James: Mockers to Martyrs

Jesus’ half-brother James is first known as a mocker to Jesus and a doubter of faith. When we first see him, he’s trying to stop Jesus’ ministry and prevent him from fulfilling his purpose. But after witnessing the resurrection of his older half-brother, James’ life is transformed. He’s called an apostle by Paul, considered a pillar of the early church, and eventually gives his life as a martyr for his faith in Jesus.

The book of James is a book about transformation. It’s about how to put our faith into practice, starting with how we respond to trials. For James, the first thing we must understand as faithful followers of Jesus is how to face our trials, find wisdom, and fight temptation.

You can take interactive notes here. At the end of the message, you can email the notes to yourself.

 Jesus had a half brother. Uh, which is really weird to think about. Jesus, the son of God, having a half brother. He actually had sisters, too.

And he had a lot of half brothers. And we don’t really know a lot about his family. But we do know that one of his brothers was named James. And his name was just James. There was other James, like James the son of Alphaeus, James the lesser, all these other James that had titles after their names. But the book of James was written by just James, the brother, half brother of Jesus.

Now the first time we meet James is actually in Matthew 13. Uh, here’s what it says, Jesus went to his hometown and began to teach them in their synagogue so that they were astonished and said, where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother called Mary?

And his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, aren’t they all with us? So where does he get all these things? And they were offended by him. So James goes, or Jesus goes to his hometown. Uh, he teaches and he’s healing, he’s doing all the things that we know Jesus to do, and they’re blown away by his god like power and authority, and then they remember his brothers.

And you have to think, at least, I don’t know, I think, like, what were his brothers like? If they see all the good things Jesus was doing, and they’re like, wait, he can’t be related to those guys. Like, who is James? What is going on? The second time we meet James is in Mark chapter 3. Uh, Jesus entered a house, the crowd gathered again so that they were not even able to eat.

This would happen a lot in Jesus life and ministry. People would be so excited to see Jesus, they would literally like crawl through windows and drop down through rooftops just to hear him teach and be around him and be near him. Uh, so Jesus and his disciples were not able to eat because of the crowd.

When his family heard this, they set out to restrain him. Because they said he’s out of his mind. Notice, they didn’t want to speak to Jesus. They didn’t want to push the crowds away. They literally wanted to restrain Jesus. This guy’s crazy. He thinks he’s the Messiah. We’re so sorry about that. Let us, let, let, let’s get him out of here for you.

Don’t worry about him. Third time we see James is later on in chapter 3 of Mark. His mother and his brothers came and standing outside, they sent word to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him and told him, Look, your mother, your brothers, and your sisters are outside asking for you. I love Matthew tells the same story in Matthew 12.

Uh, Jesus, actually he’s just coming off of like a really serious bout with the Pharisees. He has this like verbal battle with them, and I have to imagine he’s I don’t know, he’s in his element, right? He’s feeling good, and then all of a sudden somebody comes and whispers, Uh, your mother wants to talk to you.

And that’s when Jesus has the famous, like, who are my mothers and brothers? These are my mothers, you know, all that stuff, which we can’t say, but Jesus can get away with. Bottom line, the gospel writers, what do we, what do we get from this? The gospel writers are telling us Jesus’s family is not on board with his ministry, and that includes James.

The next time we see James is in John chapter 7. After this, Jesus traveled in Galilee, since he did not want to travel in Judea, because the Jews were trying to kill him. The Jewish festival of shelters was near, so his brother said to him, His brothers said this to him, Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples can see your works that you are doing.

For no one does anything in secret while he’s seeking public recognition. If you do these things, show yourself to the world. Now you’re thinking, they’re on board. This is a great, they’re, this is a great PR team. Jesus has his little band of brothers saying, Hey, go out there, do the good works that you’re doing in front of others.

John says this in verse 5, For not even his brothers believed him. They’re not supporting him, they’re mocking him. This is sarcasm. They’re saying, we don’t believe If you really are doing all the things that you are claiming to be doing, if you have these disciples and you want to take over the world or whatever, go to Judea and do it in front of other people and just see what happens.

