Opening illustration: In the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Kerri Strug faced the trial of her life. She had injured her ankle on the vault and was in great pain as she approached her final attempt to determine whether the U.S. gymnastics team would win the gold medal. She moved the crowd with an incredible performance in spite of the pain she was enduring, and the United States won gold. When asked how she did it, she said she focused on her coach, who kept telling her she could do it and who reminded her of what was at stake. When we are hurting during a trial, we need to put our focus on the right place. The payoff for being a faithful clutch player is found in James 1:12: "Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him." It takes a lot of pain and frustration to become a great clutch player. Yet over time your perseverance will bring great victory, a crown of life as a reward you can enjoy today and for eternity. (Tony Evans)
Introduction: When we encounter various trials and temptations, not only do we need to have the right perspective on the trials themselves, but also on God and ourselves. God is not a tempter who desires us to fail, but a fatherly tester that desires the best for us. The sources of failure in temptation is not God, Satan, or anyone else, but nursing the desire which leads to sin and death. Therefore we need to flee temptation.
The fruit we produce is the direct result of on what/who our focus is on …
What kind of fruit is produced in our lives?
1. Fruit for Enduring Temptation (v. 12)
This is given in the form of a Beatitude. Do you remember the Beatitudes? They were given by Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Greek used makarios (blessed) to refer to their gods and thus "the blessed ones" were the gods. They were "blessed" because they had achieved a state of happiness and contentment in life that was beyond all cares, labors, and even death. The blessed ones were beings who lived in some other world away from the cares and problems and worries of ordinary people. To be blessed, you had to be a god. Homer used makarios to describe a state unaffected by the world of men, who were subject to poverty, weakness, and death.
Here is still another Beatitude. It begins with a blessing: Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial. Like the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, the verb (“is”) is not expressed in the Greek text. This is not a wish. It is not a hopeful benediction. It is not a command. It is a simple statement of fact. The man who endures under trial is blessed -- literally, he is “happy.”
Why? Because there is a reward at the end of the struggle. Because once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life. This brings us to a question. What is it that obtains for you the crown of life? Perseverance? Good hard work? No. It is true that you do not get it apart from perseverance. But the next clause of the verse tells you the source of this crown and it isn’t based in how good you are or in what you are able to earn or deserve.
In order to develop this life, the affections must be set upon the promised crown and blessings. When we have the life of Christ, we need to be exercised in order that the heart may detach itself from things around, which constantly invite the attention of the flesh, and that the will may not yield. Resisting the allurements of vanity, the heart should habitually keep itself by grace in the way of holiness, and in the enjoyment of heavenly things in communion with God. Now trials borne with patience help greatly to this result. A heart weaned from vanity is an immense gain to the soul. If the world is dry and arid for the heart, it more readily turns to the fountain of living waters.
It is a crown that the Lord has promised to those who love Him. It is a gift. It is given to those who trust in the Lord and who love Him. God is the source of that gift. God has allowed the trials through which that gift came to you. But God is not the source of temptations.
Illustration: Jesus endured the temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane to veer away from imparting salvation to us. We are so blessed because Jesus took a stand. He wore the crown of thorns so that we could wear the crown of life.
2. Fruit for Yielding to Temptation (vs. 13-16)
When a man is tempted, and yields to temptation, he is eager to blame someone else for his sin. If he cannot do otherwise, he will blame God for having made him as he is with evil possibilities. Remember, too, that temptation itself is not a sin. Temptation is simply the invitation to sin. We sin when we decide to accept the invitation. God allows temptations, but he does not send them. He is never involved in tempting anyone to do evil.
But we have always had the tendency to want to find someone to blame. When we were growing up, a comedian named Flip Wilson was popular. He had comedy routines based on the famous line people sometimes use to excuse bad behavior: “The devil made me do it.” The point of the comedy routine was that his character tried to excuse bad choices by blaming it on the tempter. Satan is, indeed, responsible for the temptation, but not for our yielding to it.
The natural history of Sin as the result of temptation to which one yields is given with scientific accuracy and graphic power: “Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death.” Moffatt renders it thus: “Then desire conceives and breeds sin, which matures and gives birth to death.” It is a gruesome picture surely but who can say that it is overdrawn? The positivists try to shut God out of the world and so to banish human responsibility; but alas, he cannot banish human woe and anguish of heart.
Desire in not in itself sinful, but it easily falls into sin. Thus in a true sense desire makes sin where there is no sin, and so gives birth to sin. But this is not all. Sin in its turn matures and gives birth to death.
Paul talks about the same theme in Romans, for he says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). We have all done things that are displeasing to God, which makes us deserving of punishment. Since all our sins are ultimately against an eternal God, only an eternal punishment is sufficient. "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23). James is reiterating the same theme but not referring to physical death, for then none of us would be alive. Nor is he referring to spiritual death, for then no one could be saved. The fulfillment of our lust brings about in the believer’s life a death-like existence.” I would add, however, that James would, indeed, mean physical and spiritual death had it not been for the atonement, in which Jesus sacrificed His own life so that we might be saved and spend eternity with Him.
