SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: The reading this morning is from the book of James.
SPEAKER_00: In your pew Bible, it's on page a thousand eleven.
SPEAKER_00: James one, verses one through eighteen.
SPEAKER_00: James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion.
SPEAKER_00: Greetings.
SPEAKER_00: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.
SPEAKER_00: For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
SPEAKER_00: And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
SPEAKER_00: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
SPEAKER_00: But let him ask in faith, with no doubting.
SPEAKER_00: For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
SPEAKER_00: For that person must not suppose he will receive anything from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
SPEAKER_00: Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away.
SPEAKER_00: For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass.
SPEAKER_00: Its flower falls and its beauty perishes.
SPEAKER_00: So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial.
SPEAKER_00: For when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.
SPEAKER_00: Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God.
SPEAKER_00: For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.
SPEAKER_00: But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
SPEAKER_00: Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be deceived, my brothers.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: If you're uh not enjoying this cold weather, uh you can blame that on me.
SPEAKER_01: We've been looking forward to winter finally arriving in North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I realize until we get absolute temperature of minus 30 and a blizzard, it hasn't really arrived.
SPEAKER_01: But there's hope, my friends, there's hope.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to ask you to turn to the passage that uh Sue just read for us, to James chapter one.
SPEAKER_01: We have arrived in our study of this incredible and practical, hard-hitting book, to the end of the first section, the first group of verses, verses two through eighteen.
SPEAKER_01: Throughout all of this, these are not separate thoughts.
SPEAKER_01: We've taken four or five messages to talk it through, but they're all interconnected.
SPEAKER_01: And the thought which surfaces in our passage this morning is God's constant goodness.
SPEAKER_01: God's constant goodness.
SPEAKER_01: And this must not be seen in isolation.
SPEAKER_01: It's part, it's a flow, in fact, it's kind of the crescendo to what he has been talking about from verse 2 all the way through until now.
SPEAKER_01: And he's been talking about some hard things.
SPEAKER_01: He's been talking about trials and difficulties, and he started out by saying, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.
SPEAKER_01: And right from the beginning, he kind of slaps us in the face with some things that are really hard.
SPEAKER_01: And all the way through, and he's talking about, and this is James, the younger half-brother of Jesus, who, under the inspiration of God, spoke to those first believers around the year 50 AD.
SPEAKER_01: And God, this thing of inspiration is so powerful.
SPEAKER_01: What I speak are my words.
SPEAKER_01: My words are based on what James has spoken.
SPEAKER_01: But what James has spoken, through a miracle of what we call inspiration, God so worked in that process, so superintended the process, so that what James wrote was not, it was words from James, but it was not just from James.
SPEAKER_01: It was from the very message of God, down to the words that the believers in the first century who were going through many trials and difficult times needed to hear.
SPEAKER_01: And through the preservation of the scriptures down to through the centuries to us, we have not just good thoughts and not just something that Walt gives his commentary on, we have a message for God, from God, to us as well.
SPEAKER_01: Just as it was applicable and intended for believers in the first century who were going through great trials, so it is applicable to us in the 21st century.
SPEAKER_01: The trials and the difficulties of life.
SPEAKER_01: And the theme throughout this, the whole book, is our faith must work.
SPEAKER_01: And it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_01: He begins with the times where it is so very, very hard.
SPEAKER_01: And he is seeking to cultivate within us a faith that is rooted in the character and the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we tend to lose sight of when our world falls apart.
SPEAKER_01: And so he has been building slowly but surely, talking about situations, and in our day they're a little bit different from what it may have been for the believers in the first century at a very practical level.
SPEAKER_01: There's times in which we experience pain and disappointment and broken dreams, or dreams we had that were never fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps you always wanted to have children, and for whatever reason God hasn't seen fit to give you children, or you waited with great anticipation and you were expecting, and then something happened, and that child was not here.
SPEAKER_01: Or we stand before a casket, or we recognize that our friends have betrayed us and they've stuck daggers, as it were, in our heart, and our reputation and our sense of who we are is drawn through the mud.
SPEAKER_01: Or we face a doctor's report that nobody wants to face.
SPEAKER_01: It's talking about what is our faith like in those situations.
SPEAKER_01: And a faith that works is not just a faith that is strong and vibrant in the fine, wonderful, beautiful moments of life.
SPEAKER_01: And by God's grace, we have some of those.
SPEAKER_01: And you can think back on times where life was sweet and God was near, and that was your emotion, that was your experience.
SPEAKER_01: I find that out in nature more than anything else.
SPEAKER_01: I love to get out and hike and walk, and when the mountains are beautiful and the sunset is lovely, or when that little dear child is born and you look and you're afraid you're going to drop it and break it or some horrible thing.
SPEAKER_01: Or whatever it is, there's these wonderful, wonderful moments that God so graciously gives us.
SPEAKER_01: And when life is sweet and God is near, it's not hard to see who He is.
SPEAKER_01: He's there in that little child.
