How To Experience Joy During Trials (Part 2)
James 1:3-4
Preached by Pastor Tony Miano
Pico Canyon Community Church
November 12, 2000
A Little Levity: With the dust settling from our recent elections, I had an opportunity to review some sound bites that were overlooked by mainstream media. One reporter asked the presidential and vice-presidential candidates a very simple question. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” After some thoughtful consideration, this is what they had to say.
VICE PRESIDENT GORE
I fight for the chickens and I am fighting for the chickens right now. I will not give up on the chickens crossing the road! I will fight for the chickens and I will not disappoint them.
GOVERNOR GEORGE W. BUSH
I don’t believe we need to get the chickens across the road. I say give the road to the chickens and let them decide. The government needs to let go of strangling the chickens so they can get across the road.
SENATOR LIEBERMAN
I believe that every chicken has the right to worship his or her God in his or her own way. Crossing the road is a spiritual journey and no chicken should be denied the right to cross the road in his or her own way.
SECRETARY CHENEY
Chickens are big-time because they have wings. They could fly if they wanted to. Chickens don’t want to cross the road. They don’t need help crossing the road. In fact, I’m not interested in crossing the road myself.
RALPH NADER
Chickens are misled into believing there is a road by the evil tire makers. Chickens aren’t ignorant, but our society pays tire makers to create the need for these roads and then lures chickens into believing there is an advantage to crossing them. Down with the roads, up with chickens.
PAT BUCHANAN
To steal a job from a decent, hardworking American.
Introduction: Last week we began our look at three keys to experiencing joy in the midst of our day-to-day trials. The first key, which we considered last week, is the attitude of our heart. Today we’re going to look at how our knowledge of the Truth and the maturity of our faith can determine the level of joy we can experience, even when life seems to be hitting us over the head with a hammer.
Let’s pray.
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. ~ James 1:2-4
Key #2: Our knowledge of the truth
. . . knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance (1:3).
In verse three, we have the rational response to, what on the surface, seems like a very irrational claim made in verse two. The question you may be asking yourself might go something like this. How and why can I react to the trials in my life with such an unusual response as joy?
We can respond to trials with an attitude of joy in our hearts because of what we know. What we know is that the testing of our faith produces endurance. How do we know that? We know, we know with certainty, that this is the case because of our knowledge of the truth. Our knowledge of the truth comes from two sources— experience and Scripture.
Churches in today’s society can rise and fall, form and split, on the relationship between these two elements of knowledge. There are churches that place so much emphasis on human experience that they look at God’s Word as restrictive to what they would deem the moving of the Spirit. These churches are often referred to as charismatic or liberal.
While at the opposite end of the pendulum’s swing, there are those churches that completely discount the validity of any kind of human experience as if it infringes upon the supremacy or authority of God’s Word. These churches are often characterized as ultra-conservative or fundamentalist. Neither stereotype, which—by the way—is most often given the label by people within the body of Christ, is completely accurate. And both extremes miss the mark.
Our knowledge of the truth—the truth that God uses times of testing in our lives to produce endurance—must come from a balance between our understanding of His Word and a biblical assessment of our experiences.
In fact, the Greek word for “know” or “knowing” is ginosko. “[The word] carries [with it] the idea of [having a] full understanding of something that is beyond the merely factual and that often comes from personal experience” (MacArthur, p. 25).
So the meaning of the word, in and of itself, goes against the grain of this notion that human experience should be discounted outright. The word “knowing” is in the present tense, which means that James was reminding his readers that they already had this knowledge and were to continue being knowledgeable about the reasons and results of testing. James’ readers were not simply to have a perception about what their trials meant. They were to come to a realization of what God was doing through their trials.
The reason experience must be evaluated in light of Scripture is that experience is so subjective. James is speaking about experience gained as a result of trials. It is very easy, especially for those believers who are young in their faith, to misinterpret daily trials and look at them as evidence of an unloving, uncaring, and arbitrary God.
Depending on the situation, certain circumstances can even cause those who are not grounded in their faith to begin to question the validity of their faith. The reason for this is that new believers tend to lack a working knowledge of God’s Word that serves as a barometer or litmus test for evaluating their experiences.
