Last year, I worked through the Bible chronologically with The Bible Recap. If you’ve ever read through the Bible, you’ll know that at one point in the Old Testament, it seems like you’re doomed to an endless cycle of depressing narratives and prophecies about the disobedience of Israel and God’s subsequent judgment.  

These are hard passages to read. Taken on their own, these narratives usually don’t have happy endings. They’re filled with violence and gore and suffering.

I am starting to think this 12-week series could have been a year-long series. Every week I come to the set of verses for the week and wonder how in the world we’ll cover them in one post (which I couldn’t even do last week and had to break the content into two posts). The Word of God is so, so rich, and we could study this a thousand times and not exhaust all there is to learn and meditate on. But while we won’t be able to grasp all there is to learn, we can still take small, meaningful steps in the right direction.

In the first chapter of his letter, James has laid out a bird’s eye view of many of the topics he’ll bring up again. He reminds his readers to be joyful and steadfast in their trials, because there’s a reward that will be worth all the struggle. And along our Christian journey, we’ll face trials and temptations that threaten to bring us down and lead us in the wrong direction. Yet we must consistently choose to follow our good God, trusting him and demonstrating that trust by putting that faith into action.

After introducing his readers to the topics of joy, wisdom, steadfastness, and our eternal reward, James turns to warning them about what stands in the way—trials and temptations, which are not exactly the same thing. Trials form us like gold refined in a fire. God often uses trials to mold and shape us to better image him to the world.

But James is clear that temptations are not from God. While God is sovereign over us and everything we face, the intent of temptation is to draw us away from God. God sent his Son, Jesus, to die for us so that we could be reconciled to him (2 Corinthians 5:18). Why would he then try to lure and entice us away from himself? He wouldn’t, and he doesn’t.

When we think about temptation, we have to remember two simple points. They seem obvious, especially if we’re not currently facing temptation. But when we’re in the middle of fighting our earthly desires and the siren song of anything that goes against God, these points are easy to forget.