James 1:2-3 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.”

 Let’s say you call me some afternoon to tell me that you are in the hospital, and that your doctor has given you some bad news. Can I come right away? When I arrive at your room a little later, you tell me that you have an aggressive, malignant cancer. It may not be terminal, but treatment involves a very long, very painful course of radiation and chemotherapy. I reply with something like, “I am so happy for you! What a blessing this is. We should thank God right now for his mercy.”

 Or suppose you show up at my office some morning and tell me that your car has just been repossessed, your utilities have been cut off, or you have just been evicted and you are homeless. My reply is: “How wonderful! I have been praying for something like this for you! Thanks for remembering me and taking the time to share your good fortune.”

About this time you are thinking: A) I am the cruelest man who ever lived, or B) I have completely lost my marbles. I assure you, I am not so insensitive or so clueless that I would respond to your crisis like that.

But maybe you should! What does that mean? The Apostle James urges us not to miss the good things God is doing in our bad circumstances. He even urges us to adopt a positive reaction. He tells us, “Consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of man kinds” He’s not crazy. Let me explain.

Mark Twain once wrote a story called The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg. Hadleyburg had a reputation for being the most honest and upright town in all the region. One day a man came along and decided to put that reputation to the test. “There is nothing weaker than an untested virtue,” he said. Sure enough, he concocted a little temptation that exposed the greed and dishonesty in every leading citizen of the town.

Have you ever wanted a stronger faith? “There is nothing weaker than an untested virtue.” “The testing of your faith,” James says, “develops perseverance.” It gives our faith endurance, the ability to keep clinging to Christ to the very ends of our lives. The Christian race we are running is less of a sprint, more of a marathon. There is only one way to prepare for running long distances. It requires the constant repetition of running long distances. Too much rest, too much time away from testing and pushing the body results in lost endurance, lost strength and extra to work to build it up again.

In the context of his own times, the trials James had in mind may have been the persecution Christians suffered. Between 50 and 300 A.D., the persecution was not non-stop, but it did flare up over and over again. Rather than destroying the church, it tended to make it stronger. It produced the kind of Christian who was fully devoted to his faith and Savior. It didn’t prevent new people from joining the church, either.

When we think of our own trials, we start with tragedies and catastrophes like the pandemic through which we are suffering, or the civil and racial unrest that has seized our country.

But the stream of trials that come into our lives is more constant than that. They don’t always get described with words like “tragedy” or “catastrophe.” They often consist of the little irritations that pile up on top each other: A bruise, bump, cut, or pulled muscle that makes simple tasks painful; a workload that suddenly exceeds the hours in our work day; a coworker’s incompetence or a manager’s unrealistic expectations; someone’s irritating habits that become harder and harder to ignore.

Our days are full of these things. Individually and together these trials test our faith. We can react in one of two ways. We can set faith aside and let our sinful nature take the reins. We become whiney complainers, always criticizing, always pessimists, always fishing for pity. We act like we have no God and we have no faith, and we are well on the way to losing both.

Or we can face our trials and let them do their work. We can turn to our Lord for help. We can remember his grace and forgiveness and let them change us. We can get through them with prayer and patience. We can trust God’s promises. We can respond with love and godly action. We can be stronger Christians at the end of the day.

We can consider our trials pure joy, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Isaiah 55:10-11 “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

We may have reason to wonder about “It does not return to me empty.” We have tried God’s Word on brothers or sisters who have strayed from the faith, children who’ve stopped coming to church, or friends we have been trying to evangelize. The rolled eyes, the look of disinterest on their face, say, “Oh no, not this again.” “Really,” we think to ourselves, “God’s word never comes up empty? Then what do I make of this?”

When I was riding a train across Denmark ten years ago, a man took a seat facing mine. Then he did a very un-Scandinavian thing: he started a conversation with me. His name was Amir, and he was immigrant from Saudi Arabia. He was very eager to tell me about his Muslim faith. It was hard for me to get a word in edge-wise. He told me about his respect for Jesus as a prophet, the many things he learned about personal hygiene from the Koran, his belief in fantastical creatures in the Koran like monsters that eat rocks and boulders. At the moment I found him more than a little naive, and some of the teachings of the Koran more than a little silly.

Later I thought, “Maybe that’s how some people look at my beliefs from the Bible–the miracle stories, the spiritual world we cannot see. And if other people look at me the way I was looking at Amir, then how can I expect to reach them with the Word? How can I expect that God’s word will not end up empty?

