The Genuine Article (Part 1 of 2) — 09/20/2021

foreign [Music] [Music] if we're given the choice none of us would choose to suffer but did you know that trials can actually be good for you we're going to find out how today on truth for life as we continue the series called faith that works here's aleister begg with part one of a message titled the genuine article [Music] i invite you to turn to james in chapter one as we resume our studies in james this morning before we look at our text we'll just pause and pray gracious god as we come now before your word we recognize that what you have to say to us through the bible is actually more important than what we have to say to you through our songs and our prayers and so we ask for a spirit of diligence for an awareness of your divine work within us as we open our eyes to the pages of the bible and as we seek to open our hearts to receive the word that james says needs to be planted in us accomplish your purpose as we pray for christ's sake amen well our text this morning is verse 12. blessed is the man who perseveres under trial because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that god has promised to those who love him like many young couples when sue and i were first married back in 1975 and when we lived in edinburgh the capital of scotland part of our challenge was in furnishing our flat or our apartment and mainly with a secondhand furniture and we would go to the new town in edinburgh which is actually an oxymoron in many ways but uh it was a pretty old new town at the time and uh down there on a number of streets there were all of these second-hand shops and on pleasant days much of the furniture was actually out in the street so that you could see it from the road and stop and examine it and handle it and so on and on one particular occasion we were there and looking i think it was at a cabinet something that had moving parts at any rate and in the course of uh entering into price discussions with the shop owner who was out in the street with us i said to him why would i buy this second hand piece when i could actually go and for probably the same money i get a new piece from one of those hyper markets well he obviously was thrilled at the challenge that was laid down by the question because his eyes lit up and he said well i'll i'll show you why you shouldn't do that and then he proceeded to take this cabinet and to open the doors and to close them uh with such forcefulness that any lesser piece of material would have really been destroyed and the more he banged and opened and closed it and showed us the way in which everything was put together and the joints were in wonderful place he smiled triumphantly as in every occasion the doors went right back into place and then having done that he said now come with me and he took us through the shop and into a back shop where he obviously had his party piece for occasions such as this because he had another piece of furniture a new piece of furniture that was made by with chipboard and had a white sort of plastic veneer on it and he said now this is probably the kind of thing you're talking about whether it was or not didn't matter for the occasion but he then proceeded to subject this piece of furniture to the same kind of treatment that he'd given to the used piece that was out on the street and with great triumph he showed how it very quickly became a real mess and how it it it affected the screws that were in and so on and it really it really wasn't faring very well and then he said you see you can have a piece like this that may look a little better on the outside than what i have out there but the real issue he said is it's day by day usage and the test of time and the opening and the closing and the slamming and everything else and he said it is that which will prove whether you have that genuine article or not and he said i suggest to you that you reject this piece and i still have in mind he loved to waggle the door reject this piece he said and come with me and purchase the genuine article and of course we were sold and we did and uh he he spoke a tremendous amount of truth now the reason i begin there is because i've decided that an apt heading for this study of verse 12 is simply that phrase the genuine article because james in these opening verses and we come to the end of a section here in the 12th verse is actually addressing the question of faith as a genuine article what does faith look like how do we know whether our faith is the real thing and the answer that james gives at least in part is that genuine faith is to be discovered in the warp and woof of life in the day by day opening and closing if you like in the facing up to the challenges and the trials that come our way in verses two to four he's already established the fact that trials are not unnatural nor are they uncommon nor are the obstacles to spiritual growth that of course is very important because we may be tempted to think that that is the case listening to people on a daily basis who suggests somehow or another that victorious christian living means the absence of trials that if you really were a man or a woman of faith then these events that would uh threaten to harm you or undo you would somehow or another be uncommon experiences and indeed if you wanted to make any kind of spiritual progress then you would need to ensure that your life was free of these encumbrances and what james says is the exact opposite of that what he says in his opening verses two to four is said by peter in his opening section as we saw in one of our studies earlier where in first peter chapter one and in verses six and seven addressing again as james does the issue of all kinds of trials he says these have come so that your faith may be proved genuine so that your faith may be proved genuine so the experience of trials and of difficulties not uncommon not unusual not unproductive but in fact purposeful in the plan of god now verse 12 i think you will agree it completes the thought of verses 2 to 4. indeed linguistically you can see verses 5 to 11 in brackets and read from verse 4 immediately to verse 12 and find that the whole thing holds together in terms of logical thought and that's why when we dealt with verses 5 to 11 we said that we need to understand this in light of the structure that he has laid down concerning the notion of persevering faith but our concern is not so much with that this morning as it is to recognize that in verse 12 he introduces us to the truly happy individual the word