Good morning. Welcome to The Edge. My name is Brandi, and I am so glad that you’ve joined us today as we continue our study through the book of James in a series called The Intersection of Faith & Life. This book is all about how our faith is supposed to impact our actual life. That faith was never meant to be thought of as a stack of beliefs that remain up here, but rather beliefs that move us into action and change the way we live.
The book of James is actually a letter that was written by the younger half-brother of Jesus himself. And he wrote it to the 12 scattered tribes, the earliest Jewish Christians, as they had just been dispersed and were undergoing severe trials and persecutions while starting the early church.
The book of James has a very interesting writing style if you haven’t already caught on — James is very to-the-point; he’s very frank. But I love the fact that he’s very practical. He means what he says; It’s no-nonsense. At times, it’s a bit in-your-face, but I also find that it’s a very advice-giving and life-giving book as well. At times, it may feel a bit confrontational, and so don’t be surprised if, at some time during the series, you yourself feel a bit of a struggle as your own faith journey may get poked and prodded just a bit — but it’s so helpful to remember that it’s only because the outcome is going to be good.
James confronts any kind of Christian who claims to be a Jesus follower in word, but doesn’t really follow it in deed because he really wants us to chase after the purpose of this Christian life, which can only be experienced abundantly and fully when we’re living out this faith in real-time.
And that is where we’re going to experience the joy that’s promised to those who love the Lord. In fact, James starts off the letter by addressing how we can actually have joy even when we’re in trials. If you didn’t catch that message last week, Pastor Steve did a great job expounding on that opening section of James’ letter, and I encourage you to go back and listen to that because it is so encouraging, particularly if you’re going through a trial right now. It ended last week with James’ section, where he reminds us that God promises a crown of life for all those who love him — a beautiful image that we can grab onto to inspire us and motivate us in our faith journey during the hard times. But I don’t think it’s any accident that, right after that, James kind of takes a sharp turn, and that’s where we’re going to go today.
He presents to us a darker side of trials, a particular side of trials that I would call “The Shadow Side” — the side that can come whenever we are not walking in those trials in God’s ways. See, James knows that it’s when we’re undergoing trials that we can tend to question God, question what he says, question his character. And then we can be very vulnerable to temptation to sin. We know that trials happen in life, and nobody gets around that. Even Jesus told us, “In this life, you will have trials, but take heart because I have overcome this world” (John 16:33, paraphrased). And that’s great news for believers because that means that if Jesus has overcome, then if his Spirit is living in us, that we have all we need to overcome as well. But it is going to take us continually remembering that on this side of heaven, we are still engaging in a spiritual battle.
And so it’s important to remember when we do go through trials that God has an outcome that he desires for us. God’s intention in trials in our life is for our development, but Satan’s intention is for our downfall. God wants to produce in us a living and acting faith and more and more of his character, ultimately producing in us abundant life. But Satan — Satan wants to kill, still and destroy.
So listen to what James says in James 1:13–15 because it’s interesting who he actually points out as the strongest culprit in this whole sin downfall. He says:
13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, and nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is dragged away and enticed [or lured] by his own evil desires. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin full-grown gives birth to death (paraphrased).
Don’t be deceived. That’s a startling statement that James makes, and he kind of goes right for the juggler by letting us know like, “Hey, this sin thing, it really originates with our own evil desires.” In fact, he gives this picture with his specific wording about being “lured” or “enticed.” It is actually a picture of being lured away by like a bait and a hook. I grew up having to go fishing. I lived in the country and had to grow up going fishing with my family all the time. And while I didn’t personally enjoy it, I certainly took part in helping bait the hooks. And what I can tell you is, when you actually feel the bait and look at it, it looks plastic, it’s a different texture, it almost looks like a toy, and it doesn’t really look like the real thing, but, boy, once you put it on a hook and put it in moving water — and some of them have little tails that flap and they move around — from the distance, it can look awful similar to the actual bait that it is imitating.
