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100 and 80 We are but strangers here. Heaven is our home, 180.
Uh-huh.
We thank the Godfather that we can hear here. Be together.
00:05:00
Yet left in this world.
May the Lord Jesus was.
And he is now.
In his home.
We're looking forward to be with him someday.
At his choosing.
And for the time being that we are here, we would ask you to help us to please thyself, Lord Jesus.
Good things which?
Are proper according to divert.
We are looking forward.
To also consider some.
That we're living at the time when I was here on this earth.
What their testimony was.
Exactly that we are.
Have a testimony.
Whether we say much or less or even nothing.
If we are safe, we leave here a testimony for the Lord Jesus, and we thank thee that this is so.
It is a great honor to know the Lord Jesus, to thank Him for the salvation that we have.
Through him for his great work on the cross, for his care for us. So we would actually do have this afternoon to be occupied with the things.
Of heaven, whatever thou would have us to say or do, to pray, all in the precious name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
I understand that this reading meeting.
We have to do some travel Saturday.
If it is all right.
Here I would suggest that that we read the 1St chapter of the Epistle of James.
OK. Plus, uh.
Young man yet half brother of Lorides.
He has a lot of sex today.
James chapter one.
James, the servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, through the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad. Greeting my brethren, counted all joy when you fall into divers temptations. Knowing this, that the trying of your faith, work with patience, but let patience have her perfect work, that she may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that give us to all men liberally and upbraideth not.
And it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind, and toss. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. Let the brother of low degree rejoice, and that he is exalted but the rich, and that he is made low, because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
For the sun is no sooner risen with the burning heat, but it should, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth.
And the grace of the fashion of it perish it. So also shall the rich man fade away in his ways. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of light which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil. Neither tempt to see any man, but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. And when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not earn, my beloved brethren, every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above.
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And cometh down from the Father of light, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness.
And receive with meekness the engrafted Word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the Word, and not hearers, only deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding in his natural face in a glass.
For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continue it therein, he being not a forgetful here, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain, pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father. Is this to visit the fatherless and widows.
In their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
I'd like to give a short introduction about the person of James.
He was, as I said, the half brother of Lord Jesus. There were four of them.
Two of them.
Rod. Epistles.
Jane sent you.
There were two more.
Joseph Simon.
And they all grew up with the Lord Jesus.
I often smile, but.
How's that?
Was going to workout.
How does this workout? He calls himself a servant of the Lord.
So we understand that at some time we did get saved, and because his half brother, the Lord, he has become his Lord.
In full recognition.
That the Lord was rejected.
And it's it's like no means they would.
Also we rejected.
He was rejected by the majority of.
Paper the juice.
And during the temporal life of the Lord Jesus, he was not yet a disciple, which we get from John 75 after the resurrection of the Lord.
The Lord met with him and his brothers we gather from.
Who is currently in 57 and X 114?
Most likely they found by that experience the faith to the crucified, and James was then counted to his disciples.
Not only the family connection to the Lord Jesus made him an intellectual courtesy along with Jewish Christians, but because he was honest and righteous.
He enjoyed much respect among the pious Jews, which we gather from Acts 1513.
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He was at least 20 years at the helm of the Assembly of Jerusalem.
Now that the Assembly of Jerusalem was the only one that was not driven out.
When the first conditions started.
He is a shining example of how to love the law.
Without being a jealous fighter for it.
How to have authority without setting the fellow elders aside? And how to endure tremendous pressure without injuring love or giving up. What's calling?
We gather at 1519.
Thousands of Jewish believers.
I'm the Lord Jesus had in him.
Shepherd.
To prove.
The Lord, the love.
Of the Lord through his Jewish and not Jewish fellow believers.
And to resolve people every day.
His deep humility.
His right diligence and prayer, his hearty brotherliness, His practical way.
Make him to this day an excellent example for all believers.
Paula Cost, James Theater and John Philosophy Assembly.
We gather from Galatians 29.
The Book of James is the oldest Pope of the New Testament.
Written about 45 AG.
James is a material and 6280.
And James's intention was to point out the lack of honesty and consistency in the world after the Lord.
And he was promising against it.
So we see there was much to be.
Commanded.
About this.
It's.
This is not to put the Lord.
To painting or anything like this but.
It teaches us in many things.
What he said and what he did.
