In this sermon, Tony Arsenal delves into James 1:1-18, offering an encouraging and theologically rich exploration of how Christians can find joy amidst trials. Addressing an audience of Jewish Christians scattered due to persecution, the book of James reveals the purpose of trials: to test and validate faith, producing steadfastness, sanctification, and ultimate conformity to Christ. This teaching emphasizes God’s unchanging goodness, His provision of wisdom in trials, and the eternal crown of life promised to those who persevere in faith. With references to Romans 8:28, Philippians 1:6, and Matthew 24:13, the sermon provides practical insights into how believers can face suffering with confidence, trusting in God’s providence and immutability.

James 1:2-4 calls believers to “count it all joy” when facing trials, not because the trials themselves are joyful but because they fulfill a higher purpose. Trials test and validate faith, much like a temple shekel is weighed to confirm its authenticity. This testing produces steadfastness—a spiritual endurance that equips believers to persist in faith throughout their lives. Far from being a random occurrence, trials are divinely ordained to sanctify us, conforming us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:28). They provide a tangible demonstration of God’s faithfulness, working in and through difficult circumstances for our ultimate good and His glory.

James describes God as the “Father of lights” with whom there is “no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). This imagery highlights God’s immutable nature—He is unchanging and perfectly reliable. Unlike the instability of human circumstances or the shifting shadows of the natural world, God’s character and promises remain constant. This truth provides profound assurance to believers, especially in the midst of trials. The same God who brought us forth by the word of truth (James 1:18) is faithful to complete the work He began in us (Philippians 1:6), ensuring that no trial will ultimately consume or defeat us.

James 1:5-8 emphasizes the necessity of wisdom to navigate trials, wisdom that comes not from human reasoning but as a generous gift from God. This wisdom enables believers to see trials from an eternal perspective, trusting in God’s providence and purposes even when circumstances seem overwhelming. However, James warns that this wisdom must be sought in faith, without doubting God’s ability or willingness to provide it. Doubting God’s goodness leads to spiritual instability, like a wave tossed by the wind. Thus, asking for wisdom is both an act of faith and a demonstration of trust in God’s fatherly care.

The Joy of Trials

[00:00:00] Tony Arsenal: We’re gonna be reading today from the first chapter of James, so if you’ll make your way there,

[00:00:13] Tony Arsenal: and I will be reading verses one through 18. This is God’s word. James is servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. To the 12 tribes in the dispersion, greetings counted all joy, my brothers. When you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.

[00:00:43] Tony Arsenal: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given to him. But let him ask. In faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.

[00:01:03] Tony Arsenal: He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation because like a flower of the grass he will pass away for the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass. Its flower falls and its beauty parishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

[00:01:27] Tony Arsenal: Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial for when he has stood the test. He will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted. I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires.

[00:01:49] Tony Arsenal: Then desire when it has conceived, gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow. Due to change of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

[00:02:17] Tony Arsenal: Pray with me. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your servant James, who has given us this wisdom from above. Let us receive it with meekness and humility. Let it implant itself into our hearts so that we may run the race and persist to receive the crown we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

[00:02:42] Tony Arsenal: I got the call from Isaac on Saturday afternoon or Friday afternoon. Excuse me. Asking me if I could preach. And I think most of us, if we got a call asking to preach in a few days, would probably think about it for a few minutes. Uh, I was able to say yes right away because God’s providence is such that I was actually studying the book of James.

[00:03:03] Tony Arsenal: Uh, some of you may know I have an opportunity to fill pulpit, uh, in local churches occasionally. And I was asked a few weeks ago to preach the second half of James one, and so I was already studying the book. I was already reading through the commentaries.

[00:03:15] Tony Arsenal: So in God’s providence, he was already preparing us for, uh, for today, I wanted to just share a very brief bit of information about the book of James.