And this is the picture that it says that sin does to us. Sin presents this picture that looks like it’s going to be satisfying or like it’s going to bring life. But instead, it can lure us to our own deaths; see, that’s what sin is. Sin is death because sin separates us from God. When James says don’t be deceived, that word “deceive” simply means “drawn away.” Don’t get drawn away from God in your trials. Sin, very frankly, is the craving or the desire for anything that God forbids. And he forbids things that are harmful to us, either emotionally, relationally, spiritually or physically. And so one of the reasons that James says, “Hey, not only is it your own evil desires that causes you to sin and be dragged away but do not pin that temptation to sin on God. Don’t even think about it. And the reason he says that, well, there’s a couple of reasons.
The first reason is because it would not be in God’s character to tempt us to sin when the essence of sin is the very things that he forbids. Also, God is our Father, and he’s a loving and he’s a good Father, and he wants his children close to him. So, to be deceived or to sin is to be separated from him or drawn away. So God, our Father, would never want to lure us away from his protective covering. He knows only when we stick by his side under his protective covering are we going to truly flourish as his children. So it would not be in his nature to lure us away from him.
Another reason that I think James very quickly says, “Don’t pin it on God. And don’t ever say that God is tempting you,” is because it’s kind of human nature to do that. And this is nothing new; this goes all the way back to that very first original sin story back in Genesis 3. If you remember that story of Adam and Eve and how they ate the apple and Satan tempted them, they ate it, and then God comes in and approaches them, and he confronts them about this. And, of course, how do they respond? Well, Eve ends up blaming the devil, like literally the very first person that said the devil made me do it, right? And then we have Adam, who says, “Well, she made me do it.” So that’s our very first, you know, peer pressure excuse. And then Adam takes another turn, and he kind of goes, “Well, the woman that you gave me, God, that’s who made me do it.” So you can kind of hear that implied, “This is really kind of like your fault, God. Right? ‘Cause, I mean, you’re the one that gave her to me.”
So what we see is we see an incredible ability that we have to blame-shift when we ourselves have sinned out of our own evil desires. And one of the reasons that it’s so harmful for us to blame-shift is because, when we don’t own our own sin, we are still held in captivity to the sin.
I sometimes wonder how much more victory we would have over living outside of sin if we could just simply own our stuff more quickly and just be done with it because when we confess it, God promises that he’s faithful to forgive it. In fact, we see a King David in Psalm 51 — it’s a great chapter in the Bible to read If you want to be motivated to truly be free of your sin by confession because King David had just been caught with some of the worst sins you can think of, including murder and adultery. And it wasn’t until when we see in Psalm 51 how he truly owns that sin and confesses it, boy, do we see a beautiful turnaround. I encourage you to read that entire chapter in one sitting, but he says in that chapter, Psalm 51:4–5, he says:
4 Against you, Lord, against you and you only have I sinned.
And then he says:
5 Surely I was sinful from birth (NIV, paraphrased).
Now that might sound weird, but what he’s really saying is, “I recognize that, deep down at my very core, I am destined to want to do things my own way.” In other words, he is accepting the fact that he was born with a sin nature and, friends, this is the essence of why the gospel is such good news for us because guess what? David is not the only person who has ever been deceived and lured away. Guess who else has: All of us.
Listen to what Isaiah 53:6 says:
We all like sheep have been led astray, each man turning to his own way (paraphrased).
Remember, to be deceived simply means to turn away from or be led astray from God. That is the worst part about sin, and it is the condition of absolutely all of us. There is no freedom from sin until we fully confess and fully own it. You’ll see that in relationships, too — just try being truly reconciled, truly redeemed in a relationship where you’ve hurt someone without fully owning it. Maybe on the outside there’s behaviors that you’re like, you know, you’ve made nice with each other so you’d get along, but you will never have the intimacy and the bond with someone that you have hurt if you have not fully owned and confess the hurt that you have caused. It’s no different in our relationship with God, but the good news is he is able and wants to forgive us with that confession.
