Remain standing. We turn to our text this morning in James, in the first chapter, the first chapter of James, our text is found in verses 16 through 18.
But begin reading this morning, verse 12. This is God's word.
Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him. Let no one say, when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil and in himself tempts no one, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire, then when desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived. My beloved brothers, Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change of his own will. He brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. Thus far, the word of God. Let me seated. Please. One of the basic rules of understanding the Scripture is to realize that a text out of its context is simply a pretext.
If you have occasion to deal with some of the cults that come to your door and they start calling off Bible verses, if you stop them and ask them about the verses surrounding the part they're citing, they get all confused, and most of the time it turns up they're trying to twist that verse say the opposite of what it says in its context. Well, here you have a beautiful statement about God's goodness, but it's more clear to our hearts, more clearly a blessing, more clearly a joy, when we realize its context. It falls on the heels of the passage that we looked at last January, when I was here. I know those of you here then remembered every golden word, but some of you probably missed out. So basically, the verses 12 and following talk about temptation. James is writing to Christians who are undergoing trials and testings. And his opening words, after identifying himself as, Hey, count it, reason for joy. When you come into these testings, they're going to be there. And now in verse 12, he starts saying, you know, it's your own fault when you yield to these temptations, don't blame God. You are the one responsible. It's your own heart. It's your own lust within rising up and seeing those occasions and the blame then falls where it should fall, our own heart. But he doesn't answer the questions then pop up about, Well, if God doesn't test anyone with evil, how do these tests come into my life? I mean, we talk about a sovereign God who rules over all things, a sovereign God who is even over Satan, so that Satan ends up serving Him as for example, with job, he ended up strengthening Job's faith and showing His goodness and His Majesty and the power that he has of the human heart to love Him and to persevere. Well, how come these come to me? Then, how can I deal with these questions that what's going on if, if God is like this, why do these opportunities for evil even enter into my life? How can, how can it be the things that seem to trip me up most are the ones just seem to pop up all over the place, and as we go through the world, we're battered. As we go as pilgrims through this world and running into temptation after temptation, banging our nose against them, falling down, battered and bruised. How can we do this? And like a hiker who has stumbled down the mountainside, has fallen and hurt himself with bruises and scrapes and battered and confused. What do I do? Where do I go? How do I know what's going on? James begins to respond by addressing this very gently, he says, My dear brothers, not just that, your brothers, your fellow Christians, you're wrestling with all these things, but you're still children of God, but also, my dear brothers, I say this out of love to you, having just. Had these harsh, hard truths about temptation and falling and sin bringing forth death. He now says, Now, my dear brothers, don't get lost. Don't get lost. That first word that says, Do not be deceived in most translations is, is very similarly translated, don't get lost in a mental sort of way.
Don't don't get all confused with this. See, we think of Paul as the great theologian with deep, dark terms of theology and mysteries from heaven. But remember James first words after He identifies Himself, or count it all joy brethren, consider it, think about it, and he lays out doctrine to guide us in the way that we would believe. His first exhortation is doctrinal, because no practical life will follow properly unless it's founded on sound doctrine. So he says, think about this way. Your faith has to be on a solid basis, so don't get lost. Well, as I say, it was like we're battered pilgrims that fall down the hillside. We're also in unfamiliar realms. We're in realms where the human mind cannot go. We're talking about God. We're talking about his councils in eternity. We're talking about the infinite God who is unbounded by time, space or necessities of any sort.
We're talking about the God who always was. In fact, we run into difficulties with that when you read, for example, John, chapter one, the first verse in the beginning was the Word, well, there wasn't time before there was. And how is it he was when there wasn't a was, you know he it's just simply saying he always has been. That's the best we can grapple with it. To say he's omnipresent means simply that distances are relevant to him. He is as near to you here as he is in Timbuktu, and it's utterly useless. Try to figure that out. You can't comprehend these things. They're beyond our abilities. And these are things revealed, and we deal with things like that, like Elihu dealt with Job's complaints. I want the Lord to come and explain these to me. I wish you were a man and make him sit down and tell me why he's doing the things he's doing. In chapter 37 Elijah said, why don't you explain the things you see God already doing every day? And then maybe we'll be able to talk about these other things. Tell me about how the animals live and God feeds them and cares for them every day. Explain to me how the rains come in their season and come in this area and not that area. Explain how God does all of these things that you see every day. And then we'll talk about things that you can't see, things that happen in eternity, things in God's own mind and his own heart, and then we have to admit that we are not totally disinterested in the answer. It's not a general theological question that we just simply want to bat around at bottom. Are we not looking for some way to excuse ourselves the temptation arises from our heart, but God could've stopped that. God, it's not a new thing.
You recall in the garden The Lord said to Adam, did you eat of the fruit? Well, Lord, that woman you made, you know she's the one that tempted me. Eve you just take her well, that serpent that you made, he's the one that would pass the buck. We want to find a way to explain it so that ultimately the guilt doesn't lie on us and ultimately put it on God himself, and that way he can't blame us, because he's the one at fault, and that's why there's no real salvation until the knowledge of our sin hits home, until God, By His grace, opens our eyes, enlivens our heart, I realize I'm the sinner. I did this because that's me. The corruption is here. I'm the one at fault with all of this.
That's why he said of the two men praying at the temple, one who's. Said, Lord, I give my tithes. I do this. I'm not like that. Was not the one who went home justifiably, the one who said, God, have mercy on me, the sinner. So we raise these questions knowing they're in an unfamiliar realm, something that we really can't fathom great will, something that is not exactly the purest of motives.
And then we gotta deal with the question and the problem of our corruption and sin. Before Adam fell, God brought all the animals to him and he named them. That doesn't mean he named the kitten, fluffy and the dog Fido means he looked at them and he knew what they were. He saw them. He put the characteristics on. That's what the name is.
Yeah. Well, our minds don't work like that. Do they? Parents?
Your children's mind work like that. They never want to help little sister get her hair cut properly. Never want to help the wall by doing artwork on it.
Teachers know our minds are faulty. They don't seem to go work the way they should. So how are we going to know, what are we going to do? How do we find some way living in this context, to know how to live and where to go, some point of sureness, some place to orient ourselves, so that as we're battered and confused on the bottom of the slope, we have something we know they'll give us the proper direction, and that's what James gives in this verse. And every time I read this, I have to think back to downtown Kampala in Uganda, back in 1971 when a meme through overthrew Obote and the warfare started there, and fighting in the streets and all the rest. There was a building under construction. It was going to tower over most of the other buildings, like six or eight stories tall already built on one of the hills and on top of the giant crane that they used to lift the supplies up there and everything. Well, when the war got underway, they stopped the building. By the time they were able to start doing more building that Crane had rusted into a solid lump of steel, and finally, about 20 years ago, they got it down by cutting it into pieces and lowering the pieces, because that's the only we could do it. But it meant for that period of time we were there and you're going doing some knickknack shopping, or you're heading to the taxi Park to go to where you're going to be, and you weren't able to see where you look. Oh, there's the crane, okay, we need to head that way. It was a fixed point that gave us directions to go wherever we would like to go.
What is the landmark that James CITES? One that is seen from every page of the Scripture all the way through, one that we know when there was not yet creation, one that we know will be there after the end of history, he says, is the goodness of God. You're confused about where your sin comes from.
Remember the goodness of God.
Now, it helps in this particular context, particularly but it's also helpful in the lesser things that get confused. Why is God doing this? I have no idea what. Here's your landmark. God is good. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming from the Father of lights, and there's no variation in him. All things good come from Him, and He is the giver.
And he uses both words. He speaks of the good gifts, and he speaks of God, the giver. God Himself is the source of this goodness. He is the good focuses on his heart and the fruit of his heart that we see in history and in our lives. He gives unflawed gifts. He gives gifts that are good. He is the one always giving, not the God who withholds, not the God who shorts you on anything, not the God who gives you something flawed. That's what the First Sin accusation was. Did God say you can't have the fruit from that tree? Oh, you know God's withholding something good from You. You. God never withhold the good. God's activity toward us continually is the producer of good. He is not enticed by evil.
He doesn't give evil. He gives all these good things. And James says it's from above, from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change. You see, the gifts are not what's described as without change. He's saying, look at the God who gives them.
This is the constant God, the God whose attitude in dealing with you is always the same.
