We’re going to be in James 1:9-11. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, thank you for loving us. For receiving us as your children. We sing these songs in worship of a father who loves us beyond our ability to understand. I want to ask that you prepare and send us the next campus pastor in your timing. Lord thank you for this ability to lift that supplication to you. This person you are preparing for us, let him come full of the spirit, humble to lead, teachable, and as a good shepherd to encourage your people here.

Today, as we dig into this word of encouragement you have for us, I ask that you fill us with your Holy Spirit to help us identify with who you created us to be. Because Father, sometimes, we have so many things going on in our minds and in our lives that we just lose track of what matters. In fact, we mostly place our identities in the wrong things and it destroys us. That is not what you intended. We do not want to be destroyed because we wrongly placed our hope in transitory things, people, and places. We know you are already doing the work of revival in our lives. Let us be your hands and feet as you work so wonderfully through us and in us to make us holy and set apart for your works. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Today, I want to talk with the people living with an unsustainable workload, receiving insufficient rewards for your efforts, and on the edge of losing total control. Maybe that’s you. I see you, balancing a working fulltime, going to school full time, being a spouse, and a mom or dad.

Maybe, you’re the person who just doesn’t have the energy you used to and you can’t bounce back as fast as when you were 21; you feel cynical toward your job, your family, your friends even though you are more connected than ever, you’re so lonely, and you’re empty in your mind, and in your heart. I know those zoom meetings at 10am and at 10pm, is draining.

Maybe you’re watching somebody in the midst of these things and can’t help or won’t help because you have enough other problems of your own. Yeah, I see you, you’re trying to figure out where you can actually schedule to pay your bills this week because things are a little tight.

The truth is, no matter where you are in the spectrum of life, the trials, they exhaust us, and just sometimes, you even feel like those trials become synonymous with the very fabric of your being, defining your identity. Is that just me? Am I alone?

Let’s read James 1:9-11 together.

⁹ Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, ¹⁰ and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. ¹¹ For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. (James 1:9-11 ESV)

So this book in the Bible we’re studying this month, James, is written to Jewish converts to Christianity in the first century that have been scattered throughout the Roman empire. The people James is writing to were a minority group in a country where they didn’t quite belong, whose belief system even amongst that minority group was not the norm. The conclusion I want us to jump to is that even amongst the misfits, Christians are outsiders, misfit for the normative and majority culture group.

If you’re getting a sense that this was written to us in the 21^st century where our beliefs and values as Christians are not the normative beliefs and values held by society and culture, then you are absolutely right! In fact, what you should have picked up in the first two weeks of this series is that the trials Christ followers face in life will make our identity and purpose in Christ more evident. That’s the point of James.

Look at how James starts his letter.

² Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, ³ for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. ⁴ And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4 ESV)

The reason we suffer in trials is to become “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

The purpose of writing this letter for James to the first century Christians is to make sure that when they felt out of place in poverty or if they found themselves chasing something in search of prosperity, they can question why. You see family, when our faith is shallow, young, and immature, we cling to things erroneously. So we seek God and we seek the blessings of God in the wrong places and things. 

Today, we address trials that come as a result of the most common way people identify themselves: in their socio-economic status. Let’s read James 1:9-11 one more time.

⁹ Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, ¹⁰ and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. ¹¹ For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. (James 1:9-11 ESV)

The dichotomy of poverty and prosperity is highlighted here as an irony. When we read this, we are supposed to challenged to rethink the role socio-economic status plays as part of our identity. The biggest trial for us today, because we’re very middle class, living in very middle class neighborhoods, is to not miss what God is saying to us despite our middle class trappings.

Let’s get into this. First thing James says about socio-economic trials and identity:

In Christ, poverty doesn’t define us

When James says, “Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation…” he is talking about those people living in economic poverty. These people are destitute—not only do they not have a viable source of income to make a living, they were of low social status, so they have no opportunity to move up in the world.

Can I expand the idea of poverty for us middle class, free country, people. I want to include an aspect of poverty called relational poverty. Relational poverty is just as it sounds, poor in relationships.