I think it’s really important too to remember that we’ve all been led astray, and, listen, at the end of the day, whatever that bait is that led you astray or led me astray, maybe even just this morning or five minutes ago or ten years ago, when you were caught in that sin pit of a downfall, it doesn’t really matter. So there is no point in judging what someone else’s sin bait might be. In other words, we all have the desire to go our own way. And there is no point in judging someone else’s sin or acting like one’s is better or one’s is worse. The point is if we are not made right with God, we are astray, and we are hopeless and in need of a savior. Jeremiah 17:5 says:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart has turned away from God” (paraphrased).
Trials leave us questioning God’s character often because it’s then that oftentimes our faith is not sight. It really is faith. And we’re having to hold on more important then than ever to the character that we know of God. And I think that’s why James then immediately starts talking about God and relating him to the light.
Listen to what he says in James 1:17. He says God is the
Father of the heavenly lights,
also meaning the source of the heavenly lights. And he
does not change like shifting shadows (NIV, paraphrased).
He does not change. I think that James wanted to really nail it down that we have to embrace God’s character. And we can’t forget his character, because we are going to have to rehearse that when we’re going through trials or hard times where we don’t necessarily experience it in an obvious way. I think the reason that he reminded us about God being the source of light — he’s talking about the heavenly lights, the celestial lights, the sun, the moon, the stars — but when he says “Father of lights,” it actually means the source of those lights.
So not only is he the Father and creator of those heavenly lights, he is their source. So we know that the sun doesn’t lose its lightness — the essence of the sun is light. In fact, when we experience darkness here on this Earth, it’s not because the sun went dark, right? It’s because we know that the Earth is spinning on its axis, and we’ve turned away from the sun, casting darkness over the Earth. In that same way, we can draw this parallel spiritually, that when we turn away from God who is the light — he’s the light of the world who came down into darkness — when we turn away from him, we are living in darkness, and the path for our life is no longer made clear. It also says that his Word is “a light unto our feet and a lamp unto our path” (Psalm 119:105, paraphrased), which makes sense because these are God’s words for us.
So good luck having a clear path in your life if you are not connected to the Word. And by the way, knowing, embracing and speaking that Word is how Jesus got through his hardest temptation here on earth, in the desert when he was battling, you know, toe-to-toe with the devil. And by the way, the devil was using Scripture, but he was twisting it and taking it out of context.
So we’re going to have to be connected to the light — soaking in God’s light, in his love and in his Word — in order that we’re not stumbling around and getting lost in darkness. I like to think of us, spiritually, kind of like solar lights, you know. We bought some of those lights that you stake in and put next to your sidewalk because it can get pretty dark walking up to our front steps, and at nighttime, you could really easily trip on some of the sidewalks that are uneven in front of our house. But, you know, only whenever those solar lights are really absorbing that sun in the daytime do they burn bright and give off light in the darkness. And really, it’s in the dark that you actually need that light. And isn’t that true for us, too?
I just want to remind you of just the wonderful visual and the picture that Revelation paints for us that one day, when we are with him in all his glory in heaven, it says that there won’t even be a need anymore for the sun because the source of light is who gives off all the light. In fact, it says that it’s because the glory of God illuminates heaven, and God is taking us from glory to glory until the day that he calls us home. His glory is simply his essence.
So do you know what that means? That means that his intent for every single one of us is to be a light that actually burns brighter and brighter and brighter the longer that we walk this earth as a Christian. Isn’t that fascinating? Because that’s totally opposite than how most things are made, right? Most of the time, if you have a light that burns bright, eventually it fades and fades and fades until it’s done. But God’s glory in us is supposed to be burning brighter and brighter and brighter, which means my impact as a Christian should be greater today than it ever has been in all of my previous days. And the only work that I have to do to make that happen — the only thing I have to do — is remain in him, is to be in his light, like a solar light absorbing the sun in the day.
