God’s Purpose in a Variety of Testings: Failure

God's Purpose in a Variety of Testings: Failure

Amen. Let's take our Bibles, please this morning, and turn if you will to James chapter 1. I want to read a few of the opening verses in the book of James. Beginning in verse 1, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the twelve 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, but let patience have her perfect work that she may be perfect and entire wanting nothing. And please mark your Bibles to these verses as our Scripture texts for this morning. And let's acknowledge the Lord again in a word of prayer.

Our Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity we have to gather again in worship. We have read a short portion of your word this morning and we pray your blessing will be upon the expounding of your word this morning. We pray that we trust that you know exactly what each one of our hearts are in need of and Lord at the same time we do come into your presence today with a desire to bless you Lord with our soul as we saw earlier this morning. And not to forget all of your benefits to us. No matter what we are going through, your nature, character, attributes do not change. As the hymn says, thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not. As thou hast been, thou forever will be, great is thy faithfulness. May we, whatever mundane or momentous trials and tests and cares of life we may be experiencing now, Lord, lay all of those things aside as we consider how great thou art and get our eyes off of whatever we may be facing that may be troubling our hearts, Lord, and truly get our eyes upon you. We pray these things today, I pray it for my own heart, I pray in behalf, Lord, as each and everyone lifts up, we lift up our prayers in our own hearts as I lead to the throne of grace. May it be true for each one of us, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

For several weeks now, we've been looking at God's purpose or God's purposes in a variety of tests that He brings, that He allows, that He permits to come to our lives. And we know as believers the promises for those that love God, that are called according to His purpose, that all things do work together for good to those who are called according to His purpose. And what is His purpose in our lives? His purpose is not primarily to make us happy circumstantially; His purpose is to make us like His Son, to fashion in us Christ in our lives that He may be seen and not us, not our own selves.

Lord willing, I'm going to conclude next week the study that we've been going through and looking just at a variety of different examples of how God does test us. That doesn't mean that that's all the ones that we could possibly speak of, but this morning I want to speak of how God tests us in failure. Failure in life, and in James chapter one, we've already read this morning, let's look again in verse two where we read, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations,” meaning a variety of different kinds of temptations. Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience, that let patience have her perfect work that she may be perfect and entire, wanting or lacking nothing.

God intends through all the tests of life to bring a completing work in our lives, a completing by His grace to add to our lives while removing things like the dross through the heat of the fire. He also wants us to grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior. He wants Christ to be seen in our lives. His purpose is not that we would be the product of our own self-will; His purpose is not that we would be the product of our own feelings or the product of our own imaginations, our own understanding, our own wisdom. No, His purpose for us is that we would reflect His character in our lives. We sing that hymn, “All to be like the Blessed Redeemer, pure as thou art.” We want our lives, and God wants our lives, to reflect His light and His glory to others, all the way from the way that we think to the words we speak to the actions that we perform, that they would reflect, that they would glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. Even when we eat and we drink, whatever we do, do all to the glory of God.

Now, I mentioned the word failure this morning because I've been thinking on this a good bit recently. Failure can come in a variety of different ways, in a variety of different contexts. I think about failure’s definition, the modern or the American Heritage Dictionary. I just looked it up online, I looked at Webster's too, and it simply says the condition or fact of not achieving the desired end or ends, the condition or fact of being insufficient or falling short. And it could be the non-performance of what is requested or expected. It simply means that what was supposed to happen didn't happen. If you were supposed to do, you didn't do, or you did something you were not supposed to do, you failed, I failed in a particular thing.

And there's two, as I thought about it, there's really two basic categories of failure that we could look at. One of them would be we fail because we lack understanding; we fail in a new stage of life just because we don't have experience in this. If you, I'm sure Brother Stable, for instance, we know he's been growing things for years and he could probably tell you all the ins and outs of what you should do, what you shouldn't do. But when you first start into, and we have a little experience over the years growing things, and there's certain things you learn because you failed in the first crop. You know, I planted this and it was just a flop and it did not do well, but it was not that I knew better, I just didn't know. You may have even read books and tried to gain information, but the information you gained was for some other growing zone than your own and it doesn't work where you live. It could be any number of things that you just failed because, well, you didn't want to fail, but you just failed because you lacked information. But if you go and you talk to, that's why it's good to counsel with people, if we're talking about growing things, somebody that has experience and they can share that experience with you, and it will most likely eliminate a lot of those types of failures. It'll help you anyway with those types of failures.