Here’s an example if you don’t quite understand what I’m saying. If you can’t find somebody who is not obligated to have dinner with you tonight (hear me saying somebody who isn’t your spouse or child that is living with you), you’re living in relational poverty. Despite the number of Facebook friends, Instagram followers, snapstreaks, you can’t find somebody to eat dinner with because everyone alienates you or you alienate everyone.

Economic poverty, that’s a temporary situation easily remedied in our country—you hustle. But relational poverty, that’s something which alters our view of who we are.

If the COVID shed light on anything, it’s that our society crucifies relationships in the name of comforts, profits, and efficiencies. And guess what! All of us were fooled by it until we were forced to stop and quarantine. The feeling of isolation and loneliness wasn’t just for the clinically depressed anymore, it was for all of us experiencing relational poverty.

Do you know who this impacts the most? People without deep relationships with other people. It’s why people are moving all across the country to go and be with people they have deep connections to.

• It’s why you single people think you’re hopeless because you’re not married at 30.
• It’s the same reason you and your spouse are finding irreconcilable differences as the reason to drift further and further apart.
• It’s why you feel like your job has burned you out—because the superficial relationships you thought were real were found out to be noise masked as friendships.

The truth of the matter is that we’ve been allowing our relational poverty dictate our identity for generations. Just think about who we celebrate in our country as heroes: loners, cowboys, trendsetters, and entrepreneurs. And the heart of the issue is that we have a massive problem relating to one another because it’s all about me. When it’s all about me, we fail to love others and as such, we sin. That’s the root issue of relational poverty: our sin.

There’s a psychiatrist, Dr Bruce Perry. He’s an expert on children in crisis and neurobiology says this about relational poverty in America: “the deep lack of the connectedness with others that we all need to survive and to be well caused by technologies, impaired values, financial obsessiveness, broken social structures, and self-centeredness has created a massive problem far more destructive than economic poverty.”

In our sin, we are impoverished from the love of God because we have no avenue to receive God’s love. Our identity, being rooted in sin, impoverished us because we couldn’t see past me. So we destroy ourselves and we destroy others, keeping ourselves far from God.

But when we accept Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross in faith, our identity changes from sinfully alone and isolated to righteous child of the most high God, inheritor of the eternal kingdom of heaven. Here is a family that even if you fight, you still come home and love each other. Jesus gives us a way to have a rich relationship with a good, heavenly father who loves us. This is why when we pray and call out to him, God answers. If you are loved by God, and received that, you are not relationally impoverished.

This is why James says to “boast” because we are exalted by Christ in faith. You didn’t deserve to be loved, and so this is an exaltation for those who have been relationally impoverished. We boast to the world that God redeems us as his child. We boast in Christ this was made possible. That’s good news!

Here’s the second takeaway about our identity:

In Christ, prosperity doesn’t define us

Look at verse 10: …and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away.

James is talking to Christians who are financially well off, but I want to expand that idea of “rich” to being more than just financial. We are rich in ways more than money:

• like having kids rich because you have 3. You may feel not so rich with 3 kids, but there are some people who have been trying to have kids and have none and can’t have any. You’re rich in family. Don’t take this for granted.
• Maybe you’re rich in having the career of your dreams. You haven’t made a single mistake, every deal you made is a good deal.
• Maybe you’re rich in health. You have more supplements, more gym equipment, more vacation ready bodies than the rest of us. And you never get sick. While the rest of us are freezing under our long johns in Michigan eating anything fried just to keep warm.

Just as Christ gives us a redeemed identity in our poverty, we find that even if we were blessed with health, wealth and possessions, none of that was going to get us into relationship with our most holy father in heaven. The very fact that Jesus, who is the son of God, had to come to this earth to save and redeem those who are prosperous is humiliation. Be humbled and boast that it wasn’t your prosperity that saved you. It was God alone.

