Our text this morning is from the book of James in the first chapter, and particularly, we'll be looking at verses nine through 11 as we turn there. I would like for you to turn Read along with me, but remind you that James sometimes gets shorted because he's writing to those who already know the gospel and telling us, then how do you live? He's assuming that you already know of the story of Christ, of his death, that you know that by faith, you rest in Him only all these things are there. In fact, it's been said you take a knife and cut the skin of James, and it will bleed. The Gospel, all these things are assumed on that. The question is, then, okay, now that this is true, how am I supposed to live? And so he writes about it primarily to those of Jewish background.
He is, of course, himself Jewish by background, and it's sometimes called the Book of Proverbs in the New Testament, because he uses proverbs that catch in your memory and you're able to hold on to them longer.
So James, beginning at chapter one and the first verse, this is God's very word.
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes of the diaspora.
Greetings. Con it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and that steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If anyone of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, without doubting, for the one who doubts is like the 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. 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 fails, his beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade in the midst of his pursuits. This is the reading of God's own Holy Word. Let's pray, Father.
We do now ask for wisdom.
Your word is clear. You use plain language, and yet the hardness of our hearts makes us stumble by your own spirit, open our minds and our hearts this day that we would honor you and worship you and understand your word and be obedient by faith.
We ask it in Christ's name and unto His glory, amen can be seated please. It is the basic premise of the scripture that we're under trial, whatever age, whatever time, God's people are persecuted in this world, that which God declared in Genesis three, that the three seed of the serpent would be against the seed of the woman has been in place ever since that time of the fall of man into sin.
And yet here, writing to people in persecution, James, as Paul does in other places, encourage us to rejoice because of what we know about the gospel, what God has said Our situation is. And he says, here, you get confused, ask God for wisdom.
You're not sure exactly the way to please and serve him. Your heart is given over to him.
Ask for wisdom. He never fusses at you, even though he's told you the same thing 30 times. He doesn't rebuke you. He gives to all who ask without rebuking in any way. And the confusion of our trials in a world where we have so many messages of the world coming in so many directions, some pretending to be from Christians.
How do we how do we know where to go?
Well, we understand where we're heading toward.
As we looked last week, God is causing all these things to work together for our good to those who love Him, that we will be made like Christ. It will be justified, sanctified and glorified, and be with Him forever. We know where we're heading. We know that he's promised us wisdom and how to get there, but the.
The question to deal with this morning is, Well, where am I from? Where am I starting?
What is my point of origin?
Maps are very handy. If you know where you are to start with.
That's why you go to a shopping mall. Those that are still open, maybe a map of the mall, and at some point, will say you are here, because it doesn't help very much. Otherwise, GPS is a wonderful advance, now that they have pinpoint, starting out, automatically detecting where you are. Well, the confusion of this world, we're confused at times about actually where we are, where is here? Where are we?
You know, driving down the road, every man is convinced he knows exactly where we are, and we'll get there without any help.
Thank you very much. And every lady says, Whatever clerk and whatever store close knows exactly the directions we need.
Neither one is right.
Well, dealing more serious matters and how to get to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving dinner.
How do I approach God? How do I live for him? What do I do in this world? Last week, we considered the misconceptions of Jacob as to what God was doing, how he thought God and all these things were against him? Well, this morning, we deal with the confusion about what our situation is now, not the confusion Jacob had about where was he going, what was happening, but what's my status right now? What where am I?
It's not a new problem.
Just as with Jacob, we see this same problem repeatedly. You see it in the 73rd Psalm with Asaph, he says, I was confused. I saw the wicked prospering and and we're I'm suffering. And then when I entered the temple of God, I perceived therein, when I looked at it from God's perspective, I saw exactly the situation clouded by our pain, clouded by the chaos of the trials going around us.
What is my status here? What is the divine wisdom? What does God say? Here is where you are, not confused, not misleading, nor misled. What is your situation right now? Well, that was Jacob.
Was thinking, I'm abandoned by God. Okay, that's laid to rest.
Well, then what is my status?
Now is one being led by God, and James uses a parable. It sticks in your mind, and at first reading, it kind of whirls around in there and doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation. You what's going on?
Well, the first part is more easily understood when you realize that, though many translations have poor, the ESV has lowly, which is more accurate, it indicates a state of heart and of mind. There.
Contrast it with those who are raised up in the world. Those who are raised up in the world get different treatment and enjoy different status. You see it in the US, even with a background of generations of Christian training, how the sounds like the rich can get away with anything, that if you are impoverished, you're going to be hit by everything and nothing you can do about it.
It's generally about every week or so you'll see you about some elected official being pulled over drunk driving, and they'll say, You can't do this to me. Do you know who I am?
And none of us, I doubt, have ever had that problem by having to say, Don't you know who I am?
It's here in our country, but it's far worse throughout the world. It was worse in the time that James is addressing, it's still terribly worse. In other countries, the poor have no real rights.
The poor are the lowly in status. The rich come bossing them around. I still recall an airport trip when a woman from a foreign country was trying to check in at the gate with about eight large bags of carry on.
And the clerk said, No, you can't do that. You have to check your luggage. Oh, I can take this on. You don't know who I am. I can do and the clerk said, Sorry, ma'am, you can't really do this.
And finally, as she was getting more desperate, she started offering sums of money. And he said, No, ma'am, can't do it.
And finally, had to call the police. Because she was wealthy, she had her way. This lowly clerk couldn't tell her what to do.
And so if you were poor, impoverished, you're also socially reduced, and you have no real grounds of appeal.
You're oppressed, you're looked down upon in every way.
That attitude is growing in our country. So hopelessness involved in it one of the great outcomes of our first OPC diaconal conference was they pointed out in assisting those who are poor for a length of time, you have to address first the hopelessness.
They think I'm poor, I'm impoverished, I'm lowly, I'll never get out of this cycle.
And you have to first give them the hope of the Gospel and the hope of righteous living, and give them a hope that gives them the incentive to go and to pursue these other methods.
It's a hopeless, helpless, terrible thing that is taking place at the time Christians are lowly in the world.
And I'm not simply referring to the fact, as Jesus said, or as this apostle said, not many mighty, not many rich, are called, but in the world's opinion, we're lowly.
We're to be despised. Look at the media. What religions are they beat down on.
You. Look at mockeries of things religious. Who is the most mocked, even in our own nation, we have to realize that we are the ones who are counted wrong.
We're unimportant. We have no status.
And so in the the minds of the world, if you're a Christian, you're the one who's the last kid to be selected on the team.
You're the one who's going to be ignored, despised, etcetera, even though the world treasures the virtues that arise from our faith.
The world thinks highly of honesty. The world thinks highly of our diligence, of our obedience to civil authorities, how we can bridle our tongue, not slander us, not given to road rage and shopping rage and all those things general benevolence that really hospitals were started by Christians who could not manage the expertise and the size of caring for those who were severely injured, so they set up hospitals to show hospitality to those who didn't have family to care for them, To care for them and look after them and provide for them. The world enjoys the fruit, but it hates the root and derides the root.
And when you are marked as a Christian, your status has fallen drastically and will fall drastically all the attitudes which are favored by Christ are hated by the world.
Pride is thought to be a good thing in the world.
Self righteousness, revenge, no matter how petty the revenge, the world applauds these things, and Christ doesn't, and that's why there comes to the lowliness of being a Christian, a hopelessness.
The world's never going to like you.
The world is never going to think well of you.
You're never going to have the favor of an unbelieving world.
There is always going to be an oppression, a turning against in every sense. And as you grow in grace and in godliness and your life becomes more and more Christ like, and the world that hated him all the more, hates you all the more.
And he was a man afflicted, despised, who bore our sorrows.
There is hostility that often remains subtle.
Sometimes it breaks out openly, but it's ongoing.
It's going to continue to be, James doesn't try to gaslight you. Oh, you're going to be popular. It's going to be no, you're going to be.
The lowly in the eyes of the world, deal with it. How do you deal with it?
He says you're rich.
You're actually rich.
Let the lowly who want Christian. That's not what he calls us here.
Let the lowly brother now, who's writing this, James?
Who is James?
He's the half brother of Jesus.
So he who is my flesh, brother of Jesus is now also calling you his brother as part of that family. You are a brother of Jesus Christ. You are part of the royal family of God. You bear the family resemblances, and that's the reason the world hates you. It's a part of your riches that you've been taken from your sin, your blindness, your hatred of God, your rebellion and all those corrupt things, and turned into one who loves the Lord and seeks to follow him and seeks to be obedient to him.
That's why, in the Heidelberg, what are three things required.
The last one is show your gratitude by the way you live for this great grace that is there you have been adopted. And an adopted child is as fully and as certainly and as surely a member of the family as a child, biologically from that family, in some ways even more, because it was by choice.
We had four children. We love them all. Wouldn't give any of them back. They make great grandchildren and great grand great, great grandchildren. But anyway, when you go to adopt, there's someone has no rights, has no claim on you, has nothing of your family, inheritance there to lean on, no obligation, and yet you take them and they become fully a part of your family, your forever family, never to be turned away. They are as surely and certainly there as we are in the family of God, brethren.
We use the term somewhat lightly when we think of each other. We call each other, brother or sister.
But let's recall the root of it.
We are brothers and sisters of Christ, and having been made a child of God, brought into that family, the great conqueror in our adoption is brought to us great gifts. You go on reading in Ephesians, he says he that ascended into heaven LED high a host of captive and gave gifts to men, and he gave them apostles and prophets and teachers they might be made holy. God has bestowed on you men who have been called by him, chosen by him, gifted by him, trained under his direction, that you might know more of your father and walk more closely with him to show you more and more fully your access to The Throne.
You're in the presence of the omnipotent a child of the Almighty King.
Your father rules.
Your father rules over all things, and he calls you His child, and Jesus calls you a brother, as the Prophet said that he would be the first born among many brethren.
So you lowly one, look away from your poverty and realize that the riches of heaven are yours and not know the riches that will await for us when we leave this life or when Christ returns. But already we are children of God. Already he calls us his own. Already we look on Jesus Christ as brother.
Already His favor in hand, rest on us.
I remember many years ago, driving in to Tucson at night, we were living there, and I'd gone to our daughter church, driving back, the sun was down, Tucson is kind of a little dip in the road, and looked at hundreds.
And 1000s of lights, or street lights and all the rest. And I was thinking, yeah, look how big it is. But I'm a child of God.
You're exalted.
You have been lifted up.
Of all of the individuals in this earth, you child of God, have been made his child and adopted by him in love, as Calvin says, He who estimates this favor of God or right will regard all other things as worthless, then neither poverty nor contempt, nor nakedness, nor famine nor thirst will make his mind so anxious but that he will sustain himself with this consolation. Since the Lord has conferred on me, the principal thing, it behooves me patiently to bear the loss of other things which are inferior.
We are joined with him and an indis relation of love and an indissolvable status of honor when you read in the book of Revelation, who is on thrones saints, the 12 Apostles, representing the church, and Paul argues with the Corinthians, of them fussing among each other, and says, you're going to judge angels already, he who reigns on high calls you his own and does these things because you are with him and regenerates us by the same Spirit. He joins us together. He makes us one despite whatever other differences there might be in us.
I mean, we're different. You and I are different. We're all different, some more different than others.
What do we have in common?
We're brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, I remember in Iowa. I remember God who came, joined the church, came there to stay with his brother in law for a while till he got a job. Bobby was nothing like anybody in that church, Bobby was formerly a druggie and a drunkard.
He played major league baseball, made it to the big show one year, he said, Then he injured his shoulder and couldn't play anymore, but during that year, he earned a taste for drugs and drink and other things, he would go around with $19.50 in his pocket, because he said, If I get $20 I'll buy drugs with it.
And the Lord turned him around, and he was the happiest, most joyous believer you ever saw.
And a class of a church primarily middle class Midwestern people, he fit right in different Yeah. What was the one thing in common?
He was a fellow believer.
He loved the Lord, and he was one who they cared for.
Toward the end of my time there, he was diagnosed with life ending disease that came shortly after I left, the people in congregation took care of him. His family didn't want him what to do with him.
CONGREGATION found an apartment for him, furnished it for him, drove him back and forth to work. His license had been permanently revoked. He had so many DUIs, and he rejoiced in the Lord and testified of His grace every time anyone would come in his hospital room. What was in common?
What do you have in common with me?
I mean ugly, old guy.
Most of you aren't ugly, not many of you are old.
I don't know what you do, what your preferences are. I bet some of you don't even drink coffee.
What do we have in common?
We are exalted as the children of God each and every one, and that's why James goes on in the next chapter to say, when the lowly man enters your assembly, don't you dare give him a lesser seat.
You treat the rich man better, and you shouldn't do that. This one is your brother, too.
He says, You who are lowly, rejoice in your exaltation.
You who are.
Nothing in the world and will never be counted anything in the world.
God has raised you up and raises you up and puts his mark on you.
And there is a bond there in this family, Tertullian, quoted in the second century, saying of the pagans would see, Behold how these Christians love one another. If they simply know the others a believer, they're willing to die for them.
There's a bond there, joining us together, because we all together recognize our lowliness is a mark of godliness.
The world is opposed because we're like Christ, the world doesn't like us because we resemble him.
His mark is on you. It's why the world hates you.
Now, granted, some of us do dumb things and get in trouble on our own, but we're talking here of a general status in the eyes of the world.
It's because Christ has made you his own. Matthew Henry said it's an honor to be dishonored for his sake.
And he gives his hardest task to the best students.
He gives us more and more in the face of a world that hates him as we more and more resemble him, and it don't get any easier.
I remember a number of years ago when my hair was much darker, speaking with a Dear Elder who was at then, about the age I am now, he said, Rodney, it doesn't get any easier. I thought it would, he said, but it doesn't, and I can tell you, it doesn't.
So boast that word has connotations of a loud exaltation, shouting in triumph, your team won at the football game. You sit there in the stand and say, Oh, that's nice.
Rejoice in your lowliness, because indeed, you are wealthy beyond understanding. Now, by contrast, let the lowly brother boast in his saltation exaltation, and the rich boast in his humiliation.
Maybe not talking about rich in general, though that's applicatory in some ways. Not that many rich Christians along the way, but compared with most of the world, compared with Christians, to the ages, you are rich and you have no idea how rich.
Number of years ago, my oldest went with me to Uganda. He was in college. The first night in country, we had a contest to see who had the biggest spiders on the ceiling in their side of the room, and who had to move their stuff more often because the rain was pouring through.
They honored us with giving us chicken to eat, but it was Olympic quality. Chicken, the bones would break before the muscles would tear, going hut to hut, evangelizing, where children were running around and maybe had a shirt and the toy to play with was Daddy's machete.
Good thing there was no litter.
They couldn't throw anything away.
So we came back, and our flight left from Uganda to Kenya to skip a airport in Netherlands.
And we're sitting there, and he looks around, he turned to me, he said, Dad, everybody here has more things of value in their pockets right now than the average Ugandan family owns, in total, and he never complained again about poverty.
You have vehicles that will drive when you leave here, you'll go home, place where you live that has a roof on it has air conditioning and maybe even heat by now, electricity, running water. You got clothes that you're wearing.
Go home and you'll change clothes. You'll have food there.
Family, you're richer than most people throughout history have ever been, and we sometimes get distracted.
Sometimes the Lord gives a wake up call with two little rainstorms you've had here recently.
He Helene and Milton, and they caused great destruction, didn't they?
You're still here.
Yeah, you got problems.
You got housing repairs. You got to do. You still got a house.
Most of you family is here, you're still rich even with those things.
But that storm was, in a sense, God's wake up, because, like James says here, like the flower of the grass, he'll pass away.
All these things can disappear very, very quickly, flower the grass talk about in Palestine, out in the desert regions and the climate. There is a notes here in Isaiah 40 about how the flowers wither and fail quickly. Here it's November. Flowers are still blooming when the Spanish came and found Florida, they named it Florida because it was a land of flowers blooming all the time. There in Palestine is real in that area, when rains next day, you got flowers and you've got flowers for a week or two, particularly when this soroco comes the dry wind coming off the desert, they wither up.
Matthew Henry says, the worldly wealth is a withering thing disappears pretty quickly.
