"James,
Chapter 1"
The
Lord's Day, April 16, 2000
|
The ECF Pulpit |
We are taking a little break from where we've been. I will
try and tell you why. Not the least of the things that we're
to do as ministers of the gospel, is not only to faithfully
proclaim the Word, but at times to try and discern that
there is a particular season that needs to be addressed. And
for a number of weeks now, this has been going through my
heart and mind. We are, as a congregation, I think, at an
interesting place. I think we have had the smell of revival
in the air for quite some time and that's a good thing but
that also brings with it some interesting side issues. We
were, I think very definitely addressed last Sunday night as
we were called to prayer as congregation by Dr. Armstrong.
Something we need to do as a group and that I think needs to
be part of our week in and week out worship; not just an
outside aspect of what we do. But it's also a reality, I
think, that there are a great number of people in this
particular body at this particular time that are undergoing
an enormous amount of trial and difficulty.
Sometimes that happens in a church, sometimes it happens in a geographical area or in a region. Sometimes it happens with the church almost globally at the same time, but there seems to have been a season of evil among us. A tremendous amount of pressure and difficulty and one thing after another and one thing on top of another and so I would like to step away from the normal course this morning and just speak to you from my own heart, regarding that which God has given me personally over the years. It's a great source of comfort and understanding that I hope will be of tremendous benefit to you as well. And that's why I had you turn to James Chapter 1.
James, probably being the first book penned in the New Testament, obtains it's own preface in the first verses; for it says, "James, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who are scattered abroad." And so it is that he is writing to a church, comprised particularly of those Jewish Christians, who in their day were being hounded and driven from their own homes and from their own city and from their own land to the point at which they must have wondered "what in the world is going on? We've come to this saving knowledge of Christ we have embraced this wonderful redeeming love that we've been told about and as soon as that happened the floor dropped out of our lives. And as if it wasn't bad enough that the floor dropped out, the ceiling caved in on top of it!"
I'm reminded of that old story about Clyde the farmer. Clyde was out plowing in his field and as he was plowing, a great whirlwind came along and knocked over his tractor and he was pinned underneath it. As he was pinned underneath, with both legs broken, the fuel from the tractor started to spill out and trickled down the furrow where he had been. And as that happened, lighting struck from out of the heavens and set the oil on fire and burned his crops and continued all the way across the field and consumed his house and his barns with it. At which point his wife exited the house and came to him just as it began to hail. She said "you've always been a loser Clyde, and now I know it for sure, I'm leaving. And I'm leaving with the next door neighbor." The kids came out and said, "We've known this for years dad, we're leaving too!" And as Clyde lay under his tractor in pain and misery and contemplating all of this, he said, " God, Why me?" This voice answered, " I don't know Clyde, something about you just bugs me!" Well, that's not true! If you are in that state right now, where it has been one thing on top of another, on top of another, on top of another, and you have got it in your mind somewhere that maybe you've just ticked God off and He's got his finger on your life accordingly, I want to erase that thought from your mind this morning. And I want you to look at some very very important words in the passage that we are looking at today.
In fact, there is, and I have purposely not given you an outline this morning so that you would listen rather than write - I think it's more important to give heed to what's been given to us here - there is much to study microscopically. One of the things that is always so difficult for us in times of trial - and let me say that in this passage there is a great mystery, or at least something that seems to be a mystery - That is, in verse 2 we read, "consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials." And the people said... "Oh sure!" Yet down at the bottom in verse 13 it says, "Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted of God." It's interesting that the word 'trial' there in verse 2, and the word 'temptation' in vs. 13 are exactly the same in the Greek, [pierasmos]. And it means tried. It means tested. It means put upon. There is a great connection between these two in that God sends us great pressure; great stress; great difficulty. You say, "Where's the good news?" Hold on! There may be great consternation and at times great confusion so that we say, "What are all these things? I can't put them all together because if I even think about encountering one more trial this week, I am going to cave in under the pressure." And yet God gives us these things, I think, as we see the passage unpeel, in order that we might be strong to withstand the nature of sin's temptations as a result of the process.