He starts out James, the servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the beginning points that we have to take up each one of us in our lives is.
To learn our proper relationship to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ. James had learned that his own relationship to God and Lord Jesus. And it's really a starting point in every one of our lives that we need, if you will, to put God in his place.
Right place before us, and then to learn what our place is with respect to Him.
And the book of Proverbs.
Begins in about verse seven of the book.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. That is, the Lord is being given in Proverbs His right place. With respect to ourselves there is to be a respect.
And honor that is due to him. And if God is given his right place, then we will be put in our right place as well, and it will be for our blessing and our good.
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And so with the Lord Jesus, we.
Come as a starting point to know the Lord Jesus as Savior.
And without knowing Him as Savior, no other relationship is going to be meaningful between US and the Lord. But if the Lord is brought into our lives and He is our Savior, then we learn other aspects or other ways in which we have a relationship with the Lord Jesus. We learn Him as a shepherd, most significantly in his title here, the Lord.
And so we come to recognize that he is Lord of our lives and he's being in that way, given his right place. And as a consequence, it brings us into our right place with Him and.
And so on. And of course, with the Lord Jesus, there are many, many different ways in which we're brought into relationship with him. But we have to get a right starting point, otherwise our lives will not go on in a way that is a benefit to God or to us. And James had learned that.
He hadn't progressed, if you will, in his own life. He hadn't been given the revelations that Paul does has been given. His epistle doesn't take us to the same extent that some of the other New Testament epistles do, but he had a good start and uh, as well for us to get make sure that the start is at the right place.
Life starts at Calgary in a real sense of the word. Until we come to the cross, life hasn't really started in a Christian sense for us. But I think we can get that from James in this very first verse to benefit to our souls to do so.
I understand that in many of the early Greek manuscripts James follows act.
Which should be perhaps a more natural order, because you see that here it's addressed to the 12 tribes which were scattered abroad and with chains. A lot of what he is speaking about here is that behavior that would be proper to the outworking of faith and the Christian life. And so it's the expression of what is proper to our faith before man in the world, which is somewhat different in Christianity.
In fact, a lot different in Christianity from Judaism and so it would be very important for the Jews to know this early on that Judaism there may be respect given to someone who is is rich. It's at the beginning of the second chapter and maybe a lot of different things having to do with advantage in the world where James talked about persecution. If we've had prominently here in our first Test.
That belonged to.
What these Christians were going through, who were primarily Jews, the ones that James was among, and so it's helpful for them to know that this was natural to the outworking of their faith in the world. And James takes up that issue. Like you say, it's not really the deep doctrine, is it? That's more brought out through the apostle Paul. Although when you go through this, you find because this is inspired by the Spirit of God here, it's not the slightest conflict with anything brought out later.
James talked about the new birth.
In verse 18 of His own well begat, yet by the word of truth this is begotten of thought.
He talked about many things as he goes through here, just completely consistent without going to the doctrine of them, but.
James is, I could say, taking it out with those things that would prove our faith in an outward way and.
He takes up quite a few of these. There's at least three of them in the first chapter. First of all, there's the trials that come in from without to prove our faith.
Text us to see if we're real and how we, umm, endure into this trial.
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Shows in an outward way that we are real. And of course he brings in more than that. He shows that God uses them to to work in our lives as Christians. And then there's the testing from within brought up next. And then there's the way that we handle the word of God at the end of the chapter that shows whether or not our faith is real. So these are all were external things that are work out before God.
But before mad as well. And so that would be it, a mark of James, and perhaps one that would show more of where this epistle is coming from.
It's not joy.
To fall into diverse temptation that we read here.
That'd be awesome. I know that God does not tempt anybody.
So we know it is the devil who is always will find.
Something in US?
Where he can get a starting point. He tried to bring us all.
But then we also read What is the outworking of that?
The trying of your faith work is patient. It tries our faith.
And it teaches us patience.
And that can only be done.
To a time as time goes on, we are always.
Put two tests.
When things get rough.
And only with faith, as we have in the Lord Jesus.
You can prevail.
Some of you, uh, have a.
Like a daily devotional that you read, uh, every day.
And, uh, I hope this is right to say this, uh, I have found it very helpful to think of the book of James a little bit like.
Uh, in that way, like a, like a devotional, like a daily devotional, I mean that, uh, try to explain myself here. Uh, like, for example, the book of Proverbs, similar to the book of Proverbs, you can pick a chapter out of the book of Proverbs or even just a section of a chapter and read it.