[00:03:26] Tony Arsenal: It’s always important when we come to a passage to understand the context. James, uh, as an epistle was written by the brother of Jesus and he, James was the leader of the Jerusalem church. So early in Christianity, the primary center of of Christianity for the first several years was really Jerusalem. So there were of course, Christians that were at Pentecost that had begun to work their way out back to their homes.

[00:03:50] Tony Arsenal: But primarily, at least as, uh, the Book of Acts is concern, we really zoom in on the, um, church in Jerusalem. And James was the leader of this church. James was writing to an audience of Jewish Christians who had since then been scattered into the Judean countryside as far north as Fania. So the very northern reaches of, of what was the land of Israel at the time.

[00:04:16] Tony Arsenal: And they had been scattered out of the church due to persecution that arose following Stephen’s death. So you don’t have to turn there, but just to sort of show that I’m not making this up, uh, acts eight, one says, Saul approved of his execution, speaking of Steven. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem.

[00:04:34] Tony Arsenal: They were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. And then compare that to James one. One. It says, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes in the dispersion Greetings. Now, that word scattered that you hear in both. I’m, I’m not a big fan of using a lot of Greek terms in, in this kind of context, but the word for scattered used in acts as DePiero, it’s a farming metaphor.

[00:05:01] Tony Arsenal: It’s you scatter seed. It’s a very interesting, um, turn of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration that the persecution of the church was described as the scattering of seed, which of course we hear later in church history is a common theme picked up. And in James, the word for dispersion, it’s a little bit obscured, by the way.

[00:05:20] Tony Arsenal: It’s transliterated instead of translated, the word is diaspora. So you can see that the word for scattered and the word for scattering or the dis the scattering, the dispersion is basically the same word. One is a verb and one is sort of the noun form of it. There’s also some, some verbal affinities between James here and the letter, uh, that the Jerusalem council sends out.

[00:05:42] Tony Arsenal: They both end with the word greetings, which is an, a very uncommon way to end a greeting for a letter in the New Testament. So we see that James, the brother of Jesus, as opposed to some of the other James candidates, um, is the author here and he’s writing to this persecuted church. And it’s important for us to frame this as a letter to the persecuted church.

[00:06:01] Tony Arsenal: ’cause I think we think of trials and we think of something very different usually than the trials that were going on in the audience of this letter. That’s not to say, and we’ll talk about why we can say it. That’s not to say that this doesn’t speak to other kinds of trials, but if we lose sight of the fact that this is a persecuted minority scattered into the Judean countryside being oppressed by wealthy Jewish landowners, most likely we lose sight of the flavor of this and the force of what he’s saying.

[00:06:32] Tony Arsenal: Today’s sermon will have three main points to cover. The first is the purpose of the trials we face. The second is the outcome of those trials, and the third is the source of our success in those trials. So the purpose of trials, the outcome of trials, and the source of our success. James two, uh, one, two starts with the familiar phrase, but I, I wanna read it again here because I think we often gloss over it quickly as we’re reading.

[00:07:00] Tony Arsenal: We’re kind of eager to get into the meat of it, or maybe we’re rushing to get to chapter two where it gets a little spicy with the justification controversy. But it says here, count it all joy, my brothers. When you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

[00:07:25] Tony Arsenal: Count it all joy when you meet. Trials of various kinds, right? Don’t count it some joy. Don’t count it a little bit of joy. Don’t think about counting it as joy. Count it all joy. In the Greek, this word is positioned in front of the word it’s describing, which gives it the robust character. The word all is not like, count it every joy.

[00:07:50] Tony Arsenal: Think about everything as though it’s joyful. That’s not what it’s saying. It’s intensifying the word. Count it as extreme joy. Revel in the joy of this. It doesn’t mean that the trials themselves are joyful. That’s not what the text is saying here. This is not a bootstrap theology where we just try hard enough to not feel bad about the terrible things that are going in our life.

[00:08:14] Tony Arsenal: Um, James was not telling the Christians in persecution here that they should smile when someone is coming to kill them. What he’s saying is that they should count it all joy when they meet these various trials. Because you know the purpose of them. You know that they are for the testing of your faith.