So in the humiliation of—we didn’t earn it, James says we must boast that Jesus did it and gave us a way to be a child of God. There was nothing you did to earn or purchase salvation. This verse is connected to the previous verse in terms of actions. The action we take to reaffirm our identity is to boast in Jesus Christ.

Now, prosperity defining our identity is a little different than the way poverty defines our identity. It’s different in that, you don’t have to pursue poverty, but prosperity is something that has to be pursued and it’s the pursuit that begins to define us.

Look at verse 11 with me again.

For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. (James 1:11 ESV)

James is teaching us that life is temporary here on earth. Political connections, money, kids, houses, etc. Having those things may make you seem like you have more power than you do, but all those things that the world holds with high esteem, it’s all temporal. “Prosperity” or the pursuit of prosperity as the source of identity is unsustainable. Being rich or trying to be rich in areas outside of faith in Jesus Christ will burn out!

Literally, the “scorching heat” will burn you. If you feel like the attention you’re giving to your pursuits is greater than your relationship in God, then stop! You’re headed to death. That’s what James is saying. In fact, when I read this, I see James sharing the medical diagnosis for burn-out. Yeah, we have a burnout crisis here in the 21^st century, it’s the great resignation. Burn out is the result of stress that has not been successfully managed. What causes unmanageable stress besides the trials of chasing some type of prosperity and not getting the results that you want?

Come on, be honest, how many of us give much thought daily to having an identity in Christ and really sitting there daily embodying that identity?  I don’t. I’m a pastor. I don’t wake up in the morning thinking about my identity in Christ. I throw myself into the deep end of tasks, and goals. I know who my identity is supposed to be rooted in, but I don’t always behave that way. I’m sure the same is true for most of us. We think about what we have to do because our identity is actually rooted in the things we’re doing because what we’re doing is making us prosperous, or comfortable.

When our kids are hitting straight As, when our business is skyrocketing. We go on facebook and Instagram to compare ourselves with others and say, “look at all the things I am because God is so good to me in my life.” That’s the point of Facebook and Instagram. Isn’t it? It’s like sometimes we’re just pretending Jesus is the source of our identity because he gives us good things when we are pursuing prosperity in areas outside of him.

But I’ve never heard anybody say, “look at how God has left me bankrupt so that I could make him the source of my identity.” I’ve heard people say, “let me deconstruct my faith because I never really had my identity in Christ, just the things that he did for me.” But I’ve never seen us boast in our humiliation.

Being able to boast in Jesus every single day because we are humbled for who God sees us as, someone we could not even imagine for ourselves, that is where we center our identity. The more we take hold of our identity in what God did for us, the less likely we are to take stock of what we own or do and place our trust in those things. We are gifted salvation, be humbled the king of the universe did not tell you to earn it because there is no way we could in many lifetimes, let alone the one lifetime we can live.

So, what is James saying to us? He is saying:

Big Idea:Mature faith puts possessions in their proper place

We need to employ our prosperity and our pursuit of prosperity and not be defined by them. That’s no more evident than in our savior Jesus Christ.

Look at what Paul says about how Jesus put his possessions in the proper place in his letter to the Philippians.

⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8 ESV)

Heaven was rightfully his. But Jesus, in love for us, humbled himself from being the God of the universe and gave his very life for us. This was how he chose to identify himself. It was his purpose. This is an undeniable fact. God gave us his most beloved possession, his son, so that he could rescue us and make us perfect and complete. Jesus’ example moves us in the same way.

Whatever trial you are facing, you’re facing in faith that the God of the universe redeemed you. When you go face the trial in faith, you have an identity that is not temporal, but eternal as a child of God. When we correctly place our identity in Jesus, our purpose becomes clear. Let’s look at James 1:27.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:27 ESV)

This verse seems disconnected from the three we read earlier, but it’s not. This is just James coming back to complete his argument of how our identity in Christ leads to purpose. Last week, Pastor Jacob shared the circular logic James employs here to connect A to B, which connects to C, and then loops around to connect with A, and then B again.