Let's dial back just a second. At the close of the war after the freeing of so many from the concentration camps, one of those who was in a concentration camp was a man by the name of Victor Frankel. Victor Frankel came to the United States and later became a very celebrated scholar and writer and entered the world of medicine so that he was in psychology or psychiatry, I can never remember which "psych". And he, in recounting dealing with so many who had been in the concentration camps during that time and in writing of his own experience, said, and I am paraphrasing here " The worst thing is suffering without any sense of purpose... just blind misery." I think that is true. I think that is why Job cried out the way he did because he didn't understand the purpose. And unless I miss my guess, we often struggle more with the senselessness of what we are going through and the detached nature - because it doesn't seem to connect up to anything real or profitable in our lives and in the midst of that, that's what beats us down! It seems to distract even from being able to find our solace in God. So James, when he writes to these folks, wanted to establish for them first and foremost a purpose for that which seemed so senseless at the time.
Last Sunday Morning I started to get that feeling. Actually it started last week. We knew we had the conference coming up and it was going to be a pressure filled week simply because there was so much to do, and there is so much going on. But we were anticipating a great weekend and then I got a call from my daughter and she said, "You didn't forget that my play is this week, did you?" and I said, "No, NO, of course not!" She said, " Well, it's Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday night" and I said I'd be there Thursday without a doubt. Of course her school is in Boston. So, after getting the car fixed the week before, from the brakes that had gone that needed the new rotors, but then blew out the brake line when they went out to test it. It still doesn't have the heater fixed and has no radio because the antennae broke off this week. But I said, " I'll be there." So I jumped in the car on Thursday morning and I made the 6 hour drive to Boston. I attended the play and it was wonderful. Then I jumped back in the car and drove right back home from Boston because I had to be here for Friday. I was a little tired on Friday but God brought all these things together. But then you get to the conference and there's 'we forgot to do this and we forgot to do that and we forgot to do the other and oh by the way, your 800 number doesn't work cause you didn't pay the bill.' And then there's getting everything done Saturday and as I'm slowly getting sicker from probably doing too much and the asthma having a bad week, it just decided THAT week to kick up, and being tired and all those things that "just happen". Oh come on you've all had those weeks; you've had them regularly...just like I do! So then I quickly asked if I could borrow Ivan and Nancy's car because my windshield leaks and I didn't want to drive these guys around and get them wet. See of course it rained those days and then it snowed and I don't mind the snow except the windshield wipers quit after about five or six hits. Now that wasn't too bad until Sunday Morning when I jumped in the car saying to myself "the weekend's almost over." And you know you're in that love-hate relationship. I just love what is being preached and what is being taught and I'm just bathed in the goodness of God to us in all that is being done and at the same time wondering what in the world is going to fall apart next --- as the squirrels in my wall woke me early that morning while the cats meowed at them. I jumped in the car Sunday Morning and the car door wouldn't close. And as I'm driving here with one hand on the car door saying, "God, thank you it's not snowing because I can't work the windshield AND steer AND hold the door shut at the same time! I pulled in the driveway saying, "God? What's the deal? What's going on? While you were asking yourself - or the Lord "Why is that guy at work so mean? Why is the kid next door so belligerent? Why did they have to scratch my car? Why is it I can't buy things I want for groceries this week? Why? Why? Why?" And I want to tell you that though it seems it, none of it is senseless.