It's always good, it's always benevolent. He is the one who, without a variation, is good towards you. He's the father of light. It doesn't reflect off him. He's the origin of it. And he himself, is the one who is constantly there. You recall back in the Old Testament, as the people of Israel left Egypt, they went out and the Lord went with them. By night, a pillar of fire by day, a cloud, not fire by day, hard to see in the desert, sunlight, not a cloud by night, but something easing, something clear, something beneficial. I'm really out in the desert. They didn't have street lights, but they had a pillar of fire. They could help to see the daytime. They had this shadow and and that language is picked up in the Psalm that we're in earlier about he is a shade to us and a shelter, God continually has that goodness without changing.
Sun moves across the sky, and as things change, things look differently. That's why, if you're hiking, they say, always look back where you came, because it looked different from that perspective. Not so with God, he's always seen he's always good His favor this morning is his favor. This afternoon, he loves you and is good toward you exactly as much as he was in the garden, exactly as much as he was when Christ came into this world, exactly as much when Christ bore your sins, exactly as much as when you came to him by his grace, through faith and he embraced you as his dear child, exactly as much as He will be for you throughout all eternity. Never changes, always the constant. And here, Jane uses a word that speaks is not a shadow due to change, not a shadow due to something just inconsistent, something strange.
Come in this morning. My first question is, Is there coffee? If I don't come in or do that?
There's something strange. God doesn't do strange things. He's always consistent in his character. He always behaves exactly the same way. And James uses the same word twice. He repeats everything, every good gift and every perfect gift.
Linguistically, you could simply cover them under one, but it wasn't making emphatic, they all come from his hand. It all is his gift coming down, bestowed by him. He is the source. He is the one who gives things to our advantage and to our pleasure, always the same one bestowing good things on us. Okay? We falling down the hillside. We're battered and confused. We don't know why that big rock is right there beside us, but we get our orientation from God, and we know he's good. His benevolence is over us, and His love is bestowed on us. Good things come from him. Every good thing, things that sin offers, appear to be good. You remember the Satan's temptation there, that fruit is to make you wise. You be like God's knowers of good and evil. Well, they got to know what good is, because they already knew God. Now they knew what evil was, because that's what they were, and you what death was, oh, it's it's good for you, that fruit, no, it isn't. And sin offers things that seem to be good and they're not. God's gifts are never burdensome. He never gives anything but good. He gives these perfect gifts unseen.
Singly, he gives them continually. He does them despite our entitlement what we're entitled to. Dave Ramsey has the saying he uses and I've stolen many times. Well, how are you doing better than I deserve?
God always treats you better than you deserve. What do you serve? From his hand, wrath and judgment? What does he give?
Well, as the Belgic confession says in defining God in the back of our Psalter hymnal, he is the one who is just and good and the overflowing source of all good.
What about your situation? God's been good, and God is good. We don't dare to dream about laying the responsibility for our sin at his feet. We confess that he has bestowed such goodness on us, such benevolence always upon us. It's contrary to his whole nature, and contrary to the way he's been behaving himself through history, to think he was going to give his people something bad. Are you the one exception to the way God deals with everything and everybody? I don't think so. God is dealing with you and glory. As you look back over your life, you'll have to join saying God was good when I didn't see it, he still was good. Well, James says, Look now, but understand that as you are good, isn't that one of the first prayers you learned as a child sat down at the table, God is great. God is good. So we thank him for our food.
Acknowledging the goodness of God is what put food on the table. And then James makes it really personal, not just God's goodness in history, not just God's goodness in doing good things with us and for us, he says in verse 18 of his own will. He brought us forth by the word of truth. Christian, you already know that God is good.
What was the first evidence of grace in your life? What was the first thing you had in your experience of dealing with God?
He saved you. He brought you into life. He did something that only he could do, and he did it specifically to you. He brought you forth. You have experienced something that is so grandiose, so marvelous, you were dead, you were corrupt. You hated God, you deserved his wrath, and he brought you forth and gave you life. You think about his salvation to us, how can we doubt His goodness? And he points out that it was my free will. Yeah, very clear. This one of those passages that clearly teaches the doctrine of free will. Says God has it of his own will. He brought you forth. You didn't will it. You didn't wish it. He brought it to you. He regenerated you, he opened your eyes. He enlivened your heart, just as sin when it has conceived, brings forth death.
