I’ve only run one marathon. It was a couple of years ago, on a cold and rainy day in Champaign. I was having so much fun. I mean, it was really, really rainy, but that rain kept me cool. There were so many other people running, too, that I didn’t even notice it, and I didn’t feel tired at all until about mile 21. I remember hitting that twenty mile mark and thinking, “I just ran twenty miles, and I feel great!”

Then something happened; I hit “the wall.” My body said, “Enough is enough. What are you doing to me? Are you insane?” And those last five miles were agony. It got to the point near the end where every step was a challenge. The crowd thinned out, and there were only a few people running with me in a group. There weren’t as many cheerers. A big part of me wanted to stop running so badly.

But I knew that just a few miles up the road was a stadium with a finish line, and that I’d get to run across the finish line and get a medal that said I’d finished this thing. I knew there would be hot food there. Most of all, I knew my wife and kids would be there, and they would be so disappointed if I made them come all that way just to quit when times got tough. So I kept going.

I mention marathons not just because I’m obsessed with running or because I want to brag, I mention marathons because James 1 is all about endurance. It’s all about enduring trials and temptations, and building patience or endurance. Several weeks ago, we looked at verses where James said that if you let the trials do their thing and you endure them, you’ll be ”perfect and entire wanting nothing.”

In our passage tonight, James is going to pick that theme of endurance up again. Let’s read verses 12-16.

”James 1:12-16 (KJV) 12 Blessed [is] the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. 13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. 16 Do not err, my beloved brethren.”

The next town over from where I grew up has a public high school called “Pinkerton Academy.” Pinkerton Academy had a really famous teacher many years before I was born named Robert Frost who wrote a poem you may have heard of called The Road Not Taken.. You may remember the end of the poem:

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

The Christian life is a series of crossroads. You are constantly coming to a fork in the road and choosing which way you are going to go.

• Are you going to go God’s way or are you going to go man’s way?
• Are you going to take the path of righteousness or are you going to take the path of sin?
• Are you going to choose to endure hardship or are you going to seek after ease?
• Are you going to continue or are you going to quit?

The first several verses of James 1 teach us that every trial that you face in the Christian life, every hardship, could lead to Christian maturity. They could make you a complete Christian. Here it says, ”Blessed is the man.” They could lead to a blessed life. Ultimately, they could lead to a crown of victory, but these verses teach us that those same trials, if we fail them, could also be the point of defeat. They could be the beginning of sin. They could be the death of our Christian walk.

In other words, every trial and temptation is a crossroads and it really matters which road we take.

So we have to endure temptation. We have to keep going. We have to keep following Jesus through the trials instead of letting the trials be the place where we quit and turn back.

So let’s keep that in mind and look at these verses more carefully.

The main thing I think these verses are teaching us is what happens when we keep going through temptation, and what happens when we quit or get distracted through temptation.

So those are our choices: Quit or keep going. Let’s look first at...

If you keep going...

Verse 12 says

”Blessed is the man who endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.”

James is telling us that if we endure temptation, if we go through trials the right way, then God will use those trials in our life and several things will happen.

First,

You’ll end up a complete Christian.

Verse 4 says:

”But let patience have her perfect work” (Remember that “patience” is “endurance”) ”that ye may be perfect and entire wanting nothing.”

When you endure temptations and trials the right way, you build strength and endurance, and you become a stronger Christian. Eventually, you become a complete Christian.

Remember, God sovereignly ordains our trials. He’s the coach. They are the workout plan. Our trials aren’t arbitrary. God knows what He is doing. He knows what we need to grow stronger and more complete as Christians, and He allows those trials to come into our lives to build us up.

But we have to go through the trials. We have to endure them. “No pain, no gain.” If you don’t go through them, you don’t get the benefit.

When I was a teenager, I used to read these men’s magazines with all of these workout plans in them. You know, reading those workout plans didn’t make me a bit stronger. I had to actually do the workouts! I had to follow through and not quit. (I didn’t do the workouts by the way.)