The world's philosophy would lead us to believe that it is senseless. I would recommend a film to you but it's very strange so please don't watch it. But for those of you who did, thinking it was just a comedy, if you do happen to see it, think again. It's the movie, "Mars Attacks". The movie was meant to be a portrayal of pure existential philosophy. And as a portrayal of pure existential philosophy what it basically said is, that nothing really makes sense in the universe, it just is what it is - and I want you to know that that is a lie! Everything in God makes sense. Even what you're going though today and what you've been enduring for weeks and maybe months and maybe years is not purpose-less. But is designed and crafted by a Sovereign God explicitly for your good. And you need to know that. That every little irritation is not just some freakish, random thing happening in your life but that all of them compounded together are in fact orchestrated by that Divine Hand so that you and I will be made after the image of His Son. So James begins by helping us see that there is nothing senseless in the trial and instead admonishes that we "consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials."
Let me do a little bit of word study here for you for a moment. I've already given you that first word 'trials'. It's pierasmos. It's the same as being tempted in verse 13 but it's modified by this: God often tries us and sends us trial and difficulty but He never tempts us to sin. The difference is demonstrated by a word given to us in the next verse. The way that I come to this understanding and the ability to actually take my trials and tribulations and make them a source of joy rather than a source of constant misery is that I must understand that they come from His hand for this purpose - knowing that the "testing," is this wonderful word in the Greek, dokimas actually dokimion, is the same word that would be used for assaying gold. Testing it for the purpose of proving and marking out its authenticity, not for the purpose of making it fall. The enemy tempts and tries to make us fall. God tempts and tries us in our trials and tribulations in order to approve us visibly to this world. In fact, He does it to approve us so that we can understand it as well. It's never used of sin and that's the word that modifies pierasmos in this first section.
In fact, let me take you back to this little word 'consider' because if we miss this we miss the whole concept. It's the word hegeomai, which means to lead the mind with this thought. To take your own brain in check and say "I'm not going to let my thoughts go there; I'm going to make my thoughts go here instead." That's the thought here. It's exactly what he is talking about and what he want you to do is to lead your mind into a joyful pattern. Why? Because when you encounter these various trials, and because you know that the testing of your faith is that which produces endurance. hupomone is the word. I have a favorite word in Greek. It's not a favorite because of what it means. It's a favorite because I like the way it feels when I say it. It's the word macrothumia. I love the sound of that word. It rolls off the tongue. And it means to be long tempered. That's talking about having patience with people. And we are called to be macrothumia with one another, but that isn't the word here. This word hupomone means to be temperate or to be content when things have crushed you down and pressed you. It's to be content and to be at ease with God and to still have joy when you are under pressure.
The truth is, I can tell you from my own experience sometimes we don't always want to be joyful under pressure. We like being miserable. Sometimes we like to be miserable just because we want to feel sorry for ourselves. Self-pity is a fun thing! It's also the root of bitterness. It's what makes you so difficult that people don't want to be around you. But also, sometimes we want to be miserable because we get sympathy from people. And we do like sympathy. We want people to feel bad for us. We want them to feel worse for us than we feel for ourselves. Because then they do things for us. And they treat us so nicely. It's just a manipulative tool. Draw on the emotions of others to get exactly what it is what we think we want. But the other thing is we just don't plain want to be content with our sorrows. We want to say to God, "No, You don't have the right to do this to my life. You don't have the right to give me this kind of pressure. This kind of difficulty. This kind of trial. I'm running the show, not You. And I don't want to be content with this situation. With this circumstance." And then we're in real trouble. Because then we find ourselves fighting the very Hand of God. And I'll tell you there is no joy in fighting the Hand of God. None! You'll only sink deeper and deeper into your misery and into your despair and you will never rise above it. I say that sometimes we CHOOSE to not count it all joy when we could. But let's go on.
Not only are we to count it all joy because we know that the testing of our faith produces this endurance, this hupomone. But we are to let this endurance have its perfect result - telios. Let it bring to an end. Let it finish. Let it complete what it's designed to do. And what is it designed to do? It is designed to make us perfect and complete, lacking in nothing: holokleros, complete in all our parts without anything falling off. Filled and brought to maturity. The fullness of age. Those are the ideas that are contained here.