And get a lot of benefit from it. Maybe one of the verses doesn't really speak to you that day, but another one that you never noticed before really kind of hits home.
Umm.
This, the book to me is helpful to think of it not so much like, like for example, Romans or some of the other books that Paul where Paul kind of goes through things methodically and, and, and explain things from different points of view and kind of build the, uh, support for this, this truth that he's trying to explain. It's not so much like that, although there are things that are repeated throughout the book, but it's kind of divided, or I think of it this way. It's divided up into little sections.
That are that, uh, can stand on their own. There are certain things that repeat over and over through the book and they sort of build through the book. And I would be glad to hear people kind of connect those together. But, uh, each little section of, you know, 3456 or seven verses.
Uh, can be read and it kind of stands on its own. And so you'll find as you read through the book of James, you might be going along and all of a sudden there's a section that.
Really kind of hits home maybe based on some current events in your life or, uh, something that you, the Lord through through these verses shows you something that maybe is lacking or in your, in your life. And in that way it, uh, uh, it's in that way that I, I like to think of it as kind of a daily devotional. I find that helpful because sometimes you go through the book and you, uh, or at least I do, I go through the book and I think, well, how does this fit with that?
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Uh, and sometimes there are connections, but it's.
Uh, it is, I, I find it helpful and I would suggest that if you're reading through it to, to think of each one and say, OK, well, in this little section, what is the Lord trying to tell me? And maybe one time you read through the book, it, it, that particular section, you don't think about it too much, But the next time you read through the book, if the Lord makes it real to you in, in a way, I hope that's been helpful to me. It's, it's a little bit laid out a little bit differently. It sounds a little bit different, uh, as you read through it and some of the other books in the New Testament.
And uh, uh, for me, that's been a help thinking of it that way.
Have a relationship with God.
Requires pay.
The foundation? It's, uh, essential.
Speaking when we sang to him that we started with.
Saying over and over again, Heaven is our home.
You know, it's kind of challenging to think thinking about something is yours and you've never seen it.
Never been there.
In fact, that is in reality, he's saying each other. Seven is our home. We're strangers here.
But what we're saying about not one of us has ever seen it.
Not one of us could describe it in any detail and say, oh, the home I have. And and then to go describe it in any physical way, we could not. We can say a lot about it this wonderful for us, but at the same time there's a lot that we don't know as well. And yeah.
Faith says Heaven is our home.
And if faith says heaven is our home, then we live by that.
James had been brought up a certain way in his life and he got to a certain point in life and you might say the Lord Jesus came into the life at that point.
And.
He found in the Lord Jesus the person that he trusted.
And now he's writing at a time when he hadn't couldn't see the Lord Jesus anymore.
He wasn't there for his natural eyes. He had walked with him, then with him.
And was writing to people who had, like himself, embraced the Lord Jesus Christ.
As their life, as the one that they were going to follow.
But they're gonna have to do it now. By faith, he wasn't gonna be there. And as a consequence of identification with the Lord Jesus and a life of faith, there were things that were going to test it.
There were things that were going to come in and.
When there was failure, there was failure to be dealt with, but the life was that life and James is seeking to help and encourage them to go in and live that life and even face the things that were difficult in it with joy, knowing that God had a purpose of love and good in them for their blessing.
And so part of the life of faith says, as it were, God is for me.
And whatever he brings into my life, he has purpose of good in it. Never evil, never bad. And.
What would you have said to Joe?
God's the one that said that you considered my servant Joe.
And, uh, there were points in which Job said his comments are sort of like, I wish God had left me alone.
I wish you hadn't brought this into my life.
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Why didn't he leave me, as he said, in my nest? You know, a nice comfortable little spot to be in.
Umm, if God had said Job, I'm going to put you through some tests. Umm, face it with joy, I don't think he would have. He, he, he wouldn't have been able to see it in that way, but nonetheless.
He went through it and uh, he failed in it. He sinned in the test.
But in the end, Lord doubly blessed him, and he received the end, and so a blessing for his soul. And so it is with us.
The trial or the testing of the faith is for our good.
It has a purpose behind it of God for good, and it's good for us to accept it that way and to embrace it and say whatever God has is for good and He will bring blessing in the end. But He must, we must recognize that it's a relationship of faith that is laying hold of that which we do not see.