SPEAKER_01: He's there in that beautiful sunset.
SPEAKER_01: The reality of our faith is made most clear when life is not sweet and God does not feel near to us.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the reality of life.
SPEAKER_01: It's not all of life, but it is the reality of life.
SPEAKER_01: If you think I'm overplaying that, just live a little longer.
SPEAKER_01: Life is hard.
SPEAKER_01: There are deep sorrows and pain and tears.
SPEAKER_01: And how we function and how we respond to that and where we end up through a process of working through that shows the reality of our faith.
SPEAKER_01: And our faith doesn't work, if it doesn't work in those situations, if we don't get there, like the psalmist often did, beginning his psalm, and he's angry at God, or he's afraid, or he's consumed with his enemies.
SPEAKER_01: But with, I think the exception of perhaps one of the psalms, by the end he sees again who God is.
SPEAKER_01: That's the process of walking by faith in a very real sense.
SPEAKER_01: And James is helping us.
SPEAKER_01: And this beautiful, beautiful few verses this morning about God's constant goodness must be seen in that setting of the things that wrench our souls and cause us to doubt, cause us to fear, cause us to ask all kinds of questions.
SPEAKER_01: He understands that.
SPEAKER_01: And yet he brings us to a perception, a deep conviction of his constant goodness.
SPEAKER_01: Now, so I just want to clarify what we're talking about in verses 16 to 18 is just part of a flow.
SPEAKER_01: He started speaking in verse 2 about joy in the midst of trials.
SPEAKER_01: How bizarre! I don't like trials, you don't like trials, I don't like pain, pain hurts, pain stinks.
SPEAKER_01: There's days that are really miserable.
SPEAKER_01: And in those moments, by God's grace, when we have a hold of, by our fingernails, as it were, a realization and a perception or a memory, even, of the fact that God is good, then our faith develops and we develop what I called spiritual resilience, what is called here perseverance.
SPEAKER_01: And in the midst of the trials, one of the things that God wants to remind us about is that God is doing some good things.
SPEAKER_01: He's developing some things in our life that do not get developed when life is sweet and God feels near.
SPEAKER_01: And with no pain, there is no gain.
SPEAKER_01: That's not just for physical exercise, that's for spiritual life as well.
SPEAKER_01: There are things that we only learn, my friends, through trials and difficulties.
SPEAKER_01: I dearly wish it were not so.
SPEAKER_01: And when I see those I love, or when I see those around me going through it, my heart just breaks with them.
SPEAKER_01: But I know and I've experienced, and in our better moments, you know and you've experienced that sometimes the most important things for us to learn, we only learn through difficulties.
SPEAKER_01: And the end result is a deep persuasion of God's constant goodness.
SPEAKER_01: So he says, if you lack wisdom, and it doesn't mean which college do I go to, it means, God, what are your purposes?
SPEAKER_01: You're good, but what good are you doing in this?
SPEAKER_01: Then we can ask of God, and he freely gives us a perception of who he is, whether the exact answer to the question is given or not.
SPEAKER_01: But but don't be double-minded.
SPEAKER_01: Don't have a divided heart.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be like us sitting at the Olive Garden with this big menu, and we're trying to figure out, and I think this might be good, and I think that might be good, and and so the the the waiter comes and goes around, you hope they begin with somebody else, so I can finally make up my mind by the time he gets to me.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's an undivided heart.
SPEAKER_01: What he says is choose.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not do you want the pasta or the fish.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's choose to believe what you know about me.
SPEAKER_01: Don't have an undivided heart.
SPEAKER_01: And he keeps weaving this thought that ends up with a deep persuasion and conviction of the constant goodness of God.
SPEAKER_01: So he calls us to see things his way, and he talks about the brother who is in lowly or difficult circumstances, and he says, My lowly, difficult, circumstanced friends, things are not always as they seem.
SPEAKER_01: I am doing things you do not realize.
SPEAKER_01: And so we look at those who are oppressed and in difficult circumstances, and while it's appropriate for us to have compassion, we also recognize that, you know, maybe they are better off than we are.
SPEAKER_01: We think that if we have what we think we need, if life is good, then God is good.
SPEAKER_01: But there is something about the fact that God doesn't rule the world the way we want Him to rule the world.
SPEAKER_01: And things are not as they seem.
SPEAKER_01: It's no great advantage to be greatly gifted, to be greatly wealthy, to have wonderful health, and never go through any trials in life.
SPEAKER_01: It's just not, it's the way we think is good.
SPEAKER_01: And God says, we've got to see it his way.
SPEAKER_01: Things are really not as they seem.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, uh talks about when trials come.
SPEAKER_01: Are we gonna pass the test or not?
SPEAKER_01: Are we going to allow that to be a temptation that leads us astray?
SPEAKER_01: Or is it going to be an opportunity for us to begin the walk across the platform on the graduation ceremony with graduation cum laude?
SPEAKER_01: Are we gonna pass the test?