So, James wants us to know first that we are to understand our difficult circumstances as sent from God in order that in the process of approving us, we might gain that patient endurance which brings us to completeness so that we are lacking nothing. Nothing is senseless in this you see. Nothing is random. Nothing has come into your life or to mine no matter how small just because it's there, but God's working. In fact, if I can read you some words from a man who knew well his sorrow and trial and one, who has written most effectively on it, let me give you the words of J. Oswald Chambers:
"When God wants to drill a man,
and thrill a man, and skill a man.
When God wants to mold a man to play the noblest part.
When he yearns with all his heart to create so great and bold a man that all the world shall be amazed...
Watch his methods. Watch his ways.
How he ruthlessly perfects whom He royally elects.
How He hammers him.
And hurts him.
And with mighty blows converts him into trial shapes of clay which only God understands.
While his tortured heart is crying and He lifts beseeching hands.
How He bends but never breaks, when His good He undertakes.
How He uses whom He chooses.
And with every purpose fuses him by every act, induces him to try His splendor out.
God knows what He's about."
He knows what He's about in your life. And He knows what He's about in mine. And there is no senselessness here. In fact, He attaches two great reasons to everything. In this concept of becoming perfect and complete and lacking in nothing, the first idea is simply this: We endure His benign trials from without so that we may be able to resist the malignant trials that the enemy brings drawing upon our own lusts. It's a direct correlation between the two. If you don't do well with natural stress and strain you are a person who falls easily to temptation and sin. And in His infinite wisdom He works in us to learn how to deal with that pressure that we might stand complete when the pressure comes from the enemy and from the drawing of our own lusts within.
The second reason is found in verse 18, which we'll get to, but that ultimately He might be able to manifest through us something of the age to come. What an honor. What a privilege. What an amazing call. He not only gives us a purpose for the senselessness but He gives us wisdom for the confusion. And I don't know yet a person who has been under severe stress and strain and trial and difficulty from all sides who has not manifested confusion over how to deal with it; how to wrestle with it. Look at what He says in verse 5. "But if any of you lacks wisdom."...Now that isn't a call to wisdom in general. It's wisdom about this that He's talking about in the context of what came before, how we are to count it as all joy when you're being tested and tried. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given him. He says "I guarantee that if you start seeking Me in the midst of the trial for the wisdom as to how to turn this into joy, I'll show you! I won't upbraid you for it. I won't say, What are you stupid? Why didn't you know this already?" That isn't God's method! He doesn't attack us in our weak hour and say, "Why didn't you figure this out on your own?" Instead He says, "ask Me and I'll be pleased to pour out on you wisdom so that you begin to take the trial and sanctify it for His glory!" He loves to do that! He loves it but we...I tell you what we do; we develop a theology that says if I'm in any kind of trial or tribulation it must be the devil. I must rebuke it! It must end! Completely contrary to what He has told us here.
He says He'll be happy to give us that wisdom but that one must ask in faith, verse 6. Without any doubting "for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind for that man ought not to expect that he would receive anything of the Lord being a double minded man in all his ways and unstable." What is He saying? The only one who can ask for that wisdom and receive it is one who is committed to Christ. The one who is doubting, the one who isn't sure if he's committed his course to the Lord, the one who still stands outside, oh he's religious but he isn't sure about this 'everything's for Christ' deal. He says don't let that guy think he's going to receive anything from the Lord. He's a man driven by the wind. He's tossed by externals. And those externals produce a churning even in his very system all the time and that guy won't get a thing. He isn't set! He hasn't set his heart and mind on following Christ. He's in it as long as the going is easy. How many people have been lured into our churches with the promise that everything will be wonderful when you get saved? God's going to fix your home! He's going to fix your marriage! He's going to fix your kids! He's going to fix your financial situation. He's going to fix your car. Oh let me tell you, He hasn't fixed my car! That's so contrary to where He is. Why? Because He isn't dealing with the externals of just what's just going on here. He is preparing a people for eternity.
