Tested Faith.
I’d always heard this belief attributed to the supposed fact that Mondays and Fridays had the highest rates of employee absenteeism among auto workers, therefore you didn’t want to buy a car manufactured on those days because some of the assembly steps might have been skipped or too hastily performed by other workers who had to cover for the absent employees in addition to performing their own assigned tasks.
But on the outside a Monday car or a Friday car would look identical to a car made on any other day of the week.
The only way you could tell a Monday or Friday car would be by testing it.
Christians all look the same pretty much on the outside.
JAS 1:2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.
The question here is how do we find if our faith is of value.
The answer in a word is test it.
It is possible to have bought a brand new car and never test it.
Years ago I remember hearing of people buying a new car and keeping it in the shed and hardly ever using it.
That kind of car it could be said was never really tested.
Many Christians in the world today are untested.
The scriptures warn about putting God to the test in a wrong way LK 4:12 Jesus answered, "It says: `Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ "
but at the same time we read 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 21 21 Test everything. Hold on to the good. 22 Avoid every kind of evil.
How then can we be sure that our faith is a tested faith and not merely head knowledge or some vague concept that we might hold in our hearts but failed to use.
There are three key matters raised in the passage we read today by James that are key indicators about how our faith can move from head knowledge to practical applied Christian living that will lead to maturity.
The first concept emerges from the very first few words that we read in the passage this morning.
JAS 1:2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
At first that may seem to be a very strange thing to say.
Why would we count it a joy when we face a trial?
If I lose my car keys and I am running late for an appointment I consider the whole matter to be a nuiscance and a bother.
What I am worried about is being late for my appointment and embarrassing myself or inconvieniencing the people who might be waiting for me.
At that level I am not likely to be estatic about losing my car keys.
But what if something bigger is going on?
Say I lose my car keys and after searching for a reasonable amount of time stop and decide to pray.
After praying for my car keys the Holy Spirit reveals to me that I left the keys in the door of the car where I left it earlier.
I find my keys and hopefully make the appointment on time.
The trial of losing my keys has led to me using my faith to find them by praying.
As a result of this experience my faith grows and from that I learn to persevere in my faith.
Of course this is a little test let me share with you though a much bigger test.
In 1943, a theologian and pastor was imprisoned for his involvement in a failed assassination attempt against Hitler. During his yrs. in prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer went through episodes of ‘Dark Night’ experiences. His faith was severely tested as he had to come to grips with the apparent powerlessness and silence of God, in the face of the inscrutability of the Holocaust; He was also distressed over his improbable release from prison.
In a letter to a dear friend, he wrote,
“My gruesome experiences often follow me into the darkness of the night, and I can only combat them by repeating innumerable hymns…I ask myself often who I really am. Am I the man who squirms under these ghastly conditions and cries out with complaints or am I the man who disciplines himself to appear outwardly, unaffected by these things? And perhaps persuades himself that he is at peace, content and in control of himself…? - (8th July 1944) Letters & Papers From Prison.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer endured through trials.
So did Daniel.
DA 6:6 So the administrators and the satraps went as a group to the king and said: "O King Darius, live forever! 7 The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or man during the next thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into the lions’ den. 8 Now, O king, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered--in accordance with the laws of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed." 9 So King Darius put the decree in writing.
DA 6:10 Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. 11 Then these men went as a group and found Daniel praying and asking God for help. 12 So they went to the king and spoke to him about his royal decree: "Did you not publish a decree that during the next thirty days anyone who prays to any god or man except to you, O king, would be thrown into the lions’ den?"
The king answered, "The decree stands--in accordance with the laws of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed."
Count it all joy says our reading
Why would Daniel count it all joy – because by perservereing what did he see.
He was rescued from the lions
His enemies were dealt with and the scripture says:-
DA 6:28 So Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.
The reason that you can count it all joy is because you are able to look beyond your circumstance to the long term blessing that will come through the trial.
Daniel knew long term blessing as a result of his trial.
Bonhoeffer went to be with the Lord in heaven so inherited eternal life.
And even in the very ordinary car key illustration that I have given through it the person grows in faith.
So my first point really is Get a long term view of the blessing that will come through your trial.
Secondly:- the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
Perserverance is a great gift.
But I am inclined to think that Perserverance in a sense only becomes perserverance when it finishes it’s work.
Perserverance says james must finish it’s work.
Jesus practiced perserverance – on the cross his final words were
It is finished – perserverance had finished it’s work.
What project has god given you to complete.
The encouragement form this word today is to finish your work.
I find great encouragement from the life of William Carey.
"They just can’t do this,” exclaimed William. “Can’t you see how wrong it is?”
“Look, most of the people in this town think it’s the right thing to do,” replied the exasperated government official. “It’s part of their religion.”
William questioned, “How is tying a living woman to her dead husband and burning them together the right thing to do?”
With this, the official threw up his hands. “William,” he answered, “one man alone can’t change this. Just give it up and go back to tending your flock.”
When his denomination said that “God alone” would convert heathens in pagan countries, William ignored them and embarked on one of the most successful missionary journeys in church history. In addition, he taught himself several languages and published a book that became the source for the modern missionary movement. He also translated the New Testament into thirty-four languages and the Old Testament into eight.
William Carey fought for years against the practice in India of burning wives alive with their dead husbands. Eventually, despite government opposition, he succeeded in getting the burnings banned. Carey spent his life as an innovator for Christ, facing hardship to make a difference. And he was known for encouraging others to “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God” (based on Isaiah 54:2–3).
William Carey did just that.