So James is telling us to keep going through trials, and we’ll be stronger, complete, mature Christians.

But here in verse 12, he tells us more. He tells us if you keep going...

You’ll be blessed.

It says, ”Blessed is the man.”.

It’s kind of become a thing today to say, “I’m blessed.” You can go to just about any store and find throw pillows and wall trinkets that say “blessed” on them. Hashtag blessed is used over and over on Instagram and Facebook. But what does it mean to truly be blessed in the Biblical sense?

It means you have a kind of happiness that isn’t dependent on circumstances. Happiness comes and goes based on the weather; it’s superficial. Blessedness is inside of you; it is joy and purpose. It is the knowledge that God is filling your life with what verse 17 calls ”every good and perfect gift.”

The Christian life is hard. It’s supposed to be. You are going to endure trials, but it’s also blessed.

In our Christian high school, we had to memorize this poem that I later learned comes from a hymn:

---

God hath not promised skies always blue, Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through; God hath not promised sun without rain, Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

God hath not promised we shall not know Toil and temptation, trouble and woe; He hath not told us we shall not bear Many a burden, many a care.

God hath not promised smooth roads and wide, Swift, easy travel, needing no guide; Never a mountain, rocky and steep, Never a river, turbid and deep.

But God hath promised strength for the day, Rest for the labor, light for the way, Grace for the trials, help from above, Unfailing sympathy, undying love.

---

Yes, if you walk with Jesus, then you will deal with trials and hardships, but you also get daily strength; you get true rest; you get direction; you get God’s provision. Your life is truly blessed. Not hashtag blessed, but God blessed.

So if you keep going through trials, you’ll be a complete Christian; you’ll be blessed, and look at the third thing...

You’ll receive the crown of life.

The text says, ”For when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.”

Crowns in the Bible meant a lot of things. They are tied to joy, to royalty, to belonging, but mostly, they are tied to victory. When an athlete won a contest, they’d get a crown. I think that’s obviously what it’s talking about here.

Life is like a great marathon, and yes, it gets tough, but at the end of the marathon when you cross that finish line, your Lord and Savior will have a crown of victory to place on your head. There is a reward coming. Not only will you be blessed in this life, but you’ll be rewarded in the next.

So James is encouraging us to keep going. Endure temptations. Endure trials. Endure hardships. There are rewards coming if we keep going.

But these verses don’t just tell us what is going to happen if we keep going. They also tell us what will happen...

If you turn back or to the side...

You see, there are two kinds of temptations and trials. Some trials are just hardships, but other trials are temptations to sin. In every trial, whether it’s sickness or financial trials or family issues or just weariness, there is always the temptation to quit—quit trying to serve God, and quit trying to live a righteous life.

And James wants us to know what that will look like, too. First, he tells us that if you are tempted and you turn aside or turn back...

You can’t blame God

Verse 13 says:

”Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:”

This is tricky. If you believe in the sovereignty of God; if you believe that God is in control of everything and working it all out for good to them that love Him and are called according to His purpose; if you believe God is using the trials we face to complete us, then can’t we just blame our failures on Him? Can’t we just say, “God, I wasn’t ready for that temptation. It’s your fault?”

James says NO! You can’t blame God for your temptation to sin. You can’t say God is trying to trip you up. That’s not in God’s nature. He’s 100% pure. He doesn’t have any malice in Him. He doesn’t derive any enjoyment from watching people fall. James is saying it’s not even possible for God to think that way.

So who do we blame? Who do we blame for our failures?

I’ve heard so many excuses and you have, too:

• I was just too tired.
• I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• I wasn’t getting what I needed.
• The devil made me do it.

James blows all of that out of the water. There is only one person we can blame when we sin. It’s not the devil, it’s not God, and it’s not our circumstances.

You can only blame yourself

Verse 14 says:

”But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.”

Do you know what the source of your sin problem is? It’s not the devil. It’s not your circumstances. It’s you. It’s your heart.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, ”The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

You are the source of your sin problem.

You don’t need the devil. You don’t need external motivation to sin. You have that inside of you. You have your own sinful desires that you are fighting all the time.