Here in the now is only the staging, only the preparation. It's not an easy thing to comprehend or how to act upon, to count it all joy when you're in the midst of trial. I remember reading the introduction by C. Everett Koop to the biography of Donald Gray Barnhouse that was written by his wife Margaret, called "That Man Barnhouse". Barnhouse you know was a great preacher and teacher that believed in the sovereignty of God. He taught the Doctrines of Grace. It's interesting how they come out in everyday life. It seems that he was just on his way to go and speak before a congressional committee. It was about an hour before he was ready to board the train to go down to Washington, DC and Dr. Koop was in Barnhouse's office discussing some things with him and someone had given Barnhouse a new fountain pen. He used the fountain pen and then he put the top on and then put it in his shirt and promptly there was a huge blotch of blue/black ink on his white shirt. No time to go home and change. I'm going to have to go and testify before congress with this and he said "I guess God wants me to go this way today." He put his hat on and went. I wouldn't do that. I'd say, "God? The devil is trying to get in my way! He's trying to upset me! He's trying to stop me from heaving a clear mind! He's trying to make me look like a fool in front of the congress! He's trying to divert me from what I really want to do! Lord, you have to rebuke the enemy for Thy Names sake!" How foolish. What a terrible, miserable way to live. Wouldn't you rather be able to say "God, I don't understand it but give me the wisdom to sanctify the trial for your glory that I might joy in it." I tell you, the unbeliever cannot have that kind of life. Only the child of God can. This wisdom is not available to them and it's not available anywhere on earth. It only comes down from above. Only from Him.
Thirdly, He not only gives us a purpose for the senselessness in wisdom for the confusion but He gives us reality for the spectacle of it all. Look at verse 9. He's going to give us examples of two different guys dealing with exactly the same thing. There are trials and there are tribulations but these are in two different situations and the trials and tribulations are different. The brother of humble circumstances, how is he to reconnoiter when he considers all these things that are coming on if he doesn't have anything to lose to begin with? He's already in trouble. He doesn't have a position. He doesn't have much to cling to. He's just who he is. And how is he to begin to count his trials all joy? He says simply that the brother of humble circumstances is to glory in his high position. God alone is the one who directs these things. And the brother of low degree says, "Look, I'm in the presence of God and I'm in His will and under the hand of the living God." I don't know how it is that we have attached some mythical shame to trial and difficulty but we have in the church. We've told people, not with our lips, but somehow we've communicated to people that if you're sick there is something shameful about it. That if you're going through trial and difficulty there is something shameful about it. That you ought to be embarrassed about it. This is exactly the opposite. James says it's not true. The brother of low degree says when he goes through his trial I know I am held by God and this is Him working in my life and takes it as an exultation. Wow! What a way to live!
What about the guy who has plenty? What about the man who holds a high position? He says the rich man is to "glory in his humiliation because like the flowering grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with a scorching wind and withers the grass that it's flower falls off and the beauty of its appearance is destroyed, so too the rich man in the midst of his pursuits will fade away." The guy who is wealthy, the guy who has it all together, the guy who has begun to trust, even subconsciously in his own state and situation, is suddenly awakened to the fact that all of this will be blown away with he morning breeze and that there is no lasting virtue in anything that this life gives, only as it is given by Christ. And so he is taken away from that self-confidence and that self-trust that he has in the large bank account, in the 2 Roth IRA's and the 401K and in everything else that he's got socked away. God says your hope, your confidence isn't there and rejoice that I have stripped that away so that you see the truth of the person you need to put your confidence in which is Christ, and Christ alone.