[00:08:36] Tony Arsenal: And we can know that this applies to our trials and not just the particular persecutions that were happening because he tells even the people who are in the midst of this persecution that they will face trials of various kinds. So whether it is the loss of a loved one sudden or expected, whether it’s the loss of a job or a messy divorce, that you have no say in the matter, a wayward child or a loss of property, a cancer diagnosis, or the bills that you can’t pay, or something as mundane as the sleepless nights with a new infant.

[00:09:14] Tony Arsenal: Those are all trials that we should look at and count as joy, counted as all joy. And the reason, again, is that these trials have a purpose. These trials survey function. We, we read in Romans, we won’t turn there, but we read in Romans, I’m sure we’re all familiar, right? God works all things for the love or for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose, that they might be the firstborn among many brothers that they might be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

[00:09:45] Tony Arsenal: This is not saying that God is coming behind an uncontrolled history and is figuring out a way to make something good outta something bad, and he’s certainly not commanding us to try to do the same thing. What he’s saying is that the purpose of these trials, and it is known to us that the purpose of these trials, because God’s word tells us that it is known to us, is that they produce in us endurance and steadfastness.

[00:10:10] Tony Arsenal: One commentary I read translated this as sticktoitiveness. This is not about. Gritting your teeth and bearing it. It’s not about living through an individual trial and just making it through. This is about the life of endurance that is ours in Christ by the pul power of the Holy Spirit. This is also not a test of our faith as in a test that we pass.

[00:10:36] Tony Arsenal: This isn’t some sort of, um, entrance exam into the Kingdom of Heaven. The Greek word here has to do with validating things. The image that was used is the idea of the temple shekel. You’ll read about that in the Old Testament and the temple shekel. In ancient times, they would, everything would be weighed out on scales, and it was very easy for people to shave off the edges of their coins to shave just a little bit off so they could keep that small amount of silver or gold or whatever it might be.

[00:11:04] Tony Arsenal: And so the Temple Sheckle, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference by holding it in your hands. But if you put the Temple Sheckle on one side of a balance scale, and you put the other shekel on the other side, if they don’t balance something is off. That’s the picture that we have here. Our faith is not being, um, tested in that we have to prove that we have faith.

[00:11:25] Tony Arsenal: We’re not trying to clear a hurdle or to try to pass an exam. Our testing here is that our faith is being validated. It is being shown to be genuine and shown to be real. In many ways, the person that it’s being shown to the most is ourselves. God doesn’t need to learn that our faith is real. Our colleagues and our brothers and sisters in the faith.

[00:11:51] Tony Arsenal: It’s helpful for them to be able to look at our lives and to be able to assess whether we are in the faith. But first and foremost, these trials serve to validate our own faith to us, to encourage us and to build us up in the faith. They are not a hurdle for us to jump over. They are a rubric or a grading scale.

[00:12:15] Tony Arsenal: That is shown what the reality is. And finally in this section it says, let Steadfastness have its full effect. If I want it to be just a little bit cheeky, I might translate this as, let, let Steadfastness show its chief end. The word here when it says full effect is the tell us, the end, the aim of steadfastness.

[00:12:40] Tony Arsenal: It’s not saying give steadfastness permission to do what it does. It’s saying let steadfastness complete the work that it is intended to do. So the trials and the testing of our faith build in us this steadfastness. They come to us and they show us. And the Holy Spirit uses the difficult providences in our lives to show us that we have faith and to show us that it is being perfected in us.

[00:13:07] Tony Arsenal: It is being grown, it is being sanctified in us. And through this process, our steadfastness has increased. We will face more trials. We’ll come back to that at the end of the passage here. But there’s this cycle testing faith steadfastness, testing, faith steadfastness. It doesn’t stop, but it’s for our good and for God’s glory.