that is used here blessed macarios is not an unfamiliar word in the bible it occurs often in the psalms of course we have the beatitudes of jesus the brother of james and here james provides us with his own little beatitude the blessing that accompanies this man the true happiness which this individual experiences is a happiness that is not tied to circumstances it is not tied to circumstances but it is a happiness which is known by the individual who doesn't try and duck the difficulties or run from reality but instead perseveres in the face of the trial now in order to help us come to terms with this verse i want to ask five straight forward questions of it they're very simple but i hope it will be equally helpful let's just read the verse one more time blessed is the man who perseveres under trial because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that god has promised to those who love him well first of all what are these trials what are these trials up in verse 2 we are introduced to them as trials of many kinds the word in greek is the word that gives us multi multi-colored the idea of a rainbow and all of the variety of colors and hues that are represented in the panorama of a rainbow's beauty that is the word that is used to describe the trials that are experienced by those who are living the christian life they are trials of many kinds it's interesting that he doesn't begin to list them he doesn't say and what i have in mind is this and this he deals with it in a generic way which if you think about it is actually far more helpful because if he had said i have in mind a b and c then those of us who could look at a b and c and say well i have no awareness of this or experience of this right now then we would either have to go and seek out a b and c because if these trials are the key to maturity then we're going to have to have them in order to become mature or we'd have to just decide we're not going to become mature at all he does mention parenthetically that poverty introduces us to a trial that needs to be dealt with that prosperity in itself may become the occasion of trial but beyond that he simply calls them trials of various kinds which means that all of us have an immediate point of application i don't need to ask you what your trial is or what your trials are to be aware of the fact that you have some just to live life and to be honest is to know that so for example some of us are facing the trials of adolescence either as adolescents or as the parents of adolescence and somebody told us it's a bit of a chore and we're saying i didn't realize that it could be such a trial some of us are facing the trials of diminishing physical capacity for whatever reason simply the passage of time the fact that things are no longer working the way they once did for some of us as ricotta said remarkably when he was preaching here we have a furniture problem insofar as our chest has now dropped down into our drawers that the impact of gravity is taking its toll the trials of no job the trials of the same job the trials of a new job someone says i wish i had a job someone else says you can have my job trial trial the trials of not having children the trials of having children the trials of being an only child the trials of having siblings who drive you nuts no these trials are all kinds of trials they are not uncommon they are not unusual and they are not obstacles to spiritual growth and the tremendously encouraging factor is this and you need to go to first peter again to get this it's verse 10 of chapter four you can deal with it later but the peter employs the very same word of god's grace as he employs of human trials it's manifold trials manifold grace are multi-colored trials multi-colored grace in other words the grace of god is more than able to meet all the kinds of trials that are faced by god's people as they walk the path of faith question number two what does it mean to persevere under trials what does it mean to persevere under trials and you'll notice that it is not suggesting that we fly above the trials but rather that we are flying through the trials every so often when you're flying the pilot will tell you that he has spoken to air traffic control and he has spoken to some of the planes that are flying ahead of us and there is no possibility of us being able to go above below or around the turbulence that we now face therefore he has asked everybody to please be seated and if we just give one more little tug on our belts i love how they say that just one more little tug on your belt and we are going to fly through this we're going to fly through it the christian life is all about flying through it and anybody who comes to you with a story about getting above it and beyond it and so on is teaching you from an empty head and from a closed bible james is absolutely categorically clear when you face trials of all kinds not if you face trials but when you face them the challenge is the challenge of perseverance what does it mean then to persevere under trials that's our question well it means refusing to run away from the challenges refusing to run away from the challenges some of us are experts at running away as soon as everything becomes difficult we just run change jobs change home change locations change school change courses oh i didn't think chemistry would be this hard the only way to deal with this is make a run for it no you could actually try and see it through not running away but running on running with perseverance as the writer to the hebrew says in 12 running with perseverance the race that is marked out for us it means not only that but holding on no matter how hard it might be because in this way we actually prove to ourselves as well as to any who may be watching that perseverance in the face of trials is not only possible but it is profitable you see how do we prove to ourselves that our faith is genuine it's when trials come when the trials come and everything goes skew with now we find out whether these professions and these testimonies and these verses and all this stuff we've said about the grace of god and the peace of god and the securing providence of god now we have an opportunity to find out whether the profession of our lips is matched by the experience of our lives and that's what it means to persevere in them not just possible by god's grace but also profitable on account of god's grace in uh spurgeons morning and evening which you can read later on if you choose is exactly along these lines i'll give you just a little