candidates that are considered potential for the book of James. There is James the less, James the son of Alphaeus, a James the son—we meet Him in Luke 6—the father of Judas, not Judas Iscariot. The two most thought potential authors: James the brother of John, the sons of Zebedee. But most scholars believe that this James is James the half-brother of Jesus. We're going to get to that and unpack that, but let's just look at chapter 1, verse 1.

"James, a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ," that's who wrote it, "to the twelve tribes who were scattered abroad, greetings. Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing the trials or the testing of your faith produces endurance."

The Recipients of the Letter

James is writing, and he's writing to a group that it's a general epistle, not to any specific person, and there are a group of who He identifies as brethren who are scattered, the twelve tribes. Let me tell you what many of you already know and the rest are going to go, well that makes sense. When the Christian faith was established in Jerusalem, most, all of those early converts were Jews. As they would convert to Christianity, there would be two things that would happen in their life. They would hear the message of the book of Acts, Jesus saying go and be my disciples, be my witnesses, and then He does it geographically: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the remotest parts of the earth.

So some of these tribes were scattered out of obedience, some were scattered out of persecution. A Jew converts to the Christian faith, they lose family, they lose business, and they're going, listen, it can't be any worse outside of Palestine, I'll go there. So in any case, James knows that He's writing to a group of people who are in the midst of suffering, of trials, and He addresses that right away.

Testing of Faith

"You know that the testing of your faith," we see this all through Scripture. Let me give you just a few references. Psalm 17:3, "Thou has tried my heart, thou has tested me." Psalm 26:1-2, "Examine me, O Lord, try me, test my mind, test my heart." Psalm 139:23, "Search me, O God, know my heart." Lamentations 3:40, "Let us examine and probe our ways." Probably the classic 2 Corinthians 13:5, "Test us to see if we're in the faith."

James the Half-Brother of Jesus

This James writes, and I mentioned this, and let's go back because for some of you there was a little bombshell in there earlier: James the half-brother of Jesus. Now over the years, I've been doing it a long time, I've learned we attract a large number of people who come from a Catholic background. That's my background—Catholic grade school, high school college. When we dealt with Jesus and Mary, we were taught that Mary was a perpetual virgin, that if I say a half-brother of Jesus, it immediately throws everything upside down. I remember being taught that.

I went to Holy Family grade school, and recently when I was home, I'm driving around, and I thought, well I'll drive by Holy Family, and there's a sign out front, and the building, like many old schools, has been converted into assisted senior living. So I went in. I thought, well this would be cool, I'd love to go through. So I went in, and there's a guy there, and I said, I went to the school, and it was Holy Family grade school, I'd love to look around, is that possible? He said, no. He said, there's a lady who does that, and she's not here, she's at lunch, she'll be back in probably 15 minutes. I said, well, will she let me look through? He said, I don't know, you can ask her. So I sat, and I'm thinking, this is fascinating. If I'm this lady, I would be fascinated by this.

James 1:1-4 - Suffering and the Believer's Joy
Part 2 of 5

She walks in, I said, "I'm Tom Schrader, I went to school here." I said, "We are standing right there. That spot is where I was standing when I found out John Kennedy was killed." And she said, "Well that's cool, who's John Kennedy?" I mean, nothing, she doesn't care. So I said, "I'd love to walk through and take a look, it might be helpful and amusing," and she said, "Alright. Are you looking to rent something or buy something?" I said, "No, I'm looking for memories." She said, "Do you know somebody who's looking to rent or buy?" I said, "No." She said, "Alright."

So we walked down this hall, and I said, "Well, that's where the kindergarten room was." She said, "Well, that's a studio apartment that's available for sale." It's not working. I said, "That was the boys' restroom." She said, "Well, that's a one-bedroom." I said, "Okay."

A Memory of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus

Well, we went upstairs, and there was an area that probably was about two-thirds the size of this room. It's the area where we would gather. I told her, I said, "That's the fourth-grade room, that was the eighth-grade room, that's the seventh-grade room, that's the third-grade room." She couldn't have cared less.

Well, in that area, the principal's office was like right here. Outside was a little alcove like this, and there was a statue of the Holy Family. After a while, I walked by them, but I remember studying them, knowing pretty well we didn't have pictures. So we had the artist's rendering of this. Mary always had on this beautiful kind of powder North Carolina blue. I don't know that she saw it that way, but that's what it was. Jesus looked like the kind of kid in class that nobody liked. He looked really nice. But Joseph had this—he was always in red, but he had this kind of frustrated look on his face.