See what happens, Jesus. James is not a follower of Jesus. At this point, he’s not even a distant supporter. It’s not like, it’s not even like the, the weird relative you have where it’s like, Oh, that’s just like uncle, uncle Rico. You know, he wants to, he thinks he’s in high school, right? He’s just so silly.

Don’t worry about him. No, James is a mocker. James is a skeptic. James is a doubter. James is an antagonist to the life and ministry of his half brother, the son of God. Now the next time we see James is in the book of Acts, which tells the story of the beginning of the church. So Jesus life and ministry happens, and Acts kind of connects the dots.

How did we get from there to literally here, gathered together as a church? And in Acts chapter 12, it tells this crazy story of Peter, who’s one of Jesus disciples, he gets imprisoned for following Jesus. And then he’s miraculously released from prison, and it’s this crazy story of he, he doesn’t know what to do so he like walks out of the jail cell and he goes to the house of Mary, uh, the mother of John, and there’s a servant named Rhoda who hears Peter’s voice at the door, and she’s like, I can’t believe it, and she doesn’t let him in, and then finally she lets Peter in, and Peter, the first thing he says is, go and tell James and the brothers.

So you know, James is still around at this point. Jesus is gone. Jesus is gone. Rose again, ascended to the right hand of the Father. He’s not here anymore, but James is still involved Somewhat in the Apostles ministry and then three chapters later in Acts 15 something happens There’s a dispute. People are arguing about what the gospel means.

How should we apply it to our lives? Do we still have to follow the Old Testament law? Or is there, do we have to become Jewish people and follow the 613 commandments in the Torah? Or does the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus mean something else for us? And they’re arguing this with each other.

There’s a council that gathers, and then someone in that council clarifies the gospel so well. They, he preaches the gospel with such clarity that all the confusion is dispelled, and a decision is made. And they write a letter, and they go out, and they say, No, you don’t have to follow the Old Testament law, but here’s what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus.

And that person is James. And then in Galatians 1, 19, and then verse, or chapter 2, verse 9, a letter to the church in Galatia written by Paul, right, the, the great author of much of the New Testament. He refers to James as an apostle, meaning an apostle was somebody who witnessed the resurrection of Jesus and was sent out to preach that good news to others.

And then in chapter 2, he calls James a pillar of the church. Now, it could be that James realized he was wrong, and he just switched sides. It could be that he’s riding on the coattails of his half brother, Jesus. He’s saying, ah, I was really wrong about this, but there’s something powerful happening here, so I’m going to use my status, my relationship, as the half brother of Jesus to get some influence in this movement and become a leader in this church.

And, and it would likely be the case that that’s what James was doing, if not for James chapter 1, verse 1. This is how he introduces himself. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

James, who used to be a mocker of Jesus, who likely bullied his crazy older half brother, the skeptic and the doubter James, who had every right to say, James, a servant of God and the half brother of the guy you worship, Jesus. He doesn’t say that. He calls himself a servant of God. And a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Servant, the better translation in the Greek is actually slave. It says, I’m a slave to that guy. My life belongs to that guy. Now we don’t know for sure what happened to James. Our best understanding comes, uh, from the first century Greek historian, Hegesippus. Uh, so this is 62 years, uh, AD 62 after Jesus was around, uh, around the Passover time.

I have a really long quote. I’m not going to read it. Uh, but the scribes and the Pharisees, the people that crucified Jesus, Um, are angry because people are coming to Passover. Jewish people are coming to celebrate Passover. And they’re proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah. That Jesus is the Son of God.

And they go to James and they say, You have so much leadership and sway over these people. Convince them that Jesus is not God. It says, We call on you to persuade all who come for the Passover concerning Jesus, since all trust you. James is a pillar of the church. Remember, this is what James says, Why do you ask me about the Son of Man?

Not, Why do you ask me about my half brother? Son of Man was a title for Jesus. It meant that he was God. He was the reigning king and ruler over the universe. Why do you ask me about the Son of Man? He is sitting in heaven at the right hand of the great power, and he will come on the clouds of heaven. And the scribes and pharisees realized they messed up asking James to talk bad about his half brother.

They say so many people came to faith. It says people were shouting Hosanna to the son of David. People actually worshipped Jesus because of James testimony in ministry, his response to that question. And the pharisees don’t like that, so they bring him up to the top of the temple, and they throw him off, intending to kill him.