Illustration: Recently John Piper addressed: Why is it that people who have Ph.Ds in theology are fighting "graduate-level sins" with "grammar-school knowledge" of God? For Pastor and Theologian John Piper, it boils down to one crisp item: They don't know God. If someone was truly in love with the Creator of the universe and not focused on satisfying his or her own needs, he or she wouldn't commit adultery. "You can read theology 10 hours a day, 40 years long and not know God is beautiful, all-satisfying, highest treasure of your life. Who cares about knowing God the way the devil knows about God?" he says.
In the Garden of Eden after Adam ate the forbidden fruit, he said he wasn't to blame. It was the fault of the woman God had made. Sometimes we respond like that. When we do something wrong, we immediately look for someone to blame, even if it's God. But James says we sin because we listen to our own selfish desires.
Troubled by a sin that won't go away? Maybe you're not overcoming it because you are blaming someone else. You might even be blaming God because He didn't stop you from doing it. Nonsense! You'll never conquer your sin until you're willing to say, "It's my fault!” Repent and don’t return to it.
3. First Fruits of God’s Gift (vs. 17-18)
Don’t be fooled by the bait of sin, James is telling us, but realizes the hook is buried in it, waiting to pierce you and pull you in. Reject the temptations that you experience, because you have the ability to see evil for what it is. That is the key: seeing evil for what it is, even though it lures us like the bait lures the fish. We need to see our world through eyes that are spiritually mature, firmly rooted in God’s truth, and then we are able to realize that the things that tempt us are evil and do not lead to any good, no matter how great they appear to be.
James draws a contrast with the preceding verses about temptation and what it can lead to. His point is that Satan does not give good gifts. Only God gives good gifts. Remember that James began by saying that God did not cause temptation to come to us. God is not the source of our temptation. Temptation is not a good thing. It is a bad thing. And God does not give bad things to us. Satan would like for temptation to look like a good thing. Don’t be fooled. Reject that lie outright. Every good gift comes from above, from our Father. In Him there is “no variation or shadow of turning,” that is, we judge for sure between His gifts, which are pure and good and without a doubt from Him, and Satan’s temptations, which offer fleeting pleasure and fulfillment but at a terrible price. Peter elaborates on this idea in 2 Peter 1:3: “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.”
God gives good gifts. Not only does God give good gifts, but all good gifts that are given are from God. This means that you cannot get a gift that is a good gift without it being from God. God continues to give good gifts. These gifts are described as continually coming down from the Father of lights. God didn’t give and then stop giving. He doesn’t say, “I already gave at the office.” He gives every day. He is the giving God. God does not change. There is no variation in God. He does not change. He never gets up on the wrong side of the bed. He is never in a bad mood. He gave in the past and He continues to give in the present and, because He is unchanging, you can be assured that He will always be the giving God.
James tells us that we are different. We are born again into a new spiritual existence entirely separate from the spiritual nature of those who are not born again. The good news is that those who are born of God can resist temptation. We no longer have to be servants of sin and sinful human nature. We have the ability to see that what Satan tempts us with is a baited hook trying to separate us from the righteousness of God.
And when we waver in the face of temptation, we can fall back on the promise of 1Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, Who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” And we can fall back on the promise James gives a little later in his letter: “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).
Here James presents the complement of divine activity which brings us from death to eternal life. This gift that comes from above is the gift of forgiveness and eternal life. It is the gift of Jesus. It is our salvation. Notice in the second verse it says Of His own will He brought us forth. It was God's will to save us. It was not us working with God. It was God's will alone that brings us the gift of salvation and we became that first fruit of His providence of salvation. Halleluiah Christ Reigns!
The conclusion is unavoidable: self-salvation simply does not work. Man has no way to save himself. But Paul announces that God has a way. Where man fails God excels. Salvation comes from heaven downward, not earth upward. “Every good action and every perfect gift is from God” (James 1:17). Please note: Salvation is God-given, God-driven, God-empowered, and God-originated. The gift is not from man to God. It is from God to man. (Lucado, Max: In the Grip of Grace)
Illustration: The Oak trees retain their leaves throughout winter. They endure the trials of the treacherous weather and only fall after the passing of winter. They sprout back as summer gains momentum. We wonder when all the trees shed their leaves during the fall, why doesn’t the oak … Christ has introduced a new order in the world. He Himself is the real first-fruits (1 Corinthians 15:20).
The Jews consecrated their first-fruits to God as His in a special sense. All Christians are meant to be the first-fruits, the promise and earnest of better work (Romans 8:23). God has great things in store for …
Application: What kind of fruit is produced in and from our lives?
• Are we being empowered through the Holy Spirit who helps us to go through and endure trials?
• Are we standing firm on God’s Word and repelling the temptations that come our way?
• Are we Christ’s first-fruits of Salvation? Are we genuinely born again?
