Faith Series: The Trial of our Faith

Faith Series: The Trial of our Faith

So this morning we looked at the matter of faith that needs to be exercised. If we don't exercise our bodies, well, we're going to be weak, aren't we? We're going to be not able to do the things that need to be done. If we're taking care of an individual, we're not going to be able to, well, we're going to probably hurt ourselves and we might end up hurting them because we're not able to do that. I mentioned this morning Kent with his leg muscles and, you know, he's not used to walking so much and then he goes to the breaking ridge and he's walking a lot over there. It takes a little bit more walking to get from his room to the kitchen than it did at home and so he's got to build those muscles up more than what they were.

And so in the same way, spiritually God has a way of chastening us in a variety of different circumstances of life. He chastens us, corrects us, reproves us, rebukes us, but also instructs us in the way we need to go. As parents, when we correct our children, we are to do that in love. We're to follow the Father's example because He chastens us in love, not just to make us feel, simply feel bad about being wrong, but to show us what's the right way. And so as He's chastening us and we let Him have His way with us and our faith gets exercised and we are able to, instead of doing what we were doing, then say, Lord, I see what you want to do and now I'm going to exercise in the, I'm going to do the right thing and that's what our faith is challenged and stretched and all of those things and we realize that there's more to life than what we were thinking before. There's more that the Lord wants for us in His will.

And that's because the Lord is training us, isn't it? He's training us, He's preparing us to be used here on earth, but also He's preparing us ultimately as He's building character in our lives and He's wanting to prepare us for not, we're not going to live on this earth forever as we saw. The physical exercise is not the purpose of, it's not the main goal of our lives. Yes, we need physical exercise, but that's not why we're here. The world oftentimes views it that way. It's all about me and my image and my body, but as a Christian, it's about the Lord, it's about me pointing to Him. And so we need that chastening. We need to exercise as we saw this morning ourselves unto godliness and we need to exercise ourselves and maintain a good conscience toward God so that when He speaks to us, we can, and when He shows us things, we can be tender and responsive to Him instead of hardening our hearts and saying, no, I'll just do what I want to do.

No, we need to become more, I think as a person grows closer to the Lord, they're going to become more and more tender to what God is saying to them, not harder and harder to what God is saying or I already know all that or you can't tell me anything, you know, no, it's a sensitivity to the Lord. And that shows that our faith is being actually strengthened, our faith is growing, our faith in the Lord. Sometimes, you know, when it comes to warnings, people are more, this world certainly is more concerned about being caught than they are about being wrong before God. About the world, I know a pastor gave an illustration one time, I was listening to a message and he said, it was, the case in point is when you know, you're driving 20 miles an hour over the speed limit and then you see everybody put on brakes when they see the highway patrolmen sitting there. You didn't brake because you thought, oh, you know, I shouldn't have been speeding 20 miles an hour over, you put the brakes on because you didn't want to get a speeding ticket, right? So there's the difference between having that sensitive conscience versus not wanting to get caught.

But thank the Lord that He chastens us and He deals with us so that we would respond quicker, you know, we sing that hymn. I want a principle within a watchful godly fear, a sensibility to sin, a pain to feel it near, help me to feel the first approach to feel of pride, a wrong desire to catch the wandering of my will and quench the kindling fire. You know, that is a heart that's being exercised, this unto godliness of faith is being challenged and stretched and we're being chastened and then we're growing. That's the indication of that. That's the true prayer of my heart, not just, you know, not just that I sing the hymn in church, but that's in my own prayer closet before God. That is the true heart that I have before Him. You know, the Spirit will bear witness to my spirit that the Lord is working in my life. Amen. The Lord is drawing me, drawing me closer and I'm becoming more sensitive to the things of God.