If you are a new Christian here this morning, or at any stage of your spiritual development for that matter, you need to know that as you experience trials in your life, God will use those experiences to teach you more about His grace, His mercy, and His sovereignty. God will take the knowledge you gain from past experiences and use them to prepare you for whatever is yet to come.
Not only does God use our experiences to help us have a fuller understanding of the purpose and results of trials, but, as I mentioned before, He also uses our knowledge of His Word to help us to come to that fuller understanding. Not only is it advantageous to have experienced a similar trouble in the past when trying to wade through your current difficulties, but it is also encouraging to be able to recall truths from Scripture, verses you have committed to memory—written on your heart—as you face day-to-day struggles.
That’s why it is so important to not simply read the Bible from time to time, but to know it—to spend time studying it. Psalm 199:105 says, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. We should carry God’s Word in our hearts the same way we would carry a lamp to light a dark and ominous path.
I remember Mahria recounting for me her experience during the Northridge earthquake. We were living here in Lakeshore at the time. I was working the graveyard shift on patrol, so I wasn’t at home. When the quake hit, Mahria was literally thrown out of bed. Somehow she managed to wade through the debris and find our two daughters. Bachelorette #3, Amanda, was in the oven.
Once Mahria found the girls, the three of them huddled in the doorway to the hallway. We were not big into earthquake preparedness and Mahria really wished she had a flashlight. At the very least, a flashlight would have given Mahria some comfort from the oppressive darkness. It may have even helped her to find her way to the door and get out of the condo.
God’s Word is the same way. When we find ourselves on life’s darkest and most ominous paths, God’s Word serves as a light to bring us comfort and direction. With that said, let’s continue to look at what kind of light God’s Word wants to shed on our lives as we study the keys to experiencing joy during trials.
James says that it is the testing of our faith that produces endurance. What does he mean by that? One way to have a better understanding for what a particular word means in the Bible is by looking at various, reliable translations to see if they use other synonymous for the word you are studying. In this case, the NASB, NIV, and NKJV all use the word testing. The original KJV uses the word “trying,” with a margin note that suggests that the word would be better translated as “testing.”
When we see a word like testing, we probably often think of meeting a challenge or completing a task. In this verse, however, the meaning of the word goes deeper than that. Here it is used in the sense of genuineness or proof.
Before gold is considered pure or genuine, it must be refined. “Gold was one of the first metals to be extracted and used because it is found in a relatively pure state and can be melted at low temperatures (1063 deg. cent.) and poured into moulds. It was refined [in ancient times] by heating it in a clay crucible and skimming the top of the liquid to remove impurities” (Gower, p. 157). This skimming process was repeated several times in order to extract as much impurity from the gold as possible. “It was also beaten into thin sheets for overlay work, and the thin sheets were cut into strips fine enough to be woven into gold thread” (Gower, p. 157).
The process of refining gold is mentioned throughout the Old Testament. Gold was an important element in the construction of the Jewish Temple and its ornamentation. James was undoubtedly aware of the passages in the Old Testament that describe the various uses of gold by his ancestors and the way the writers of the Old Testament used the refining of gold metaphorically. He may have had something similar in mind when he speaks of the genuineness of our faith in verse three.
The trials of the believer are not unlike the refining process of gold. Gold was appreciated not only for its intrinsic value and beauty, but also for the fact that it was already quite pure before it was refined. When a person comes to faith in Christ they receive the righteousness of Christ imputed to them.
“When we say that God imputes Christ’s righteousness to [Christians] it means that God thinks of Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us . . . It is not our own righteousness [that God sees] but Christ’s righteousness that is freely given to us . . . It is essential to the heart of the gospel to insist that God declares us to be righteous not on the basis of our actual condition of righteousness or holiness, but rather on the basis of Christ’s perfect righteousness, which [God] thinks of as belonging to us” (Grudem, p. 726, 727).