I never got it until I was in eighth grade, when I realized they were teaching that Mary was forever a virgin. All of a sudden, I go, "Well, no wonder he's frustrated. He's got a—no wonder he's a carpenter pounding away." Well, what the Bible teaches—I might have read too much into it, it's the mind of an eighth grader. What the Bible teaches in Matthew 1:25 is that Joseph kept Mary a virgin until she gave birth. We know through Scripture, on different occasions, that Jesus would be encountered by His mother and His brothers, His mother and brothers and sisters. In one occasion, we have four brothers named and sisters, plural.

So, to put this in the gentlest, but crassest of terms, Mary and Joseph did it at least six times. We know that. The byproduct of one of those was this guy named James.

James the Humble Bond Servant

Now, just reading those first sentences, "James, a bondservant," to me, there's inferred in there—and I don't think it's a stretch—that this guy was a humble guy. If I'm James, and I'm writing you a letter, I would be tempted to say, "I'm James. I don't know if you know me, but I'm one of the pillars of the church." "I'm James, and you might know my mom, Mary." "I'm James," and his nickname was Old Camel Knees, and tradition says his knees were deformed from spending so much time on them in prayer. You might be prone to say, "I'm James, but I'm a praying guy." It seems to me, you got the ultimate hammer card. "I'm James, you might not know me, but you know my brother, Jesus."

Billy Carter did it. Roger Clinton did it. Trade on your brother's name. James doesn't go down this road. It seems to me, it infers all sorts of humility. "I'm James, and I'm not looking for special treatment or trafficking in this, and I am a bond servant." He chooses the word to describe a servant who is utterly, entirely, completely deprived of personal freedom, and totally under the control of his master. A slave who's dependent upon his master for food, clothing, housing, whose single desire was to fulfill the will of the master.

Writing to Scattered Believers

That's just James, and he's writing to an audience, understanding that they, because they're scattered, whether it's out of obedience to share their faith, or it's out of persecution, either way, they're in a foreign land. He understands there's trials and difficulties, and he's going to write to that group about all of the things that come into light very quickly.

So if you go back to our old phrase, a transformed heart, an informed mind, and a radical life, James hits all of those. James is about life change. I said the other day, and I don't know if my reactions are accurate, or if it's my sense, or it's me, but it feels like in the last three or four years, we haven't talked as intently in the church about a changed, transformed life as we used to. Now, it might just been the tribe I was in. Larry was our chief, and Larry was all about, if your life doesn't change, then you have no biblical assurance of your salvation. That's what James is saying to us.

The Challenge of James

I'll tell you, and I'm going to warn you, if you seriously, honestly read this book of James, and use it as a mirror, and you hold it up against your life, you're going to be filled with all sorts of emotion. You're going to be filled with guilt. James says, if you see somebody who has a need, and you have the ability to meet that need, and you don't meet that need, you're no better than an unbeliever. Well, I meet people every day that have a need, and I have the ability to meet that need, and I got to work very hard to process that scripture, so somehow I'm okay at the end of the day. James is going to, if you take this seriously, and you do, you're going to be pushed, and pushed, and pushed.

In a sense, James is writing to refugees in a foreign land. Sandy and I had dinner last night with a younger couple, and he's a pastor, and she's involved in ministry, and she's graduated from seminary, and we were talking about how it's starting to get tougher, and tougher, and tougher to live out your faith in the world. There was a little time, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, where it was almost cool to be

Christian, and you were living in a town where you had, even in the Phoenix area, you probably had, I don't know, 10 of them who would boldly profess that they were Christians. That's becoming lesser and lesser and lesser. Still in a very healthy environment to talk about God. People will talk about God, but when you go, "Okay, here's the God we're talking about," and you pull out the characteristics of God from the Bible, they go, "I'm not sure about that," and we're not done yet. Now we're going to talk about Jesus, not as the great teacher or miracle worker, but as the savior of the world. People don't want to hear that.

So you're seeing more and more—I don't want to say persecution, because it pales as compared to what ISIS does—but you're seeing more and more a hostile environment when it comes to the basics of the faith. As James writes to these people, I think, in a way, he's writing to us. He's writing to encourage them, he's trying to remind them.

