Books of James & Jude - Greetings and Intro to testing of your Faith - James 1:1-4
James 1:1-4 · Roger Henderson · Jan 13, 2013
James & Jude, No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492634028745

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well today we start talking about, we're going to have the introduction to the book here, the first verse, which we've kind of covered already in the interview, interview, overview, interview, overview, last week. And we're going to start on the idea of testing of your faith. And that's going to kind of carry us down, that's actually testing and trials and temptations. down through about the middle of February when we're talking about that, down through February 17th.

It's a wonderful section and actually I'm going to draw a lot on what our brother Hal Malloy did. He was here. He taught at Holly Hills and was the elder here for many, many years. And you'll see some charts in here that are back from the 90s and from the 2000s. I'm going to draw on a lot of his work.

And it's just really wonderful if you had a chance to listen to Hal. And actually, you can do that. I mean, we still have, if you want to go back and listen, I thought I'd recommend it to the teachers. Go back and listen to, there's a whole section Hal did on trials and suffering. And he used James a lot. And I listened to one section here that was done in 2004, and it's just wonderful. So you'll see as we get into this. So we're going to be talking about trials and testing a lot. So with that in mind, let's just kind of jump in here. Can I have someone read these four verses for me? Just from here? Yeah.

James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad, greetings. Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various tribes. knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

So we're going to see here, I have a chart, several charts in each verse, and then some other charts. The first verse we're going to see introduces James, basically. And then starting in verse 2, it's interesting, he just jumps right in. it's like you know he's he's talking to us we're going to see to this disperse uh a group of jewish believers and he just jumps right in i mean i i kind of imagine that they and we're going to see a verse that talks about the fact that they you know they had undergone persecution fact but by actually by the apostle paul you know he he basically we're going to see that verse They're being persecuted. So he starts right in and says, you're going to encounter trials. He's right off the bat. He doesn't waste a moment.

And I underline trials, plural, and testing because they're actually two different words in the Greek. And we're going to spend a lot of time looking at that. And that's going to be kind of key to understanding what's going on here. And you'll see that as we kind of go through here. Okay, so let's just go and look at the introduction again.

James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad. Greetings. So, I'll start off with a question. What does James say about himself? Remember, we talked last week about the fact that James is the half-brother of the Lord Jesus. So, does he say anything about that here? Does he mention, Guess what?

I'm the half-brother of the Lord Jesus and you all listen to me. I actually don't have to answer this question. Basically, it's interesting. He basically says I'm a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. He sees himself as every believer should see themselves as their servants of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he doesn't elevate himself in any particular way. So that's kind of one point.

And then it's to the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad. So what does, if you're here last week or you listened to last week, what does dispersed abroad mean? Of course you can look at what I have in the handout there. There's a literal, I'll just go ahead and, basically it's literally in the dispersion. And this is where we see the group of Jewish believers that are dispersed.

And we kind of get that from looking at a couple passages. And I want to do that. Again, we looked at them last week, but I think it's important that we do it again. So let's look at these two passages, Acts 8. Can I get someone to read Acts 8, 1 through 5?

Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death, and on the day except the apostles. Some devout men buried Stephen and made loud lamentation over him. But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and driving off men and women. He would put them in prison.

Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and began proclaiming Christ to them. So a couple things I want to just kind of point out here. This is Saul or Paul when he becomes a believer. I know he was basically the part of the first verse, you know, and on that day a great persecution arose and Paul was, you know, he was in hearty agreement with that against the church, the body of believers in Jerusalem. and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria.

So that's the idea, I think, in the dispersion are scattered. And what's interesting in here is that, so they were scattered, so did they say, okay, we're scattered, we'll keep our mouths shut. We're not gonna say anything anymore. No, what's really cool is, look in verse four, and those who have been scattered went about preaching the word. And Philip in particular. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and began proclaiming Christ. So it's really cool.

They were dispersed. The original set of believers were all Jewish to start with, right? Eventually Gentiles believed. So these Jewish believers, and that's who James is talking to here, they were dispersed. So it seems like with that kind of setting there, they've been persecuted and shoved out of their home and caused to go someplace else. He's writing this letter to them to encourage them and to show them the truths of what God has for them, even in trials and tribulations.

And then another verse that's kind of helpful in that, not quite as explanatory, but in 1 Peter 1 Peter 1.1. Al, will you read that for us? Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the pilgrims of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. Okay, was that 1.1 or just 1? That was just one.

That's 1 Peter 1.1. Actually, I didn't turn to it. So if you notice here, they're scattered through Pontius and Galatia. So here's another. And that word scattered through is literally the translation that we have here, dispersed abroad or in the dispersion. So that's literally that translation.

So we see here that James is addressing this body of believers who had been forced out of their home, out to other parts of the world there. in that region and he's ministering to them and encouraging them and we're going to see that it's all about trial the first part is all about trials and it kind of makes sense really if you read these couple verses I think boy they it wasn't a fun time I mean imagine if today you got home and somebody your stuff's out in the street and they say you're sorry you can't live here anymore you got to leave Or maybe it's even worse than that. Maybe you're driving your car for your life and they're chasing you. I don't know how bad it was. It wasn't fun, it doesn't sound like.

So he starts off, it's like you write a letter and say, greetings, now let's talk about what's happening to you. So that's basically what happens. And greetings is literally Cairo, it's one of the grace family of words and that's a typically they would say grace and actually it occurs in other passages inscription in Acts and in 2nd John. I'm not going to turn to those but that was a typical greeting in that time. Roger, just a thought. Sure, go ahead. You know this diaspora, this scab, it's something that the Jews already understood and knew about. They'd been through experience in the past as far as ancestry.

They've got the Lord Jesus Christ, which is a totally different concept for them. Grace is a totally different concept for them. So here they're going through something that in the heritage they've been through, but not with the exact same set of tools to embrace these trials and temptations. So it's neat that in context they understood these things, but they didn't understand them as James Right, right. He was going to clarify what these trials were about. Were they to lament about these trials? It's not to say they rejoice about these trials, which doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't want to be joyous about this trial. It seems counterintuitive to the natural man, but you're absolutely right.

This is dispersion part two. They were dispersed initially back when they were kicked out of, what is it? then they sacked Jerusalem way back then. So this is dispersion part two, and this is a believers, Jewish believers. Now that's great, thanks for adding that. And what's cool is that grace, the first thing he says is grace, basically. And a new focus on our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Okay, great. So let's just jump into the next one. Okay, he starts out, consider it all joy, my brother. So I'm going to kind of chop this into sections, we're going to look at that first.

So actually, In the Greek, literally, my brethren kind of comes first, and that's kind of the subject, subject, but that's kind of the addressee, if you will. And basically, it's literally, well actually, you know, last week we looked at a bunch of verses that had, it had brothers, it's the same word, adelphos, but we're looking at the relationships between James, his family, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and Christ used my brothers My Adelphos, well here he says literally brothers are mine. So is there any question about who James is talking to here? Is he talking to his physical brothers or do you think his spiritual brothers?

Well, in verse 1 he said, to the twelve tribes. Exactly, exactly. In context, as we say, context, context, context. And Jim wasn't here last week, but basically we traced through wherever Christ said, my brothers, and we found that those were talking about his literal brothers, because in the context of those, it was James and Jude and so on, were part of that. So this case, he's talking to his brothers in the faith. So I was just trying to contrast that from last week.

Okay, so I just kind of arranged it here and so the use implied you consider it all joy and Consider here is this word? I'm not sure I can pronounce it It's an oh my in the end. Oh, am I oh hey Gil mine is to view to regard to esteem to reckon so he's telling him Here's how you should think about your trials. This is how you consider or reckon your trials.

And I have some other passages here. I'd like to read part of those at least. Let's look at the first one. This is from Philippians, which we just finished recently. Philippians 3, 7, and 8. Using the same word to consider or reckon or regard. This is the Philippians.

But what things were gained to me, those I counted lost for Christ? Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but done, that I may win Christ. So the word translated there is counted or count. So you can see it is, you know, this is in the Philippians passage, it's I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. I have counted all things loss for the sake of Christ. So this is how you're viewing it, this is how you're esteeming it, this is how you're to view it. So in this case we're going to view trials, various trials, in this context. In other contexts it was in terms of the value of Christ, basically.

Yeah, there's a slight difference between count it all joy and be joyful. He's not saying be joyful. He's saying count it all, Joe. Reckon it as something worthwhile. You wouldn't count, if you had the loss of a loved one, you wouldn't count that as... I see your point there, and that's well taken, too. It's just worth noting that he's not saying that you get happy about something. He's saying take the long-range view instead of the immediate view, and count it, reckon it as being something that God in his sovereignty has put in your path, so to speak, and that there's a purpose to it, that it isn't just a random trickster sort of thing, God's going to play games with you by saying the maze or something like that.

Right. And we're going to see as we go through, we'll see exactly your point there. That's good. Now there's other passages I have here. I'm not sure. So maybe for the sake of time we'll just I think we've already got that word pretty well nailed down. This is maybe your point. What's the difference between joy and happiness? That's where you're going. We're talking about joy here. We asked this in Philippians. What's the difference between joy and happiness? Do you remember what we said back then?

So we must do this. Right, right. And that's actually in imperative mode. So this is a command. And commands here, under grace, there are commands. And we do this counting upon what God has done for us. And I kind of see it as joy is focused on God. Happiness is focused on us. Am I happy? God is concerned about joy. Joy is because of what He's done, and we count upon what He's done. Somebody has said, happiness depends on happenings. Good, I like that. You go up and down with your happiness.

Exactly. Like a lot of Bronco fans are miserable this morning. Yes, absolutely. Yep, I agree. Okay. Alright, so that's the first part. So now, consider it all joy, my brethren. And now when you encounter various trials, so this is kind of one of these, you know, I just threw this in for keep you awake here. So why doesn't James say if? Is he assuming something here? I think that's where we do a real disservice to scripture and to our savior. group of believers, they want to have happy, happy, happy. They're focused on happiness. And you know, this is when, not if.

And I kind of offered the verse, can someone read 1 Peter 4.12? Beloved, do not be surprised at the fire I reveal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you. Right, so it's not to be strange. We're to be accustomed. We're to be, actually in a sense, we're to be ready. As these trials come at me, I'm going to be ready.

I'm going to say, Lord, you've allowed them. I may not understand them. I may not want them, but I'm going to trust you for that. Do you have a question, Margaret? I was just going to say, by the way, he doesn't say just trials. He says fiery. Fiery trial, that's good, right? It's not just, you know, oh, by the way. This will be easy when I have a flat tire. No, yeah. This is fiery trial. Right. Amen.

There's another interesting part of it that in the New Testament, over and over again, talks about the spirit and the flesh warring against each other. And if there's not any trial happening, one could wonder whether he's really trying to, I shouldn't use the word trying, but whether a person is really resting in God's grace and trusting in that new life in Christ to be working out through him. If nothing's happening, if Satan isn't opposing you, you have reason to stop and take stock and say, what am I? doing or who am I becoming if I'm not encountering opposition. So I don't look for opposition, but it's going to happen if I try to follow God's working in my life. The world's not welcoming believers in Christ. It's totally counter to who they are. So we shouldn't expect it's going to be an easy ride.

Okay. Encounter is to fall peripipto, to fall into or among. Actually, the one I like here, the example I like is the Luke passage, Luke 10, 1030. Can someone read that? Kind of brings out the idea of falling into or among. And Jesus answering said, a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. So that fell among is the same word, encounter. So that was kind of a graphic picture, fell among. So when you fall among these various trials, and actually I didn't, I don't have one for various, but various is like many colored, it could be one translation. So all flavors, little ones, small ones, big ones, various trials.

So now we kind of get down to the meat of the first word we have here, which is prosmos. And this is a testing with a view toward failures. It's not always used that way, but that seems to be the primary usage of that word. And it has implied a solicitation to sin. So this trial comes along and the this trial, or sometimes it's translated temptation depending on your translation, the end result is that you may, when you encounter that trial, there's an inherent, you may respond to it out of your fleshly nature and not out of trusting the Lord. That's what's kind of implied here.

So let's look at some passages here. Can someone read the Matthew passage 26-41? And this is in the garden with the disciples. Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So that's the same words we have here for Asmas. Then actually we're going to we're going to see it again down in James with verse 12 here. We're going to see the same word again here And that basically says blessed is a man who person but perseveres under trials and Then could someone read the first Peter first Peter 1 6 And we actually already read 412 Ren greatly rejoiced, that now for a season it need be, for a year in heaviness through manifold temptations. And we've kind of already answered this.

Now why should we rejoice about a solicitation to sin? Here comes something into our lives and we're going to see later on that God is never the source. He's never the source of sin. He never tempts us to sin. We're going to see. That's why the other word is so important. DocuMos. We'll see it shortly. He never tempts us to sin. So why should we be joyous? We kind of talked about that. Basically, we see this trial, if we're savvy, so to speak, if we recognize it, and many times we don't.