That's what we hope for our children. I'm getting to the text tonight. But that's what we hope for our children that they will want to do what we tell them to do, not just that we're, yes, we expect obedience. But I remember, you know, growing up parents telling me something along the lines of we want, we want you to come to the point where you're doing it because you know it's the right thing to do, not just because you have to do it, because we want you to do it, and I'm forgetting these exact words, but something along the lines of do it because it's right, you know, do right till the stars fall. And so our faith, our faith must grow, our faith must be exercised.

And tonight, we return to James chapter one. If you'll turn there with me, James chapter one, we talked about chastening, but we're talking about the trying of our faith. Our faith must be tested. And we certainly have covered this theme a number of times over the years, but even, even not that long ago we were mentioning about this matter, we were talking about this matter of the trying of the testing of our faith, but want to draw from James chapter one and verse number one this evening.

James chapter one, verse number one, James says, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting. My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations, knowing this that the trying of your faith worketh patience, knowing this that the trying of your faith worketh patience. James is certainly, he's writing to the brethren here. A few years ago, we, what was it three years ago, something like that, we went through the book of James, I lose track of time and exactly how long it's been, but in that book, he writes to the, he's obviously writing to the brethren, brethren or brother are mentioned 19 times in this book, he says, he's writing to the brethren and he's writing about obviously about the trying of our faith here in these opening verses, those that do not know the Lord do not have faith. I mean, this is a message to us.

We have all obtained like precious faith in our Lord Jesus Christ heavenward. We've all been baptized into His death. We all have the same hope of the lively hope of the resurrection because we're in Christ and we have the same guide in the Holy Spirit. We have the enemy that each one of us faces and we are tested by that enemy on a daily basis, aren't we? We have the same spiritual warfare that we have to wage. We have the same armor that we're to put on. Our faith is personal. It's not a corporate kind of a conglomerate faith. No, each one of us has a relationship with the Lord, but we hold to the same faith, the faith that was once delivered to the saints. It's been given to us. And so what James is going to say for these brethren that he's writing to here is the same truth that we need to hear in 2026, even though these have gone before us, we have, there's one faith. There's one Lord. There's one baptism. There is, we're abiding by the same word that they were abiding by, the same faith that they had in that day.

And he says that we are to count it all joy when we fall, when you fall into diverse temptations. You remember in Romans chapter six, I believe it is there. If I'm remembering correctly where it's where he says Romans chapter six, let me read the wording there so I don't misquote it. Romans chapter six, I believe is verse 11, where Paul makes the statement, likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. In that context, this is the same word. It's a different English word, but this is the same thing he's communicating here. Paul's communicating, reckon or count it to be so. He says, you already, you're already dead. You were buried with Him in baptism so that you might be raised to walk in newness of life in Christ’s death through His death for you on the cross by faith in that death, you're dead indeed unto sin. And now you need to count it to be true and to be so that you're alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Look at it, the way God is looking at it. If you put your faith in Christ, you're dead to sin, you're not a debtor to that sinful flesh to serve it any longer and the lust of that flesh. But you are alive unto God. Count it to be so. Reckon it to be so.

And James is saying here, count my brethren, count it. Reckon it to be so. Count it to be the actual truth. Come to this conclusion because if you look at the scriptures, this is the conclusion you must come to. Count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations. If you have faith in God, this is the conclusion you need to come to. This is the way you need to view trials, that it is all joy, that we're all means complete. You remember the word alloy when we were playing baseball, when I was playing baseball we didn't use metal bats or we didn't use wooden bats. I should say we used metal bats and there are a certain alloy combination of metals that are used. That's not all one type of metal. It's a mixture of metals that's supposed to be the certain kind of composite that's needed to hit the ball the farthest and all of this kind of thing. But this is different than that. This is not alloyed joy. This is so that when you're going through trials that it is complete joy. It is complete joy when you face those things. We're told that when we suffer persecution, rejoice, right? Rejoice, Paul tells us. Not feel sorry for yourself but rejoice. And here this pure or this all, this complete joy, don't consider what you would naturally think of the trial as being.