But He does a fourth thing. He gives expectation for the hopelessness because if there is another cry that is perhaps offered up more often than the cry of, "Why God?" it is the cry of "How long?" Hopelessness is such a destroyer of men's hearts. When you can see no way out. When there is no fathoming an end to the circumstance. When there is an assumption that this is the way it is and it's never going to change. It's not going o get better; it's only going to get worse. What do I do with that information? He says I want you to know that it's not hopeless. Look at verse 12. "Blessed is the man who perseveres under these trials. For once he has been approved he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him." You think your situation is hopeless? Let me tell you the truth. If you are a child of God, your situation is going to end. One day you're going to stand in the presence of your God and King and He will crown you with that crown of life and you will spend eternity with Him. It is not hopeless! It will end and it will end on time! He holds you! He keeps you! He will preserve you until that hour! Nothing is hopeless because of the God we serve and because of the promise that He lays before us! How often we let those things crowd in upon us and we have to go back and leave the mind out. Consider it all joy! It's not an easy thing to do but oh what a blessed thing to do! But He doesn't stop there.
He gives us a fifth thing. It's wrapped up in verses 13 through 15. There we read, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God; for God cannot be tempted by evil", and here is the difference between the two. The first is trial and tribulation and testing of all sorts but the tempting unto evils, solicitation unto sin, how does that arrive? God doesn't tempt a man with sin but each one is tempted when he's carried away and enticed by his own lusts. Isn't that amazing! And then when lust is conceived it gives birth to sin and when sin is accomplished it brings forth death. What he is saying is simply this. God's nature is not to draw you into sin. You need never fear that that's Him. Yes there will be trial, yes there will be difficulty, yes there will be pressure and stress and all kinds of other things but God will not draw you into sin. That's a product of your own fallen heart. His nature is to guarantee that you need not fear that God will lead you to destruction. He is Holy and He cannot do anything but that what is holy. He won't let you go. He presses us again with the benign, in those trials and tribulations of the first verses that we might be perfect and entire and lacking nothing. When it comes to dealing with the internal pressure, the internal tempting, and trying and testing that sin brings.
But He gives us a last one. It's found in verses 16 through 18. And so He gives this final admonition regarding His thoughts above. "Do not be deceived my beloved brethren. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth with the Word of Truth so that we would be kind of a first fruits among His creatures." He gives us certainty, THE certainty of who and what He is for the unknown of what lays ahead. He does it in a wonderful way. He says that all good and perfect gifts (He's talking about the trials and tribulations in the first verses) all those good and perfect gifts come down from the Father of lights, the Father who is from above in whom there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning. It's such a wonderful phrase. In terms of variableness, what we're saying is that God Himself is constant. He always acts according to His holiness. He always acts according to the commitment of His love toward us in Christ. He never varies from that. He never treats His child any differently than He would treat Christ in exactly the same circumstances. He never varies that way. You never have to worry that one day He's just going to up and get ticked off at you and everything is going to blow apart because of that. That's not the way - He has not dealt with us according to our sins says the Psalmist. We are not rewarded after our iniquities. He's dealt with us after grace. And He never varies that principle with those that our His own. But this idea that with Him there is neither shadow of turning: As we stand on the earth and the sun stays steadfast in its one place and as the earth rotates around the sun and as it turns, shadows come and go. But the shadows are not the product of the sun moving, they are the products of us moving. God hasn't changed His position. We changed position. And we say, "Well, look at this gray shadow in front of me." And He says, "That's due to your position relative to Me." And when He is directly overhead there is no shadow. Yet when we are walking contrary to Him we see that shadow again. It isn't Him that changes. The sun never moves. There's no shadow of turning in Him. The shadow of turning is in us. And so the heart anchors itself in this reality that He never changes and because He never changes I can trust that what He's just told me is absolutely true and will never fail. Every trial, and every pressure, and every difficulty, and every crushing thing that you are under this very hour, you can know of an assurance is designed by Him, not to crush and to destroy you but to work in you that endurance which brings out a perfection that enables you to stand holy against the sinful temptations of this world, and ultimately brings you to the place where He displays through your life that you are a first fruits of the resurrection of Christ. What a thing that He gives us in trials and tribulations. We look at them with such disdain. We look at them with such fear, sometimes with disgust. It ultimately boils down to this. Trials are good because they come from One who can't do anything BUT good. And He brings us forth not to destroy us but to show us off ultimately as trophies of His power and His grace.