I find maybe sometimes at work, or maybe with Bonnie, I'll just respond. Boom. And it's the wrong response. It's a sinful response. But sometimes, you know, Lord, will you, I do, I actually recognize it. I say, Lord, you know, I can trust you for this. I don't have to get all bent out of shape. So I think it's basically, he uses temptation to cause us to grow, to cause us to trust him, to cause us to walk by faith. It's just, I mean, so here's something that is a negative that God turns into a positive. Other thoughts? Go ahead. I was just trying to relate this back to You're like, this is controlled, this is realistic, I'm being conformed, this is purposeful, and now I have the choice of faith or not.

And it's a much different mindset than, in 1 Corinthians 10.13, there's an escape, right? So it's not like this is trial than in any other faith-based system or lack of faith law-based system. These set of verses show us that the Christian is really set apart, as you say, the believer in the Lord is set apart from the world and everything. It's counter to what the world would say.

The world would never say, you know, that whatever tragedy we see and there's, you know, with the communication we have today, you get tragedy on your phone every instant. You can see every death or killing or murder or mayhem, you can see it right there on your phone, right in front of your eyes. It's just, it's, and you know, you go insane after a while. I mean, it just, it's just never ending. Al?

I had turned to 1 Corinthians 10, 13 when you said that, just to piggyback on the idea there. It's an opportunity for me to check my faith and see whether it's really in my cleverness and ability to solve problems to see how big a challenge I can handle, it's for me to see how big a God I have to see me through. That's great. Well, I would say, too, is to realize you have that faith, and no matter what is coming at you, that faith is about trusting the Lord in all circumstances, not even kind of checking to see where I am. I don't think I want to check where I am. I want to just trust the Lord. And whatever His outcome is of that, it's going with His will and going, you know, I'm trusting the Lord in my faith that I know this is for my growth or the people around me. I mean, it's for everyone involved. It's not just me Most of the time, those trials are not just for one person. They're for a whole group of people.

People are watching you and how you respond to that. Some people are just amazed. How can you do that? Exactly. We go back to this a lot, but it's sort of, how do these people who have no faith go through trials over and over and over again without, I mean, on the outside they may look like they're handling this, but on the inside, You really do wonder because it's sometimes so extreme. That's great.

This is a HAL chart from 1994. This actually is beyond where we've gotten to, but I wanted to introduce it early just to show you the kind of the thought process here. So basically he starts off at the top. This is kind of the trials versus testing. We haven't even defined testing yet. It's to be defined, but I'm going to kind of allude to that in a second. But basically, we have the temptation and he lists the verses in James 2, which we're just looking at here. And we're going to see it again in 13 and 14. And that's an enticement to sin, prosmas. So what will our response be?

And so he shows two paths, a path the leftmost path and the rightmost path. The rightmost path I'm not going to talk about because that's coming. That's when Jim and Jeremy are going to be teaching, maybe Bob. That's that path. They're going to talk about that path. The path we're talking about here is the leftmost path. It assumes, and I haven't even defined the other term, but basically it's a walking by faith path. It's the life. It's the approved, the glorified God. I kind of want to introduce this early just to kind of show you that that the Lord, He's showing us here that we can respond by faith or we can grab on to that thing.

I'm going to, let's say you're driving your car and somebody cuts you off. I'm going to get that guy. I'm going to cut him off because he cut me off. You know, and you take, you literally take the bait and there's a real graphic picture that we're going to show here down the road.

Hopefully I'll get other guys to show us how it's a little picture about a stair step. It's a beautiful way to look at that. But I want to kind of introduce earlier that this prosmas, enticement to sin, and the Lord is looking to us to respond by faith and walk with Him. And that glorifies Him. He gets the glory. So let's just go on.

So now we're going to define the rest of this verse here, the rest of the testing here. Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. So what's cool is this This other word here, this testing or docking modus, is going to produce something. It's going to produce a thing called endurance. This is really cool.

Knowing, this is Gnosko, to be taking in knowledge, to come to know, to recognize. And we have some verses there. I think just in the interest of time, we'll just skip over those. But basically, it's the idea that Gnosko is something that we're learning. We're taking in knowledge. We're learning. We're coming to know him. We're walking by faith, learning about the Lord Jesus.