The trial would be a reason to complain, right? The trial would be a reason to go, woe is me. That's the natural thinking but no, you're not thinking, you're not walking by sight, are you? That's not what we're supposed to do. We're not going to walk by sight because if you walk by sight the natural human response is going to be to go, oh man, why does this have to happen to me? Why? Why? Why? Why? And people get angry with God. People get angry with, got to find somebody to get angry with for this because why did it have to happen to me? Well, we're to have exactly the opposite response. Yes, even when we talk about chastening, no chastening seems to be joyous, right? The chastening when we're right under the test doesn't seem to be a joyful thing. That's it. Nevertheless, afterward, it yields a peaceable fruit of righteousness to those that are exercised by the trial or by the chastening. And so if we're going to have a fruitful trial, if we're going to have a fruitful testing in our lives, then we need to think the way God tells us to think about it rather than the way we tend to think about that.

And so in other words, don't, and the words not even tell of us, put on fake it. He's not saying fake it and do your best and really grit and grind and just act joyful, you know? If you ever think that, he's not saying put on a good face, he says, no, actually with God's help, we need to think this way. We need to think that way. Not just, doesn't mean you won't shed tears, it doesn't mean that you won't be heartbroken, we're human beings and we have emotions and feelings. But don't let the emotions, don't let the, don't let just how you feel in the moment dictate how you think about it, how you're processing this. No, you actually should count it to be joy. Joy doesn't mean that you're always every moment. You've got a, you know, a face-wide grin on, you know, that you're always walking around. But this joy is an inner gladness and it will ultimately produce a healthy countenance and that's, yes, it will. But it doesn't mean that we never shed a tear, it doesn't mean we never, we never cry, we never have sorrow, but we can sorrow and hope, we can sorrow knowing that the Lord is our, our joy.

So this is, in other words, by a choice of the will choose joy, choose God's way of approaching your trials, choose to obey God in the way that you think about this. We can work ourselves, I know I can, I can work myself into a slough of even, you know, the two on the road to Emmaus, the more they talked, the more depressed they got. You know, I just thought we were gonna, you know, this was going, this, this man was gonna save us and he was gonna save Israel, he was gonna do all these things and now he's, he's dead and what are we gonna do? You know, they were just getting, they were getting more depressed as they went along. And yet there were other words that came along, Jesus began to speak other words and he just simply reminded them of things they already knew. We need to, we need to edify one another, right? We need to encourage our own selves in the Lord. Sometimes we have to, what a pastor, Peacock used to say, he said, I had to just stop and have a prayer meeting with the Lord right there. I had to have, I had to have a prayer meeting, I had to stop and have an attitude adjustment or something like that, you know? And sometimes we need an attitude adjustment. We're not thinking the right way about something. Lord, help me to choose joy in this situation. Help me to think rightly about this.

We would never, left to ourselves, we will, we will stagnate, you know, we don't like stagnant water. If you've had water standing in a, I don't know. If you had a glass, let's say you had a glass of water that was just sitting out for a week, you probably wouldn't really want to drink that unless it was freshly poured water. You know, if it's just been sitting out, eventually it's going to start growing some kind of mold or algae or whatever. It's going to start growing something, bacteria is going to, bad bacteria is going to multiply in that water over time. You might, I mean, have any number of contaminants that are going to be in there as if it's just sitting there and left to itself. Running water, purified water certainly, but you know, the water moving at least when you have flowing water, you don't have algae forming on top of it. And the Lord is, that's the very reason, you know, spiritual parallel. The Lord is, the Lord is purifying when He puts us through trials. He's purging our faith of the dross. He's getting the impurities out of it by agitating. I guess we can say not just simply aggravating us, but agitating our lives, just like an agitator in a washing machine. It is necessary to clean those clothes. You've got to agitate if you don't have a washing machine, you're going to need a washboard and you're going to take, you've got to have friction to clean those things. You've got to have heat to purify silver. You've got to have pressure to form things into a mold. You've got to have all kinds of agitation to get a product out of something. And that's what the Lord is doing with us. He's agitating. He's putting pressure in the word for trials here, the tribulum that the Lord's bringing to us is talking about a pressure that He's putting on us so that we will come forth as He wants us to be.

So we just have to yield to what He's doing and count it by faith to be pure, complete joy. He says, when you fall into diverse temptations, not if, but when, if you sin, we have an advocate with the Father, when you fall into diverse temptations, count it all joy. When is just expected, this is going to be an ongoing thing that's going to keep happening. It's going to keep happening. And so when we fall into that, like Job says, man is born in trouble, right? And the sparks fly upwards. There's going to be a number of things that God's going to test us with. But we are to fall into it. Fall in God's plan, we're going to fall into diverse temptations.

Look with me in Luke chapter 10, verse 30. Luke chapter 10, verse 30, we'll say, we'll use this same word that is used by James here in verse number 30. Luke 10, verse number 30, to describe the man, the good Samaritan helped. And Luke 10:30, it says, 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. Well, it happened to him, didn't it? He fell among thieves. He didn't go out pretty planning this, but it just, it just came one day as he was traveling. He was caught up in that situation. And now he's going to have to deal with it, right? And we don't know how many things will be, will befall us or will fall into this week. You know, there's the devil means it for evil, right? But God, God means it for good. And we're going to have to pray when we fall into those things. Lord, in this moment, help me to choose joy as I, if you've allowed me, this is not an accident. You've allowed this to come.

You know, the car breaks down, something costs more than we thought it was going to cost. Somebody at work is being unreasonable or, you know, get a bad doctor's report or, I mean, any number of things can happen. Somebody doesn't respond well to a gospel witness or, you know, there's any number of trials that we may, we may face in a given week, but we need to count it joy. These men jumped, we might say, they jumped the man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. They jumped. They were lying in wait. And trials can often seem that way. Like we get jumped, you know, we just fell into the foul or snare or something of that effect. But these, these trials, James describes them when you fall into divers. Oh, I mean, we get the word, this is an older word here, but we get the word diverse, you know, the different kinds, diverse, a diversity of trials. In fact, this word has the idea of a variegated or multi-colored is the meaning of the word in the Greek here, variegated or multi, a multi-colored trials. And we see that word when we think of God's grace. And I know I've mentioned this number of times before, but the manifold grace of God is the variegated grace of God. His grace is manifested in a variety of different ways in our lives to meet a variety of different circumstances of life that we are in need in those things.

And so these, these variety or divers temptations we will fall into. When you fall into divers temptations, you're to count it all joy. These temptations again are those like the pressure of the squeeze. You can think of a tube of toothpaste. You squeeze that tube of toothpaste. What's going to come out? Well, it's going to be toothpaste, right? Well, what comes out of us when the worst, we talked about the trial is to prove and to improve, isn't it? The trial is meant to prove the metal, but it's also meant to improve the metal by purifying the metal of the dross. That's when that metal is being tried and put through the fire. And so we need to know as it says in verse three, knowing this, knowing this, there's some things we can absolutely know. Not, when you look at what we've been going through in First John, there's a lot about knowing, isn't there? There's a lot about knowing. And that's, that's what by faith we are to do. It's not really about how we feel in a given moment because the feelings go up and down, but it's about knowing what God has said. Knowing the truth, we said faith is resting on truth. Faith is resting on solid substantive promises of God and precepts and principles of God's word. We're resting on those things and trusting that they're going to be played out and verified in our daily living.

If you say you know somebody, you know, what's the difference between me? You tell me tonight, Brother P, Brother Kiki, you might say I know so and so that I worked with them for x number of years where I know them from so and so supply house or whatever the case may be. And I may have heard their name and I may have even briefly met that person, but you say I know them. And that's different than me, even if I've met them a few times. Because and what do you, what's the difference between you and your knowledge of them and me and my knowledge of them? I know them by name, but I don't know them. You know them because you've not only heard what they said maybe, but you might have seen them in a lot of different circumstances of life and you see that, hey, that person can be trusted because they're, I mean, what they say they're going to do. And I'm taking your word for that, for who they are in the same way. You might know somebody and say, watch out for that guy. You know, I know that guy. I know that guy. He might tell you one thing, but he's going to do something completely different or you can't trust him further than you can, as the saying goes, you can't trust him further than you can throw him. You know, so you know that person. I might not know that person.