[00:13:30] Tony Arsenal: I take your Bible briefly. I’m gonna turn over to Matthew 24, 3 through 14.

[00:13:41] Tony Arsenal: I commented earlier that this is not just the momentary endurance of making it through an individual trial. That this is the steadfastness of a Christian life and it’s not James alone who teaches this. So reading starting in, uh, Matthew chapter 24, verse three, and he, Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives.

[00:14:01] Tony Arsenal: The disciples came to him privately saying, tell us when these things will be and what will the sign of your coming and the end of the age, Jesus answered them. See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name saying I’m the Christ, and they will lead many astray. You hear of wars and rumors of war, see that you are not alarmed for this must take place.

[00:14:19] Tony Arsenal: But the end is not yet for nations will rise against nation and kingdoms against kingdom, but there will be famine and earthquakes in various places. All these are about the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you’ll all be hated by all nations, for my name’s sake.

[00:14:37] Tony Arsenal: And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will increase the love of many will grow coal cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved and this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations.

[00:14:57] Tony Arsenal: And then the end will come. You can see just in the English translation, the the verbal affinities here, right? For James, the full effect of steadfastness, which is in Greek is Hoopa. Monet, is that we might. Uh, is that we might be perfected in the end, in the Tello. The tell us for Jesus, the one who endures, he endures until the end, the telos.

[00:15:24] Tony Arsenal: So we have this complex of words that is used by the church, by Christ to show us that the process of Christian living that will bring us to the end is one of endurance. We should not expect it to be easy. We should not expect it to be simple and to not require effort. Both Christ and Jesus. And then Paul and all of the other, um, biblical writers who teach on this are arguing that the chief end of this endurance is to prepare us to fulfill the chief end of man, which is to endure to the end so that we might glorify God and enjoy him forever.

[00:16:06] Tony Arsenal: The endurance that we. Have that is given to us by the spirit is given to us for the purpose of our good and for God’s glory.

[00:16:17] Tony Arsenal: Now moving on to the next pass, uh, section of this passage here back in James. We see immediately that James acknowledges that seeing trials in this way is going to require wisdom.

[00:16:31] Tony Arsenal: The natural man cannot look at negative things as they’re happening and see that they’re for his good. We all know people, and I think almost everyone, this is a universal experience who’ve had some sort of negative thing happen in their life, and they look back and say, that was really the best thing that happened to me.

[00:16:49] Tony Arsenal: But we’re not talking about the wisdom to see the good. In retrospect, we’re talking about the supernatural wisdom, the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit to see the good in advance. To understand and trust the Lord that he is working good for those who love him, that he is conforming us to the image of his son, Jesus Christ.

[00:17:14] Tony Arsenal: For this reason, we must ask God for this wisdom, not just in the moment, but every day. Every time we come before the Lord, we should be asking him for wisdom and we can be confident as we approach the throne of grace. Because God does so generously and without reproach, he does not chastise us for asking for wisdom.

[00:17:36] Tony Arsenal: He looks at us similar to how he looked at Solomon. We can ask God for all of the temporal blessings of this world, for all of the skills that we need to accomplish our job, and he may in fact give them to us. God is a God who loves to give good gifts, but just as he said to Solomon, I will bless you with this because you have not asked for other things.

[00:17:55] Tony Arsenal: He also will bless us with wisdom. Another way to come at this phrase of without reproach is to bless. Without hesitation, God is not slow to grant this blessing. God grants us this blessing in the moment that we ask for it, and in a certain sense, the blessing comes in the very asking of it coming to God.

[00:18:16] Tony Arsenal: To ask for wisdom is itself a wisdom act that is driven by the Holy Spirit. We cannot do it apart from wisdom that he’s already granted us. However, James is clear that we must ask for this in faith. He says that you must ask with no doubting for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

[00:18:39] Tony Arsenal: When you’re sitting on the ocean, the waves have a rhythm. They come in, they go out, they come in, they go out. They don’t ever make a lot of progress. When they do make progress, it’s a big problem, but even when they do, they still go back out. It might just come in longer and harder, but they go back out.