And that which our natural eyes have not seen, perhaps, but still it's a trust in the God who is and who loves.
I could just add a little bit more to what you're saying there. Or they're not that faith is always based upon the word of God. And we in this chapter here we, we find that God is telling us that there's a purpose in our trials.
But he is, he is, he is doing something for our blessing and for his glory in the difficult things and the pain and the sorrow that he allows in our lives, that he has a purpose in it. And we, we see here that if, uh, if they're told to count it all joy when they fall into different temptations or trials, the next verse tells them why they should count it all joy.
It says knowing this, that the trying of your faith, working patience. Well, God has promised us that there is going to be blessing in the trial that He is calling us to go through.
Umm, we might say, well, what's what's so important about patients? Why, why, why do I have to suffer like this?
So that the outcome can be that I learned patience.
Well, that's one of the.
Characteristics of the Lord Jesus.
The Lord Jesus became a man.
And.
He he learned things he learned.
To be subject by the things that he suffered.
He he took that place as a man and in in that one sense he became a learner.
By the things that he suffered.
You and I are learning to be.
Submissive.
Gone through the trials and the difficulties that we go through.
Patience is a a wonderful thing because it makes us more like Christ and it reflects the glories of God. Patience is based upon the fact that we are submissive to the will of God, that we're submissive to his timing, that we're willing to let him have control of our lives and do what he sees as best. And it's just some patients is just simply.
Waiting upon God because we know.
That he's doing something for his own glory and for our blessings and so.
The pain and the suffering that we go through, we go through because we believe what God has said. We faith is believing God and God has told us that there's blessing through suffering and the blessing is going to result in that. We learn patience and as we learn patience, we will reflect the glories of the Lord Jesus more and more. We will become more like Him and there will be more for God's glory here on earth.
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Because our lives will be created more into his image. I would just like to confirm this by turning to Romans 5.
Romans 5 verse three says And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also.
Knowing that tribulation worketh patience and patience, experience and experience hope. Word of God tells us that there is a process God is bringing us through to develop us as the children of God.
It's in this instance he begins with tribulation. Tribulation works patience.
Patience works, experience, you know when we've gone through a trial.
And we've learned to submit to the Lord's hand in our lives that that we've, we've, we've allowed him as it were, to say, OK, you've chosen this for me and I accept it.
We threw it. Not only do we get gain the patience.
But it also works experience.
Where we learn God's ways and we trust Him more.
Experience. We might be able to be used to pass that along to others.
So I just bring this process out, that this is the process of Christian development, making us more into the image of Christ.
You take for instance.
OK uh, in the scriptures, the prophet Jeremiah, he was the.
And he knew how the people where he didn't want to draw that God was going to give him.
And on the other hand, we also, uh, notice that he did grow up with the greatest team there ever was for God.
In Josiah.
With all the idols away and.
Who were destroyed, that what was not pleasing to God and he did a great job.
So we can understand that, Jeremiah.
Must have a wonderful time sometimes watching this godly thing.
But he had a long life, and when this king died, when this king passed away.
Then his prior wheel started.
So God put him to.
Very different circumstances.
And we can learn from that very much. It can start with a very nice.
And and as a great trial, the greatest ever.
That Jeremiah has.
But yet in all these things, God is in it.
It says here, if you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.
Now he understood that Jesus was God.
And that always last resort or the first resort I would say to go to go to God and we don't know what to do.
You ran into a a problem. We don't know how to approach it how to.
Deal with it.
And what to do about things?
We need the wisdom that we can ask of God.
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Like to turn to Psalm chapter 4.
Psalm chapter 4.
Support sum.
First verse Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness.
Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress.
Have mercy upon me and hear my prayer.
Going to read it again in the new translation. When I call, answer me, oh God, of my righteousness and pressure. Thou has enlarged me.
And pressure thou has enlarged me.
And spiritual things. Many times in order to grow, it's necessary for us to be put under pressure.
Often times when circumstances are easy, faith is not really tested and it doesn't grow. It doesn't develop, it doesn't mature, but in the school of God.
Uh, he uses pressure often to.
In his ways of helping us to grow.
And so we see people who were placed under pressure.
Take a young man as an example. Joseph.
Joseph when he was.
Still quite young, had a dream.
And he dreamed that his brothers would bow down before him, and so his parents.
