Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Well, good morning and thank you for the privilege and the honor of worshiping with you again today. Denise and I always enjoy coming to Village Church of Bartlett, and we trust that in our worship together and through the ministry of the Word, God will equip us with everything that we need to know for life and godliness. I'm going to ask you to take your Bibles and turn to James chapter one. James, chapter one. Our this morning will be verses 12 through 18. James chapter one, verses 12 through 18.
[00:00:38] I'm going to read the text and you'll also see the passage behind me. I'm reading from the new American Standard 2020 translation. You'll probably see the ESV in the translation behind me. This is James, chapter one, verses one through 18.
[00:01:00] Blessed is a man or woman who perseveres under trial, for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love him.
[00:01:14] No one is to say when he is tempted. I am being tempted by God.
[00:01:20] For God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself does not tempt anyone.
[00:01:28] But each one is tempted when he is enticed away, carried away and enticed by his own lust.
[00:01:37] Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it has run its course, brings forth death.
[00:01:47] Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers and sisters.
[00:01:51] Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above.
[00:01:56] Coming down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow, in the exercise of his will, he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among his creatures.
[00:02:16] This is the word of God.
[00:02:18] So hear it and receive it and obey it. For as often as God gives you life.
[00:02:27] I don't know if you've come across the name Solomon Ray.
[00:02:31] Solomon Ray is portrayed as one of the up and coming young Christian artists.
[00:02:37] He has a combination, I am told, of Mississippi soul and Christian pop music.
[00:02:45] Whatever that means, I'm not sure I can tell you. But he's an up and coming artist. Spotify has said that perhaps his Christian album will be one of the best selling albums of all time.
[00:02:57] Christianity Today had an article about Solomon Ray and it said, here is the artist who has no soul.
[00:03:06] That intrigued me. So I read the article and this is why they're saying that Solomon Ray has no soul is because Solomon Ray does not exist.
[00:03:17] He is a fabrication of AI.
[00:03:20] Now some people who found Solomon Ray went to his Facebook page. Some people have bought some of his music when they Heard this, they thought, oh, we've been cheated, we've been defrauded. This guy doesn't really exist.
[00:03:33] I suppose that happens sometimes in the realm of music. Even more, it happens sometimes in the world.
[00:03:42] Some people would say it's just welcome to the modern world.
[00:03:47] Some of you have heard the name Sam Bankman Fried.
[00:03:52] Sam Bankman Fried, when he first came on the scene, was considered a genius as far as financial investments were concerned.
[00:04:00] He lived on an island offshore in the Atlantic. And there were people, actors and actresses and professional athletes who went to the island and they listened to some of his wisdom. We were told about cryptocurrency. And so they bought into it.
[00:04:19] And yet several years later, people started to investigate and they discovered that Mr. Bankman Fried was a fraud.
[00:04:26] He was cheating people. It was more of a Ponzi scheme along the way.
[00:04:32] And yet that will happen to people sometimes in the realm of finances, happens in music, happens in finances. And do I really have to tell you, it can happen in the spiritual realm as well.
[00:04:46] We all know people who may have come to faith and then somewhere along the line, they are pulled away, they drift away. And no longer do they express faith in what we would refer to as faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:05:00] How does that happen?
[00:05:03] Deception takes place along the way. But an even bigger question is that if deception happens, what can we do to prevent ourselves from falling prey to fraud and deception along the way, spiritually speaking?
[00:05:18] This text this morning gives us some answers.
[00:05:22] To get to the answer, I want you to notice some things that James is doing in this passage.
[00:05:29] You want to make note of the fact that this passage is. Has a setting.
[00:05:34] The setting is what takes place in verses 2 through 11. And then we come to verse 12. I talk about what verse 12 is in just a little bit. But would you notice that three times between verse 2 and verse 12, we come across this word trial.
[00:05:51] That's the setting, takes place in verse 2, takes place in verse 3, and is expressed again in verse 12. In other words, these early Christians were experiencing severe trials in their life, happened because of a lot of different reasons, but most of the time it was because of their profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and they were persecuted because of that. That's the setting.
[00:06:16] I want you to notice also that this passage has a center, kind of the centerpiece of everything that James is saying in verses 12 through 18. We see it in verse 16.