[00:19:01] Tony Arsenal: This is the image of the doubting man that that James is leaving you with. It’s this fool who spins his wheels and accomplishes nothing. He’s asking for something from someone he doesn’t believe has the ability or the desire to grant it. That makes no sense. You wouldn’t go to someone with no money and ask them for a loan.

[00:19:23] Tony Arsenal: I mean, you might do it, but it’s a foolish thing to do.

[00:19:29] Tony Arsenal: God does not answer the prayers of those who are marked by doubting him. Now, James is not saying anyone who ever has a doubt is not going to be given this wisdom. That’s just not, not the testimony of the New Testament and James is consistent with the testimony of the New Testament. What he is saying is those who are characterized as the doubter.

[00:19:50] Tony Arsenal: It’s not just the individual who has a doubt from time to time, or even the person who has the persistent and besetting sin of doubt. There are those out there who are, for whatever reason, just full of doubt. They’re full of a lack of assurance and they need to have our gentleness and not our uh, aggression.

[00:20:11] Tony Arsenal: But that is not who James is talking about. He is talking about the person whose life is characterized as a rebellious doubt in the blessings of God. Probably he’s referring to the Jewish landowners that are persecuting the church. He’s probably referring to people who claim the name of God, who claim to be God’s people and refuse to accept his blessings on his terms.

[00:20:36] Tony Arsenal: If we do not believe that God is generous or that he will give us this wisdom asking for, it is a form of insanity. That’s why he says that the one who doubt. Is a double-minded man unstable in all his ways. It’s not just the faith life of this person that is unstable. When you live a life characterized by radical skepticism and doubt, that will creep into everything you do and it will make your life unstable.

[00:21:04] Tony Arsenal: He gives us two primary examples, and this is a, a thing that James does a lot. He’ll get, deliver a little block of teaching. He’ll give us a concrete example and then he comes back to that block of teaching to finalize and clarify it. He gives us the example of the lowly brother. We might translate that as poor brother.

[00:21:23] Tony Arsenal: The Christians that are being persecuted, he’s encouraging those, receiving the letter, but he’s also encouraging us that are lowly us, that are made lowly by our trials. Later in the chapter outside of our passage, he talks about receiving the word with meekness. He’s talking about those, the lowly who receive God’s word.

[00:21:43] Tony Arsenal: In humility, asking for wisdom to understand it. He says that this lowly brother will be exalted because of his trials, because of his humiliation. He will be exalted. And then he contrasts this with the rich doubter and the commentaries in the church have interpreted this doubter in many ways. Some would say that this is a rich Christian, and so his humiliation is that in the end of things, he will, uh, he will not have his riches.

[00:22:14] Tony Arsenal: I’m not convinced of that perspective. I think that a, a better argument can be made again, that the rich doubter here is probably the Jewish Christian’s persecuting the church. But he says, let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation because like the flower of the grass, he will pass away.

[00:22:35] Tony Arsenal: The rich doubter will not endure through his trials. James is probably referring to the trial of being rich, which is its own kind of trial. But whatever the trial this rich person faces, he will not per, he will not endure because he will fade away like the grass he fades away in the midst of his pursuits.

[00:22:57] Tony Arsenal: So James is building this image for us of the wise lowly Christian who trusts the Lord in the midst of his trials, seeks wisdom and receives it by going to the word of God and hearing and receiving the word of God in meekness. And he contrasts that with the people who do have a bootstrap theology who do think they just have to push harder.

[00:23:19] Tony Arsenal: They do just have to see the good in it and see the silver lining. Do you see that contrast? There’s those, uh, those who have faith in the Lord and are able to see that the Lord is working even in the most tragic of circumstances. I had a friend in college, uh, who. She, um, she had rheumatoid arthritis or some sort of rheumatoid disorder.

[00:23:42] Tony Arsenal: And so the, the medication she had to take was, um, was not conducive to healthy pregnancy. So her and her husband had to make the difficult choice to just commit themselves not to having children. And I heard, I heard from a, a friend, uh, shortly after we graduated, that they had found some new treatment that was managing her condition and she was able to get pregnant.

[00:24:02] Tony Arsenal: And she was calling to share that this mutual friend was calling to share the good news. And a few days later, that same mutual friend called me and told me that my friend had been in a terrible car accident, died on her way home from her first ultrasound. And I remember sitting at the funeral and her husband was literally carried into the podium, and he looked at the, the, it wasn’t a church service, it was a, it was a funeral service, but he looked at the gathered crowd and he said, for I know that God works all things together for the good of those who love him.

[00:24:34] Tony Arsenal: That is the lowly brother who trusts in the Lord. In the worst circumstances that brother was imitating Christ, who of course looked forward to his trials with joy. Moving on to the outcome of our trials, we see in verse 12, James says, blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial. We see again that same repeated language who remains steadfast under trial for when he has stood the test.

[00:25:03] Tony Arsenal: He will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. The order is being moved around. Before it was the trials that produced the testing that produced the steadfastness. Now it is the steadfastness under trial that we are looking at, and it is looking at the test in reverse.

[00:25:27] Tony Arsenal: This is not, um, someone who stands through individual trials, as we said. We could look at this in a translation, which is hard to say, might say for when he has been authenticated or when he has become authenticated. The, the word here is a, a being verb when he has entered the state of being, of having been authenticated.

[00:25:51] Tony Arsenal: This is looking at the final outcome of the life of a Christian who has faced trials and has remained steadfast, who has trusted the Lord to give him the steadfastness, the endurance, the sticktuitiveness to persist.

[00:26:09] Tony Arsenal: And this is now given to him as the victor’s crown. The crown is the, the culmination of his trials. It’s the culmination of his steadfastness. Paul describes it this way in one Corinthians nine. He says, do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that. You may obtain it.

[00:26:29] Tony Arsenal: Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But after I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest I preaching to others should find myself disqualified. And that word disqualified is the negation of the same word that we’re using here for tested.

[00:26:57] Tony Arsenal: He’s saying, I discipline my body. I run after the prize, not so that I may gain a prize, but that I may not be unauthenticated. This is the consistent teaching of the New Testament. Not that we obtain our salvation based on our endurance or obtain our salvation based on our works, but that we must endure unto the receiving of our prize.

[00:27:25] Tony Arsenal: If we want to make it to the end, we have to make it to the end. But making it to the end is not what gives us the prize. It’s not what gives us a right to the prize. It’s not what delivers us the possession of the prize. It is simply the pathway that we must walk in order to reach the goal.

[00:27:45] Tony Arsenal: Moving on to close out the passage here, starting in verse 13, we talk about the source of success in our trials. Now this is a complex passage and and we won’t dig into all of the nuances of it here, but James is very careful to qualify a few things. He’s told us now that the reward is for those who endure, which implies that there are some who do not endure.

[00:28:09] Tony Arsenal: There are some who will not be qualified or will not be authenticated, but will instead be disqualified. He’s anticipating the doubting man who receives nothing from God and blames his failure on God’s withholding wisdom and endurance.

[00:28:25] Tony Arsenal: He is anticipating the argument that someone will say, well, I asked for wisdom and God didn’t give it to me. Calling God a liar, because we know that God gives generously and without reproach to all who ask for wisdom. The way that he answers this hypothetical objection is He points to the fact that God is holy, good, and wholly righteous, and cannot be tempted with evil.

[00:28:54] Tony Arsenal: And because he cannot be tempted with evil, he cannot be affected by evil. He cannot be tested by evil. Evil has no control or root or foothold within God. He also cannot be said to tempt anyone else with evil. So rather than look at a situation where a person is facing a trial and fails under the trial and blames God, he details for us how it is actually that that failure occurs.