So here, we find trials in faith as it connects with the most common method of self-identification—through socio-economic status, connecting to the purpose of an individual– which is to become pure and undefiled, and then to purposefully act in that manner.

You see faith gives us an identity in Jesus that does not change. Nothing that happens to us here on the earth changes who we are so we never have to think twice about how we live purposefully. We never have to question why we exist here on earth.

This is our purpose. To live:

In Christ, so people are more valuable than possessions

Orphans and widows, who have no living fathers and husbands, respectively, in patriarchal societies have no means to get themselves out of affliction. They depend on somebody with power to change their predicament because they are powerless. There is nothing that they can do except hope to be adopted or brought into a father’s house.

It’s interesting James calls God, “Father” here in passage to point to the perfect father. We were fatherless and without hope, but God, our heavenly father, changed our predicament when he gave his son for us as payment for our sins.

When Jesus came to “visit”, he got involved with our lives. That’s what the word “visit” (ἐπισκέπτεσθαι) implies—to care for people. Jesus cared for people like you and me, sinners, unworthy and unable to help ourselves whether it’s our poverty or our pursuit of prosperity. That’s the gospel.

Jesus shows us what the gospel looks like — pure and undefiled by the world. He lived it. Jesus, despite having everything, chose humanity. He was tempted by the devil to pursue prosperity, and chose to remain sinless. He died for people who could not help themselves in achieving righteousness before the Holy God of the universe. That is who we place our faith and trust in.

God thought people more valuable than anything else so he adopts people in faith.

If you never placed your faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer and savior, this is the time. You are not an orphan to heaven. Jesus is here for you. You are a beloved son and daughter, more valuable to God, our father, than anything else. Give your heart, mind, and soul, the very fabric of your identity to Jesus and he will redeem your poverty, your prosperity, your purpose.

If you are a child of God, what that means for us is that we need to be involved in the care of people, because that is our purpose. We do so because our identity, as a child of God, causes us to act in purity. We may not know what that entails, but God sends us a helper, the Holy Spirit to ensure his sons and daughters that when they visit the powerless, the power of God in faith moves mightily.

• That’s the reason why we point out things like Sanctity of Life Sunday where we challenge you to advocate for lives of the unborn.
• It’s why on Martin Luther King Jr Day, we had a card insert in your bulletins that challenges you to serve people.
• It’s why we invite you to serve at our Warming Center. Did I say it was the only low-barrier homeless shelter for the street homeless during the coldest winter weeks in Oakland County.
• It’s why we invite and challenge you to put your possessions in their proper place to help families get re-established in Hamtramck.

Don’t pursue prosperity and find yourself burned out. Don’t allow your poverty define you. You are a beloved child of God. In faith, allow the trials you face perfect you for your purpose—to use your full faith, heart, mind, body, and soul to love, serve and bless others.

Let’s pray.

Thank you for the trials you give us. We know you give us these trials to produce a mature faith that is steadfast so that we can see your purpose for our lives—to produce a reason for our being. But Father, the trials we face, relational, economic, situational, in poverty, in prosperity, God sometimes they are so difficult. We need breakthrough. We need your breakthrough. Visit us in your Spirit and fill us with an overflow of power, mercy and grace so that we can imitate Jesus and find ourselves in perfection, lacking nothing because your love as our father pervades every facet of our lives.

Today, I know there are some here who are struggling with relational poverty—let relationships be mended and healed. Especially the spouses in the room. Yes, those who have been on the verge of breaking up, let your love for them be manifested through faith. God and those of us who are here who do not know you. That have never received you as father, give us the courage to confess our need for you. We need you, adapt us through your son, Jesus.

Lord, if our trials are in prosperity and the pursuit of it, please Jesus, help us choose you. To choose instead to pursue the reason you created us – to loving and meet the needs of those who are disenfranchised like our heaven father. 

Give us all a boost of our true identity, as your son and daughter. Do it now. With this identity, let us pursue our purpose of bringing the good news to the powerless and destitute. And as we bring that good news, move mightily so we can boast in you. Thank you Father. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.