The Command to Consider It All Joy

He goes right in verse 2. It's almost like this: right in the face, right out of the blocks, right after he gets his "dear tribes" out of the way. "Consider it all joy, my brother, when you encounter various trials, knowing the testing of your faith produces endurance." This is, for me, one of those game-changer passages. This is one of those ones that I find myself going back to again and again and again, and it seems like a perfect sequel to the book of Ecclesiastes.

He's speaking to them, but I think you can insert yourself in this text. "Consider it"—it's an imperative—"consider it all joy." Stop, think, reflect, consider it joyful. What? When you encounter trials. By its very nature, I don't need to tell you, that's not a natural response. "I'm joyful, I have cancer." "I'm joyful, my daughter is sick." "I'm joyful," and then you fill in the blank. James is telling something to us that's not natural, it's supernatural, but then again, that's how we're supposed to live.

It's the idea: joy is pure, unmixed, complete, total joy. James is saying, regardless of the cause and the type and the severity of the distress, James is saying, "I want you to choose joy, consider it all joy."

The Language of Trials

Now, look at the words—they become really important. "When"—"consider it all joy, my brother, when"—he doesn't say if, it's when. It's inevitable. "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you inevitably encounter"—the word encounter means literally to fall into unusually unexpected circumstances. "Count it all joy when you encounter various"—again, the literal word there means multicolored. "Consider it all joy, my brother, when you encounter multicolored, various trials."

Again, it's important, I think, just to get the words, and then we'll unpack it. The word trials—it is neutral. It's not necessarily positive or negative. It implies a testing. You're going to be tested. You're going to have in this life—this seems 101, doesn't it?—you're going to have challenges.

Now, here's one of the things: that subset of this is the game changer, is that these trials come in many shapes and sizes. What might be a trial for me might not be a trial for you at all. I might struggle in the area of lust, and for Travis, that might not be an issue at all. He might struggle with food and exercise and fitness, and I don't struggle with that at all. You see what I'm saying? We don't know. You have all these trials.

The Reality of Multicolored Trials

But I want to show you an exercise, and again, it's a game changer of a game changer. If I say to you, "We're going to take 10 seconds, and I'm saying to you, I want you to, in your mind, think of God testing you today. God's going to put a trial in your life today. What would that be?" Now most of you thought of something along the lines of an economic challenge, a relational challenge, a kid that's a problem, the challenge of a parent who's sick, of a test.

I had a test not long ago, and it's funny, I'm like you, we're all at that point where we're getting doctor's tests all the time. Well, I can't hear a thing, and so I go, and I've got like two months before I can get in to see the person I need to see. So I pull the text card. I know the doctor a little bit, so I text him, and I said, "Listen, I hate to do this, but I'm in real trouble. I can't hear, and I can't get in there for two months, and I need your help." So he texts back and says, "Tomorrow morning, nine o'clock, you're going to be with doctor"—I don't know, somebody with a lot of vowels—"and you're going to meet with the doctor at nine o'clock."

So I go in, and I'm in this room, and I got this headset up, and "put your hand up," and you know all this. I'm doing the whole thing. So I come out, and they said, "All right, thank you, Mr. Schroeder," and okay, I heard that, and off I go. When I get home, my phone lights up. It's like 10 in the morning, my phone lights up, and it's the doctor's office saying, "The doctor wants to see you this afternoon at one o'clock." This can't be good. I know my copay cleared, and I know that's the primary thing. So I mean, right? This can only be one thing. So I go in, and he said, "You got a problem," and I said, "I know that, that's why I texted you."

Trials of Prosperity and Time

So when I said to you, "Think of a challenge," you thought of something like that. Here's what James is pushing us: it's the challenge of prosperity. There's the challenge of when the deal blows, and that presents a whole set of challenges, but there's the challenge of when the deal makes.

I have—and it's the cry of the generation after us—everybody's crying they don't have enough time. So one of the—I've wanted for years to have enough time to play golf. Now I have the time to play golf, but I can't grip a club. I wanted the time to read. Now I can read, but I can't comprehend anything. So now I have this valuable commodity, precious commodity of time. How am I going to invest it?

Here's what James is saying: "Consider it all joy when you encounter various—"

What You Know Trumps What You Feel

Trials, how can you do that? Well, because you know something. Verse three, key word, circle, underline, mark it: "knowing the testing of your faith produces endurance." If you've been around PL for any length of time, you've heard what you know trumps what you feel. That phrase came out of this verse.