At the same time, the life of the Christian is spent trying to be more like Christ. When we freely receive the righteousness of Christ we are not made instantaneously perfect. Becoming more like Christ is a process and this process is known as sanctification. God uses the trials in the life of the believer as part of the sanctifying process. Just as gold is refined by fire, likewise, our faith is refined by the trials in our lives. It’s no coincidence that James refers to joy in verse two in the sense of pure joy and speaks of the genuineness or purity of our faith in verse three.
Gold does not reach its ultimate level of purity after one skimming. The impurities must be skimmed away from the gold several times before it reaches its purest, 24k form. Likewise, as Christians we should not expect to become completely Christ-like after experiencing one trial. It’s a lifetime process.
Each time you skim away a trial off the surface of your life, each time you encounter a trial and come out the other side praising God and rejoicing in His grace, your faith becomes a little more genuine—a little more Christ-like. In the refining process of gold, each time the impurities are skimmed off the surface there are fewer impurities to skim away the next time. Each time you encounter a trial and consider it an opportunity to experience joy and an opportunity to grow in your faith, you make yourself more prepared for the next trial you encounter.
In God’s economy, the genuineness of our faith is more precious than even gold. Peter tells us this in his first letter. I Peter 1:7 says, “so the proof [or genuineness] of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Just as gold is tested and purified in fire, so too our faith in Christ is purified through the fiery trials of life. Some of the most precious and valuable artifacts from antiquity are items of incredible artistry, overlaid with the thinnest pieces of gold leaf. In order to form gold into these thinner than paper leaves, the gold must be repeatedly pounded—hammered over time.
With that said, we should not sit around weak-kneed waiting for the other shoe to drop. We need to be aware and constantly remind ourselves that God does not allow the repeated pounding of trials for the purpose of beating us down. They are allowed in order to produce something beautiful—a faith that endures.
James uses the Greek word translated “produce” or “develop” in the present tense, which means it’s a continuing process—a development over time. James uses the word in the sense that his readers were to work through their trials until endurance is completed.
The word translated “endurance” carries with it the idea of “remaining under.” “The picture is of a person successfully carrying a heavy load for a long time” (Moo, p. 55). It’s not a picture of a person being crushed by the weight of heavy loads. Rather, it’s a picture of a person who actively remains under the weight until the task is finished.
I really like what Simon Kistemaker wrote in his commentary about this word in verse three. He had this to say. “[Perseverance or endurance] has nothing in common with resignation. Some people think that, because they are unable to avoid trying circumstances, they should resign themselves to them. They adopt the slogan whatever will be, will be. But whereas resignation is passive, perseverance is active” (Kistemaker, p. 33).
I remember drill instructors in the sheriff’s academy standing over us as we struggled to do one more push-up or one more sit-up, yelling at the top of their lungs, “Don’t quit! In this job you can never quit! If you quit, you’re dead!” At first, I thought their tirades were just their way of humiliating us. You know—breaking us down. It wasn’t until I started working in the jails and got into my first fight with an inmate who was twice my size, having nothing to lose, that I realized why the D.I.’s kept pounding those thoughts into my head.
Whether in the jails or out on the streets, if a peace officer finds themselves in a position where they have to fight, they can’t just lie on the ground, take a beating, and wait for help to arrive. They can’t take the passive road of resignation. They have to take the higher ground, the active road of perseverance.
What I learned, and what I eventually would teach younger deputies who I was responsible for training when they came to the streets, was that a good deputy fights whenever he has to and never quits. A smart deputy will do the same but won’t have to as often.
There are things new deputies have difficulty seeing that experienced deputies notice right away—things like a tightening jaw or a clenched fist; eyes fixed on your gun belt or looking past you to something behind you. The deputies who are able to pick these indicators up in a moment’s time are those deputies who have missed them in the past, who have endured more fights than they care to count, who have made enough mistakes to be able to avoid them now.
That’s why there is a training process for newly assigned deputies—so they can learn from a more seasoned officer and build their own experience and knowledge of the job. The difference between a ten-year street cop and a ten-month street cop is simple. It’s maturity. The result of persevering through an academy, working the jails, enduring the long hours of patrol training, and surviving the fights that come is maturity. The same is true about our faith.
