Before we get to it, let me say a word about this book. Because for a lot of us, James can feel like the most uncomfortable letter in the New Testament.
It is relentlessly practical. James doesn't open with a long doctrinal section. He doesn't write a bunch of beautiful theology before he gets to the application. He leads with the application. What does your faith look like? What does it produce? How are you treating the poor? What are you doing with your tongue? Does your prayer life actually go anywhere?
Now, the truth is, some people really like this. Some of you have been waiting for someone to just tell you what to do.
And some of you are already a little nervous. You are worried that you are going to get another list of things to do that you are just going to fail at doing.
I want to say this right up front: the danger with James, and why so many people misread him, is that it is very easy to take this letter and turn it into a list of things you need to do better. And if you do that, you will walk away from this series feeling like you failed a test. Every. Single. Week.
That is not what James is doing. James is not giving you a self-improvement program. One thing we are going to see is that James is helping us align ourselves with Jesus. He wants our hearts to have an undivided devotion to Jesus.
And the first thing he wants to talk about is suffering. Because when you suffer, your devotion gets challenged. Suffering exposes the idolatry that lives deep inside. And James wants to help us get rid of that idolatry so we are singularly devoted to Jesus Christ.
James is writing to Jewish Christians scattered across the Roman world. These are not people having a mild inconvenience. Some have been driven from their homes. Some are navigating poverty, social exclusion, and real pressure to give up on following Christ.
Notice the two words, "various trials" — what that means is something like tests, pressure, things that strain you to the breaking point. And he says, Consider it a GREAT joy when you experience these things.
Now, if you're sitting here and you're not a Christian, or you're not sure what you believe, let's be honest. That sounds absolutely insane. Consider it joy when your life falls apart? That sounds like the kind of thing a religious person says to someone else who is suffering while they sit in comfort. So before you tune me out, let me show you what James is actually doing. He's not asking you to feel happy. He's asking you to do math.
That word "consider" is doing a lot of work. It is not an emotional command. He's asking us to think. To change our minds and believe something to be true.
What I mean by that is we are always calculating the cost when bad or good things happen to us. Most of the time we consider good things to be an addition or even multiplication. But when something bad or negative happens, it's a subtraction or division. Suffering in particular is really bad. Something has been taken from you. You perceive that you will be less than you were.
James is telling us, that's the world's math. We need new math.
And he tells us why. The testing of your faith produces endurance — the ability to stay standing under weight. Not just surviving, but holding up without giving in. And endurance has a result: you don't become less than you were, you become more than you can imagine. Mature and complete, lacking nothing.
Now, let me be honest about something. Most of us hear that and think, okay, so if I just hang on long enough, things will get easier. We treat suffering like a tunnel. You just keep walking and eventually you come out the other side into the sunlight. But here's the thing. Life doesn't usually get easier. Talk to anyone who's been around for a while and they'll tell you. The challenges get bigger, not smaller. You don't graduate from hard things.
But here's what James is actually promising, and it's better than what you think you want. He's not saying the weight gets lighter. He's saying you become someone who can carry more. The person who has let endurance do its full work isn't someone whose life got simpler. They're someone who can stand in a storm that would have destroyed them ten years ago, and they're still standing. Not because they're tougher. Because they're rooted in something deeper.
That only happens through tests. Specifically tests of our faith. This isn't about just getting better at suffering — it's about growing in trusting. Suffering by itself doesn't make you stronger. Suffering by itself can make you bitter, cynical, or numb. Ask anyone who's been through something terrible without faith. They didn't come out refined. They came out scorched.
So what does that mean? Simply put, it's when God puts us into a situation where we have to answer the question: Do you trust and value me more than this? These tests cause us to feel our own helplessness. Our inability to fix it, to solve it, to get out, to save ourselves. Only then does our faith get tested so that we ultimately rely on God alone.
Let me share something from my own life. Many years ago I served for a short time at a church where things were very unhealthy. Dysfunctional doesn't even really begin to describe it. At the time, all I could think about was what I was losing. It was a very long four years that I prayed and prayed for God to bring an end to. When He finally did, I thought the next church that I went to was heavenly. At first. And then I found it was dysfunctional also. The situations were so broken that I couldn't fix them. And actually I realized that I was so broken that I couldn't fix myself. Only then did I begin to rely on God alone — and I pray that continues.