Basically, in this setup here, the testing is the subject, produces as a verb, and this testing, we had trials before, that was parosmos. There's several Greek words here. There's the verb form, there's a noun form, an adjective form, and so on. This is a noun form, documon, a testing with a view toward approval. an opportunity to glorify God.

This is the kind of testing we're going to see. The testing of your faith. This is the kind of testing that God does to the believer. He does it with a view that will trust Him. He wants to bless us. He wants us to be trusting Him. So it's a testing with a view to approval. And there's some verses that we should look at here, just to kind of get our feet on the ground here.

So let's look at and we're going to see, let's look at the 1st Peter passage, 1st Peter 1.7. That the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that persists that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. Okay, I thought, now let's see, mine has, so that the, let's see, 1st Peter, let me just see, I'm sorry I didn't get to it here. Okay, yeah, so Doris, how did your verse start? That's a trial of your faith. Okay, that's fine, just stop right there.

Now my translation, so here's the case where the translators, they can pull out part of the definition, so mine has that the proof of your faith. So you begin to see, we're going to see that They're going to use some of the proof of your faith or the approving of your faith. So mine has the proof of your faith being more precious than gold. Interesting that the proof of your faith is precious.

New King James says genuineness. Okay, cool. So God is looking to approve us. He wants to show us that trusting Him and putting our faith in Him is a way to operate, not trying to do it on our own. And actually, we're going to see that a little bit more. There's another really neat passage in Romans here.

Let's look at Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5. And not only that. Well, yeah, why don't you start back in verse 3. 3 through 5. Yeah, not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance character, and character hope. Right. And then it goes on. Right. OK.

Actually, the proven character is our same word here. And we're going to see this passage in Romans verses three and four. Several of the words that we have in this passage will show up in that 3 and 4 passage. And actually there's a neat picture that our brother Hal has, which hopefully will show down the road on this. This is sort of like a process that goes on. So basically here it's a proven character. And then lastly, there's a James 12, which we'll see later. And Philippians passage is about what you know of his proven worth.

So the idea here is that this testing is to show who you are and it's an opportunity to glorify God. So basically I ask the question, what is being tested or approved here? And it's in the context. your faith. I'm just trying to make sure we didn't get off the track and say, well, what's being approved or tested? He's, as it says, knowing that the testing of your faith, that's what he's approving or testing.

And it's going to produce something. Jim, do you have something? I was just going to kind of go back to the word knowing there because, you know, you get a lot of young believers who are tested, but they don't know. Good. Excellent. Excellent. They don't know how to respond. So in that situation, they may have faith, but their knowledge is not there yet.

And so there's a call to us to be patient in that situation and teach. But it's also a reminder, I guess, in the knowing side of things that your faith cannot be tested and you cannot endure without having first known what it is that's going on, what's happening here. So it's a call back to the scripture and the growth and maturity of a believer and beholding Christ through his word. And that's a predecessor to to faith, right? It has to have truth, because ultimately Christ is its object. That's key. In fact, that's a really good observation. That's great.

And don't you think too, though, that a lot of times the Lord uses those trials to force us to want to know why is this happening, to bring us back to the Word, having a hungry heart. Because things are so bad, or it's such a trial, and I don't know how, because I don't know how to respond. But it sort of pushes you back to that hungry heart and wanting to understand. Remember Brother Hal, he'd get excited when people, a trial would come along. His kids would call him. All that happened. Well that's wonderful.

Bad. You don't understand. I failed the course and I'm not going to graduate. Resign or whatever it might be. I don't know what it was. I'm just going to put this in my own personal context. When I'm frustrated about a trial, it's because I'm not going back to what I know and I'm not putting trust in what I do know. I took the bait, so to speak, in your chart there, but that happens and it's a knowledge the truth, because my faith was not placed in the right thing. It was a misplaced faith.

Right. Excellent. Excellent. Okay, good. Okay, so let's go on here. So, knowing that, the testing of your faith, and we're talking about produces, produces kattergelmei, to work out, to affect, and the idea here is that It's going to bring about something.

It's going to bring about this thing called endurance. The testing of your faith that the Lord is bringing into your life is going to produce something. God is not a passive God. He wants to produce in you this thing called endurance. We're going to define that in just a second. He wants to produce in you endurance. And these passages, I won't be able to cover them all, but I wrote them down.

It says, like in 2 Corinthians 4.17, for the momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory.