And then what happened?
He went through years and years of pressure.
He's sold as a slave, his brothers hate him, he's faithful in his circumstances and things only get worse and he goes for something like 13 years.
Not seeing his family under constant pressure.
And it tells us in I think it's Psalm 104 or thereabouts, it says the word of the Lord tried him.
In other words, for all those years, what did he have to hang on to?
One thing.
The Lord had sent.
His life wasn't over it, it wasn't going to remain as it was, but as year by year passed, this young man, this teenager goes through and we would say the best, some of the best years of his life from that time until he's 30 years old, the word, the pressure of God was on his life.
But what was God doing? He was preparing a vessel to use it for blessing of souls, and so he was a great blessing in his life. We like to read of the tail end of it, but God has His ways to develop in each soul that which is pleasing to himself, and very often the way, the necessary way of God is pressure to bring it about.
And James recognized that and he could say be thankful, be happy that God is doing the work.
That will satisfy him and.
In the end, we'll satisfy the one that he's working in.
I think verse four seems to indicate that we can't be perfect and entire and wanting nothing without it.
We we need this in our lives or we're going to be very lacking as Christians and that is really the point of recognizing this process of their brother called it tribulation work to patients and patients hope and hope. It's not a shame and so forth In Romans 5 or here as it says that patients have a perfect work. And so it's that work of God in our lives that we need so much and I know for myself when a trial comes into my life.
My first thought is generally, how can I get out of it?
But what we have here is that shouldn't be our first thought, or my first thought. It should be.
00:50:03
What does God want me to get out of it?
And there's something that God has in it for blessing and and.
They're recognizing that. I think it's the the first thing.
We get that from these first verses, just to know that whatever other things were involved, it was if it was Satan, they could look and say, well, here, drove it there. I'm sorry. If it was Job, you could say look, thinking it's something to do with my trial, but he didn't do it. He looked beyond it and eventually at least he got to the point of it. It was thought God didn't 'cause it, but God allowed it. And so Job had to do with God and so do we, and we need to go back to God and say what is he doing?
In my life.
And the first point though, we could recognize that God allowed it. That's where the joy comes in. He cares enough about me to be doing something in my life, even if it's hard. He hasn't left me alone. He cares.
And I can see that this is something that a God who loves me is allowing. Then there should be real joy in that.
But that doesn't solve the problem.
I get to that point and I'm thankful that the Lord is doing something, but what is it? And maybe I still don't know. So that's the reason for the verse five. If any of you lack wisdom, let a master God.
And I know for myself, I may often get into a situation of difficulty, and perhaps I do get to the point where I'm thinking the right thought about it, that the Lord allowed it, but I still need to know what it is that He's doing. And so the next thing is I need to be down on my knees before and find out what that is so that I can realize what His point is in the trial and difficulty and gain the blessing.
I can make a brief example to Moses.
So it's 120 years.
1St 40 years It's often been commented his life was divided into 3 periods of 40 years.
And the first 40 years of his life, he had a a really good life by man's standards. Yeah, the ultimate opportunities.
To be raised in the palace of the king and so on, and learned the good life.
And he spent 40 years in the desert alone, a lot of the time with the pocket sheets or whatever he cared for.
And then he served God, having been so prepared of God for the 1St 2/3 of his life. He served God for 40 years.
But God is patient.
It is perfect work.
He's patient in it and actually it appears that it's a year 118.
That he misspoke.
In his life and as a consequence personally was not allowed into the land.
Lived 118 years.
Life is almost finished.
And yet he still had something that was for his blessing is going to teach him. And he did and.
How is this when we meet him will be profoundly thankful that God was patient.
Awfully she's work that the end result of Moses life was that which pleased God and will make Moses forever satisfied. So it is in our lives. It's not attract me. It's an endurance race.
And uh, you have that in chapter Hebrews, chapter 12. Let us run with patience or endurance, the same word that you have here, endurance. And so it is it, it doesn't stop until the goal line and the goal line is not until we enter glory.
We've seen #74.
God and Father, we give thanks for this, these thoughts that we've had about the trials of faith. We just give thanks that we know that we're not the only ones who may have our individual struggles and challenges of faith, but there's many others also.
Father, we just ask for help and understanding and wisdom as we go through these, and we will learn from these that we might be able to give the Lord his glory and that we may become more likely to give thanks for this time together in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen.