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Listeners, we are embarking this morning on a new miniseries drawn from the book of James. We begin with a message entitled Trials and Joy. Preached by Pastor Wei. Let's prepare our hearts and allow the Lord to speak to us through his word.

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Church, this morning we are uh kicking off our study of the book of James. Uh, and it is a book that many have called intensely practical because it gives specific guidance to our human experience and to our Christian life. And I think it will be helpful to look at the very beginning of this letter of James, uh, in verse one to establish who this James is and the recipients of his letter. So in verse 1, actually we see this, right? James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion. Greetings. Uh a very short and sweet uh greeting in his letter. This James has been traditionally called James the Just. Uh he is, of course, also James, the brother of Jesus, uh, which itself is quite fascinating. He actually grew up with uh in the same household as Jesus with the Lord. Um and and at one point he thought Jesus was a lunatic. He was crazy, he was out of his mind, but now considers him as Lord and Savior. Uh this James will eventually become the leader in the Jerusalem church. Um yeah, when we read the opening of this letter, we find neither of these descriptors. Instead, we find James identifying himself as a servant, uh, which in the Greek actually means slave. He identified himself as a slave, someone belonging to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ. And he writes to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, which actually tells us quite a bit about the recipients of this letter. Um, historically, to be honest, it was not uh it was not a good time to be a Christian. Uh James was writing to his church members who were currently under heavy persecution. Uh, it's something we read in Acts chapter 8, verse 1, after Stephen's uh execution, we read that there arose on that great on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles. And so now it becomes apparent why James cut straight to the chase in the next uh three verses, the verses that we are looking at this morning. He was writing to a people who were under persecution and were suffering. And he says this in uh verses 2 to 4, as uh Vanessa just read out for us count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Let that uh let steadfastness have its full effect, that you will be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So remember that James was writing to a people who were in the midst of great trials, they were persecuted, they were dispersed from their home city, they were actually now living in great poverty under oppression of the wealthy in the places that they were at. Um, they were filled with trouble, they were filled with pain, with sorrow, and some were probably in despair of their lives. Yet counterintuitively, James exhorts them to count or to consider, to take the perspective that there is pure joy to be had in the face of these dreadful circumstances. What is he talking about? What is he on? James is of course not saying that we should seek out trials, right? Trials in and of themselves are not a source of joy. So we are not called to seek out, to look for trials and suffering. He is not encouraging us to be mesochists who derive pleasure from pain. Right? He uses the term meet when we meet trials, which actually is the same word used in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of the man who was traveling and then one day, and then during his travel, he fell into thieves and robbers. Right? He wasn't going around, going to the bad neighborhood, looking, looking for trouble, but he fell into it. A group of thieves came suddenly, beat him up, and robbed him. Right? It happened suddenly and unexpectedly, and that's how many of us face trials, right? They are sudden and they are unexpected. And so James is being real with all of us here. Because unexpected trials is a prominent feature of the human experience that is common to us all, right? And I'm sure all of us intimately know this that we all face unexpected uh trials throughout our lives. It'll be easier to count if I just ask, how many of you here have never had a difficulty in your life, has never gone through a trial in your life? All of us have had some form of suffering, some form of trial in our lives. And even though James, uh his recipients had a very particular circumstance, they were persecuted, they were oppressed. James casts his net wide here and he says, uh, when we meet trials of various kinds, there are various kinds of trials that we all will face in our lives. Some of us here may very well have been persecuted for your faith, or some of us may actually have to go through persecution in the future. Some may be going through uh a really difficult situation now, a terrible breakup. You may have lost a loved one and you have not quite gotten over it yet, or you are in financial difficulty, or you are struck with an illness, or there's a great setback in your life, there's trouble in your family or at work, or maybe deep down you have you're going through this struggle because you know that God is asking you to give up something and you just cannot let it go, and you're struggling through it. You're filled with anguish and sorrow, and you just want it to all end, you just want all the troubles to go away. You want to wake up one day and just be able to have peace for that day. James's first words to us is to count it all joy, consider it pure joy when we face these trials in life, and that is so contrary to our mindset, that's so contrary to how we think, right? Most of our contemporary life is uh is lived trying to avoid trials, right? If we can avoid trials, we can have joy. And if we have trials, then we feel like it is impossible to have joy, it's impossible to be happy, to be glad. But James says that if you want unadulterated joy, you'll find it in trials. Because paradoxically, trials, rather than being just destructive, tearing it that tears us down, trials can be generative and productive. Um there is a lot of writings about trials, about suffering in the New Testament. And it's not just in the gospel, it is in Acts, it is in many letters of Paul, it is in Peter, in Hebrews, and of course in James. And generally speaking, there are two approaches when when it comes to facing trials uh with joy. One is is uh eschatological, one is to look to the future, right? There is a future hope, a future glory, and a future reward, a final redemption to be had. And so we have already overcome all our sufferings in this world. Paul says that we consider our present sufferings nothing compared to the glory that we will have. So there's one approach to look far into the future and see that the victory has already been won. All this counts for nothing, and we can hold on to God with that hope. Another approach uh which is which we will be to say that there is still something to be gained in the here and now too. And this is where James is is coming from in his letter. Um, so so the question: why can believers respond so strangely and so unexpectedly to trials with joy? It is because that we know that God uses trials to perfect our faith and to make us stronger Christians. So let me read out uh verses three and four again. For you know that the testing of your faith produces something, it is productive, produces steadfastness or endurance in some translation. And let that steadfastness or the endurance have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. It is something that both Peter and Paul have uh written about as well. So if I can have the next slide, we will just kind of quickly look at what what both of them say. Um Peter writes this in this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, uh you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes through uh though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Right? Peter says that that the trials that we face today has an effect on us now, that it tests the genuineness of our faith. Paul come coming from uh from the anger as well, writes this not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. The apostle Peter, Paul, and James, they all recognize that we can rejoice in our sufferings because trials do something to our faith as believers of God. And from their writings, uh from these few passages, including James uh verses 3 and 4, uh chapter 1, verses 3 and 4, we can glean three related points or related purposes of trials for our meditation this morning. Uh, as we go through this along, maybe it's good to also ask yourself how has God used this trials for these various purposes in your life in the past? Uh, very quickly, then the first one trials, tests, and refine our faith. When trouble comes our way, we are tempted to doubt God's goodness. Or we want to take the easy way out to avoid suffering. But trials refine us like how we would refine gold. Right? It is not easy to refine gold. When they mine it, it's it's filled with impurities and by itself, it is not very valuable. We need to refine it, we need to make it pure. But to do so, it has to undergo intense heat and pressure so that we can smelt it, smelt it down and and and cause all the impurities to surface so that we can remove it, so that what is left is pure, genuine goal. And so it is with our faith, right? Uh, our faith that emerges from the crucible of suffering as genuine and pure, as holy and acceptable to the Lord. And that's the first thing. Trials, uh, refine our faith so that we know that we possess a genuine faith that we can say that we are wholly devoted to the Lord. And on the back of testing comes the strengthening of our faith. So that's the second purpose. Faith, uh, trials strengthen our faith by producing endurance, steadfastness, uh, perseverance. Right? Uh recently, uh the season two of this show, Physical 100, uh just came out, and I don't know how many of you know this show. I wanted to put a poster up, but then it will be just a bunch of half-naked men, and I I thought it might be inappropriate uh for church service. Um but physical 100 is about show, about about um competition of really, really fit individuals, uh seeing who has who has the the the best overall uh fitness. Yeah. Um whenever people watch shows like this, right? Uh I might myself kind of included in that. When people watch shows like this, or when New Year comes around, you want to have New Year's resolution, uh, you want to be like them. You want to get fit, you want to get strong, you want to get healthy, right? So you sign up for gym membership, or you start going to the stadium and you start to run, start to work out and all. Um and and you know, many people go into it hoping that you'll come easily and quickly, right? And hoping that they can maintain it without much effort. Of course, not knowing that it takes months, it takes years, and often an entire shift in lifestyle choices and habits to build that endurance to be physically fit for so long. We know in principle that if we stick to it, our endurance and our capacity grows. But it's a matter of putting it into practice. And so it is with trials in our lives when we suffer in the Lord, we we build up the muscles of our faith so the endurance may be produced in us, the endurance to run this race that God has set us on, and to the endurance to stand firm under trials and temptations of this earthly life. So, number one, trials test and and refine our faith. Number two, uh trials strengthen our faith by producing endurance. And the third thing is that this endurance from trials make us perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Uh, in the Jewish understanding, perfect uh tends to have this connotation of being complete or being mature, right? Uh in this context, it refers to being spiritually mature, having an undivided heart for God, right? The opposite is being double-minded about God. In other words, perfect here has the sense of being holy. A person who is complete and lacking in nothing is one who is pleasing to God and is ready to meet Jesus when he returns. And through the trials that test and produce endurance in us, our faith also grows and matures until we are made complete in God, until we can wholeheartedly devote ourselves to him, fully trusting in him and lacking in nothing. Um, it is when we come to a state of utter reliance uh on the Lord that we also come to a state of joy that can only come from the God who is our refuge and our strength. And this is what Paul was referring to in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, uh verses 8 and 9, um, in the next slide. For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experience in Asia. See what great trials that uh that Paul went through, uh Paul and his uh uh company went through. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we have received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. So, in the end, trials and suffering bring us to this point total reliance on God, and that is where we are finally made complete, mature, whole. And those uh three purposes, these are the community reasons why Paul James says we can count it all joy when we meet trials of various kinds. Not because trials themselves, uh uh, not because of the trials themselves, but because of the fruit they produce in us. It is a kind of joy that is truly not of this woe. A joy that cannot be fully articulated with words, because it is something we experience on a very personal level. Uh when I think back uh on how I came to Christ um at the at the beginning of my life, my new life in Jesus, um I remember my family being deeply opposed to my converse uh conversion to Christianity. Um and of course I don't claim to have gone through a lot of hardship per se. I mean, I think what I went through was pretty mild, uh all things considered. Um but I was on the receiving end a lot of angry, angry words. Um there was a fracturing of my relationship with my family. Um I remember I I hit the fact that I was coming to church for a while. I I didn't tell my parents. Um so so a bit strange a teenager waking up at 6 plus 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning to go somewhere. I used to tell my parents, ah, I go study, I go study with my friends. Um I I I I I hit the fact that I was attending church for a few weeks. Uh I didn't dare to tell my parents that I was Christian. Um But uh a few weeks down the road, I I felt I really needed to. I I I I don't think I can keep hiding from them. Right? And so I came came clean. I told them I became Christian, and um they went they went kind of uh yeah, they were really angry with me and they had a huge problem with me becoming Christian. What about our ancestors? What about uh my your my parents next time when when they passed away? Um there was a huge issue with me getting baptized as well. Um which I mean I went ahead with it anyway. Uh I think I think this teenage rebellion uh tendency in me uh in the past. Um but I went through all of this and when I first started attending church, I I I actually really I grew quite envious of my peers um who were born in a Christian family. Uh they faced um relatively no challenge to going to church. Um and I think I was envious of the fact that they grew up in praised land together, they are friends and they knew the Bible well, they knew the faith well. Uh and I I really wish that I had all these things, and I really wish that I didn't have to go through that whole episode with my family. Um at some point I really thought about uh stopping this this whole thing. Um my brother did tell me that uh you you probably wouldn't uh last for six months, and I don't know if I took that as a challenge, but I stuck around for more than uh six months. Yeah. Um but to be honest, I was really not having a good time uh during the formative years of my life as a teenager in in a very foreign culture in church. Um but I I'm I stuck around and I'm so glad that I did. I think going through that whole uh period, um there was that sense of joy, not that I was very happy on the outside, but there was a sense of joy because I realized that that was for me to bear, that was for me to stand up under, that was my opportunity to be a witness of God. I didn't like it, but but but there was a sense that I was contending for my faith, and that that the fact that I was given this opportunity to do so was almost a privilege. And so there was this kind of a quiet or uh an ineffable joy because my fledging faith was tested and was being strengthened. And I could say that um being able to stand up for my faith in God uh in the face of opposition was truly a kind of privilege and actually almost necessary for me at least, because down the road uh in the in the coming years from that period, uh there were gonna be there were more trials, more troubles, more issues that I had to face. And I mean to be honest, if I if my faith did not go through all of that, I don't think it would have survived through the many trials that that I have encountered in my life. And so, you know, really I can thank God for that, even though it was a particularly trying period. And then many years later, I I kind of met or encountered, uh, experienced a kind of a different dimension of trials and joy that I mean to be honest, I I don't think I've even uh really experienced in my life yet. But um many years back, I I did an internship with a church in Thailand. Right? I stayed there for a month, I followed the pastor in her ministry, and at that time she had a church member. Um the church member had kidney failure, uh, so he was suffering through it. Um but he was actually doing kind of well, but there was this period, just this period where it was so bad that that um you know he had to go for regular uh kidney dialysis and and and uh it was so painful that he couldn't move. Right? So one day um the pastor that was following she got a call from this. Man's wife asking if the pastor can go help and fetch him to the hospital because it's it's it's a particularly bad day, he cannot move at all. We we have no means of getting there. We need your help. Um so the pastor called me along. You know, we went to the man's place. I entered the house, I entered the room, I saw photos uh of the man, right? This this guy looked like tall, sturdy, uh strong, right? The kind of guy you wouldn't want to mess with, the kind of guy you you you see on the street, just let's look look look away, you know, scary, you know. Um and yet I saw him on his bed, um really, really skinny, just weak. Every movement that he makes, he he he grimaces, he he wins it. It's you can tell the pain on his face. And you know, I was there, I was trying to help him, right? So I I didn't even dare to to really uh try to try to uh carry him up, but but I was there to help him uh you know together we we we we load uh well we we brought him to to the church van and then the pastor drove the the the man and his wife uh down. Um you know um when when when when later on I I managed to tell talk to the the the the wife every time she talks about this, she's just in tears. You know, and in the car on the way back, um the the pastor was kind of recounting to me, you know, this this this couple and what's been going on, uh saying that that there's just so much pain and so much difficulty that they're going through. Uh money was a worry, money was an issue as well. Um, but you know, one thing stuck with me, which is that the pastor said they never stopped praising God. And I when that back then I was 20 plus, I was kind of young, and I'm just wondering how does someone go through all of this and yet still say, I thank the Lord. But they were thankful, they were always thankful, thankful for his grace, thankful, thankful for the hope that they have in God. Um, that Sunday I met the the lady, the wife in church, and I tried to converse with her. I mean, someone else had to translate for me, of course. Um, but indeed, the the the words coming from her mouth were thanksgiving. And she was just praising God, she was just thanking God for his grace. Um a couple of years later from from from that I received news from the pastor that he eventually got much better. Uh, she sent me a clip of of him serving in church, uh sweeping the floor of the church. And really, that was more than 10 years ago now, and I still think about it from time to time. You know, I will I I I mean I think it's safe to say that I'm much, much better off in in some sense, right? Um I mean I was studying in in theological school and I felt like you know, I was growing in my knowledge of God, I was growing my faith and all. And yet, after meeting them and witnessing their steadfast faith, the faith that endured through this entire period, it felt like they possessed something that I just didn't have yet. It felt like they had something so precious that I didn't have. Though outwardly they were troubled and going through hardship, though outwardly they were going they were going through a lot of pain, seemingly lacking in many things. Inwardly they were full, they were complete, they were lacking in nothing. Whereas I felt the the opposite. I I felt like like I had so much more, and yet I was lacking something so vital. And I think this is what Paul is trying to get at this total reliance on God for all that we go through in life, so that joy, true unadulterated joy, may come into our hearts. If you kick accidentally kick a wall or a table, you stub your toe, right? Suddenly all that matters is your little toe that is in huge pain, right? You drop everything immediately and start to tend to it. Trials have a way of focusing our entire being on something. It also has a way of kind of just stripping away all the unnecessary things, stripping away all the peripheral stuff, and to get at what is essential, what is core, what is true, and what is the most important thing for us. Right? Often when we are struck with illness, for example, suddenly health is really all that matters. And when those things happen, when when trials come, I think what James, what Peter, what Paul, what these biblical writers are trying to say is that when trials come, we can be torn apart, we can be in despair, we can we can just be depressed and just kind of give up. Or we can we can use this opportunity to fully rely on the Lord, on the good and gracious King who loves us so much and who is sovereign over us and who continues to watch over us, and and and it really is our true source of refuge and strength. And so there's that sort of joy that comes when we fully rely on him. When that happens, we allow him to complete his work in us through the trials that we face. And so I leave you with this question. Uh will you trust in the Lord? You know how difficult that is to trust in the Lord. Will you trust in the Lord though? Uh in verse 3, let me just quickly come back to James for just one last moment. James writes something that seems a bit odd. Um he says this, you can count it all joy when you meet trials because you know.

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Right?

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In verse 3, he says, because you know that trials test us, it produces endurance and maturity. Um, he says it as if it's so obvious, right? You can count it all joy, my brothers, because you know that it can be good. Well, perhaps it's it was very obvious for his readers, the ones, the faithful ones who are going under persecution for their belief in the Lord Jesus. But really, do we know that today? Is it obvious to us at all? Maybe a more helpful way of putting it is how would we know? How would we know that trials can can have such uh a productive uh purpose in our lives? Church, that knowledge comes when we entrust our earthly lives to the sovereign Lord. It is when we place our lives in the hands, uh in his hands, that we may allow the various kinds of trials to push us beyond mere intellectual ascent, right? To push us beyond just believing that there is a God, believing in the existence of a God, having God just in our mind, right? Trials push us beyond that to an intimate, very personal knowledge and a deep faith of God who is truly sovereign, gracious, and loving. So that we may be like David, who in Psalm 13 uh was going through an intense bout of troubles, and he asked God, How long, oh Lord, how long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? But then very quickly rises in his faith and hope when he sings in verses 5 and 6. But I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. Or to have the sort of faith that Joseph had when he was sold into slavery in Egypt. And through his audios, he saw the hand of God working, the sovereign hand of the Lord working, such that what his brothers meant for evil, Joseph could see that God meant it for good. Or to come to have a faith where we fully grasp um the knowledge as Paul did, that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are caught according to his purpose. So, church, when we meet trials, and we most definitely will, when we meet trials, when we are filled with pain and sorrow, what will be our response today? Will we trust in the Lord or will we despair and be torn apart? Let us hear the words of James. Count it all joy when we meet various kinds of trials. Let us choose to consider, to count it all joy, knowing that good will come out of these trials, that our faith may be refined, that our faith may be shown to be genuine to the Lord, that endurance and steadfastness may increase in us, and that we may become spiritually complete and mature, completely reliant on God and lacking in nothing, but have having everything in Christ.

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