[00:29:23] Tony Arsenal: Starting in verse 13, he says, let no one say when he is tempted, I’m being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. Then desire when it has conceived, gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

[00:29:42] Tony Arsenal: It is absolutely the case that the trials, the providence, the context that our trials take place in, comes to us from God. He will ground that later on in the verse explicitly. What does not come to us from God is the evil desires that inappropriately reach out and interact with those desires. When God brings a good gift in in our lives, there is a constant temptation to take that good gift and use it for unlawful purposes.

[00:30:13] Tony Arsenal: The constant desire to find your identity in your children instead of in Christ. The constant desire to see your spouse as someone who is there to meet your needs rather than someone you are called to serve and love and sacrifice for the desire to turn the money we earn in our jobs, in our vocations, which God has called us to, and our catechism is clear that wealth is not in itself a bad thing.

[00:30:39] Tony Arsenal: To turn that into an idol, to turn that into its ultimate purpose. That temptation is constantly there, but it is not there because God is dangling something bad in front of our face and just hoping we won’t take it. Instead, we are tempted when we are lured and enticed by our own evil desires. This is a fishing metaphor.

[00:31:00] Tony Arsenal: It’s a line fishing metaphor. Most fishing in the promised land was done by nets, but there was line fishing. We read, Peter goes and he line fishes when he gets the temple coin to to pay the temple tax. The picture here is that. Our desire is placed on the end of the hook, and when we bite, we are trapped.

[00:31:20] Tony Arsenal: It’s not that the nice new car that we’ve been looking at, that there’s nothing wrong with purchasing a nice new car. It’s fine to have a car that you enjoy or the trip, the vacation that you’re planning or whatever it might be. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing that if you’re doing it according to God’s law and in Christian prudence.

[00:31:39] Tony Arsenal: But when we reach out and grasp ahold of it because of, or through our wicked desires, we have been tempted. The temptation is not the thing that’s out there. The temptation is what happens in here. And he says that desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown, brings, brings forth death.

[00:32:03] Tony Arsenal: The chain of verbs here is in a complete tense. It’s not a sequential thing. It’s the desire. When it has finished the process of conceiving, then it gives birth to sin, and when sin has completed the process of being fully grown, it brings forth death. This is both terrifying and encouraging. It is never too late to stop and turn around when you’re walking down the path of sin until you’ve reached the end.

[00:32:30] Tony Arsenal: If you’ve endured to the end of the path of sin, then you’re in trouble. But the Holy Spirit is always quick to bring us back. He’s always quick to receive our repentance. This is why we should repent of particular sins, particularly we should examine our life every day and see the areas that we are falling short.

[00:32:49] Tony Arsenal: He goes on to reinforce this when he says in verse 16, do not be deceived, my beloved brothers, which of course implies that there were some who were either being deceived or likely to be deceived. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

[00:33:10] Tony Arsenal: The trials themselves are not joy, but they are a gift. John Piper wrote a famous book, don’t Waste Your Cancer, right? We don’t have to enjoy trials. We don’t have to think that they’re fun. We do have to recognize that God is working in them and that he has ordained them for us. He has prepared them as good works in advance for us to walk in

[00:33:38] Tony Arsenal: and it calls God here the Father of lights. This is probably not a reference to God the Father as the first person of the Trinity, but rather a reference to the whole Godhead as a fatherly God who gives fatherly gifts to his people. And more than the fact that God is a fatherly God, God is immutable. He does not change.

[00:33:57] Tony Arsenal: There is no variation or shadow due to change in God. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Malachi three six is the famous passage in the Old Testament. If, if you, if you’re looking for a new memory verse, you could do a lot worse than this one. It says, for I am the Lord. I the Lord do not change.

[00:34:18] Tony Arsenal: Therefore, you, o children of Jacob are not consumed. God’s unchanging nature is a source of comfort and assurance for his covenant people. We are marked in our baptism with the promise of God. He has admitted us into the church. He has promised us by the sign of baptism that we are his people, that we will persist until the end, that we will be fully clear.