The problem is never with the power of God’s word. It is with the sinners who hear and use it. Who are we to deny God’s promise, or just as bad, consider it boring or irrelevant? No one hears God’s word and remains unchanged. It is always working on people for salvation or for judgment. Appearances can deceive. Experiences can be misinterpreted. But God does not lie. Where his word is present, it is never just an empty letter.

Isaiah reinforces the promise in a positive way: “It (the word) will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

I said a moment ago that God’s word is always working on people either for salvation or for judgment. But the emphasis of Isaiah 55 is salvation. These words of promise are part of a comparison with the life-giving power of snow and rain. No doubt Isaiah and the people of Judah had often seen their dry, thirsty country suddenly burst into life when God sent rain. Even a desert blossoms and turns green when the rain falls on it. It works every time.

“So is my word that goes out from my mouth.” God has given us a Word of Life, Good News perfectly composed to give him what he wants: souls that seek him, hearts that trust him, and lives that are lived for him. He speaks to us like a young man in love, trying to win a woman’s heart. More than that, he speaks to us like an utterly devoted and committed man trying to win an unfaithful woman’s heart. “You left me for another yesterday? I honestly don’t remember it. I forgive you for the way you have turned against me, each and every time. I will always be here for you, always be waiting for you, no matter what the future brings.”

You won’t find this Word in my friend Amir’s Koran. His god would rather scare you into submission. You wouldn’t think of it left to your own thoughts and ideas. Only this Word tells you God loves you so much that he gave up his own Son to save you and make you his own. Only this word brings with it faith and the Holy Spirit. Only this word changes God’s enemies into friends, slaves into Sons, and spiritual corpses into living and breathing children of God.            

So don’t give up on God’s Word. Maybe your life isn’t easy. Temptation still gets to you. Sometimes your soul feels like a very dry, very dusty spiritual desert. God’s Word is just the Water of Life we need. Trust that in it God still accomplishes what he desires, and achieves the purpose for which he sent it.

Matthew 11:25-26 “At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.”

What are the “these things” Jesus says have been hidden? John the Baptist’s disciples had just visited him with a question John sent from his prison cell: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” Was Jesus the promised Savior, the Messiah, really? “These things”, then, are the truth about Jesus’ identity and message. Jesus is the Son of God who came to rescue us from sin and death.

From some people the truth about Jesus had been hidden by his Father. He had hidden these things from the “wise and learned.” They came in two types in Jesus’ day. There were the religious conservatives, the Pharisees. They knew the Bible like the back of their hand. Unfortunately, they did not know themselves well enough to be able to see their own desperate need for God’s grace. Their great learning only puffed themselves up with self-righteousness.

Then there were the more secular Sadducees. They were the liberal elites of their day. They reasoned away much of what God’s word had to say. They were men of the world who considered themselves too sensible to believe in things like spirits and an afterlife.

Such “wise and learned” still live among us today. You probably know plenty of the second kind personally–someone with a college degree or two who accepts all the theories of modern science as established facts. They are skeptics of all things miraculous and associate belief in the supernatural with a low IQ. One such man was visibly shocked to learn that an otherwise educated man like me was a young-earth creationist who believed that Jesus was God.

Higher education and a sharp mind are a great gift from God so long as they remain subject to God’s Word and Spirit. But few things have the ability to blind us to God’s truth like putting too much confidence in one’s own intelligence and learning. Don’t think that we are immune to this kind of challenge to faith.

The first kind of the “wise and learned,” the Pharisaical moralist, we may not recognize so easily. They often sound so “biblical” and “moral.” One clue is the claim that they have discovered the key to a genuine Christian life, and that key is something other than Jesus and his cross.

I know of an evangelical leader from some years ago who was trying to promote fasting as the way to God’s heart. He said that he began his fast by meditating on God’s word and confessing his sins. But frankly, he claimed he didn’t have many sins to confess. His relationship with the Lord had grown so strong. If it had actually been growing, he should have been even more aware of the depth of his sinfulness and need for Christ. Somehow he was missing the place of God’s grace in his life. These things remain hidden from some, not because God has kept the information away, but because their own ideas get in the way of believing it.

Do you want to meet someone who knows Jesus? Ask a child about him. Their faith is eloquent in its simplicity. Who is Jesus? He is bigger and stronger than your best friend, and the bully who lives down the street, and even your dad or mom. There is nothing he can’t do. They don’t question whether he healed people, or stopped storms with a command, or made five loaves of bread grow until it could feed 5000 people. The Bible says so. They don’t question whether he is really God. It’s why the worship and pray to him.