Key #3: The maturity of our faith
And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (1:4).
And that brings us to the third key to experiencing joy during trials—the maturity of our faith. “When faith is tested, then, the immediate result is, or should be, perseverance. But valuable as it is, perseverance is not itself the final goal of testing” (Moo, p. 55).
James starts verse four with the phrase, “and let endurance have its perfect result.” James is not asking for permission, here. There is no word for “let” in the Greek language. This “is the only way we have of giving expression to the Greek imperative in the third person” (Hiebert, p. 66). And that’s what James is doing here. He is commanding his readers to let endurance have its perfect result or, quite literally, “finish its work.” He is commanding his readers to guard against the possibility of enduring trials for no other purpose than to simply get by.
The wording of verse four shows us how emphatic James is being about this issue. In ancient Jewish writing, if the writer wanted to emphasize or stress a particular point, it was common for the writer to repeat key words in their writing. In this passage we see the words “endurance” and “perfect” repeated.
In fact, James uses the Greek word for perfect or mature, teleios, five times in his letter. The word is seen more often in this letter than in any other New Testament book. The meaning and weight of this word was obviously very important to James.
Although James does not mention specifically what the perfect work is, we can draw a conclusion based on the words he uses and the tone of his entire letter. As endurance works itself out in our lives, the perfect work is the development of perfect, Christian character.
James is saying that this is the goal of enduring life’s trials. He is not saying that we will reach the goal. After all, none of us are perfect—are we? James even says later in this letter “we all stumble in many ways.” James is speaking in the present tense. Reaching the goal of perfect character is an ongoing and continual process. So what James is talking about here is not becoming a perfect person, but becoming a person who is mature in their faith.
There is something very important about what James is saying in this passage that is explained well by D. Edmund Hiebert, one of my favorite theologians. He wrote, “Maturity of character is not the result of the number of trials encountered but the way in which those trials are met, allowing them to achieve their divinely intended impact on us. ‘Mature Christians are the end-product of testing’” (Hiebert, p. 67).
I apologize if I use too many law enforcement analogies in my teaching, but that’s where I come from. That’s the source of much of my adult experience. With that said, here’s another.
There was a night very early in my patrol career when I was assigned to work with a deputy who had a dozen more years of patrol experience than I had. I had heard that he was a deputy who liked to, shall we say, take short cuts. I tried to have an open mind and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
We were in the car for just a few minutes when he tried to school me on the way things were done. He started by telling me about all the citations and awards he had received for his police work. He told me about the many different assignments he had worked and how they were all busier stations than Santa Clarita.
This deputy was what we called “old school.” He didn’t think much of my abilities or me. After all, I hadn’t yet “been there and done that.” Then he shared with me his method for making traffic stops.
He told me that if we saw a good “shake” (that’s a person in a car or on the street that is probably carrying drugs, guns, or some other kind of contraband), that we would stop them and figure out the probable cause for the stop later. Not only was that an unethical approach to police work, it was illegal.
Then it dawned on me that here was a guy who had a ton of experience and hadn’t learned a thing. He had probably done the same thing, taking the same unethical shortcuts, his entire career. Instead of maturing through his experiences, which were probably vast and varied, he settled for something less. He placed all of his eggs in the basket of his personal experiences instead of growing and maturing through his experience.
Undoubtedly, there were many times in this deputy’s career when he was faced with various trials, times in which he had opportunity to make critical decisions based on his previous experiences. Sadly, he gauged his level of expertise, his level of maturity as a street cop, by the number of times he was placed in situations instead of the number of times he successfully and ethically navigated through those situations.
Instead of growing and maturing as he came out the other end of each situation, he remained mired in repeating the same mistakes, time and time again. I never worked a radio car with this deputy after that night. In fact, it wasn’t long after that night that he resigned from the department under unconfirmed clouds of suspicion.