If I might, I think I Peter 2:9 sums this up in its entirety. When it says, "But you are a chosen race. You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation. A people for God's own possession so that you may", and I think the Kings James is better here than the NAS "show forth the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." He does not leave us with senselessness, with hopelessness. He does not leave us without purpose. He does not leave us without wisdom. He does not leave us in that position where we have nothing that can hold us and keep us but He pours out of His grace upon us with such love and such mercy.
I'll let John Flavel close us out this morning with these words. Preaching on Providence. "How great a pleasure is it to discern how the most wise God is providentially steering all to the port of His own praise and His people's happiness. While still the whole world is busily employed in managing the sails and tugging at the oars in the opposite direction. To see how they promote His design by opposing it and fulfill His will by resisting it and enlarge His church by scattering it, and make their rest come the more sweet to their souls by making their condition so restless in the world. This is pleasant to observe in general but to record and to note its particular designs upon ourselves with what profound wisdom, infinite tenderness, and incessant vigilance, it hath managed all that concerns us from first to last, is a ravishing and transporting thought! Oh what a history might we compile of our own experience while with a melting heart we trace the footsteps of providence all along the way it hath led us to this day! And set our remarks upon its most imminent performances for us in the several stages of our lives." Listen to this. "Here it was prevented and there it was delivered. Here it was directed and there it was corrected. In this it grieved and in that it relieved. Here was the poison but here was the antidote. This providence raised a dismal cloud and that dispelled it again. This straightened and that enlarged. Here a want but there a supply. This relation withered and that one springing up in it's room. Words cannot express the high delights and gratification's of gracious hearts that they find in such an employment as this"
Do you live like that? I don't either but we are suppose to. I think that's exactly what James told us. He just said you need to know who He is and then you won't have to worry about the "what" that happens. Flavel continues: "Oh reader, if your heart be spiritual and well stocked with experience; if you have recorded the ways of providence toward thee and wilt thou allow thee time to reflect upon them, what a life of pleasure thou mayest live. What a heaven upon the earth does this way lead unto. I will not here tell thee what I have met with in this past path lest it should seem to savor up too much vanity." Flavel says if I look back and look at the providences of God in my life within all of the trouble trials and tribulations and were to tell you where God brought good out the of it in the process, it would seem like I am bragging. Boy, what a way to look at things. "There are some delights and joys in the Christian life which are and must be enclosed but try it yourself. Taste and see and you will need no other inducement. Your own experience will be the most powerful oratory to persuade thee to the study and the search of the providence of God."
If you are His this morning and you are at the breaking point, remember those words of J. Oswald Chambers. "He bends but never breaks, but hammering and hurting, He molds us into shapes of clay that only He understands. But He knows what He is about and He will bring it to perfection in Christ. Count it all joy brethren when you fall into divers temptations knowing that the trial of your faith worketh patience. And let patience have its perfect work that you may be complete and entire, lacking nothing.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You again this morning for the counsel of your Word. Oh how it escapes us at times. Lord we get caught up in the moment that we forget the eternity. We focus so much on the current distress that we forget the promises. We fear so much the unknown that we lose sight of the eternal concrete that you've given us. We see things so myopically that we've lost the vision of an Omnipotent, Omniscience, Omnipresent, Sovereign, Loving God! We have spent so much time trying to sooth our own wounds that we've completely forgotten that He suffered wounds at Calvary that will heal us for eternity and bring us at last into eternity without a doubt. Father, will you remind us again this morning by your Spirit, that you have called us to a life that is beyond the comprehension of the lost and that you have endued us with graces and with the gifts that taken all together should give us joy unspeakable and full of glory. Not in spite of the difficulty, but as a direct result. We need your wisdom to do that and we plead with you for it, in Jesus' name, Amen.
Transcribed by Jude Heberger
Copyright © 2000 Reid A. Ferguson. Permission granted to quote in context.