Then in Romans 4.15 it says, for the law brings about wrath. Same, brings about is the word. And then in Romans 7, this is Paul talking about the sin nature produces in me every kind of covening.

So the Lord wants to produce in us this thing called endurance. And endurance, this is one of these cool words. I mean, sometimes you get, you know, you can really, you can see why people can get so wrapped up in the Greek that they just kind of go into, you know, hupomone. I don't know whether, to me, that's kind of, I hear that word, it's just, my eyes light up and whoa. It's just, it's abiding under. And it's kind of a compound word, under and to abide. And it's basically patience. The Lord wants to produce in us patience. And it's so beautiful.

He wants us to be patient. and we're not patient. I'm not patient. I'm trying to help buying the computer and I'm the worst helper ever. I'm not patient. I'm not patient at all. I say, click this, click that, do this. Roger, give me a chance to do it. I don't give her a chance to do it. I'm not patient. I'm not patient. He wants to produce in us this patience, this abiding under. And there's some passages there, let's see if I, the, what's the one I wanted to see? Go ahead, if you have a question. Sure. And this may be in the weeds too much. Okay.

This produces an indicative, faith is an indication of endurance. It's the output of endurance. So when you're walking by faith, that is what, that you're in the state of endurance. So it's an, faith is the, It's a production of endurance. It's a cycle, right? You know you're enduring when you're walking by faith. And what does endurance look like? It's a walk of faith.

Actually, we're going to see that circular pattern. Brother Hal kind of picked that up in Romans 5 passage. Trials come along, you trust Him as hope. It goes back around. You're in this racetrack thing. It's a faith loop. and it's a good kind of being because it's an enduring state. You want your patience, your patience in the Lord. The Lord takes this trial, it's a test of your faith, your faith produces something, this abiding under, you're not, I've got to get out of this, I've got to run.

No, you rest. You don't run, you rest. Just like you said earlier about joy, part of the fruit of the Spirit is long-suffering, patience. When you take the long-range view and try to get God's view of what He's working out in your life, that's really how patience manifests itself day by day, instead of jumping to a conclusion. take the rest of God's grace. purpose here. Don't get too anxious to move out of this.

Hold him under his wings safely abiding. He said to abide under. I mean, I just, I just, you know, to me, I just, it's just so key. And I offer some verses there. I'm just trying to think. I just want to not, I want to get on to the other parts here. We have the person in the, in the Romans passages, perseverance, you know, perseverance is a translation of that word. Let's look at the Colossians.

Colossians 1.11. Let's look at that and we'll move on.

Colossians 1.11. Did someone read that?

Strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience joyously. Yeah, you notice it kind of joyously just comes in there. I mean, we didn't really read the whole context of that. But basically, so that you may walk, let's go back to 10. So you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience, the Huppamäne abiding under joylessly. There's just some dynamite stuff in these verses. It's wonderful. This is a rhetorical question.

So what's the result of testing? It's this abiding under, this resting and abiding under during this testing process of our faith. And then four kind of tells us, it says keep going and let this endurance, this abiding under, have its perfect result. So this endurance or patience, let it have is a verb, and that could also be rendered to be having.

It's a perfect result. And perfect here is this word, interesting and perfect in scripture, really a better word might be mature, complete. He wants to mature us. And actually, I have some verses to offer, but the key one is in 4.13. It says, until we all attain to the unity of faith, to the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, and that's our word, our perfect or complete. He wants to mature us. Let this abiding under have its perfect result. So as we abide under, we're maturing. We're coming to know Christ. There's a process here.

So I offer, what is this process called as we abide under during the testing of our faith? And there may be multiple answers here. Actually, I asked Vani what that meant. She had one idea, I had another idea. So we're walking by faith in this testing. He's testing our faith. and this abiding under is having its complete result. So what's going on here?

You say that's growth. Right. I call it spiritual growth. We're growing because we're in the... I hate to say in the groove, but I mean we're... If we're walking by faith and we're seeing what's going on, we're trusting Him, that's where He wants us to be. That's exactly where He wants us to be. And we'll grow. We'll grow in that process. That's why that statement, you're exactly where the Lord wants you. And suddenly, you say, really?