Now step back and look at this, and it should put a smile on your face, and it makes today easier. I'm going to encounter various trials. Well that makes me frown. But I know something: that testing of my faith produces endurance. All I ever hear when I talk to people is, "I want to finish strong. I want to persevere. I want to say I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith. I want to hear well done good and faithful servant." Well if you want that, James says, that's patience, perseverance. You need testing.

Testing Is Spiritual Aerobics

If I can use a physical picture, testing is spiritual aerobics. Sandy right now is going to run a race, a 5k, which she considers nothing. She used to say, "If I have to run a 5k, I'll stay home," but now she has to run a 5k - that's all she can run. But she's got a friend who's swimming a nine mile open water swim at Apache Lake or wherever it was. Sandy did this swim a couple years ago, didn't train for it, just did it. But her friend has asked her to kayak for her.

What that means is, she's in the kayak providing Him guidance, and she has the food and the tubes and all the stuff that goes with it. Every day she's out kayaking for an hour, and I'm thinking, "Huh, what are you doing?" Every day that hour gets easier, because she's done it before. It's two a days. It's pushing yourself. It's coming into spring training and working your way into shape.

It's coming out of spring practice. I'm just reading Iowa football stuff last night, and they're talking about, "We got this guy, we want to develop Him. It's the first time in my memory a five star kid is signed in Iowa." So everybody is ready to start Him, and they're going, "We got to bring Him along slow here. We got to teach Him the defense. We really aren't going to know until we get Him in here in June with Coach Doyle." That's strength and conditioning. They're going to take this kid, who I'm sure is really good, they're going to find out, and he's going to find out, he's not as good as he thought he was. They're going to push Him and push Him and push Him, stretch Him and stretch Him and stretch Him, so that he's game ready.

What James is saying to you and me is that the spiritual equivalent of that are trials. Consider it all joy, my brother, when you encounter various trials.

God Majors in Suffering

Our flinch is to push this suffering away. R.C. Sproul writes this: "To remove God from human suffering is to quit the pilgrimage of faith. God majors in suffering. He displays Himself in holy involvement in all suffering. Rather than be removed from our suffering, it's those circumstances that allow us to see God at work."

I have in here somewhere I wrote a couple of sentences that captured kind of my version of that. I wrote this: "God has structured and organized our lives to include suffering and difficulties. Our mission is not to stop the suffering prematurely, but to first find Him in the midst of the hurt and the pain. We need to avoid being consumed and obsessed by discovering the relief and resisting the ever-present temptation to be absorbed in self-pity."

Somebody comes along, and I see this in the church all the time. Somebody comes along, and they're really hurting, and the first thing people want to do is fix it. Take off the pain. Sometimes, and that's why I chose the word prematurely, sometimes we back off the gas before we've ever learned the lesson that God is trying to teach us.

The Parenting Dilemma

That was always the dilemma I had in raising the kids - I hated to see my kids suffer. I hated to see them go through difficulties, but if I just rescued them and rescued them, they never got the lesson God was teaching them. It's so much fun for me to watch my girls raise their kids, to watch them. I used to have, I would say to the girls, and they'd cuddle up, and I'd say to them, "You're the perfect hugging size. You're the perfect hugging size."

Haley sent me a text the other day, and she said, "I'm holding Lucy, and I just realized she's the perfect hugging size." But I can't communicate that. They have to experience that.

Things to Do When Suffering Comes

Let me give you five, six, seven things to do when suffering comes. Number one, don't be surprised. What we said to you at the beginning: this suffering is inevitable. It's part of the Christian life. It's a promise. Don't let it take your breath away.

Number two, commit yourself to the Lord. Trust in God. Trust in His plan, and the old "plan your work and work your plan." About three months ago, I went to Sandy. She makes this drink every morning, and it's got all sorts of stuff in it, and then some powder, and then spinach, and it looks terrible, but she drinks it every morning. So I went to her about three months ago, and I said, "Would you teach me how to make that, and help me work on a diet?"

And she said, "No." And I said, "Seriously?" And she said, "No." I said, "Are you kidding?" And she said, "No, I'm not going to be responsible. I know you. I know what you're going to do. You're going to make this drink for about three days, and you're never going to drink it again. You're not going to change your diet. I don't want the responsibility for it. I don't want to be arguing with you about what you're going to eat. No." Probably true.