And when the fall doesn’t kill him, they stone him to death. And here’s what Hegesipas says, Such was his martyrdom. They buried him on the spot by the temple, and his gravestone is still there by the temple. He became a true witness to both Jews and Gentiles that Jesus is the Christ. So what happened? How did James go from a skeptic and a mocker to a pillar and a martyr?

Well, Paul tells us exactly what happened in 1st Corinthians 15 verses 3 through 7. Paul says, I passed on to you, as most important to what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep, then he appeared to James.

Now, we don’t know what that meeting looked like between Jesus and his little brother. Uh, but I, I’m willing to bet my life that Jesus did not let James feel one ounce of guilt or condemnation for mocking him.

I think the only thing that can transform James from a mocker to a martyr is the radical experience of the love and the forgiveness of God. I think in that moment, he sees his brother alive. He sees Jesus. He saw him get crucified, and now he sees him. And I think he was faced with the reality of the resurrection, but more than that, I think James was transformed by the love and the grace of God.

Now James, what we have in this book is a, is a book, it’s a letter written by James about that kind of transformation. And our tagline for this series is putting simplicity into practice, but let me be clear, our goal, our end goal, is not to get you to own less stuff, to be on Instagram less, or to, to talk less about yourself.

Our end goal is to help you make space in your life to encounter the radical love. Grace and forgiveness of God so that you are transformed like James. James wasn’t just, uh, he didn’t just meet the risen Jesus. He was transformed by the risen Jesus. And that transformation that can happen in James life, that, that put James from a mocker to a martyr to a pillar of the church, is the very same transformation that can happen to you and to me.

And that’s what the book of James is about. And so what we have in the book of James is a collection of his best teachings in the early church. And, and for James, that encounter that he has with Jesus, that you and I have with Jesus, experiencing the love and the grace of God, that does something to you.

Because what it produces in you is called faith. But here’s a key, and this isn’t in your notes, but it should have been. If you write this down, this will help you understand all of the book of James. To James, faith is not just something you have. Faith is also something that you do.

James is talking about what faith looks like in practice. Which I think James would not have understand what that meant. What does it mean that faith is practice? That’s what so much of the book of James is about. I’m so excited we’re gonna work through a lot of really tough stuff that James says in the future.

For now, we’re just gonna look at chapter 1. So with that, let’s start at verse 2.

This is how James starts. Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. Now where, I don’t, okay, where might we expect James to start?

Not there. If James is a book about transformation, we think, okay, read the scriptures. Pray once a day. Try fasting. See if that does something. Give your stuff to the poor, right? Serve orphans and widows. That’s religion that’s pure and undefiled. James actually says that later on. Most of that stuff, James does tell you to do, but that’s not where James starts.

Where James starts is here. Hey, life is hard, so celebrate it. Rejoice! Have fun! Life is hard. This is actually similar to how Peter starts his letter. If you remember, we went through 1 Peter a few months ago, maybe a year ago, I don’t know. Uh, Peter says, Peter says this. He says, Hey, don’t be surprised when you suffer.

What does James say? James goes a step further. Rejoice when you suffer. All kinds of trials. Not just everything. Not, like, you think of the big stuff. You think of the persecution, you think of, you know, economic hardships, and James does have that in mind, but he actually uses a Greek word that means, like, you are just hit on all sides by every kind of trial, temptation, pain, suffering that you can imagine.

You are, Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 12, it feels like he’s being buffeted by Satan. When that’s happening to you, you have a choice. What I want you to do, James says, is I want you to Rejoice. And the question is, why, why does James start here? Why is this so important that James is going to base his entire letter on this reality?

Because, for a lot of us, the starting point of faith is pain. Faith is easy when times are good, right? When your Sabbath is restful, when your scripture reading is fruitful, when simplicity is easy and practical, and you get a reward from it. But faith gets really hard really quick when it doesn’t seem like it’s paying off.

James says something happens in that moment. When you are in the crucible of pain, that’s when your faith… is formed. That’s when your character is tested. That in that moment, something is happening inside of you. God is doing something in you that, that in that space that we often try to get out of, that we’re trying to escape, James says it’s actually in that space that God is nearest to you and doing something in you that he could not do otherwise.