And this is the same way when it comes to the Lord. As Christians, I think about was it King Darius and he said Daniel, is that God that thou servest, is He able to deliver thee, He delivered you from the mouth of the lions, but even he would say sort of in another case, at the beginning, I think it was he said, thy God whom thou servest continually, He's able to deliver thee, but he was saying it kind of based on Daniel's, he could see Daniel's confidence in his God, but it wasn't from a personal God. And so as we know God, as we grow through these trials, we're going to know God better and better. And we will be able to say, He's been with me through this and that and the other, He has kept His word, He is faithful and true. And I will trust Him in the next trial He sends, whatever the variety of the trial will be. I know that He will do what He says He will do. I know it because He says it's in His word, in His word, but experience built hope, right? Experience strengthens my hope. It's upon that experience of trusting in God and seeing that as I am trusting Him, He does exactly what He says He will do. He may not always take me out of the fiery furnace, but He will deliver me through the fiery furnace. And so we find more and more and more God, God is doing what He says He will do. And even though we may have trusted Him imperfectly in it, and we had to get our heart and mind in the right place by His grace, we had to be rebuked because we were of little faith. We're finding that our faith is growing, our faith as it's being tested is being purged of that unbelief, of that little doubts here and there that we may have or we trusted Him for that, but we didn't trust Him in this like we ought to have. And yet the Lord is purifying, the Lord is working through those things.

So we know, we ought to be knowing the Lord with greater clarity and greater confidence as we grow older in Christ, as we grow up in Christ. And so knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience, it's only afterward that we can really as we look back over the trial we can see. It wasn't pleasant, but I would have never learned what God had to teach me was it not for the fact that He, unless He had put me through that, I wouldn't have learned what it was He was trying to teach me about Himself. I mean, I think of those in our church who have said things like that about having lost a spouse, the Lord is more dear and precious to me than He was even when I was married, not that He wasn't precious to them, but you know, I found, I found more out about His faithfulness since my spouse passed than before.

It may be that, you know, the different, the different transitions and the testings of life that we can each one of us can look back and say, you know, I think about in our marriage Elizabeth and I, you know, the things that God has brought along did not been always easy in the marriage, you know, things that you face together as you face them together, they strengthen you, they strengthen your marriage, they strengthen your love for each the Lord and as I know each one of us can say things like that tonight as we look back and we see it was not joyous in the moment, but at the same time God taught us, God put some things in our lives as a result of that. Well, so here He says knowing this that the trying of your faith, personal faith, your personal faith in the Lord is being tested and your, your tests are different than my tests, aren't they? Each one of our tests, we might have similarities, but they're unique in that they're specifically tailored to your needs, just as mine are specifically tailored to my needs. The Lord knows what we need each one of us. He knows exactly what, what we are in need of, but ultimately what is He, what is He wanting to bring about in each of our lives? Patience. He's wanting to produce patience. Going forward in trust even though we don't know what He's, we don't know all the answers. Faith doesn't need to know all of the specifics. Faith just says, Father, I trust you. Father, I know I don't know exactly what you're doing, but I know your way is best. Father, I'll, I'll just continually get underneath of this as long as you want me to be under it. And I know, I know that when you're, when you're done with me in this particular trial, I'll come forth as gold, not because of any good in me, but because of your loving, caring, superintending hand over this trial that I'm, that you're, you're putting me through, I know you're putting me through it. I know you have appointed it. I know that you've allowed me to fall into this particular trial for a reason.