We, as Christians, can find ourselves doing the same thing, even though the situations we find ourselves in may be distinctly different. If all we do is count up the number of trials we have had to endure and use the tally as our gauge for spiritual growth, we won’t see ourselves encountering future trials with joy in our hearts. Instead of considering the number of trials we endure to be a joy, which in and of itself is unlikely, we need to consider the way we come out of our trials, at least in those situations when we prevail because of our faith in Christ, as opportunities for experiencing and expressing authentic joy.
James uses the phrase “so that you may be” in verse four. Again, he is speaking in the present tense. This means that James is not talking of maturity as some future, far-off goal. He is insisting that his readers work toward that goal in the present and continually.
It seems that at times we can use the immaturity of our faith as a scapegoat. We can use the immaturity of our faith as an excuse for our mistakes and for not handling our trials well—for not experiencing joy in the midst of our trials. We look at spiritual maturity as something that will come eventually as if one day God will simply allow maturity to descend upon us the way the Spirit descended upon the Lord like a dove.
We don’t see the future tense anywhere in this passage of Scripture. James does not say that someday, when you have all of your ducks in a row, when life is finally going your way, when you finally get around to studying God’s Word and participating in mutual accountability with other believers, maturity will manifest itself in your life.
Everything James is saying to his readers is in the present. They were to have the right heart attitude right now and from now on. They already knew the truth and were to continue knowing and growing in that truth. And they were to work today, and every day from then on, to reaching the place of spiritual maturity in their lives.
God’s Word is relevant and practical for today. There is nothing that James is saying to his readers of two thousand years ago that we cannot and should not apply to our own lives.
James tells his readers, “so that you may be perfect and complete.” We see James use the word “perfect” for the second time in this verse. Again, James is not saying that his readers were to reach perfection, but that they were to be continually reaching for spiritually maturity.
Paul expresses this concept of spiritual maturity very well in his letter to the Philippians. Philippians 3:12-16 says, “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.”
Even Paul, who, by all accounts, was the greatest preacher and teacher, next to Jesus, who ever lived, realized that spiritual maturity is a process.
The two adjectives James uses here are synonymous. The second one, which comes from the Greek word holokleros, is translated as “complete.” It “carries the idea of being whole, entire. The prefix holo is the term from which we get holograph, a 360-degree, three-dimensional depiction of an object” (MacArthur, p. 33). James uses this word in the sense that the Christian who is spiritually mature is well rounded and possesses those characteristics that exemplify a wholly devoted follower of Jesus Christ.
One way we can determine how important a word, expression, or idea is in the Bible is by looking at how often it is used. The word translated as complete only occurs twice in the entire New Testament—here and in First Thessalonians 5:23 where it carries the identical meaning. I Thess. 5:23 says, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul prayed that the believers who made up the young church in Thessalonica would be sanctified by Christ and that His sanctifying power would be manifested in their spiritual well roundedness.
We know what James is calling his readers to, and to what he is calling those of us who know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior—a progressive spiritual maturity, beginning with the right heart attitude, grounded in our experience and knowledge of the truth, all of which is to be built on the foundation of our faith in Jesus Christ. But how do we get there? How do we reach that level of spiritual maturity? More importantly—where do we start?
Several of the core values here at Pico Canyon Community Church speak directly to this concept of growing to be spiritually mature followers of Jesus Christ. One that I had mentioned on our first Sunday together was the priority of God’s Word in the life of our church. Everything we need to know about who God is, who we are in Jesus Christ, and how we should live our lives is contained in God’s Word.
Another one of our core values is to actively make disciples that reproduce. We will do that by first teaching people how to be students of God’s Word. What that means is that we will be very intentional about showing people how to go from having others feed God’s Word to you, to being able to feed yourself. A key to spiritual maturity is being able to understand what God’s Word teaches and how to draw those truths for yourself out of the Bible.
There are ways already in place in our young church to begin this equipping process. One is by getting involved in our Shepherd Groups. These groups are made up of people of various levels of spiritual maturity and life experience. These groups serve as opportunities for people to ask serious questions about the Bible and about what it means to have an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ, in a relaxed environment.