And it’s important to note, James says when, not if, right? I know some of, we know that intellectually. We think, okay, of course, like, life is hard and all of that, but I think some of us struggle with this. We know this because you’ve chosen to follow Jesus, genuinely, generally expecting life to get, like, kind of better.

Maybe not, like, completely better, but you’re expecting life to get a little better. Um, you want, you know, you, you practice Sabbath and you want to feel perfectly rested the next week, or, or you, you read, you commit to reading your Bible. Every day a week, and you think that maybe you’ll get a few favors from God.

You practice simplicity because you think maybe you’ll get something out of it. Maybe God will give you back tenfold what you give to him. But instead, maybe things have gotten worse. Maybe it has nothing to do with your spiritual life. Maybe you’ve just been following Jesus faithfully and you’re still struggling with poor health, a bad diagnosis, financial hardships.

Bad relationships, everything from death, miscarriages, grief, pain, suffering, all the way down to just mild inconveniences, like life is just hard. And James says the first thing he wants you to know is that somehow in those moments of pain, that God is working In the midst of those, not in spite of those, and that, that these, these moments are not sidesteps or detours on your spiritual journey to joy, satisfaction, and wholeness in Jesus, but it’s actually, these are the channel through which joy and satisfaction and wholeness in Jesus are happening.

This is where they’re birthed. Something happens, and James tells you what happens. It’s endurance. Right? He says, you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Another word is patience. If you can learn how to rejoice in these moments, if you can learn how to buckle down with a real hope that God is doing something, what you get out of it is non anxiety.

You become a person who can endure. You are patient. You are made whole, James says, or complete. In other words, you want to lack nothing? This is the end goal of simplicity. You want to be content? Then learn to suffer well. Because in that suffering, you’ll learn patience, and when you’re patient, you don’t need anything.

We’re going to see how this plays out looking at the rest of the chapter. But here’s where we want to start. James is forcing us to make a choice. He says trials are going to come. That’s not the choice. The choice is how you respond. And what he’s gonna say the rest of this chapter is there are two ways.

James is a very binary writer. He says, you’re either following Jesus or you’re not following Jesus. There’s no in the middle. You are not neutral. And so when trials come, you have a choice between the way of anxiety or the way of faith. So let’s look at the way of anxiety. Let’s look at verse five. Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to him.

But let him ask in faith without doubting, for the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord, being double minded and unstable in all of his ways. Now James is steeped in the ancient Hebrew literature of the Old Testament, so when he talks about wisdom…

He’s not talking about something that’s intellectual. When we think of somebody who’s wise, we think of somebody who’s really smart, who knows a lot about a lot of things, who has like an inner disposition of peace, or maybe they’re older. I don’t know what you think of when you think of wisdom. But for James, wisdom is very practical.

Remember, nothing is just mental or intellectual to James. Everything has to do with how you live. N. T. Wright describes biblical wisdom this way. It’s learning to trust God for everything, and to discover how that trust would work out in every aspect of daily life. Wisdom is our ability to take what we intellectually believe to be true about God, about the world, about ourselves, and about others, and in the midst of chaos, live out that truth.

Now you’re likely asking, how, how, so this is James’s answer to the question, how do I celebrate in trials? Like how, in the midst of trial, I know I should rejoice, but I can’t get there. How should I get there? And James says, oh, easy. You need wisdom. You need to remember what you know to be true about God, and then allow that to shape how you live.

And you’re thinking, that’s a lot easier said than done, James. And James says, no problem. Just ask God for it. And he says, God’s character is such that he is generous. God doesn’t want you to suffer, right? God will allow it. And you’ll see this at the end of this chapter. But God’s, like, God is not vindictive, like, He doesn’t get joy from watching you suffer.

God wants you to succeed. He’s just waiting for you to ask. He gives generously and begrudgingly. But there’s a caveat. If you’re an astute reader of the Bible, you caught it. What do you, you cannot ask, James says, and doubt at the same time. Now here’s what James is not saying. James is not saying that you cannot struggle.