[00:06:30] Would you notice again what James says?
[00:06:34] He says, do not be deceived, my brothers and sisters. Do not believe simple command, but it's the centerpiece of the passage.
[00:06:44] Now, he's telling them that for a very significant reason, because they were facing spiritual deception along the line.
[00:06:53] So that's the center, please. And then I want you to notice there's a structure. Everything else he's saying in verses 12 through 18 kind of revolves around that statement, do not be deceived, my beloved brothers and sisters. The first part of that takes place in verse 12. He tells them why they shouldn't be deceived. Happens again in verse 13, and verse 17 tells them why they shouldn't be deceived. Then it happens again in verses 14 and 15, and finally in verse 18. Four different things he's saying in this passage about deception.
[00:07:28] Now, that leads us to a principle, a principle that I'm praying for myself and for you, that you will take with you into the rest of your life if you write down anything. Here's what you want to write down.
[00:07:42] Our best defense against spiritual deception is to learn to think theologically.
[00:07:51] That's so important, I want to repeat it.
[00:07:53] Our best defense against spiritual deception is to learn to think theologically.
[00:08:01] My guess is there are a couple questions at this point.
[00:08:04] One of the questions will be, what do you mean, Harry, when you say we need to learn to think theologically?
[00:08:11] Well, very basically, the term theology means the study of God.
[00:08:16] But it's not just the study, what we refer to as theology proper, where we talk about the attributes of God and the purposes of God and the character of God. God. And that's certainly what we mean when we talk about theology. But theology is much broader than that.
[00:08:32] Theology has to do with understanding everything that God has revealed that we need to know and is found in Scripture.
[00:08:43] Theology is the study and the understanding that everything that God has revealed and we need to know that is contained for us in Scripture.
[00:08:54] Now, certainly you know that God knows much more than what we do. He doesn't reveal everything about knowledge, but he reveals in the Scriptures the thing that we need to know. And the more we begin to embrace that, the more we begin to understand and to think theologically.
[00:09:11] Now, the other thing that will come up is that some of you will begin to say, harry, I'm going to excuse myself from the sermon at this point because I'm not a theologian.
[00:09:22] May I say this with all due respect? That's just not true.
[00:09:27] Everybody in this room, no matter where you've come from, no matter your background, no matter how long you have been in the Christian faith, if you're in the Christian faith.
[00:09:38] You are a theologian.
[00:09:43] There's the kind of individual that walks into the lunchroom on a Monday morning and says, well, it's a good weekend because the big guy upstairs took care of me. He's actually making a theological statement. Now, I don't know what he means. Is he talking about his landlord that took care of him, or what's he talking about? But everybody in one way or another thinks about ethics or they think about theology. And so everyone is a theologian. The big question is, are we good theologians or are we bad theologians? And my desire for you, James, desire for you. God's desire for you is that you are a good theologian.
[00:10:24] Because keep in mind, your best defense against spiritual deception is to learn to think theologically.
[00:10:33] Now, that leads to another question. And that other question is, okay, where do I need to think theologically?
[00:10:41] We cannot cover the vast array of things that we need to know, but we're going to discover four ways this morning that we need to think theologically, and they're all found in this text.
[00:10:53] Now, here's the first way.
[00:10:55] First way that we need to think theologically has to do with thinking theologically about eternity.
[00:11:04] And that's what verse 12 is implying. Let me see if I can show you how.
[00:11:09] You'll notice that in verse 12 there is a command, an action that takes place.
[00:11:16] It's a statement, actually, where James says, blessed is a man. Here's the verb, who perseveres under trials. So he's talking about something and he's saying, you need to think about. He was commanding them in the midst of their trials to persevere in the midst of all of those things.
[00:11:34] And then there's an incentive for doing so. Would you notice near the end of that verse where he says he will give to the one who perseveres after they've been approved the crown of life.
[00:11:47] Now, keep in mind that James was talking to people who are facing trials, very severe trials.
[00:11:54] Again, I'm going to say this with all due respect. We think that we experience trials in our lives, but in comparison with the first century saints, our trials are minimal compared to what they were facing.
[00:12:09] And so he's talking to people who are facing trials, and he has to say to them, I'm going to give you the crown of life, which is basically a gift from God, a reward from God for those who have faced severe persecution in the midst of their life. And so he's saying, I'm going to give you the experience of having life to the fullest. Like you've never had before, never had it here in planet Earth. Now, here's the thing. There are even people today, they experience many different trials. They go through their entire lives facing severity in life. And God says, there's coming a day. Because of your perseverance, I'm gonna grant to you life to the fullest, like you've never experienced it before. So there is an action.
[00:12:53] Persevere under trials. There's incentive for doing so. He said, you will receive the crown of life when you do that. But I want you to notice there is a presupposition behind all of this. We don't always talk about the presupposition, but it's there. Why would he tell them that God's going to give them for their faithfulness the crown of life? Because James is saying there is a heaven.
[00:13:21] We can count on the fact that there is eternal life. It's not just a one and done experience. We go through this life and after we die, that's the end of it.
[00:13:31] He's saying we need to come to believe theologically that there is something beyond the grave. And there's a whole host of passages of scripture.
[00:13:40] Jesus In John chapter 14 talked about going away and preparing a place for his disciples.
[00:13:48] So he believed that there was life beyond death, life beyond the grave. And that's what James is saying here. And we need to think theologically about the afterlife, about eternity. Now you're going to ask the question, how does that protect us from deception?
[00:14:09] Here's how. We've already stated, we've already established the fact that we live in a deceptive world.
[00:14:16] For example, sometimes we are deceived by statements in the scientific community.
[00:14:22] Time out for just a moment. I'm not saying that everyone in the scientific community believes this way, but the history of science down through the ages a lot of times will propagate this idea. There is nothing after life.
[00:14:36] For example, the late astronomer Carl Sagan, he would often say this.
[00:14:42] The universe is all that there is.
[00:14:47] Can you prove that? He could not prove that, but that was his assumption that that was all that there is. That's all that there is nothing beyond the grave.
[00:14:56] Or even in the area of pop culture, in film. A lot of times we get the idea that if there's anything beyond this life, it's in the paranormal. Or if we're going to be delivered from this life, we need to have some superhero who will come on the scene and somehow will deliver us.
[00:15:15] There's no superhero outside of Jesus Christ who can deliver us.
[00:15:21] And so we need to understand a theological understanding of eternity. There's more to life than this life, even in the midst of all of its suffering, all of its trials.
[00:15:35] Your best defense against spiritual deception is to learn to think theologically. Start thinking theologically about eternity.
[00:15:46] Second thing and a second place where we need to think theologically.
[00:15:50] We need to think theologically about God. Now, it may seem that we've already established that. But James says something very, very specific in verse 13 and again in verse 17 about God. Notice how he starts verse 13.
[00:16:07] No one is to say, when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God.
[00:16:15] Sometimes we'd step back and say, why would someone say that?
[00:16:19] It's interesting that the word that is translated here as tempted is the very same word that is translated in verse 2, verse 3, and verse 12 as trial.
[00:16:31] We could translate it here.
[00:16:33] No one can say when he is tried, that he is being tried by God. I tried to establish that last week that God does not send a trial. But in a fallen world, God allows the trial, and then God intervenes to help us to persevere in the midst of those trials. So he's basically saying, at this point, no one should say, God is tempting me, because sometimes in a trial we face temptations. And here's where the accusation was coming gone. If God allows a trial, these first century saints were saying, then God must also allow the trial. Because in the process, he's probably tempting me. He's probably that kind of a God that wants to see me in misery.
[00:17:15] That's not a good theology about God.
[00:17:19] Notice how he makes a correction. He says, for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself does not tempt anyone.
[00:17:30] The most powerful evil force in the world cannot come and say, I'm gonna tempt God and I'll have victory.
[00:17:36] It will never happen.
[00:17:38] And God himself will never come along and say, I'm just gonna dangle some temptations in front of you just to see how long it takes for you to give in. That's not the kind of God that we serve.
[00:17:50] He says that God is 100% pure.
[00:17:56] When I pondered that thought for myself, went back years ago in my own memory as a child watching tv, and there was a commercial for Ivory soap. This is what it said.