a little piece from it he says he who would glorify his god must set his account upon meeting with many trials no man can be illustrious before the lord unless his conflicts be many if then yours be a much tried path rejoice in it because you will the better show forth the all-sufficient grace of god as for his failing you never dream of it hate the thought the god who has been sufficient until now should be trusted to the end ed spurgeon on 2 corinthians 12 9. thirdly what does it mean then to stand the test you'll notice that the verse goes on because when he has stood the test the word is dokimos in greek it means approved after testing and that is the word that he uses here when he has stood the test when he is the one who has the seal of god's approval on his life because he is a persevering believer but without the trials there's no test and without the test there's no graduation you don't get a seal of approval without going through the test god is purposeful in what he does in the lives of his children that's what james is saying how long does this test take when i looked at this at first i thought you know when he has stood the test uh this is a moment in time and then i looked and i said no when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life when do you receive the crown of life in eternity when does eternity come just after you finish with time when will you be finished with time at the end of your life how long is this test going to last the whole of life see basically if we're honest the whole of our lives is just one gigantic series of tests there's something reassuring about that though isn't there because it gives us it gives us an opportunity to think seriously and realistically about the things that we and other people are going through when we're tempted to regard them as intruders rather than as james says welcoming them as friends every so often when you're flying and i'm sorry this is my last flying analogy for the morning but uh 18 and a half hours from johannesburg to new york has put flying firmly in my mind for a while but you've had the experience you find yourself sitting next to a pilot and you say where you're going and he says i'm going to the simulator and why are you going to the simulator well i'm going to simulate and i'm going to have experiences of turbulence and stress and the loss of an engine or the loss of two engines or an aborted takeoff or whatever else it is so that if and when that ever happens i might be prepared and ready to go and of course you're very interested in that and you wish him the best and you hope that he finishes his course successfully just in case the two of us are ever back together again in a real life situation but when you think about it the christian life has no simulation the christian life is a real time experience all the time every day and what james makes so obviously clear is that the experience of joy and trial is an experience that is a simultaneous experience it is not as we've said before that in the absence of trial is the discovery of joy but rather that joy a joy that is an unfathomable joy may be discovered on account of the trial i've quoted this verse to you before from the hymn but it is a useful verse isn't it it's the hymn that begins my god i thank you who has made the earth so bright and all of the wonderful things in the earth and then the hymn writer says i thank you too that all my joy is touched with pain that shadows fall on brightest hours and thorns remain so that earth's bliss may be my guide and not my chain you see the blisses and the encouragements of our earthly journey may chain us to a constant fixation with wanting more and more and more of that affirmation that approbation that good time that safe time and god in his heavenly wisdom brings into our experience pain in the reality of joy in order that we might become more like his son [Music] trials are unavoidable but we're finding out that god uses them to test our faith and to make us more like jesus you're listening to truth for life with aleister begg our mission here at truth for life is to teach the bible with clarity and relevance as we study the book of james we're learning how this practical instruction is relevant to our lives particularly in the midst of trials when you donate today to truth for life this is the mission you're supporting bringing clear relevant bible teaching to others through this daily program and when you give a gift today we want to say thank you by inviting you to request a terrific children's book it's called bible stories every child should know this is a collection of more than 120 short stories from both the old and the new testaments all of the stories in this book include colorful illustrations and they're written in a way that kids preschool age and up are able to easily understand them each story is just a few pages long so the book provides you with countless nights of bedtime reading at the end of each chapter there are a few short questions that can help you dive a little deeper into god's word with your kids one of the things we love about the book is that it links old testament stories to god's eternal plan especially to its fulfillment in jesus your children will learn how god leading the israelites out of egypt points forward to jesus who leads his people out of sin if you have a young family or if you know a young family request the book bible stories every child should know when you donate today to give simply tap the book image you see in the mobile app or visit us online at truthforlife.org donate if you'd prefer you can call us at 888-588-7884 let me also mention you can purchase additional copies of bible stories every child should know to give as gifts or if you're a teacher you can purchase these to use with your sunday school class the books are available to buy at our cost at truthforlife.org store i'm bob lepine thanks for listening today life's challenges can sometimes feel overwhelming many of us have probably been tempted to give up or to run away at one time or another but as believers we're instructed to persevere join us tomorrow as we'll continue learning how to stay the course in the midst of trials the bible teaching of alistair begg is furnished by truth for life where the learning is for living [Music]

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 2,921

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Keywords: Christian Living, Perseverance, Trials

Id: WQFf3Qk4XcE

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2021