Another way is by participating in what we call Life Transformation Groups (LTG’s). These groups are designed for two or three people and there is no designated leader for the group. The groups met once a week, whenever it’s convenient for the people in the group. Each person comes to the table, making the commitment to read a selected portion of God’s Word every day, to pray for the other people in the group, and to participate in one-on-one accountability with the others who are in the group.
Yet another way to grow in your understanding of God’s Word and grow in your level of spiritual maturity is to come Sunday morning intent on taking something significant away from what you hear about God’s Word. Of course that means I should say something significant each week, but that’s my responsibility. Take advantage of the sermon notes. Write in your Bibles. Underline verses. Make notations.
Another one of our core values is that we want to be a group of people who yearn to be holy. Personal holiness comes from cultivating the spiritual disciplines in our lives. Those disciplines include consistent personal worship, regular devotional study of God’s Word, and a prayer life that is consistent and meaningful. Making these disciplines an important part of our daily lives will equip us to make godly decisions, even in times of intense trial and hardship.
It will be far more likely that you will experience the pure joy that James talks about if we face our trials armed with a maturity that comes from the consistent practice of these and other spiritual disciplines. These aren’t the only ways to develop spiritual maturity, but it is certainly a good place to start.
As your pastor, I want to do everything I can to help you be everything God wants you to be in Christ. One of the neatest things that happened to me this week was that one of you called me and asked for help in finding verses that dealt with a particular issue. That’s the kind of thing that gets me fired up about ministry. If you have a question about something you’ve heard, something you’ve learned, or find yourself dealing with a particular issue, call me. That’s the reason I’m here. I don’t assume to have all the answers, but I can promise to help you find them.
And I’m not the only one you can turn to. You don’t have to have a seminary degree or years of ministry experience to help a brother or sister in Christ. What we are building here is a family. There are others in our family who are more than able to help you to grow in your faith.
You see—you can experience a certain amount of spiritual growth by simply being involved in relationships with others who share your love for Christ. As we care for one another we will grow in our faith together. I know there are those of you here who are still checking us out, still trying to decide if you want to call Pico Canyon your church home, or maybe still trying to decide if a relationship with Christ even matters. Some of those questions can be answered by connecting with other people in our church. Don’t stand on the outside looking in. Come and be a part of what God wants to do through this small part of His body.
Let’s look at one last thing. Look at how James finishes this passage. He says that those who are mature and fully developed followers of Christ will lack nothing. What does that mean?
Well, it doesn’t mean that if you are spiritually mature that life will be handed to you on a silver platter. As was common with writing for the day, James emphasizes a very positive assertion by following it with a negative one. In a sense he is saying, “Not only will you be spiritually mature, but you won’t lack anything pertaining to spiritual maturity, anything of spiritual significance.
Since God has provided us with everything we need to endure the trials of life, we should be able to count them as opportunities for joyful experience—not because we will necessarily experience fewer trials, but because the trials we do endure will probably hurt less because of the maturity of our faith.
We’ve taken an in-depth look at this subject over the last couple of weeks. I hope you’ve been encouraged by what you’ve heard. As James exhorted his brothers and sisters, let me exhort you with this. My beloved brothers, you must continue looking at every trial you fall into, whether or not it is of your own doing, with a heart attitude of pure joy.
And you already know and I don’t want you to forget that the genuineness of your faith, which is more precious than gold, will continue to produce endurance in your life of the type that willingly sits under the weight of whatever the trial may be until the task is completed—not with an attitude of resignation, but with an attitude of perseverance.
And let endurance finish its work, which is the ongoing work of developing Christian character and spiritual maturity in your lives. Do not simply sit around and wait for this maturity to come at some unknown future date. Rather, continue to work toward that goal today and from now on.
Finally, remember the promise that if you let endurance finish its work, not only will you be spiritually mature and a well-rounded, wholly devoted disciple of Jesus Christ, but you will not lack anything that you need to become the spiritually mature person in Christ that God wants you to be.
That’s what James is teaching us in these three short verses. Isn’t that encouraging? This is a great book. James wrote an extraordinary letter that endures today. May each of us grow in Christ through our study of His Word. Let’s pray.