[00:18:09] 99.44, 100% pure. Ivory floats.
[00:18:15] And then they would have pictures of little babies in bathtubs, and they would be splashing in all of the suds. And there you'd see a bar of Ivory soap and it would be floating along the way and there's this idea that this is the best soap. It's pure soap. No, wait a minute. You just said 99.44% pure. No, it's not 100%.
[00:18:38] There's nothing in this life that is 100% pure except God in his character.
[00:18:47] Sin cannot penetrate his character. God Himself does not tempt anyone else.
[00:18:53] Now, there's something else about the corrective here that we need to see. Drop down to verse 17.
[00:18:59] This is what he says.
[00:19:01] Every good thing and every perfect gift is from above.
[00:19:06] Coming down from the Father of Lights, what do you call good in your life?
[00:19:12] Maybe you were like our family. And we gathered around as a family on Thanksgiving Day and we talked about the past year and things that we were thankful for. We were thankful for where God had placed us. We were thankful for children and grandchildren, thankful things that we call good. Those things came from God.
[00:19:31] Do you say my job is good? That came from God.
[00:19:36] My children are doing well in life right now. That came from God. Everything you call good comes from God and says from the Father of Lights.
[00:19:48] That's another way of talking about God, the Creator God who created everything in the universe. Everything good comes down from Him. Now notice what he says in the last part of verse 17.
[00:20:03] He says, from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
[00:20:12] Here's another way of saying that you'll not get up tomorrow morning and discover that God has changed.
[00:20:20] Many of you in this worship center this morning came to faith because someone introduced you to the fact that God is love. And he sent his son, Jesus Christ, into the world, who is a very God, a very God. Perfect love, perfect mercy, perfect compassion in every way. And you were drawn to that.
[00:20:39] You will not get up one morning this week and there will not be a headline that said, by the way, God's changed his mind.
[00:20:46] God no longer loves you. That's not the case.
[00:20:49] You see, God is pure and God is unchanging in all of his ways.
[00:20:55] And how does that protect us from deception?
[00:20:59] Here's how.
[00:21:01] There are some of us in this room this morning that heard from the time we were very, very small that we were worthless.
[00:21:12] We had reason to be ashamed.
[00:21:14] We were failures.
[00:21:16] We'd never amount to anything. And we heard that. And after a while, we started believing that.
[00:21:25] But God never says that about you.
[00:21:30] The God who redeems you in Jesus Christ is the God who has perfect love, perfect compassion. He's the God who has something for you in life.
[00:21:41] He loves you and embraces you and wants to use you as part of his kingdom work. God will never change in his commitment to you. So the best defense against spiritual deception is to learn good theology.
[00:22:02] We need to be good theologians with respect to eternity, and we need to be good theologians with respect to God and who he is.
[00:22:10] There's a third thing I want you to see in this passage, and that's the fact that we need to also think theologically about the development of sin.
[00:22:21] Sometimes we have this assumption that sin just comes upon us and somehow we fall into it, or we've been tripped into it or drawn into it, and we think that it happened because somebody else did something to us.
[00:22:37] I don't know how many times I've heard Christians say in my office, in my presence, something like this, I made a terrible, terrible mistake. I shouldn't have done it. But they never come to the point and say, I've sinned, so that we could ask them, how did that sin come about?
[00:22:55] James tells us, would you look at verse 14 and verse 15?
[00:23:00] He says, but each one of us is tempted when he is carried away and enticed. Just stop there for a moment. Notice those two descriptors when that person is carried away or enticed. It's a metaphor used of a fisherman. And some of you who are fishermen here know all about this. You put a worm on a hook and you kind of cast out the line. It drops into the lake or into the water, and there's a fish that you can't see under the water, and the line, you kind of allow it to be pulled along a little bit. And the fish begins to say to himself, I wonder if I should check that out?
[00:23:40] And he's drawn to think about that. He is enticed and carried away. James says, that's the way sin works. Word of caution here, and the caution is that a temptation is not a sin in and of itself.
[00:23:57] There's a second part of the development of sin. We could even say the theology of sin. Notice what he says.
[00:24:04] He is carried away and enticed by his or her own lust.
[00:24:11] Not someone else's, not God's, but by his or her own lust. I want this. I want it so much.
[00:24:20] Now notice how he changes metaphors in verse 15.
[00:24:25] Says, when lust has conceived, I understand that to be a choice. So here we are. The temptation comes along. We're tempted to buy into this evil, and after doing so, we make the choice and we say, I'm going to do it. I don't care. I'm just going to go ahead and do it. And. And then would you notice, he says, and sin, when it runs its course, brings forth death.
[00:24:52] Is that immediate?
[00:24:54] Well, in some ways, yes. In some ways, no. We know from Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter three, when they disobeyed God, sin came into the world. They did not die physically at that point, but they died spiritually.
[00:25:08] And something like that happens to us as well.
[00:25:12] We come to a point and we choose to make a decision in which we're going to violate the commandments of God to do what God says. Don't do that. Please don't do that. And sin begins to unfold, and it ultimately ends in death.
[00:25:30] Now, here's the thing.
[00:25:33] How does knowing that help defend ourselves from deception?
[00:25:40] It's because verses 14 and 15 happen to be a warning.
[00:25:47] You have warning lights in your car. Every so often, my wife's car, my car will have a warning light. Come on. It'll say something like this. In the dead of winter, your tires are getting low. It's a warning to us. You better stop. Better put some air in the tires, because you're facing a danger at this point.
[00:26:05] This passage is like a warning light. It's basically saying, understand the development of sin.
[00:26:12] And we also need to realize that part of the warning is, if you make a choice, please understand you're bringing pain and destruction on your life.
[00:26:24] You know this and I know this.
[00:26:26] Having read stories of pastors, a lot of people, not just pastors, but famous people who make a choice in the midst of their ministries that they're gonna disobey the commandments of God and they decide to enter into an immoral relationship. And here's what happens after temptation, after the choice conceives, it ends up in death. How so?
[00:26:50] The ministry has ended.
[00:26:52] One's reputation is destroyed, A family is destroyed by along the way, and the warning light comes on. And it basically says, you better understand the evolution of sin, how it works along the way, so that you can make the right choice and live in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:27:17] Your best defense against spiritual deception is to learn to think theologically. Think theologically about eternity, think theologically about God, think theologically about the development of sin in a person's life.
[00:27:33] One more thing.
[00:27:34] I want you to notice in verse 18 that he's also telling us that we need to think theologically about our spiritual identity.
[00:27:44] I spent a lot of time thinking over verse 18 wondering, what is it that he's really saying here? But I am convinced that he's talking about our spiritual identity.
[00:27:55] Now Here's a problem with spiritual identity. I'm convinced a lot of Christians do not think about on a regular basis who they are in Jesus Christ. Here's what happens. It'll take place in the foyer. We'll do something like we'll meet someone for the first time and we'll eventually ask this question, so tell me, what do you do?
[00:28:16] As if what you do in terms of vocation or where you live, that's your identity.
[00:28:22] That's the last thing that a Christian should think about. Our identity is much more than that. Notice how James develops this. He says, in the exercise of his will.
[00:28:33] I understand his will in this passage is talking about God's will, God's plan for world redemption, drawing people out of their sin and despair and bringing them to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:28:49] Notice, he says, in the exercise of his will, he gave us birth. And notice the way he gave us birth through the word of truth. I understand to be the gospel, the proclamation of the Scriptures. But don't pass by that word birth too quickly. He gave us birth.
[00:29:08] In John chapter three, Jesus talked about the new birth.
[00:29:14] Sometimes when we think about our salvation, we were drawn to Jesus because of his love, because of his compassion. And then we're told, because of your faith in Jesus, your sins have been forgiven. That's absolutely true. That's a wonderful thing.
[00:29:29] And then we say something, not only that when you die, you're going to go to heaven. That's true. That's a wonderful thing.
[00:29:36] But that's not the completion of the gospel.
[00:29:39] The gospel goes beyond that. When God gave us birth, he gave us a brand new life and a brand new identity.
[00:29:50] You are not the person in Jesus that you once were.
[00:29:56] Just notice how this verse ends. He gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we'd be a kind of first fruits among his creatures.