How do they know Jesus loves them? He died to pay for their sins on the cross. They know what sin is, and they know it has consequences. Perhaps more than us adults, they have big people reminding them of what they have done wrong all day and making them pay for it. Jesus paid for it instead of them–not just one time, but every time. Yes, they know that Jesus loves them.

Want a picture of what this means to know and believe in Jesus like little children? Mark’s gospel tells us that, when Jesus told his disciples to change and become like children, he actually called a little boy or girl over to use as a visual reinforcement. Then he took that child in his arms and held it while he was speaking to them.

Put yourself in the disciples’ shoes for a moment. Picture what they were seeing. To be a little child, wrapped up in Jesus’ arms, surrounded by his love and protection–there is not a better place in heaven or on earth that you could be!

What Jesus has revealed are not abstract principles to debate or pick apart. He has revealed himself, the God who loves us without conditions, who died to cleanse us of our guilt, who lives to give us life that never ends. Put aside your pride and cynicism. Let go of your desire to be respected. Be his little children. There is no better way to know him.           

2 Cor. 1:8-11 “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.”

When tragedy strikes, there is one question that plagues our minds: Why? What purpose is this serving? Often we ask “why?” not so much because we genuinely want an answer. We simply can’t believe any good can come of this.

God doesn’t feel obliged to share all the specifics with us. “Why?” is often the one question he doesn’t answer. But in these words to the Corinthians, Paul does provide a general answer to the question “Why?” It’s one we can apply to our hardships, too.

Paul spent nearly three years in Ephesus, a leading city of the Roman province of Asia. They weren’t easy years. In his earlier letter to the Corinthians he talks about fighting wild beasts in Ephesus, and the many men who were opposing him. Preaching about God’s love in Jesus made him many enemies and created many hardships.

The year 2020 has been a year dominated by hardship. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of COVID 19, and millions sickened. Tens of millions face unemployment and financial ruin. Now the unnecessary and unjust death of a black man at the hands of a white policeman in Minneapolis has opened up old, deep wounds of prejudice and racial division. Fear and frustration grip minority communities. Riots and looting exacerbate their suffering. Attempts to maintain order by those charged with keeping the peace sometimes pour fuel on the fire. No one knows quite what to do to achieve justice and heal the divide. We find ourselves at wits end.

Perhaps we can relate to Paul’s sense of despair. Paul doesn’t say, “It was almost more than I could bear.” He states that it was too much, “far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.”

It’s not necessarily a sin to despair of life. But despair becomes a sin if we despair of faith as well. If I suffer hardship, so much so that it exceeds my human ability to endure it, then I might start to think that something is wrong with God. Has he lost control? Has he stopped caring? Has he been just an illusion all this time?

Actually, not only does he still have control. He is probably getting some of his best work done. Paul explains, “But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead.” Why? Why does God let our hardships exceed our ability to endure them? One reason is that he is stripping us of the illusion of self-sufficiency. He is constantly letting hardships into our lives to strip us of the idea that our gifts, our abilities, our hard-work are going to rescue us or enable us to get by.

The destruction of trust in ourselves leaves only one viable option. “But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.”

Why shouldn’t Paul have confidence in God to deliver him? This was the God “who raises the dead.” Jesus’ raised the widow of Nain’s son, Jairus’s daughter, his friend Lazarus. You don’t get much more hopeless than already dead.

Jesus died and rose as well. If ever there was a hardship that begged for someone to ask the question “Why?” it was his death. The answer doesn’t come back with some defense of its fairness. The answer is, “This is how much I love you.” “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” “This is how much you mean to me.” In Jesus, God has delivered us. He did so by becoming one of us, and letting our sins kill him instead. All the guilt, all the consequence, all the danger, all the hell for our sins went with Jesus to the cross.

Now Jesus lives again—more than lives, he reigns. Above I recounted the hardships this year has brought. But you are alive and reading these words. God has delivered you. If you are alive, then God has a purpose for keeping you here. So long as God has a purpose for you, it is our hope (in the Biblical sense of a future certainty, not just a wishful possibility) that he will continue to deliver you. You are going to make it. Rather than worry about dangers, we can focus our attention on finding and fulfilling his purpose.

Maybe you don’t have the cure for a deadly disease. Maybe you don’t have the power to erase the pain, the fear, the suspicion, or the resentment caused by centuries of oppression and inequality. But you and I can continue to be a voice for Jesus. We can live lives marked by unconditional love. We can show mercy to someone who needs it. We can answer hate with grace.

Through it all, we can rely on the God who raises the dead, even as we struggle with the question, “Why?”