But then there's another, I would say another category of failure that we might divide into two subcategories. And this is not divinely inspired or anything, but these are just as I've been thinking on it, things that have come to my heart and mind. Failure because of doing what we knew we shouldn't have done or not doing what we knew we should have done. So let me say that again, we can fail because we did something we knew we shouldn't have done, but we did it anyway, or we failed to do something that we knew we ought to have done. And in that, there can be two different levels, I guess we can say, of that. There could be the failure to do or not do something because we got, how can I put it, we got distracted, we forgot. It wasn't that we intentionally, directly, you know, my parents would say, “You disobeyed me,” but there's a difference between disobedience and direct disobedience. You directly disobeyed what I told you to do. You just, you heard it and you went and did what you wanted to do, didn't you? Or there could be a situation where we've been told, but we forgot. “Oh, Mom, I'm sorry, I forgot, I didn't mean to not do that,” right, whatever the case may be.

Or there could be the failure that one tried to get away with and thought they wouldn't get caught, but they failed in that way, in the sense that they failed to do what God would have them to do, not because they didn't have the information, not because they didn't remember, simply because they failed to do what was right. They knew it was right and they just simply failed to do the right thing, or, you know, whatever the case may be, they failed to abstain from something they shouldn't have done, not because they didn't have the knowledge, perhaps just because they didn't have the heart, and they failed.

Well, I want to look, if you'll turn with me, we'll come back to James here, but let's look in Genesis 9, please. Genesis 9, verse 20. In Genesis 9 and verse number 20, we see a failure of the first variety that I mentioned. It says here in verse 20, “And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine and was drunken, and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father, and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.”

We've read a lot of good things about Noah before we read about this. We've read, well, he was a man that feared God rather than man. He was a man that feared God and believed God's warnings about a coming flood, and he trusted in God's warnings to the point that he actually built an ark in obedience to what God had taught him to do, and he preached righteously. He was a preacher of righteousness, preparing people, “Listen to God, He's telling us there's a flood coming, and we've got to get in this ark.” We read everything I read of Noah, his heart is where it ought to be. He's doing what God would have him to do. That's the record that we read of him. In fact, we find that Noah found grace, Genesis 6:8, in the eyes of the Lord. We find in Genesis 6:22, what does it say in verse 22? “Thus did Noah according to all that God commanded him, so did he.” In other words, he did not fail to do anything in the building and preparation of that ark that God told him to do. He didn't 99% of the way do it. He did it just like God showed him, just like how Moses made provision that the tabernacle would be built according to the patterns shown him in the mount. He prepared it just like God said. He didn't fail to do any of that.

But then we read this odd, kind of a strange failure here of his in Genesis 9. And when we look at this failure, it's hard. We have to be careful that we don't attribute something to Noah that's not true of him. And I think the kind of failure he experienced was something that he had never experienced before. Evidently, something, it seems, changed after the flood where he plants a vineyard and then he gets drunk. Does it seem that he was expecting to be drunk by drinking this wine, drinking this fruit of the vine? I can't say that 100% for sure, but it sure does appear to be that way. He's in his own tent and he's uncovered, and evidently Ham and his son Canaan, and we see that there was something that was inappropriate. I'm not even going into speculation. I think too much speculation may have happened about what happened there. But there was something inappropriate evidently that happened because of what we read of those words towards his grandson afterwards. But we noticed that this was not, did not seem to be something that Noah was purposely doing. He failed in new territory, evidently, not because he knew he was going to, but because it just happened, kind of like a failed crop kind of failure.