You know, it were, it were either, I think it was a, was it a devotional thought too long ago that was talking about the hurdles of life, you know, their, their hurdles, you can sometimes there's some high hurdles to, to jump. Sometimes it seems like, you know, the, the, those racers that jump the hurdles and they, uh, it may seem that this is a particularly high hurdle or one of these high hurdles going to end that we're, we're having to clear here. And yet patience, run the race with patience, right? That's what the Lord tells us. We're to run that race with patience looking to the author and finisher of our faith, looking to Him, not, not looking so much at the hurdles, but looking at Him and the trials will produce, work patience in us.

God does not want us to come through the trials of life, doubting and grumbling. He doesn't want us to come through them and saying, you know, you're just a hard master to serve. You know that? That's what we see in the gospels any other, the one who says, well, you're a hard master. You're, you're, you're reaping where you didn't sow in all of these things. Uh, no, that's, that's not the view we need to come away with the Lord. We need to come away with the view that everything I have comes from you. Everything that I have, you could, you could take it all the way. Job said blessed would be the name of the Lord. The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. I don't deserve anything from the Lord in the first place. But and when He hath tried me, Job said, I shall come forth as gold. I will come forth as gold. So it's how we, it's how we think of it. You know, there's things that we used to when we were children. We did, we thought of them differently. Uh, then we think of them now. We, we, we thought of them as a child thinks, but the Lord is spiritually speaking, there's some things in infancy of our, our Christian lives. He doesn't want us to remain in our infancy in the way we think about things. He wants us to grow up. He wants us to have a mature view of Him and, and, and yet to have that spirit of just a little child at the same time of trusting Him, of trusting Him in the way that we, uh, way that we come, uh, go through those, those testings. So knowing this, that the trying of your faith, worketh patience.

I think that's the word that's going to be, you know, the word hope, the truth of hope is a very important truth. We need to have hope as we're going through trials. We need to have an expectation that we have an expectation that God is going to do what He says He's going to do. We need to have the expectation that ultimately the Lord is coming back, right? We're, we're looking forward to that blessed hope that we need to have, we need to have this patience being worked into our lives. We don't have it in and of ourselves, but the Lord will, the Lord will produce it in us. If we'll just trust Him, right? If we'll just trust Him, He's exercising that faith muscle if we can say it that way. Not by sight, but walking by faith, may the Lord help us to do that.

Thank you, Lord, for these moments we've had in your words tonight. Uh, look, look, uh, across the small group we have here this evening and I, I think about different, different ones that have gone through different trials in recent months and even years. Uh, we think of, uh, the loss of a, of a child. We think of the loss of a, of perhaps a spouse, maybe some that aren't here tonight. Those who have lost loved ones, those who have gone through, uh, heart problems, those who have faced cancer, Lord, those who have, uh, diabetes, we think of different ones, Lord, who are being tested in a variety of different ways. And yet, Lord, we can know not because we know the full outcome of a thing, but we know that the one that is in control of the, the temperature of the furnace, the one that's in control of the, the duration of the trial itself is the one that loves us. The one that wants to purge and purify our lives and produce in us. You want to produce in us patience that we do not have. You want to work in our lives that which we do not naturally possess, but we, but, but we need to grow as, as we're, we're rooted in Christ. We need to bring forth these fruits that you speak of. And so help us to know that even though it may not seem joyous, we need to count it to be joy. We need to reckon it to be so in our lives. True, true blessing to know that these things touching our lives are coming from the loving hand of our God. Bless us now as we go out into this week, Lord, as we sing this final hymn, but as we go out into this week, Lord, help us to know that there's going to be some things that are going to befall us this week. We're going to, we're going to come into, but Lord, in that moment, help us, help us not to start speaking words that are going to drive us into a place of despair about it, Lord, but help us to speak to ourselves in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, help us to, to remind and encourage ourselves in your word, in the Lord, help us to do that, help us to claim and quote the scriptures so that we will think as you would have us to think about these things and that we may come through that trial better, not to be bitter, but to be better as a result of the things that we face and we pray these things in Jesus’ name, Amen.