Don’t try to blame your sin on other people. Own it. Realize the source of the problem is in your own heart. Until you do, you won’t win many battles.

So James tells us if we turn back, then we can’t blame God. We can only blame ourselves, but he also tells you that if you turn back and sin...

You will be sowing seeds of failure later on.

He says:

”But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”

James is picturing lust here as a temptress and the sin as a baby. Our own desires are like the woman in Proverbs 7 that says “Come, come, come to me.”

That’s the illustration James is using, but it’s important that we realize that even though James is using that illustration, lust isn’t necessarily sexual. Lust just means “strong desires.” Your lust could be to stay in bed in the morning when God has a job for you to do. Your lust could be to make more money when God wants you to be content with what you have. Your lust could be to be popular when God wants you to stand out for Him. Your lust could be to take it easy. Your lust could be sexual.

The point is that you are being flirted with constantly by the desires of your heart, and if you let those desires have their way, there are going to be consequences. It’s going to bring forth death in your life.

---

Now, before I wrap this up there is one more important thing that these verses teach us we need to cover before we move on. These verses, as much as any verses in the Bible, teach us about how sin works, and because they teach us how sin works, they teach us how to defeat sin.

Sin isn’t God’s fault, it’s not the devil’s fault, and it’s not our circumstances’ fault. We are all being flirted with by the sinful desires of our own heart. It’s internal.

In other words, sin always starts the same way. It always starts in your mind and in your heart. The way to defeat sin is to defeat it when it is still small, in your mind and in your heart. Your mind and your heart is the battle ground where we fight against sin. It’s not our bodies. It’s not our circumstances. It’s in our mind.

Because sin always starts in the mind and heart, what we have to do is not flirt with sinful desires and not allow those desires to take root. We can’t allow ourself to think on those sinful desires. We have to ignore them.

Do you know how you do that? You do that by staying focused on something else. You focus on loving God; you focus on God’s blessing; you focus on the reward at the end of the trial, and you won’t have much time for thinking about the flirtations of sin.

Nancy Reagan popularized the phrase “just say no,” but it’s not enough to just say “no” to sin, you have to say “yes” to God. You can’t just remove sinful thoughts, you need to replace them.

Another thing this teaches us about defeating sin is this: If sin starts with desires of your heart, and if we want to defeat sin, we shouldn’t put stuff in our heart and mind that is going to feed those desires. If you say you want to defeat the sin of lust, then it makes no sense to read 50 Shades of Gray or look at pornography. If you say you want to get victory over drunkeness, then it makes no sense to read magazines full of Smirnoff ads or watch TV shows placed in adds or listen to songs about “red solo cups” on the radio.

You have to starve those desires while they are small and you have to replace them with Godly things.

Remember, if you endure temptations and trials, you’ll receive the crown of victory. There is a prize coming.

So keep your eyes on the prize and off of everything else. Recognize that sin starts with an internal desire and shut those desires down. Don’t give them the air of any of your attention. Focus your attention on Jesus.

That’s how you defeat sin. You kill it by starving it of attention when its still really small.

---

So let’s review here. James is teaching us that if we keep going and endure temptations, we are going to be complete Christians; we are going to be blessed; we are going to receive rewards in heaven. But we have this constant temptation to quit, to not endure temptations, and to turn aside. That temptation isn’t God’s fault. We can’t blame it on circumstances. We can only blame it on our own desires, so we have to starve those desires and keep going so we can win the prize.

So keep going. When you are at mile 21 of the marathon and you don’t feel like you can run another step, focus on the prize, not on the pain. Don’t even let your mind think about quitting. Think about the finish line.

There is one more verse I want to cover in closing. Verse 16 says:

”Do not err, my beloved brethren”

Whatever you do, don’t deceive yourself. Don’t give yourself excuses. Keep going. Get that crown of life. Be the victor. Be blessed. Grow in Christ.

Don’t make excuses. Don’t err. Keep going.

Let’s stand for invitation and prayer.