I don't like to fail. Do you like to fail? I don't like to fail. It doesn't feel good, does it? It brings a sense of shame to us. It brings a sense of, we could just have a little pity party when we fail, right? I just feel so bad because I failed in this thing. There's a lot of things, but that's not what God wants us to get out of failure, even in this particular kind of failure. He doesn't want us to get out of it, “Well, you know, I'm just a failure.” Well, if that's the case, we're all failures in that sense. We've all failed. We've all fallen short of the glory of God. Let's just get it on the table. None of us are perfect in the sense that we haven't failed. But at the same time, what is it, I never read anything else about Noah drinking and getting drunk and being naked in his tent. I don't read anything about it. I'm not saying, you know, that there are not things in the Bible, things that happen in history that weren't recorded in the Bible. But I think there's a reason we don't read anymore about Noah's continued failure in this matter because he learned from it, I believe. I believe he learned from this failing, honest failure in this matter, and he didn't repeat it. I don't believe that he continued doing this.

One of the things we need to get out of failure is that, alright, this God knew this was going to happen. It doesn't mean that God led him into a trap. I'm just saying that God knew this was going to come to pass. What did Noah do? Well, I believe he learned from it. We need to learn what God is trying to teach us through even the honest failures of life. You know, I had no idea. Well, just because you, thank God for His mercy, I think about if you did not, honestly did not know.

We have this very odd set of traffic circles and the very odd intersection in Rocky Mount here that they've put up on our way home. And you cannot make a left turn. You will not legally be allowed to make a left turn, and somebody coming off the interstate, I would hope that law enforcement would give a break if they can see this person is coming off the interstate. This is a non-standard intersection that people, technically if they're paying full attention, they should probably realize, “I shouldn't make a left turn.” But it just looks like you should, right? And they might honestly make the mistake and say, “Well, I'm just going to turn left here.” And they might get pulled over. Now, technically, legally speaking, they can be slapped with a fine because they broke the law, right? But they didn't mean to do it. They didn't realize what the situation was. The key is, what is the law officer going to say when he pulls you over there? “I'm going to give you a break this time. Don't do it again. Don't do it again.” What did Jesus say? Well, that may not have been honest there, but anyway, the woman taken in adultery, “Go and sin no more.” Thank God that if we sin, if we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. But shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? No. What may have been a discovery would there be a rebellion for me to continue in that sin, to continue to do that thing now that I have knowledge, because with knowledge and understanding comes responsibility. It becomes, I am now responsible for the truth that I have received. I'm responsible for what I do with what I have received.

We also see that those who observe failures, as we see in this passage here, those who observe failures, God is testing them as well. What did we read here? When the sons went in, what was it, Shem and Japheth? Honorable. They didn't fail the test of this situation with their father. They handled it honorably. They went in and were very careful on how they covered their father. But that does not seem to be the case with the other son. It doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to be quite the opposite. And God is testing us. What, God was testing Job's friends when they went in and saw him lying there with his putrefying sores, boils, smells terrible. His bones were aching. He had fever. All of this stuff was going on. His wife was saying, “Curse God and die.” Children had died. He lost, you know, I forgot how many thousands of animals, it was over 100,000 animals, I forgot how many it was, lots of them anyway. But all of that happened to him. How are you going to think about Job, friends? How are you going to view this man? Obviously, his life has fallen apart. But how are you going to view him? How are you going to talk to him? Are you going to pray for him? What are you going to do about this? And that's a big part of God not only trying us with failures, but He's trying the hearts of those who are observing us. Our lives are not islands. We're not isolated into ourselves. Our lives all are interconnected and touching one another in various different ways.

But evidently, Noah learned. Noah learned what it is that God wanted him to learn because he probably said, “I'll never do that again. I'll never do that again.” But also, I want us to see the failures of doing what we shouldn't have done. Do you remember Eve in the garden? We remember how she took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It doesn't mean that she took of that fruit, and the scripture tells us she was deceived. She was deceived. Adam was not deceived in the transgression, but she was deceived. Well, we say, but she knew what God had said. In fact, she just not too far before the deception, not too long before that, she had just said that, she repeated essentially what God had told them to do and what not to do. But she was deceived. She came to a place by the manipulation of the serpent, of that old serpent, that she actually didn't think she was doing wrong in the moment.

She, we could say, I want to give you a personal example. This is not a deception, but it's something I knew better about. I knew, in fact, I taught our children this past year in a little basic survival skills class that we did about using a knife. One of the rules, I think I gave nine or ten rules about using a knife. One of the rules of using a knife is you never cut towards your body. You're always cutting away, right? You don't want to be cutting towards yourself. Well, I knew that. Chicken, and you know, got my finger too far up on the back side of the chicken's neck. And technically I was cutting away from my body, but I was cutting towards part of my body. And I knew better. I was getting tired. It was probably one of the last chickens that we were doing. I was getting tired. And I cut myself. And I failed. And I don't like to fail like that, but I failed. I failed in that thing. And I cut myself. But you had better believe I learned from that mistake. And I have, you know, I think of the hymn that we sing, “I want a principle within of watchful godly fear, a sensibility of sin, a pain to feel it near. Help me the first approach to feel of pride, a wrong desire, and quench the wandering of my will and quench the kindling fire.” Help me, and it goes on. But I want a sensibility of sin. I want to, a pain to feel it near.

Lord, I think of David. Remember David when he sinned, he knew how the Ark of God was to be transported. He knew that there were staves that were to go through those rings, and they were to carry that Ark in the way God had prescribed, just like Noah knew that God wanted the ark built a certain way. He knew Moses knew that the tabernacle was to be built after a certain pattern. David knew that there were staves. And I don't think David purposely held his fist at God and said, “You know what? I'm going to do it the way I want to move this Ark.” I don't believe he did that. But they made a new cart, an ox cart. And he was just so excited to be moving this Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, to a tent that he had made temporarily for it until the temple would be built. He was joyful about this. He was, I believe, wanting to do this to the Lord. He failed. He failed. Something should have been so obvious. Was it because of the precedent set with the cart back in the days when it went to the Philistines? I don't know what was in his mind. Why did he build the cart instead of just, you know, sometimes we complicate things too much in our own ways. But instead, well, there was a stumbling of the ox, and the cart rocked, and the Ark, like it was going to tip off. And as you know the story, Uzzah reached out to stabilize the Ark. And the Lord smote him dead. And the Lord smote him, not because his heart was wrong in it. Even he failed in what he did, with good intentions. He failed, but he shouldn't have touched the Ark. He was not given the permission to go and just touch the Ark. But in this, God showed David things must be done His way. You have got to learn from this, son. I know you had a good heart. I'm just imagining what God would have said here. If He spoke directly, you know, well, David had a true desire to do this in the right way, but he did it in a way that was in disobedience to what God had actually said. And he failed in that.

But what I think really touches my own heart about it is how David recovered from the failure. Sometimes we can even, in pride, not try to do anything for the Lord because we're afraid we're going to fail and be shown up, right? And we're going to fail, and we're going to look stupid or be ashamed or look like a failure. That's an aspect of pride. We might just say, “Well, I feel very comfortable right where I am.” Well, God has His ways of getting us out of our comfort zone, doesn't He? God has His ways of bringing us out of that comfort. Well, David was wanting to do great things here for the Lord, and he failed in doing it, right? He wanted to build, and the Lord was pleased even ultimately with David's desire to build a house, but He said that you're not going to be the one to build it. Look at how David submitted to the Lord in that. And so many times said, “Yes, Lord, but I will prepare abundantly for the building of this temple. I will prepare abundantly for the preparation of this temple.”

But even in this particular situation in 2 Samuel 6, let's look over there for a moment, 2 Samuel 6. I want to just read a few of the words here. If you look there with me in verse 1, let's begin in verse number 8. And David was displeased because of the Lord and made a breach upon Uzzah, and he called the name of the place, so David would not remove the Ark of the Lord unto him into the city of David, but David carried it aside into the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. The Ark of the Lord continued in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite three months, and the Lord blessed Obed-Edom and all his household. And it goes on and talks about how the Lord had blessed the house of Obed-Edom because of the Ark. And it was so that when they that bear the Ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed oxen and fatlings, and David danced before the Lord with all his might, and David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouting and the sound of the trumpets.

Well, the priests, we noticed that those that carried the Ark of the Lord were carrying it properly. They were carrying it by the staves as it was supposed to be. They were no longer carrying it on an ox cart. And we see that the Lord, that David and the people experienced great joy. David could have stayed in, “I have failed. I'm not going to try anything else.” That's pride. “I have failed.” No, you just need to learn from the failure. You need to learn from what, yes, it was perhaps you forgot how the Lord said it was to be done, but now you know. And just as it's wrong to continue in a failure and repeat the failure once we know, it's also wrong to just say, throw up our hands and say, “You know what? I'm not even going to try again because I am a failure.” That's selfishness. That's just pure selfishness and getting attention on yourself. No, David said, “We did it wrong the first time, and we'll do it right the second time. We're going to learn what the Lord wants us to learn from my failure to obey the first time, even though I had a good desire. I want to do it right. I want to do it well. I want to do this the proper way.” That's an honorable thing, isn't it? It's an honorable thing.

In our text this morning, we read about the divers temptations that we fall into, the variety of different temptations. We've been looking at a variety of these temptations, haven't we? The different tests that come to our lives, and sometimes, as some of you have said recently, we're being tested in different areas at the same time. We're being tested in different ways simultaneously. Wasn't Job being tested in different ways simultaneously? Well, we need to learn what is the purpose of each of these tests, isn't it? We need to learn. We need to know. The scripture tells us this morning, the scripture tells us here that we are to learn to count it all joy, literally complete or pure joy, when the Lord allows us to fall into these varieties, this variety of temptations.

We wouldn't naturally say, you know, “This is joyful. This is joyful that the Lord did this, has happened in my life.” It's just, it doesn't seem to be joyful. Instead, it seems to be grievous. I believe David was deeply grieved about this. But we by faith are called to count it, to reckon it to be so. This is joyful, not because it feels good, but because we know that it is good. Because God has a purpose, even in our own failures. God has a purpose. He never does anything in our lives without a purpose or a plan for us. And that purpose and the plan ultimately, as we've already said this morning, is that Christ may be seen in us. If we recover from the failure and we gain invaluable understanding and we obey the Lord in something that we failed to obey Him in, what vengeance Paul says. What clearing of yourselves. What joy comes to the heart in knowing that we saw the Lord in the trial. We didn't just see the tools God was using in the test, but we learned what it was He wanted us to learn out of the trial. And we saw His hand. We saw Him working through that.

We come to this other type of failure this morning, and it's the type that we see with Adam. If you look with me in 1 Timothy chapter 2, please. It's here in verse number 14, then I'd like us to read 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse number 14. “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” Adam was not deceived. There's no variety of ways to interpret that. It's just what it is. He was not deceived. I think I learned this phrase first from my parents when I was a child, “You knew full well what you were doing.” Is that a southern expression? “You knew full well what you were doing.” When you hear those words and direct disobedience, you better believe there's going to be the Board of Education to the seat of learning coming. It's coming hard. It might be coming multiple times. But “you knew full well what you were doing. You thought you could get,” whatever the words would be, “you have failed to obey. You have directly disobeyed.” Well, I write unto you that you sin not. Don't even sin a single sin. I write unto you that you sin not. But if you sin, you have an advocate with the Father. Do not, as Christians, it should not be this idea in our minds, “I'll try to do this and not get caught.” No. Don't even think that way. God has shown us. How did it get? Your sin will find you out. Your sin will find you out. God does not want us to continue in sin.

Notice what Adam, Adam just disobeys God. We might try to say, well, he heard God, but maybe he misunderstood, like he knew what he was, the scripture. He knew what he was doing. But he thought he knew better. He thought he knew better. He heard, but he didn't heed what he heard. He heard, but he didn't listen, really listen to what God was saying. He didn't heed the word of God. He failed to obey, not because of distraction, not because of deception, not because of lack of knowledge. He failed simply outright, knowing full well what he ought to have done. This reminds me of David, King David. Do you remember? I doubt when he began to covet his neighbor's wife, he thought he would end up murdering a man. Do you? I don't think he began thinking that. You know, he probably thought nobody will see this. I can sweep this under the rug. You know, and he probably said, you know, even afterwards, he probably had some sense of a little bit of regret. You know, “I failed in this thing,” but there was no repentance. There was no true godly sorrow over it. He didn't repent of his sin with Bathsheba. It was not until the birth, well, it was not until the Prophet Nathan came to him and said, “You're the one,” that he did repent. But he envied. He coveted that which was his neighbor's. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, doesn't it? A little bit of sin, no, even in our thoughts.

We've been, not too long ago, we went through a series on the sins of the Spirit. And this is what God is greatly concerned with, is what is in your heart, not simply what did you do, not what the world thinks about, “Well, what can I get away with and not look like I'm too bad or I'm a failure.” No. If we have sinned even in our thoughts and motive, then we have sinned. We may as well have gone ahead and committed wherever the act may be because in God's sight, we have already broken His law. We have sinned. We have failed to think the way God would have us to think. If we're not broken over sin and asking God to forgive us in the mind, we will continue, unlike David did. We will continue to fail. If we don't want God teaching us in our hearts and minds, then what are we going to end up doing? Well, I don't know exactly, but we see that David, because he coveted, it led into stealing to take that which was not his. The Bible warns us that that's what's going to happen. And then after he stole, he committed adultery, and after he committed adultery, he lied, and after the lying didn't work, he murdered. Well, indirectly, he murdered. He set up the murder. He made sure that it happened, and he was guilty of blood, but all of that began when he did not respond well, I'm sure, to the Lord knocking on his heart saying, “No, don't think that thought, don't do that,” and he went on anyway. And he proceeded with what he thought to do. He proceeded with it.

It's been said before that we're like tea bags, and when we get in hot water, the flavor comes out, whatever is in us, right? It's also true, thank God, that the heat makes us malleable if we will respond to God. The heat, we can be shaped like the blacksmith shapes the metal, the iron in the fire. We can be shaped through the heat as well. The trial reveals what's in us, but it also, it is through the trial that we are able to be shaped and changed. And what is the purpose, what is God trying to do through the trials and the tests? We read in our text here today. We read what that purpose that God has on His heart is. Let's go back and read it again in James chapter 1. What is the purpose? What is God wanting to teach us? What is He wanting us to learn? What is He wanting us to gain? Well, we would count it joy because we know He is working. We know He is sovereign over these tests. The devil, of course, as we read all in James, will find out that the devil wants us to fail. He wants us to completely and utterly fail and not learn from it and not draw nigh to God through it. What God wants for us is that the trying of our faith will produce in us, it will work in us patience, patience that we will, as we have seen so many times, will get up under what God has to teach us.

You can't teach a child that won't stay still. Listen to me. We talk to our children sometimes, and we talk and say, “I feel like sometimes I am just, what is the word we use, blowing hot air or something. I am saying something, and it is not being heard. I need your attention. Look at me. I want your eyes. I want you to look at me. I know you are listening to me. I want to connect eyes with you.” That is what God wants to do. It is through the trial that He is teaching us, “Son, get still, be patient, and get under what I am teaching you in this.” We can flail all around in the trial, and we can have a pity party. We can do all these things and say, “I am just a failure,” or we can learn patience. “What is it, Lord, that you are trying to teach me? You are trying to get me still, first of all, and know that you are in control of this trial, and then to acknowledge with joy, Lord, you are teaching me, and then, Lord, what is it that you are teaching me? What is it that you are trying to tell me through this situation?”

Let patience have her perfect work. You know what the saying is, “I want patience, and I want it right now.” That is not true patience. “I want it right now.” No, we can't get patience right now. It is a learning process. It is a process of learning. God brings us through a variety of different tests. We need to say, “Lord, help me. I don't have patience, but help me to get under what you have appointed for me because you are teaching me. What you have in it for me is good. It is good for me. It is good.” Well, it is this trying that we read up here. It is the trying of our faith that works patience. That word in the Greek for trying, as we probably remember, is that word that was used in metal for the testing of metals, for the purification of those metals. But we might say that the Lord is testing us to see what is in us, but also He is testing us to purge out from us what ought not to be there, the dross that ought not to be there in and through that test.