James is asking us to use a different kind of math. One from above, not the world. The trials you are trying to avoid are given to subtract things from our life — the hidden idols we are using instead of God. And they add to our lives by giving us more and more of Christ.
Now, let me show you something really wonderful. Some people think the way to get through trouble is by working harder. Trying harder. Doing more. But that is not the answer James gives us.
This verse is specific. The wisdom God promises here is given freely when we are suffering. And let me ask you — why would you need wisdom when you are suffering? Because most of us, when we are suffering, don't understand and we even lose the ability to think clearly. So James tells us: when you are suffering, God has a special promise for you. Ask him for wisdom and He will give it to you freely.
What a good God. Free wisdom. When you need it most. The only condition is this — and it's really important for you to understand this. The condition isn't a moral condition. It isn't a performance condition. It's a posture condition.
He says, when you ask, don't try to run the math both ways. The text says, don't be double-minded. Most translations use the word "doubt." It's better to say double-minded. What does that mean?
Let me ask you a different question. How many of you, if you're completely honest with yourself, are running what I'd call a spiritual backup plan? God is your plan A. You want to trust him. You're in church. You pray. And you mean it. But somewhere in the background, you're maintaining a plan B — actually what you are maintaining is an idolatry.
Maybe it's that extra degree that you hope will keep you from being irrelevant. Maybe it's the savings account you check every morning. Maybe it's your child's acceptance into the right school. For some of you, it's the thing that will finally get your parents to see you the way you always hoped they would. And if God comes through, great. But if he doesn't — you've got options. The issue is not whether you have savings or a good plan; it's whether or not your peace rises and falls with the bank balance or your success or failure.
Double-mindedness is not only an identity problem, it's an idol problem. It's what happens when you haven't decided who you are. Or maybe it's better to say, whose you are.
Here's what James is saying. Some of you are really struggling — maybe financially, maybe emotionally, maybe relationally. You are poor in an area that the world says you need "wealth." The new math says: the worldly poor are often the spiritually rich.
And likewise, some of you are doing quite well. Maybe you have begun to identify yourself with these things that make you appear or feel rich. And the new math says: those things are going to be like a flower in the scorching sun. It appears pretty, but it won't last.
James is stripping away everything we are prone to cling to. Poverty won't save you. Wealth won't save you. What's left when everything gets burned away?
When suffering and trials come into your life — when you get that terrible diagnosis, when all your efforts don't produce the result you hoped for, when the relationship you thought would bring you joy falls apart — you cannot by sheer force of will just "count it as all joy." You need something underneath you.
Did you know that on his way to the cross, Jesus was doing math? He was bringing to mind the things he knew from before time began.
What was the joy set before him? What was he calculating? He saw the other side. He saw the throne. He saw the restoration of everything that had been broken since the garden. And he ran the numbers. The cross on one side. The joy on the other. The shame on one side. The glory on the other. And he did something almost impossible to understand — he despised the shame. He counted the shame as worthless and the joy as infinitely valuable.
Jesus did not just go through a trial or experience suffering. He entered the ultimate trial and suffering in your place. And then he rose from the dead so now you can know that whatever trial or suffering you may experience is never empty and never final.
So for now, when you are suffering, when things don't make sense — James tells us this: Ask for wisdom. Remember what he said: "Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God — who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly — and it will be given to him."
What did God give us generously and ungrudgingly? Jesus.
Which means when you are sitting in the hospital room wondering what just happened, the wisdom God promises isn't a principle you look up — it's certainly not ChatGPT. It's a person who sat in the garden of Gethsemane and didn't run.
At the beginning of this sermon I told you James was asking you to do math that sounds insane. Consider it joy when your life falls apart. And maybe you're still not sure you can do that. But here's what I want you to see. Before James ever asked you to do that math, Jesus did it first. He looked at the cross — the worst subtraction in human history — and he counted it as joy. Not because the math made sense. Because you were on the other side of it.
He's not just the math underneath your math. He is the answer.