I broke an arm, I'm in a hospital, whatever it is. You can sure take endurance and perseverance from a law-based perspective really pretty quick. I can work out some perseverance through this thing and I can endure it. I'll just pull my bootstraps up and get it done, you know. This is a different kind of Well, can you imagine if you came in and looked at James from the law perspective, you got to say, OK, Jim, when you have a trial, I want to see you bucket up there, buddy. I know you're going to be strong today. We're going to do it. Like the football player, we're going to do it. They're pumped up. No, that's not the way it's all about at all. It's totally different than that. So that's good. OK.

Then the last part so that with a purpose that you may be perfect the same words before mature complete I Will just go through this paper Spirits are mature and complete and there's some verses that we've got those verses before lacking nothing Or wanting nothing So basically, there's actually another complete there. Spiritual maturity is there. That's that one perfect word. And then the other one is, that complete is the idea of having all its parts, there's nothing missing kind of idea.

Okay, so let's look at, I'm gonna finish off with two more HAL charts. Okay. You know, Hal loves these kind of things. OK, so we're just going to go through the right-hand flow here. I think this is a great summary here. So it shows that we're being tested with a view to approval. And this is the Doccymos in James. We saw in James 2. Actually, 2 has Parasmos 3. 3 has the Doccymos.

So we're by faith. The Holy Spirit, you know, we're in fellowship with God. The approved, the tried or true faith of your faith, dependence upon Christ, reckoning we're dead to the sin nature, alive to God, that's Romans there. It works patience, so there's abiding under Huppamune. Patience completes its work. The purpose of it may be conditionally perfect, complete, entire, wanting nothing.

So that's the path that God desires. So the temptation comes from outside. It doesn't come from God. It comes from this path. And we're going to talk about that. And there's like a stair-step picture here. If you go down this path, it's all down. And you wind up losing fellowship at the end. This path, you're glorifying God, you're walking by faith. And then the last one is kind of a practical one.

And Hal put a lady up there and a guy up here. I easily see this as flipped around, because I think women many times are more long-suffering than guys are. Guys, I don't know. That's editorial there from Roger. So Hal basically, he shows a picture here of her problems, financial, demanding, bad attitude, or whatever. And he shows this guy here, and so he can react. So that's a prosmas. He can be upset, impatient, discouraged, angered. But God's going to use that. He's going to use that temptation to do those... He's going to use it as a test of his faith. So, do we take the bait? We're going to see that later on. Or do we faith rest in the truth?

So I just offer these kind of as a little capsule picture of what we've kind of been talking about here today. So I mean, there's just really neat things down the road in these verses to come. More of these two words, prosmos and dokimazo, and the interaction and how the Lord desires that we trust him and we abide under that testing. literally seconds, right?

Well yeah, actually this is not, this is something I hear, just like that. And what's neat about it is if you were to trace this out, even to the next level, you may come to a place where you took the bait, and that is an evidence of the sin nature, and so you have yet another decision, almost instantaneously thereafter, to realign your thinking back to faith. And so it's neat to where what just happened seconds ago, but there's a realignment that can take place even seconds following. You're absolutely right. You can say, oh, I'm sorry. I, hey, you know, right. I, that was, I was totally wrong about that. Yeah. And, and, and that, I just, no, that's my, that's the chart that I go through. You know, send nature output and then it's a, Oh, well that's awfully.

But isn't it cool that, you know, once we grab, once we understand this, we understand ourselves, we realize what we're like, I can just grab, I can, oh, and sometimes it's so juicy because you realize that you, you know, how I used to say this three times, I can basically, you know, I can win that argument. I have all my little bag, I can win that argument. But is that going to glorify God? Maybe you're absolutely right. Maybe you're absolutely right about whatever issue that is. Is that the way to do it? To bang a person over the head?

Whacko! Whose life is that? Whose life is that? It's not the Lord's life. He's working through you. That's the old man at work at his best. Winning the argument. Many times it's not where the Lord would have you. It's better to actually lose the argument. It's a walk, right? It's not a step. There's an instantaneous step thereafter and thereafter. It is a walk. It's a life.

We can break it down. This is really helpful. But it's so encouraging to know that that next step can be. And things can be reconciled and you can put things back on the right track. Okay, well, thanks guys. This is great stuff. Actually, Jeremy has the next two classes, I think. I'm going to email him some stuff here. Anyway, thanks again. Let's close.

Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for this day, for the blessings we have, Father. We thank you that you do desire that we walk by faith, trusting you, abiding under the trials that come into our life, the testing that you bring. And Lord, that it produces endurance. And we thank you that this glorifies you as we trust you. In Christ's name, amen.