He just talked about struggle. And he just talked about the character of God. He just said you’re going to struggle, and God wants to give you what you need. So he’s not talking about intellectual doubt. This is not, he’s not describing the person that, that doubts whether God is, is good. He’s not describing, I, he’s not even describing the kind of person who doubts that God is capable or willing.

He’s using a very specific word here. It’s a word that, this is the first time it appears in any Greek literature. In fact, most scholars agree that James made this word up. And the word is double minded. In Greek, it’s the word dipsychos, which literally means double souled. So James says, he’s describing the person, this is the person whose very soul is divided.

You have split, split priorities and divided loyalties, right? This is the person that, when you are asking God for something, you are asking God for help, you are half heartedly asking from God, but still expecting to live your own way, no matter what God does or gives you in answer to your prayer. When God doesn’t answer this prayer, I have a backup plan, and I’m gonna go and do it my way.

This is, yeah, this is, you practice, you try Sabbath. Okay, you try Sabbath for a week, and it doesn’t work out, so you abandon that practice altogether. You try scripture reading for a week, or for a month, and the minute it gets hard, confusing, or you feel like you don’t have divine inspiration, or motivation, or encouragement from God, you give it up, and you go back to scrolling Instagram, or checking your email, or whatever, in the morning.

You try simplicity until it actually gets hard. You try simplicity until God, He asks the one thing that you can’t give up, like the rich young ruler last week, and you say, I can’t do this, and you walk away dismayed. That’s the kind of person that James is saying, You can’t handle the kind of wisdom that God is going to give you.

The kind of clarity, the perspective to see, the wisdom you need is to be able to see what God is doing in the midst of pain and trials, and that only comes if you are willing to give up what God might ask you to give up. And that’s really hard, and that’s the journey of the Christian life. But to be double souled means that you have, you have half of your soul to God, and you have half of your soul still clinging on to these things.

And for a lot of us, I think this is why our resistance to simplicity is, is really about our response to trials. When trials come, we cling to things. We run to things. We half heartedly ask God for things. While the other half of us is still holding on to our escape, our hope. And our material goods. In fact, this is what, uh, James says in, in verse nine.

Sorry, anxiety starts with doubt. That’s the first thing. So it starts with doubt. So, James chapter nine, he says this, Let the brother of humble circumstance boast in his exaltation, but let the rich boast in his humiliation, because he will pass away like a flower of the field. For the sun rises, and together with the scorching wind, dries up the grass, its flower falls off, and its beautiful appearance perishes.

In the same way, the rich person will wither away while pursuing his activities. Oh, it’s so encouraging. Okay, why does James suddenly start talking about rich people then? Like, what, he goes from trials, and he talks about wisdom, and waves, and seas, and crashing, and he’s like, The flower’s gonna die! If you’re wealthy, you’re a flower, it’s all gonna fade.

What’s, what’s going on here? Anxiety forces us to cling to what we can control. So here’s what happens. The way of anxi trials come. The way of anxiety is I’m gonna trust God, but I’m gonna doubt a little bit. I’m gonna have my, my plan B in my back pocket. And then the second thing that happens is you give into your, you run to the wealth that you have.

And again, wealth is not inherently bad. We’ve said that for weeks now. So if you don’t hear, like that’s on you at this point. Wealth is not bad, but it takes a lot of spiritual maturity to steward well. That’s why Jesus says you cannot serve both God and money. Why? Because you cannot cling to what you want to control, and also give God total control.

And that’s exactly what wealth is, is we doubt, and then we go to what we can control. The lure of wealth. is really a lie of control. It’s an illusion. We want to control our outcomes. We use wealth, our stuff, our money, our status, our reputations, whatever, because we want to control the quality of life that we have.

So even if we go through trials, that it can be buffeted or, uh, cushioned by the stuff that we have. James says all, none of that matters. It’s all gonna wash away. It’s gonna perish. It’s gonna die, like a flower’s gonna die at the end of time. And God sometimes will allow this to happen, not because he hates you, but because that thing’s gonna die anyways.

So the way of anxiety starts with doubt, but then it goes on to our wealth. We cling to what we have. Now brother of humble circumstance is a really polite way of saying poor, poor person, right? Uh, you’re like, yeah, that’s me. I’m a brother of humble circumstance. And this isn’t just any, like, it’s not just poor people in general.