[00:34:45] Tony Arsenal: Uh, CL cleansed, excuse me. It’s a sign and a seal of regeneration. It signifies what is ours in Christ that is given to us by the Holy Spirit. And we can look to our baptism. We can look to. The Lord’s Supper. We can look to our Christian family and our place in it. We can look to these things that God has given us and we can trust that he is good because he does not change and his promise does not change.

[00:35:12] Tony Arsenal: Paul says in Philippians, he says, I’m sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Just as Israel could be confident that even though judgment was coming, they could be confident that they would not be consumed. So also, can we be confident that our trials will not overcome us.

[00:35:34] Tony Arsenal: We may be pressed down, but we are not rushed. The hearers of this letter were persecuted, but they were not abandoned. And lastly, he says in verse 18 of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creation. He gave birth to us by the word of truth because that was his unchanging, eternal will.

[00:36:01] Tony Arsenal: And if it was internal, eternal unchanging will that we would be brought forth as the first fruits of his creation. It is also his unchanging eternal will that he will accomplish that for his own good or for his own glory, and for our good.

[00:36:17] Tony Arsenal: A few brief points of application as we leave this place today. And I, I recognize that this is probably particularly poignant for people in the congregation right now. We’re all facing something, some of us worse than others, and this is not an easy application to make to any passage of the Bible. But we must praise God in the midst of our trials, we must turn to Jesus and give him the glory he deserves for bringing us through and into these trials that he will produce steadfastness in us.

[00:36:51] Tony Arsenal: He is producing steadfastness in you. You may not feel it, you might not recognize it. In the dark of the night when you’re laying there staring at the ceiling, just begging for sleep to come. ’cause that’s the only thing you can do to get it off your mind. He is building steadfastness in you. And that steadfastness is not just the means to reach the end, it is the very testimony of God to your faith.

[00:37:17] Tony Arsenal: It is the discipline that he instills in our life to show us that he is our father. And once your faith has been fully validated, you’ll receive the crown of life, not as a reward of your faith, but as the ultimate proof that you are his. When we look at the Olympics, in most instances, it’s very clear who wins.

[00:37:39] Tony Arsenal: There’s an objective standard, and the winner is determined based on when they cross the finish line in reference to other people or how high they jump or whatever the, the test might be. The awarding of the Olympic medal is not what makes them an Olympic. It is to show that they are an Olympic winner.

[00:37:57] Tony Arsenal: It’s the signification to all who are seeing. It’s the permanent reminder that they have run the race and that they have won the prize.

[00:38:09] Tony Arsenal: An equally difficult application here is to not only praise God in the midst of your trials, but to seek God in the midst of your trials. God generously gives wisdom to all who seek it from him. It is important to seek wisdom. When we are not facing trials, it is vital that we do when we are. If we do not allow our trials to be a source of driving us to the Lord, then we in very real effect, are wasting our trials.

[00:38:42] Tony Arsenal: We might learn something from it. We might come out of there with a good story that we can tell. It may shape our careers in a positive fashion. We may be able to look at it and say, this was the best thing that ever happened to me. But if we do not seek God in our trials and allow ourselves to be shaped by the Holy Spirit, then we might as well pack up, shop and go home.

[00:39:04] Tony Arsenal: God has brought you forth by the word of truth, and God is faithful to complete his work in you. Let’s pray.

[00:39:15] Tony Arsenal: Father, we are soft-hearted and sensitive as we come to your word. We are all mourning something in our own ways, and we are all facing difficulties in our own ways. And we know that it is not easy to count at all joy when we face these trials, but we also know that you are working all things together for the good of those who love you, and we love you Lord.

[00:39:40] Tony Arsenal: And so we can trust that the purpose of these trials is to conform us to the image of your son, Jesus Christ. So we pray that you would make that true in our lives, that you would make it apparent to our eyes. In Jesus name, amen.