Well, thank God for redemption. Thank God for His mercy and grace in our lives. Certainly, if it wasn't for His mercy and grace to one Adam, who by his disobedience, sin and death passed upon all men, if it wasn't for His mercy and grace, we wouldn't be here today. But thank God that He can turn failure into learning and joy in our lives. Thank God for that. Let's not hate failure more than we hate sin and pride. Let's not hate to fail because we want to look good. Let's hate the actual sin itself. Let's hate that we have thought or thought that we shouldn't think about God or about someone else. Let's hate the fact and uphold the fact that we have said or done something that we ought not to have done and learn from it. I hate the fact that I cut my finger, and I learned from it. But, you know, that's kind of a trivial sort of thing in comparison to the spiritual and eternal realities, isn't it? That's just a temporal thing. And yet even through that, God can teach us. If we do not learn, and we do not humble ourselves, and we do not confess our sin, we'll harden our hearts only. We'll harden our hearts, and then we'll become like the cornered cats, and we'll become insecure.

But the scripture says, James, look in chapter 5, James chapter 5, verse 16, he says this, you need to make it right. You can't just sweep it under the rug and say, “Well, it'll be all right.” You know, no, that's not learning from the failure. Confess your faults. Depending on how you classify them, there are six or seven basic Greek words for sin. And this word, faults, here means a slip, a lapse, a deviation of some sort from truth and uprightness. Confess it. Confess your slip, your lapse, your deviation from truth and uprightness. This word, perhaps hamartia, is found in the New Testament. Generally speaking, this doesn't seem to be some kind of premeditated high-handed sin against God from what I can tell as I look at the scriptures, but it's still nonetheless a sin against God, and it may be a sin against our brother. It may be a failing in some way. It won't hurt you to make it right. It won't hurt you. In fact, it will be healthy for you. It says, “Confess your faults one to another and pray for one another.” Why? “That you may be healed. That you may be healed.” The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Part of healing comes through confession of failure.

Confess our sins to God that have been committed to Him, and He is faithful and just to forgive us, cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But the scripture says that he who covereth his sin shall not prosper. We can't cover our sins. We can't cover up our failures. But if we will humble ourselves, maybe we say it was an honest mistake. It was new territory. I was planting a new garden, I mean, that kind of thing. I was cutting, and I should have known better. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Confess those faults. God will bless if we will learn what He's teaching us through the trial of failure. He will bless us, and He will use us to be a blessing to others. Look at Job when he prayed for his friends. Look at David when he said, “Against thee only have I sinned.” What do we truly, whatever, whether we might say it's a small thing or whether it's to the degree of a David and what he did as we described with Bathsheba, nonetheless, the point is the same. We must learn from God through the test. May God help us to do that.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for these words in your word. You bring us into and allow us to experience a number of different kinds of tests in our lives, Lord. And some of those are, as we've seen this morning, a variety of different levels, maybe we can say of degrees of failure. The will and the mind and the heart have varying degrees of involvement in those things, Lord. But nonetheless, we should never feel ourselves above the need to make something right, even if it is honest, as in David's case, transporting of the Ark. And I was trying to do well and failed even in that. How many times have we experienced that, Father? We wanted to say it well, and maybe we fumbled across our own words. And we said it wrong. We did it wrong. We acted in a wrong way that we didn't intend to, Lord. But even in that, there can be a blessing that comes out of making it right. And there will always be a blessing that comes out of humbling ourselves and letting you have your way in the situation. We pray, Lord, for your blessing in our lives as we go forward, help us to apply these truths to our lives, help us to learn what it is that you'd have us to learn. Help us to get under the appointed chastening and test that you bring in our lives that we may truly have your patience. Help us to see the trial, count it to be from your hand with all joy. And gain what it is that is on your heart for us through the various tests of life. We pray and ask these things in Jesus’ name, Amen.