This is the poor person that’s learned to live with humility. Because they’ve, they’ve practiced wisdom. They received wisdom, full trust in God, and they are exalted. Why is the poor person exalted? Because they’ve learned the lesson that many wealthy people cannot learn, and that is that faith is a gift.

It’s not something that you can get, except by opening your life up with humility, receiving what God has for you in the midst of trial. The poor person has nothing to cling to but God. And so in that clinging to God, the poor person receives exaltation. And so the way of anxiety, it starts with doubt, but it evolves.

Trouble comes, I have heartedly asked God to help me while also clinging to what I can control. It’s doubt, and it’s double mindedness. It’s wealth. Let’s look at verse 13. No one undergoing a trial should say, I am being tempted by God, since God is not tempted by evil, and he himself doesn’t tempt anyone.

But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death. So it doesn’t just start with our stuff. The way of anxiety doesn’t just stay with doubt. It leads somewhere.

And, and where it leads to James is, is death. And here’s how it happens. There’s a temptation in the midst of trial. Your, your, your body, and when I say your body, I mean your soul, your mind, your affections, your desires. All of these things in the midst of chaos and pain when it feels like you’re feeling buffeted on all sides.

You are going to reach for things that you can control. You are going to want to satisfy and self medicate. And the temptation is to think, this is what God wants me to do. The temptation is to think, God is allowing this to happen so that I can satisfy my desires. And it always, it doesn’t always seem harmful at first, but, but what happens is your trials expose an opportunity for you.

And, and you have an opportunity in the midst of chaos and pain to either get closer to God, Or self medicate by feeding your desires. And we all do this in a lot of different ways. It’s not just like the hard stuff. Like the substance abuse and alcohol, pornography, whatever. This is also digitalism.

That’s why we talk about digitalism. What do you run to in the midst of pain? It’s your stuff. It’s your wealth. It’s the, the things that you want to buy. It’s the shopping spree. It’s the money. It’s your investments. It’s your relationships. What can I get from other people so that I feel better about the chaos that I’m in?

Trials expose your desires and it’s, it’s usually the thing that you don’t want to give up. This is why I think last week was such an important week to talk about. Um, the rich young ruler was asked to give up the one thing that he knew that would, would keep him from trials. What’s the one that like, and this is the question that James invites us to ask.

We read this and we think, oh I’m not wealthy, this isn’t me, I’m not tempted, I, I’m not dead. James is giving us a warning. This is what happens with the way of anxiety. So the question that it asks is, what, what would you be, what would you be the most afraid to lose? It’s the same question as last week.

What is that thing that you’re holding on to? And there’s so much grace here. Like, I’m not saying, I’m saying, I was able to write this because I, like, this is us, right? We, we’re all in, like, this is all of us. We’re doing this together. We’re practicing simplicity together. And what I’ve recognized from my own life is.

Um, trials, however you define that, right, pain, suffering, that’s subjective. However you define that reveals what you really want in life. Either because that’s the thing that’s targeted, or that’s the thing that you run to. And the temptation is to give in to that. To feed those desires instead of offering those things up to God.

In the midst of pain, what do you run to? Alright, what are you tempted by? This is the way of anxiety. So notice the progression, right? Trials come, something happens, something horrible, and then another thing happens, and then another thing happens, or just one really big thing, whatever it is, something happens, and the way of anxiety is this, it starts with doubt.

Will God really give me what I need to survive this trial, or will I have to get it for myself? And the moment that you feed that question, it’s not, it’s not just about asking that question, all of us are going to ask that question, but the moment you start to drift away from God and say, maybe God doesn’t.

Want to give me what I need. God isn’t generous, and he gives grudgingly, not unbegrudgingly. I’m gonna run to what I can control, to what I can self medicate with, and so it goes on to your wealth, it goes on to your things, the stuff that’s going to perish, and then the more that you have in control from your stuff, the more that you need to have in control to self medicate.

That’s where desire comes in. And the more that you have these desires for things, you desire more and more and more to accumulate, or relationships to have, or status, or wealth, or whatever it is, attention, escapism, all of those things. The more that you desire, the more that you’re going to be tempted to feed those desires.