But if anyone else is going to benefit from my light, then I have to be willing to go into the dark places. It always fascinates me that one of Jesus’s final prayers was, “Father, I gave you glory, [meaning I burned your light bright] by completing the work that you gave me to do here on this earth.” You know what our work is? Our work is to shine; It’s to shine his light. I get fascinated when I think about the fact that most things burn and fade, and we know this, even Scripture says that outwardly our bodies, our looks, our strength, our capabilities, our minds, outwardly, we all know this: We’re fading. We’re fading here on this earth, but he says, “But inwardly, he’s renewing us day by day.” His intention for every single one of us is to only grow in brightness, is to shine brighter and brighter.
And I love this because I was thinking about it — I went right back to those first words that James penned, and he said, “James, a servant of God.” So fascinating that he didn’t identify himself as Jesus’ earthly brother, but he found it more of an honor and more of a purpose to consider himself a servant, a minister. I love that he said that he was addressing this to the 12 tribes scattered. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I was reading that that was actually James’ perspective, right? I mean, he’s the one that wrote it. So he’s saying “to the 12 tribes scattered,” and I just have this fun thought, if you will. And I was thinking, is that how God would phrase it? Would he say that they were scattered? Or might he say that they were the 12 tribes sprinkled? Perhaps he was sprinkling his lights to the dark edges of the earth.
And perhaps that’s what we are supposed to be doing too. Long before James ever put pen to paper, the Prophet and King David, the same one that confessed and owned his sin back in chapter 51, wrote this in Psalm 102:18:
Let this be written for a future generation, a people not yet created.
He’s talking about us, people who would actually indwell God’s Holy Spirit. He said:
Let this be written for a future generation, a people not yet created, that they may praise the Lord.
That word “praise” — hallel — literally means “to shine,” “to shine.”
Let this be written for a future generation, a people not yet created,
those people that would somehow, if he could fathom this, indwell God’s Holy Spirit that they would shine for the Lord. We were born to shine — that’s our purpose, that’s our purpose. Don’t hide your light, and don’t let it go out.
Do you feel like your light has been dimmed? Do you feel like your spark is going out? Maybe you’re down to nothing but a little flicker? May I suggest to you I understand that? And I’ve gone through times in my life, even fairly recently, where I just felt kind of dull in my Christian walk. Can I tell you what changed it for me? What has just lit me on literal fire? It was about a year ago when I just knew — I can’t really get into it right now — but I just knew, and I was completely convicted and nudged almost badgered by the Holy Spirit to get out there and be with people who are living very oppressed, very dark lives. I did not know how I was going to do it because, for the most part, I was surrounded by wonderful Christian people, which is great for me. But I don’t think that my light was going out all the places that it needed to.
And let me tell you, if you pray a prayer and ask God to open those doors, you can bet that he will. You guys, we have to be in his Word. We have to be in his love and in his light and remain connected to him, but never so that you can just burn up bright all by yourself, but so that you can be sprinkled into the earth and take your light into the dark places around you. Sprinkle the earth, church, shine your light in your neighborhoods, shine bright in your homes. Sprinkle your light into the workplace, into your neighborhoods, into your grocery stores, into the gas station, into the local coffee shop that you frequent. Take your light and shine, and keep shining until the day that we stand fully in his glorious light. And I just want to pray this final blessing over you, straight from Scripture, “The Lord bless you. The Lord keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you.”
Some questions that could be helpful for you to kind of mull over upon this hearing would be:
What is the biggest takeaway for you?
Can you identify a trial where maybe you were tempted to turn away from God, but instead, you came out on the other side, and God had developed in you a stronger faith and deeper character. If so, share that. Talk about that. Encourage other people with that story.
What practical spaces and places can you shine your light?
Church, it was a blessing to be with you this morning, and I look forward to hearing and sharing all the stories of the places that we got to go and shine his light.