About two weeks after that, she came to me, and she said, "If I help you with that drink, and I coach you with some diet stuff, will you do it?" And I said, "Yeah." "What if I don't?" So I've got about eight and a half weeks of really good eating. But what she saw was, you're going to quit and give up if you're not committed to this. When the suffering comes, if I don't go, "Listen, I trust God. I don't lean..."

Don't Lean on Your Own Understanding

If you don't do that, you're going to cave when the suffering comes. Here's the third thing: don't try to understand all this. Now, that's not intellectual suicide. It's just you aren't going to figure out what God's doing. He's going to work in these ways, and sometimes you can see it. Oftentimes, you can hear people say, "Oh, I look back now, and I see how God was at work."

We were at dinner with this couple last night, and they were asking, "How did you two meet? How did you get married?" So we started telling this story, and I hadn't thought about it in a while, and it's amazing. The lady we were with said, "It's not to say this isn't a love story, but look at God's provision, Tom, for you. You would have had a hard time getting through the last five years if you didn't have Sandy in the equation." Now, the problem with that is I don't want to reduce Sandy to a caregiver. Well, the reality is she was. You can see it now. You didn't see it at the time. It was just a date.

You're Not the Only One Suffering

Number four: realize you're not the only person that's ever been through this, whatever the suffering is. That's my tension. Eight or nine years ago, I got the flu, and I was really sick. Susan came in and said, "Can I get you anything?" And I said no. She walked out, and I said, "Can you come here a minute?" She said yes. I said, "There's something you need to realize. In the history of the world, no one has ever had the flu like this. Nobody's ever been this sick. Whatever strain this is, the Mayo Clinic needs to study this."

Because when you get in the midst of suffering, you feel like nobody's ever really had a string of bad luck like this.

The Power of Prayer in Suffering

Here's the fifth thing: pray. When I pray, I'm acknowledging God's in control, and that He cares, and that He can do something about it. If nothing else, prayer opens my eyes to be able to see Him work in the middle of the suffering.

Thank God for the Suffering

Six, this is odd: thank God for the suffering. We get around the Thanksgiving table. "Father, thank you for this day, and thank you for this food, and thank you for the family, and thank you for the house." No one ever says, "Thank you that Grandma has cancer. Thank you that we don't have much."

I was a cold caller, and this was in my early years. There was a guy in there. We were talking. I said, "What are you going to do for Thanksgiving?" He said, "Nothing." I said, "Well, would you like to come over to our house and have dinner with us?" He said, "Yeah, sure." So I told Susan, "We got somebody coming over for Thanksgiving dinner." She said, "Well, what are we going to do?" I don't know. Well, we didn't have any money. So she went to Bash's and got some sliced turkey. We had sliced turkey and Wonder Bread. I don't remember what we had to drink. We might have bought a beer or two, because he would want one.

This guy walked in and, you know, absent the smell of that baking, cooking turkey. I said, "Hey, it's time to eat." He said, "Oh." I said, "This is what we have." He said, "Oh, that's dinner." I said, "Yeah." He said, "You know what? I think I got to go." I said, "Really?" Here's a guy with no place to go, would rather go no place than be with us. That's how bleak it was. I remember praying, "Hey, God, I just realized we don't have much. But thanks for this. Thanks for what You got."

Don't Become Defined by Your Suffering

Don't become a martyr. Some people become known by their suffering. If you're sick chronically, that's easy to do. Everywhere I go, people ask me how I feel. Thirty seconds into the conversation, we're talking about me and my problem. It's really hard to not let your suffering become your identity.

And then lastly, and this sounds silly: don't suffer needlessly. Don't say, "Well, God really works in suffering, so I'll make a bunch of stupid decisions, and I'll start to suffer needlessly."

The Key to Suffering Well

The key to all this, being that Larry Wright quote, and it'll be on the tape, so if you miss it, you can get it on the CD: "I'd rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently." Now that, like verse two, looks out of place. I'd rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently because I know my obedient suffering is as temporary as my disobedient prospering.

Then in the final analysis, what Larry's saying is: I'd rather do what's right and have pain than do what's wrong and prosper because I know both of these will fade away.

Next week, we'll go right into a discussion on wisdom. So we'll look at that next week.

Father, take this, apply it to our hearts. We pray this to You in Jesus' name. Amen.