Most people fall into the following categories when it comes to sharing their faith: go-go, slow-go, and no-go. When Jesus calls Christians to go into the world and make disciples, some respond with great fervor. Like William Carey, they go and go for the gospel. Still others respond, but only halfheartedly, slowing down with age or the busyness of their schedule. Sadly, many believers are no-go Christians. They hear the command, but they figure that someone else will do it. Which category best describes your response to Jesus’ call to evangelism? Ask God to renew a desire to share your faith with others. If you are expecting great things from his answer, then be prepared to attempt great things in his name. THE north road, which runs for twelve miles from Northampton to Kettering, passes through a country known last century for the doings of the Pytchley Hunt. Stories, by no means exaggerated, of the deep drinking and deeper play of the club, whose gatehouse now stands at the entrance of Overstone Park, were rife, when on Lady Day 1785 William Carey became Baptist preacher of Moulton village, on the other side of the road. Moulton was to become the birthplace of the modern missionary idea; Kettering, of evangelical missionary action.
No man in England had apparently a more wretched lot or more miserable prospects than he. He had started in life as a journeyman shoemaker at eighteen, burdened with a payment to his first master’s widow which his own kind heart had led him to offer, and with the price of his second master’s stock and business. Trade was good for the moment, and he had married, before he was twenty, one who brought him the most terrible sorrow a man can bear. He had no sooner completed a large order for which his predecessor had contracted than it was returned on his hands. From place to place he wearily trudged, trying to sell the shoes. Fever carried off his first child and brought himself so near to the grave that he sent for his mother to help in the nursing. At Piddington he worked early and late at his garden, but ague, caused by a neighbouring marsh, returned and left him so bald that he wore a wig thereafter until his voyage to India. During his preaching for more than three years at Barton, which involved a walk of sixteen miles, he did not receive from the poor folks enough to pay for the clothes he wore out in their service. His younger brother delicately came to his help, and he received the gift with a pathetic tenderness. But a calling which at once starved him, in spite of all his method and perseverance, and cramped the ardour of his soul for service to the Master who had revealed Himself in him, became distasteful. He gladly accepted an invitation from the somewhat disorganised church at Moulton to preach to them. They could offer him only about £10 a year, supplemented by £5 from a London fund. But the schoolmaster had just left, and Carey saw in that fact a new hope. For a time he and his family managed to live on an income which is estimated as never exceeding £36 a year. We find this passage in a printed appeal made by the “very poor congregation” for funds to repair and enlarge the chapel to which the new pastor’s preaching had attracted a crowd:--“The peculiar situation of our minister, Mr. Carey, renders it impossible for us to send him far abroad to collect the Contributions of the Charitable; as we are able to raise him but about Ten Pounds per Annum, so that he is obliged to keep a School for his Support: And as there are other two Schools in the Town, if he was to leave Home to collect for the Building, he must probably quit his Station on his Return, for Want of a Maintenance.”
His genial loving-kindness and his fast increasing learning little fitted him to drill peasant children in the alphabet. “When I kept school the boys kept me,” he used to confess with a merry twinkle. In all that our Lord meant by it William Carey was a child from first to last. The former teacher returned, and the poor preacher again took to shoemaking for the village clowns and the shops in Kettering and Northampton. His house still stands, one of a row of six cottages of the dear old English type, with the indispensable garden behind, and the glad sunshine pouring in through the open window embowered in roses and honeysuckle.
When Carey had worked in India for six years, and had preached the gospel from one end of Malda to the other, he had not made a single convert. In describing his own feelings, he said:
"I feel as a farmer does about his crop; sometimes I think the seed is springing up, and then I hope; a little time blasts all, and my hopes are gone like a cloud. They were only weeds which appeared, or if a little corn sprang up it quickly died, being either choked with weeds or scorched with the sun of persecution. Yet I still hope in God."
Instead of losing heart, the missionaries were ready to increase their efforts. Carey bought a printing press for £40 to print the Bengali Testament, and four new missionaries arrived from England. Among these were Marshman and Ward. You will remember Ward as the young printer, and the three are always known as the Serampore missionaries — Carey, Marshman, and Ward.
It was their plan to go to Malda, and Carey had built some houses ready to receive them; but when the ship arrived the East India Company would not allow them to enter British India, and but for the kindness of the Danish Governor, who allowed them to settle at Serampore, they would have been obliged to return to England. As they could not go to work with Carey, he left Malda and joined them at Serampore. He was sorry to give up the houses he had prepared, which meant a loss of £500; but in this hindrance to their plans we can now see the wisdom of God working through the very men who were trying to hinder Missions. At Serampore, close to Calcutta, they were able to do a work such as could never have been done away in a country district like Malda.
The first man to declare himself a Christian, and ask for baptism, was a workman named Fakir. The missionaries were so joyful that they all stood up in the Church meeting and sang with new feelings: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." Then each shook Fakir by the hand. Before being baptized Fakir wanted to go to Birbhum to wish his friends good-bye. Dr. Thomas, who feared their influence on his mind, determined to go with him. When they got there, Fakir asked if he might go to the house of a friend, and promised to return
JAS 1:2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
My final comment is that the destination of this journey of faith and perserverance is not lacking anything.
What is it that you lack in your life?
Could it be the ability to forgive others could it be a pure heart – could it be a good temper.
Then what James is suggesting here is that the very trials you face and perservere through as your faith is tested will release you from what you are lacking.
What is lacking in most of us is the right kind of heart a heart than can be used by God.
William Carey’as experience was similar to that of David Brainerd and Martin Luther, who, under conviction, saw that the root of their trouble lay in the heart.
"I had a very good outside but my heart was exceedingly sinful," said Brainerd.
"My austerities did not change my heart," said Luther.
"My heart was hard and proud," said Carey. "Nothing but a change of heart could do me any good."
God will through this faith journey meet all of the lack that we have.
Phillipians chapter 4
19 And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
To summarise:
