James 1:1-4; The Life of Discipleship

Tanner Crum December 28, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL 

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Transcript

Welcome And Ministry Context

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Good morning. It's good to be here with you today. Like Andrew said, my name is Tanner Crum, and I am uh the campus minister with Reformed University Fellowship at Auburn. Uh and um uh my wife and I have been in Auburn for about seven years. Uh and faith is one of our supporting churches. Very grateful for it. And many of you sitting in these chairs support our ministry as well. Um and if you don't know, RUF is uh a strategic ministry partner um because over the past 25 years, 40 million Americans have left the church. Uh, and the time of life that they're leaving the church is between the ages of 15 to 25. And what happens right in the middle of that very formative decade in the spiritual life of someone is college. And so in RUF, we get to step into that time of someone's life when they're asking really big questions like who am I? Who is God? What does God expect of me? And we get to connect the big truths of the Bible to the big questions that they're asking, and we get to do it right on their turf on campus. Um, and I love what I get to do, and I'm very thankful for this church for for supporting us as we reach um students for Christ and equip the next generation of leaders in the church. Um, so thank you. Uh, and if you didn't know this, your your beloved pastoral intern Chris Um was before he was here, he was uh down in Auburn with us for three years working with RUF. And so Jason texted me a few weeks ago and said, Hey, you want to get the dream team back together? And uh so uh I said yes, and here we are. Um and this morning uh we get to take a look at one of the um passages from uh a book that I used to be afraid of for a long time. Um and uh it was because I didn't understand it. Uh, but after reading it and meditating on it and and preaching through it, this has quickly become one of my favorite letters in all of the New Testament. Um, and this is uh the letter that um the apostle James uh wrote to uh a really a cluster of churches um in uh in and around uh Turkey um in the first century. Uh and I I thought this letter was especially this passage was especially relevant as we come to the end of one year, right? And I don't know how 2025 was for you, but for us it felt pretty chaotic. Um and as we look into the uncertainty of the future in a new year, um this is a very relevant passage of scripture because the question that James wants to ask of you and of me is this whose disciple will you be? Whose disciple will you be? The question is never will I be a disciple? The question is always whose disciple will I be? Because we are always being discipled, we are always being formed, shaped, molded into the image of someone or something, or some practice, or some philosophy, or some new diet, or some new exercise plan. And now, more than ever, this is dictated by an algorithm, and even more and more by artificial intelligence that's backed by billions of dollars worth of data on you and all of your family. But this isn't something new. This has always been the nature of being human. We don't live in a vacuum, we're not brains on a stick, we don't make decisions based on logic and reason, but by passion and desire and values that we hold, whether you like to think you do or not. We were shaped and molded by our creator's hand in the beginning, we're shaped and molded in our mother's womb, and we come out as people who will be shaped and molded for the rest of our lives. There's no exception to the rule. Every day and every situation in our lives is a decision point. A fresh new opportunity to follow the path of Jesus or follow the path of discipleship to the world. And to be a disciple is to learn and to study and to experience and to form habits in your life that train your souls through your body. And the life of discipleship to Jesus is a means to an end. And James says the end goal of this life of discipleship is to be so transformed in your character by the continual abiding in the love of God, the love that Andrew just prayed about, through Christ, so thoroughly that you are made whole, complete, lacking in nothing. Does that sound like something you want in 2026? To be whole and complete, lacking in nothing? Does that sound better than settling for being judged successful by your peers or being liked or being distracted or being fit? So question for James is not, will I be a disciple? The question for James is whose disciple will I be? What does discipleship to Jesus look like in a broken world, no matter what's happened in the past year, what happens in the year to come? So let's read this text from James. This is James chapter 1, starting in verse 1. Says this James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he's writing to the twelve tribes in the dispersion. Um, these are uh tribes of Israel who have been dispersed from their homeland. Greetings. Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you meet trials of various kinds, knowing full well 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. This is the word of the Lord. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, this morning, as we come uh to this text in James, um, thank you for your word to us. I pray, Lord, that you would give us new eyes uh to see and new ears to hear. Would you open our hearts and our minds that we might turn to you and be healed? And we pray all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. So just a quick snapshot of who James is, who's writing this letter to these 12 tribes of Israel that are dispersed from their homeland. Um, James is the half-brother of Jesus, and he was actually converted in Jesus' ministry. Uh when you read the Gospel of John, you find out in the beginning that uh his brothers, his family didn't believe who he was. And later, as the story unfolds and the gospel continues, and Jesus is doing his healing ministry and his teaching ministry, and he's on his way to the cross, and Jesus appears to James after his resurrection. This is most likely the moment when James's heart was convinced of who his brother really was, that he was the Messiah. And later on, James would be elected the first bishop of this new Christian church in Jerusalem. He was the chief judge and authority of the Messianic Jewish community. He was known as James the Just, James the Wise. Uh, when James spoke, people listened. He was a scholar of the Torah, and he was deeply rooted in the person and work of his brother Jesus. And um, if that's not enough reason to listen, James, this is my favorite one. Uh James had a nickname. And if you translate that nickname into English, it roughly translates as old camel knees. Old camel knees. Um, I think that's enough reason and of itself, but how he got the nickname is even more impressive. Uh and it's telling about what James really cared about. Uh, in this, the uh one second century historian writes this of James. He says, He used to enter the temple alone and was often found kneeling and imploring forgiveness on behalf of the people, so much so that his knees became like a camel for his continual kneeling and worship of God in prayer on their behalf. What I found out is that James is not a book about how we earn God's favor or how we earn God's love, uh, but it's a book about how receiving God's love draws us deeper and deeper into this life of discipleship to Him. It's written by a man who he himself was deeply transformed and shaped by what he preaches and prays in this letter. So, what does this life look like that James is describing for us? Well, two things about the life of discipleship. One is it's full of trials, and two is it's marked by steadfastness, steadfastness in those trials. So uh the life of discipleship is full of trials. Uh, I was listening to an interview with this guy named Alex Hermosy, and he specializes in investing and consulting for small to mid-sized businesses. Uh, he's been very, very successful at it. He's done thousands of um of helped thousands of businesses unlock their potential. And he said, um, he said something in the interview that's like stuck with me ever since. Um, the interviewer asked him, what have you found to be the difference between failure and success in the entrepreneurs that you help? And this was his answer. He said, the difference between failure and success is how long it takes for someone to realize that there's no easy way. How long it takes for someone to realize there's no easy way. And this is kind of stuck out to me as like kind of the big idea of James's letter. That in the life of discipleship, there's no easy way. Because these first few verses, they're really the thesis statement for everything else he talks about in his letter, whether it's gaining wisdom or taming the tongue or how we treat one another, those with means and those without, being transformed in our character, learning, discipline, and self-control. It's all under the heading of discipleship to Jesus being full of trials and requiring the steadfastness. And it's actually in the steadfastness, the holding on, the perseverance of faith through those trials that the Holy Spirit does his work to sanctify us and make us more like our Savior. There's no easy way. And so James begins his letter. And mind you, he's writing to people who are displaced from home. They're living under oppression, they've lost their homes, they've lost their community, their family members, and they're living dispersed throughout the world. And James says, look at your life and the trials in it and consider it with joy. Uses this word, consider, in the same way that Paul considers others as more significant than himself in Philippians 2 3. In the same way that Paul considered his trial in Rome an opportunity to proclaim the good news of Jesus to a pagan king in Acts 20, 24. In the same way that Jesus did not consider equality with God as something to be held on to, but to be surrendered for the redemption of others, in the same way that Abraham considered God to be faithful and powerful even when his wife was barren. In the same way that Moses considered suffering for the sake of Christ more valuable than the riches of Egypt at his disposal in Hebrews 11. When James uses this word consider or regard, James wants to reframe the way that his people are seeing their trials. This word kind of has this dimension of like take hold of or reign in. And it's this idea of having new eyes to see them and standing outside the situation and seeing it with a new perspective. James is saying that we actually have agency even in the midst of trials. Don't let your trials rule over you. Don't let your suffering or your circumstances rule over you, because in Christ, you are free to suffer. In Christ, you are free to walk into trials with eyes wide open. In Christ, you can encounter trials of various kinds without fear. Opportunities to exercise their faith. In the life of abiding in Christ, we no longer have fear of condemnation or punishment. Our trials aren't punishment. Our trials are God-given opportunities for us to trust that He knows what is best for us. Opportunities to walk through hard things and experience difficult trials so that God can grow in us a humility and an empathy for others and a longing for his kingdom to come. My wife and I experienced this ourselves a few years ago. In July of 2022, we uh we had a house fire, and we lost everything. Uh at one point I owned a pair of pants, and my wife and my children had a pair of pajamas, and that was it. And we watched everything we owned go up in flames. And that's something I would never wish on my worst enemy, and yet it was actually in the midst of that suffering that we experienced God's presence through his people in a way we could never imagine. That night our pastor and his wife came and watched our house burn down with us and just hugged us and cried with us. That we watched our church like, I mean, just engulf us with love and care. There was um a moment when uh we we moved six times, and one of those times we were in this little game day apartment that we found just as a transition place until we could find something more permanent. And we went out for groceries and we walked in our front door, and the floor was just covered in stuffed animals and clothes and groceries and gift cards. Uh it was like it was like uh the our inheritance, it was like an advance on our inheritance in heaven had materialized into our lives. We never would have been able to experience that without encountering this trial. It was an invitation for us to trust that God has us. And I want you to notice he says trials of various kinds. Because trials come in all shapes and sizes. You're encountering trials all the time. And James is saying, do you have eyes to see them as trials? Do you count them? Do you consider them as trials? Because trials can be internal suffering, they can be external suffering, they could be temptation, they can be positive circumstances, a new relationship, influence in your workplace or on campus, popularity, riches, and comfort. They could be negative circumstances, they could be pain and poverty and suffering and loss. A trial for James is really any decision point in your life that has the potential to expose where your trust and loyalty ultimately lies. Not what you say you believe, but what you actually believe. And we encounter these trials all the time. Am I gonna accept this new job opportunity, move to a new city, and leave behind this network of people that I've built for the past 10 years or 20 years or 30 years? It's trial. What are we gonna do about our children's education? Are we gonna do homeschool, private school, class school school, public school? What are we gonna do if the AI bubble pops and the market collapses and we go into recession and the M2 money supply growth continues to rise at alarming rates? What are we gonna do? Are we really gonna try and have children after years of being unsuccessful? The voices inside your head as you stand in front of the mirror, ashamed of the body God said was good, or ashamed of the person you've become. It's a trial. See, James wants to reframe the way that you see your entire life, to have eyes to see these trials as trials, as these opportunities, these invitations to walk in greater trust and faith in the God who is sovereign over all things and working all things for your good and his glory. And yet the temptation for us is to discount our trials and see them as innocuous or meaningless or inconsequential, or to separate them from our life of discipleship. How many times have you been making a big life decision and you're going back and forth with your spouse and you're Your mind is spinning and racing at night, and you're spiraling. And it's been like a month of this, and you realize I've never even asked God what he wants. Or if we do see them, we're tempted to file them under self-pity, or woe is me, or why would God do this to me? And James wants to cut through all of that. And so when you do that, you completely miss the opportunity to follow Jesus. That we can know full well that there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ, that God promises to always be with you, that He is always at work in you, that you are never alone in your suffering or trials. Because James doesn't want you to just have eyes to see your trials, he wants you to have eyes to see through your trials, to see Jesus on the other side calling you and beckoning you to come and follow him. This is why we consider our trials with joy. Because trials, both positive and negative, are the mechanisms by which God intends to shape you and mold you and make you more like him. Trials are the primary way that we are discipled by God in this life. The way that Peter says it is growing up into our salvation. This is how God grows us up into our salvation. I tell college students all the time, I tell them, go, go get your mountaintop experiences, go turn the lights down and raise up your hands, go to all night prayer meetings and all night worship, big, big flashy stuff. Come to summer conference with RUF, do the the whole highlight reel of the Christian life. It's all fine and well, but that's not where the life of discipleship to Jesus happens. The life of following a savior who himself suffered and died and rose again happens in the day-to-day trenches. It happens in the grind. It happens in the suffering and in the trials. It doesn't just happen in one big decision, but a thousand small ones. It doesn't happen in a day, it happens daily over a lifetime. And there is no easy way. Life of discipleship is full of trials, but it's also marked by steadfastness. If you're think about the question from the interview, what's the difference between failure and success for an entrepreneur? I think if we were to ask that question, what's the difference between failure and success and a life of discipleship? I think James would say the difference between failure and success and a life of discipleship is the one who remains standing. The one who remains standing under the pressure. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And so we count it all joy, knowing, or with the knowledge that, or in light of the fact that if if James wants us to put our trials against the backdrop of knowing that they are the very pressure points in your life that God is using to produce in you a divine resilience. That through those trials, God is actually expanding, as He's stretching you beyond your margins, God is expanding your capacity for genuine pure faith. We don't consider our trials with joy because of the trials themselves. We consider them with joy because of what the trials produce in us. Last summer I got really into uh the cold plunge. Have y'all ever done this? Do you know what this is? Yeah, okay. I I love it, I think it's awesome. 