$1,000 isn't much to have, but it's a lot to need.
What you have disappears and can disappear and will disappear and go quicker than you thought possible.
And resting on those things means that you're resting on a pile of sand that's being eroded the whole while, and James says, Rejoice in your humiliation.
You got nothing, not simply in terms of the world, but in terms of God. What are you going to bargain with?
He doesn't need you.
God doesn't need you. What are you going to do for him?
What are you going to do? Other than be an example of His grace.
You can do wonderful things and say, Here, Lord, look at all this I've done for you.
Remember that heretical poem that goes around God has no hands but our hands to who the masters will Well, yeah, he does. He does what he pleases, and you got nothing to bargain with him about.
Lord. I tithe. Who gave you that money to start with?
You got no leverage?
Well, Lord, if you'll do this for me, I'll do what? Nope, no bargains.
You may be rich in the eyes of the world. You may be lifted up in the things you have and the status you have, but you got no privilege for that.
You come before God just like the poorest beggar.
Only thing you bring to Christ is your sin and your need of a Savior. You You're humiliated.
God by His grace, Child of God has pierced through the blindness, pierced through the false confidence of I'm strong, I'm vigorous. I can serve him doing this, and I can do that, or I have these resources, or I'm able, he pierces through them and says, You got nothing.
You got nothing, dude, you got no privilege or entitlement there at all. Your status in this world gives you no advantage, a helpless and hopeless sinner begging for grace.
He says, exalt in it. Rejoice in it. That's the kind of people God saves.
That's the kind of people God saves you. And God receives you in your deflated arrogance the same way he did the lowly he does for us, that which we cannot do, he gives to us that which we do not.
Have he overcomes our sense of self worth, self righteousness, self importance. Shows us the reality of our lowliness and our need of grace and mercy that we come pleading for that and he humiliates us and brings us low that we might find great riches, that we might find true riches, an exaltation beyond anything the world can think of or offer.
So he says, if you are confident of your resources, your ability, your your rank in the world, or wealth, or whatever else. Don't rejoice in them, but remember, they're going to disappear.
You know the old joke about the funeral procession? They ask how much the man left behind? The answer is, everything be gone quickly, whether by death, by someone going bankrupt, by theft, by whatever health and strength disappear just as quickly also the temptation to think they will endure is to be confronted by Christ's remembrance that we are not having that security, the grace of God has called us to recognize that brevity and to look to Him and to realize what We have now is His provision.
He's put these things in our hands to be used and served.
They can be stripped away.
You only stand by grace, even as we speak rejoice, the status will be removed, and you'll be seen before eternity in the angelic host as once saved by grace. Meanwhile, he says, The rich man fades away in the midst of his pursuits.
When your pursuits, use it pursue things, you are going to lose it, so use it properly.
Your necessities, your investments, care for the family, relief of the poor brother, who is so lowly that everybody simply looks down with contempt on his need, rather than reaching to help him come out of that need. See, there's going to be an end to both, an end to the lowliness, an empty to the highness. There's going to come an end to the need for provision and the abundance that some have all fades away, and Christ only remains.
So James says, that's that's where you are, you who are lowly, rece you who are rich, rejoice in humiliation.
That's Christ's work in you. And you see why this is built on the gospel. What's the first beatitude?
Blessed? Are the poor in spirit, James is simply echoing what Jesus has said. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
We come today to the Lord's table.
How many of us earned the right to be there?
How many of us can come boldly and say, Hey, this is mine. I deserve this.
We come lowly, we come with a confession, I have nothing to offer. Christ has given to me.
I have nothing I can say. I can exalt Him.
I come humbly to receive from him, his body, his blood. I need his grace, and he gives it, and he shows it and says, Do this in my church so you never forget you don't feed yourself with the goods of salvation I give to you come. He says, and feast you who are poor, let's pray, Father, we thank you for your great grace, thank you for the abundance of your love and mercy toward us, for showing us reality.
In teaching us who we are in this world that you've made we thank you Lord for stripping us down that we might see how wealthy we are.
Now we ask for grace to honor you by living before you as those entirely depending on your mercies, and as those who have received those mercies, we come in Christ's name, Amen.