And so temptation comes. And the more that you are tempted to feed those desires at any cost, you’re already used to feeding those desires at that point. You are used to living the way of anxiety. You’re used to living double souls. And so it’s easy. You give in to what the Bible calls sin. It’s not the way of Jesus, it’s the way of the flesh.

You start satisfying desire after desire, hoping that it’s gonna give you what you want, relief. And James says the very thing that you are looking for relief from is actually the thing that kills you because it ends with death. It’s a complete abandonment of the way of Jesus and its separation from all joy and contentment in the kingdom.

So what’s the alternative? Well, James has been weaving these two things throughout, uh, this whole chapter, the two ways. So, if that’s the way of anxiety, what is the way of faith look like? The way of faith starts with joy. Now, joy is not an, uh, a passive emotion. It’s not an emotional optimism. It’s not just like a look on the bright side of things kind of a joy.

Joy is an active choice of your will. It’s your posture of, I’m going to celebrate this because I know that God is still good. And, and you can like, joy is not like a holistic thing. You don’t have to be happy. You can be joyful and somber at the same time. You can have an everlasting, uh, and confident and persistent joy in the midst of trials because all you’re doing is worshipping God in that moment and loving others.

As if trials were nothing to you because you know something. And you know that what’s happening in this moment is God is actually refining you. God is doing something. And you know how the story ends. You know that all of this is gonna end. with restoration. So it starts with joy. You choose to act out your joy, and then with joy comes trust.

Right? The testing of your faith produces endurance. That knowledge allows you to trust God in any circumstance. The more that you trust God, the more that you receive endurance. You actually are able to live out what you know to be true. And the more that you trust God, the more that God gives you wisdom.

You, you learn. God, God teaches you what it looks like to live in the kingdom, even in the midst of chaos. That no matter where you are, that that, there’s a stability inside of you. There’s something, you have a quiet confidence that there’s something in you that’s telling you to push on. And that’s, that, James says that’s called endurance.

And living out that endurance is called wisdom. And then the more that you, you practice wisdom. You know how the world works. You know who God is. You know who you are, you live that out. The more you’re able to live a simple life next to simplicity, you don’t run to your wealth. You’re okay living with less.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. You’re, you’re, you are a brother of humble circumstance or a sister of humble circumstance that you are somebody who doesn’t chase every desire. That’s the next thing is endurance. Simplicity creates endurance in all seasons. You don’t need to self medicate. Because it starts with joy. It goes to trust.

Trust begets wisdom. Wisdom begets simplicity. Simplicity begets endurance. You can, um, you can persevere. Because you know what this is like. Your faith has been put to the test and it’s been put into practice. And James says in chapter 12 that you will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

And the end of that is, is life. We fight the temptation to have more, to do more, to be more, to cope, and what we experience as a result of this, this way of faith, is a joyful life in the kingdom with Jesus. This is what simplicity looks like in practice.

Last thing, let’s read verses 16 through 18, and then we’ll close. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. Who does not change, like shifting shadows by his own choice. He gave us birth by the word of truth so that we would be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

Again, God is not testing you to be vindictive, right? God is not testing you because he wants to, because he gets some kind of sick joy out of it. God doesn’t want you to fail. God wants you to succeed. And God doesn’t change. Notice that. In the midst of the chaos, the way of anxiety, is you are a person being tossed and turned and swayed by the winds.

Circumstances of life pull you in all sorts of different directions. But there’s one constant, and that constant is, is God. And that is a real hope that he says, God’s desire is to give us life. If we’re willing to accept it. If we’re willing to lay down the things that we’re holding on to, again, the things that are keeping us from joy, the things that are keeping us stuck in the cycle of anxiety, trials come.

We choose to rejoice. And as we rejoice in Jesus, Jesus gives us trust. We trust in him. A real trust, not like an intellectual thing, but a real trust and a real hope. And the more that we trust Jesus, the We’re able to know and discern who we are, how we respond to things, who God is, the love that God has for us.

And then we’re able to live a simple life. For some of us, this is why simplicity is so hard again. With simplicity comes endurance. We’re able to endure everything. And the end of that is joy, a joyful life in the kingdom with Jesus.