10 out of 10. Uh if you don't know what it is, a cold plunge is when you submerge your whole body into a tub filled with ice cold water, 47 degrees or less, and you have to stay in for at least two minutes. The worst part of the cold plunge is always getting in. That first, when that icy cold water first touches your skin, and then after you've been in for about 30 seconds or so, it never gets comfortable. It's awful the entire time. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they're lying to you. Um it is, but here's the thing: you you don't do it because it's enjoyable, you do it because of what it produces in you. So when you stay in this icy cold water long enough, it releases all these endorphins and chemicals and oxytocin and dopamine and neuroprenephrine and it reduces inflammation in your body. It wakes you up like a gallon of Celsius, but it also helps you sleep better at night somehow. And the more you do it, the more you enjoy it because of the benefits that it brings. Your trials, in and of themselves, aren't the things that you look to. When you see through your trials the gospel lens, the vision that Christ has for your life becomes clearer. Your trials begin to shape in you a steadfastness that wasn't there before. Right? You grow in humility, knowing that the world doesn't revolve around you. You grow in dependency, knowing that apart from Christ you can do nothing. You grow in meekness using your gifts and abilities that reflect God's image for the good and the sake of others and not just yourself. You grow in seeing others in their pain. And that when you're young, that fire of prideful ambition that threatens to destroy you and those around you, it matures into a slow burning ember that can be sustained over a lifetime of service in God's kingdom. For James, this idea of steadfastness is another way of saying seasoned with the aroma of Christ, or matured, or reaching its full potential, becoming like Jesus. And he uses a word that literally translates to remain under. And it it makes me think about um if you have ever watched during the Summer Olympics, my favorite event uh is the women's weightlifting, it's incredible. If you haven't watched it, the the characters in it are absolutely amazing. These women are wild. You should totally watch it. Okay. Uh, but one of the lifts that they do is called a snatch, and it's where they bring the weight from the ground and they heave it up over their heads, and they have to hold it. And and when they're holding it up, you can see their arms shaking and their legs shaking and their face grimacing and their muscles straining, and they're lifting it up and holding the finish. And they can only do that by hours and hours over time, building up the strength to remain under the weight. And our trials are like those hours and hours of building up strength over time to remain under the pressure of this life. See, joy isn't something that you can get by slapping on a thin veneer of happiness or Christian platitudes on top of our trials. Joy is only something that can be produced in us over time by remaining steadfast and rooted and anchored and fastened in the love and the mercy and the grace of Jesus through years of trials and testing of our faith. And James says, once this steadfastness has its full it has its full effect, it's like once once it does its work in you, if you let it do the work, it coursing through your veins and getting deep inside of you, that is where true joy comes from. The testing James is talking about is not a past-fail test. It's the process of working out the impurities and weaknesses in the timber of your faith so that your faith may be pure. And it's a process, it's a continuous work of God's grace whereby we're renewed in the whole person after the image of God, and we're enabled more and more to die into sin and to live unto righteousness. And as we allow that maturation process to do its full work in our lives, that's how God will bring us to our full potential as image bearers who mirror his heart and his will and his mind and his character to the world. That's longing for hope. It's how he brings his kingdom through us. And if you don't believe James, this is where Peter says something very similar in 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 6. He says, In this you rejoice now for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it's tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor in the revelation of Jesus Christ. If you don't believe James and Peter, here's what Paul says in Romans chapter 5, verse 3 through 5. He says, Not only that, but we rejoice in our suffering, 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 of the Holy Spirit who's been given to us. And it's almost like all these New Testament writers agree. Suffering and trials and decision points and pressure points and testing, none of these are signs that God is far from you. It's actually a sign that God is hard at work in you, that you are his handiwork, and he refuses to stop until his handiwork is complete and whole and lacking in nothing. And the only question for you is this Will you be his disciple? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for your love and uh for your word, and I pray that it would nourish us, um, Lord, and it would get into us that your steadfast love would hold us, that um it would do its work in us to make us more like you. Um give us this abundant mercy that we um prayed for this morning. Lord, we pray all these things in the name of Jesus, our Savior, amen.