[00:30:06] These first century writers would understood very, very clearly what first fruits was all about. There was a festival of first fruits in the Old Testament. That is when the harvest came. A Jewish family would take the first gathering of the crops or the first fruits, whatever they were, and they would go and they would offer these things up to God in thanksgiving for what he had done. And God in turn would say something to them. This is only the beginning, only the first fruits. There is more to come.
[00:30:34] Now some people apply that to these first century saints, that they were the first Christians and there's more to come. That's true, but I think it applies to us as well.
[00:30:44] And what I mean by that is that when you came to faith in Jesus Christ, you and I need to be anticipating that there is more to come.
[00:30:54] Jesus has much more for us than we might be experiencing right now. So therefore, we need to have a theology of Christian identity.
[00:31:05] Christ's death has become our death. Christ's resurrection has become our resurrection. Christ's righteousness has become our righteousness. Christ's hope has become our hope.
[00:31:16] Christ's calling to be servants has become our calling as well.
[00:31:22] And so it's important for us to remember that this applies to how we defend ourselves. I said just a moment ago, some of us have grown up with this idea that you're worthless, you're not valuable.
[00:31:34] God says, not true.
[00:31:36] There is more, better things that are yet to come. God says, I want to use you in my kingdom, work.
[00:31:44] You are more than just your vocation, more than just your location.
[00:31:50] You belong to Jesus Christ, and everything that Jesus is is gifted to you as well.
[00:31:59] We live in a deceptive world, and it's imperative that we, as Christians, somewhere along the line, step back and say, what am I going to do? And the answer is, we need to think theologically. No excuses. I'm not a theologian. I can't do it. No, it's incumbent upon us to become good theologians.
[00:32:22] Let me suggest some ways that you might do that.
[00:32:25] One of the ways that you might do that is by making a commitment this morning to something like this.
[00:32:32] I will make a commitment that I am going to be a regular and faithful church member for as long as give me life.
[00:32:40] I'm going to encourage my family to be faithful in church attendance. Say, Harry, why would we do that? Because here is where you will learn good theology.
[00:32:50] So I would encourage you to make a commitment to be a good, faithful church member.
[00:32:56] Second way that you might do that is by thinking about filling your soul with biblical truth. If you're not already doing this. You need to be in a Bible reading program every day so that you can take in biblical truth. Truth or I'd recommend a good book. This book, it's called Victory over the Darkness by Neil Anderson, has been one of the most encouraging books in my own spiritual growth. So I'd encourage you to do that because one of the things that Anderson does, he has a whole list of things of who we are in Jesus Christ.
[00:33:29] I'd also encourage you that if you're new to this church, you might want to ask one of the staff members along the way to think about how you might get involved in a small group. In that small group, you'll not only reflect upon the Scriptures in that small group, you will begin to encourage one another and pray for one another along the way, and that will help you to become a good theologian.
[00:33:56] But maybe you are here this morning as someone who has never really come to to place your faith and your eternal existence in Jesus Christ.
[00:34:08] You've never crossed the line yet at this point, but you have questions, lots of questions. Does God really exist? Can I trust the Bible? All sorts of things. And we had the announcements earlier and one of the announcements is about being a part of a ministry called Alpha. I think I'm correct in this. There's a calendar and a table in the back. And January 11th, a new alpha series starts.
[00:34:34] If you have questions like that and you're not still convinced, could I encourage you to check Alpha out and to consider the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ?
[00:34:44] The one who came into the world is very God, of very God, yet came in human flesh and came for the purpose of going to the cross to pay the penalty, the just demands of God for my sins and your sins.
[00:35:03] And in all these things, God wants to equip us with a good defense against deception by becoming his good theologians.
[00:35:18] Heavenly Father, we are grateful for your word and we are grateful that you speak to us through your Word.
[00:35:29] Father. Do not allow us to dismiss these things too quickly. But Holy Spirit, remind us throughout the day that eternity exists. We can count on it.
[00:35:44] God is compassionate and truthful in all of his ways.
[00:35:49] We can protect ourselves against sin and that we have a wonderful identity in Jesus. Help us to remember these things now. O Lord, we give ourselves to you in Jesus name.
[00:36:03] Amen.