Now God, in His goodness, brings forth life in you and brings you to salvation, not rooted in your decisions, not rooted in your merits. As Charles Spurgeon said, we have no claim upon God except for the claim of justice.
And what would that involve that he should punish us for our sins? We are felons against the majesty of heaven. God. Has had his free will, and he exercised it to set love on you. You had no claim. You had nothing to induce him. But he showed goodness to you, and goodness beyond measure. Christian, what is now your condition? What is now your estate? You're a child of God, you're forgiven, you're enlivened, you're brought near to the throne, and you doubt His goodness in that way back in Deuteronomy. To me seven Moses says it in a little different words. He says, basically, God loved you because he loved you.
He didn't love you because you're the most numerous of people to this, that reason, but well, he loved you. Loved One of spurgeons quotes someone asked him one time, Mr. Spurgeon, do you believe that God actually loved you before you were born?
And Spurgeon response was, he must have, because I've not done a thing since I was born to make him love me. He said, It's live on you without any merit on your part, without any good or inducement on his part, a cost.
Already determined that it would be his son bearing your sins. It wasn't a whim, it wasn't something incidental, something he determined that he might bring you to Himself. Now, can you twist that to say that God's inducing you to sin, or somehow it's God's fault that sin is appealing to you? No, he's the one determined to deliver us. He brought us forth again. The contrast between what sin does when it conceives what God does.
Doesn't leave us in death. He brings us to life and gives us fullness of life, and he's the father of lights, and he brings us forth, gives us life as a father gives life. So we're not just creatures that he's being good to. We're His children. His heart is set on us in a mighty, wondrous way. My oldest son is now retired also, yes, I'm that old, but I recall clearly the first time I saw him in the nursery window at the hospital, little squalling red thing. And I would relate my own life for him. I knew that I loved that little thing. I would have died for him, a father's love, God's love for you. Child of God, Child of God, is like a father who brought you to life, unlike a human father, flawed limited understanding, limited compassion, limited abilities.
He who is perfect in wisdom and power and justice and holiness and goodness and truth is your father and deals with you in that way. He brought you forth.
James says, by the word of truth, in the midst of confusion and not knowing what's going on or how did I get in this mess?
Whatever God sent his Word of truth to your mind and your heart and gave you birth. He convinced you of your sin and misery showed you. Christ drew you to Himself, in spite of the pre existing errors there of how we didn't think God was good.
He's our enemy. He has all these nasty laws that just to bind on me so much. God, by His Word, pierced through and gave you life, the truth of mercy, shown through and brought us to himself, made us capable, then of hearing and learning and walking with him. And he uses his word, as Paul says in first Corinthians four, he says, You have many teachers, but you don't have many fathers. I became your father in Jesus Christ through the gospel or the counterweight. McShane says, depend on it. It's God's Word that saves souls, and not our comment on God's word. God's word of grace and power accompanied by his own Holy Spirit, because He determined he was going to save you, accompanied by his own mighty hand, because he determined he's going to give you life, and he was going to overcome your sin, your corruption, your guilt, and bring you to be his own with joy.
That's why it's called the good news. That's where God's goodness first came to you and so that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creation.
What's he doing with you? Okay, looking at all this context of temptations and questions, what was he doing? Only with you.
Well, you're one of his first fruits. And here you go back to the Old Testament, when the crops first would begin to come in, the first of the fruit belong to God. And you would take a string or a ribbon or something equivalent, and you would tie it around that limb where that fruit was to market.
This one is God's, and you watched over it that was going to be given to God, so you protected it, and you've made sure it was brought to full rightness, so it be given to God. That's what God is doing.
Your Mark is one of his first fruits, and he's preparing you to be brought into his own presence and known as his very own to show the first fruits of what salvation is to know how God takes sinners like you and me and makes us Christ like because he's good, because he's that good. So what do we do? We get confused as what we do. What do we do about that look to God, knowing His goodness, and with that orientation, the other things fall into place when you grasp the reality that you know from your own salvation that God is good, and the other questions of life and how you navigate become pretty clear, God is Good. Let's pray, Father, we thank You that You are good, that you are the God who does good and the God who is good. And we come now to give you worship and praise. We ask that we might honor you in all things. Glorify now yourself. We ask, as we live in a world, recognizing your goodness to us and giving you praise, we ask in Christ's name and to His glory. Amen.