James 1:2-4

Bringing the sermon home:

All who read the letter of James are both encouraged and challenged in their faith. James was writing to Christians who had been scattered throughout the Roman Empire due to the life-threatening persecution that had erupted in Jerusalem, beginning with the very public and very brutal murder of Stephen (Acts 7:54-8:3). Having been run out of Jerusalem, these Christians struggled with poverty, oppression, persecution, and illness (James 2:6-7; 5:13-16).

In the midst of these trials, James calls them (and thus us) to “consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials”. How can we possibly count trials as joy? Only by recognizing that God has a purpose for every trial that He permits to come our way, and that part of that purpose is to further shape us into the image of Christ, like the goldsmith who refines gold through fire (1 Pet 1:7). In addition to the countless other things that God is doing through our suffering, very few of which He will ever reveal to us, we know for certain that He intends to “make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Cor 1:9).

It is right to grieve the brokenness of this world. Jesus wept over the death of His friend, Lazarus (John 11:35). Even so, we all know how quickly our hearts can move from Christlike-lament to selfish-anger over the suffering we’re facing, thus revealing ways that we have come to love the things of this world (which can all be taken from us) more than we love God (who will never leave us or forsake us). May we increasingly "find our all” in God alone, and may we increasingly be there for others as they suffer, ministering the Words of the "God of all comfort” (2 Cor 1:3).

(Special thanks to our guest preacher, William Beckham, for faithfully unpacking God's Word for us on Sunday.)