SPEAKER_01: And it's a process of life.
SPEAKER_01: And in today's passage, he says, do not be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: Don't get it wrong here, my beloved brother, my beloved sister, my dear, dear friends.
SPEAKER_01: Every good and perfect gift, everything that God is doing, and all that comes to us from the hand of God, all that God allows to come into our lives, because He is good, we can believe that there are good purposes in it, and we receive every gift and everything from the hand of God with a deeper and growing conviction of the constant goodness of God.
SPEAKER_01: Because in God there is no shadow and turning and changing.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just that today, you knew I was going to get to it, today is Sunday, the 10th of January 2016, and God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_01: You see, it wasn't just that he was on the throne all last week, but now he's no longer.
SPEAKER_01: There is no shadow of turning with him.
SPEAKER_01: He is ever and always the same.
SPEAKER_01: He is ever and always good.
SPEAKER_01: He is ever and always trustworthy, and that is the foundation for our lives.
SPEAKER_01: As he was before, so he is now, so he shall ever be.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed be the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: God wants us to see him for who he is, and we see him most powerfully when we are weak and hurting and helpless and needy.
SPEAKER_01: Every good and perfect gift, the father of lights that doesn't change.
SPEAKER_01: And the greatest example of that, verse 18, of his own will, uh he gave us new birth.
SPEAKER_01: We'll get to that.
SPEAKER_01: All right, so he begins with the thought in the beginning of verse 16 um, stop being deceived.
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of as strange a statement as counted all joy, my brothers.
SPEAKER_01: Stop being deceived.
SPEAKER_01: In the midst of the dark, painful, confusing, frightening moments in our lives, we run the risk of wandering off and losing sight of who God is.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, don't be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: Don't begin to question, or as you begin to question, don't stay there.
SPEAKER_01: Don't go there.
SPEAKER_01: Don't wander in places that are not right and good.
SPEAKER_01: You see, when life is sweet and God is near, then it's relatively easy to say, along with the psalmist, Psalm 119, verse 68, good you are and good you do.
SPEAKER_01: But when we're going through it, it's much harder to say that.
SPEAKER_01: I get it, it is much harder to say that.
SPEAKER_01: But don't be deceived by casting off that deep conviction of the goodness and the sovereignty and the sufficiency and the love and the mercy and the compassion and the righteousness and the trustworthy of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's why I keep saying it every week.
SPEAKER_01: It's not because I can't think of anything else to say.
SPEAKER_01: Today is a day that ought to remind us that God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_01: And God is who he was and who he always will be, and his constant goodness is what James wraps up this discussion with.
SPEAKER_01: It's in the context of when we're tempted to doubt God's goodness.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, the one of the most natural, one of the most understandable, one of the most common, one of the most human responses when we go through deep personal waters, is to say, God, why me?
SPEAKER_01: Why are you doing this to me?
SPEAKER_01: Don't you love me, God?
SPEAKER_01: We begin to doubt who God is because everything around us, the circumstances, our feelings, the situation, where is the God who was sweet and near?
SPEAKER_01: Right now it's painful and he seems so far away.
SPEAKER_01: And he's saying, in those particular moments, do not, my friends, do not allow yourself to wander.
SPEAKER_01: And so he gives a command.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just good advice, don't be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: It's a command.
SPEAKER_01: But listen to the way he says it.
SPEAKER_01: I just I love this.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: My beloved brothers, my beloved sisters, my dear friends, says James.
SPEAKER_01: My dear children, says God.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be misled.
SPEAKER_01: I love you.
SPEAKER_01: And there's this warmth, there's this tenderness of relationship.
SPEAKER_01: He did the same thing in verse 2 count it all joy.
SPEAKER_01: No, he says, Count it all joy, my brothers.
SPEAKER_01: He brings truth to us in a context of relationship.
SPEAKER_01: And love.
SPEAKER_01: Very, very significant.
SPEAKER_01: If you picture yourself, for example, standing with a friend or talking on the phone or sitting over coffee with a friend whose life has just fallen apart.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they just got the report of cancer.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe it's like I described a couple of weeks, a few weeks ago, my best friend calls, and now for the second time, his second wife walks out on him and he is utterly shattered.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what am I supposed to say?
SPEAKER_01: You stand someone in front of an open grave.
SPEAKER_01: Someone whose child just died.
SPEAKER_01: What are you supposed to say?
SPEAKER_01: Well, what you're not supposed to say is, would you just buck up?
SPEAKER_01: Did you miss theology 101?
SPEAKER_01: Don't you know that God is sovereign, God is on the throne, God is in control, just deal with it.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what James says.
SPEAKER_01: But neither does he water down the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Neither does he say, oh, everything's going to be fine.
SPEAKER_01: Just, you know, it's it's really not that bad.
SPEAKER_01: He speaks the truth and he does it in love.
SPEAKER_01: And he softens the command in a context in which we're very vulnerable without compromising the truth of who God is.
SPEAKER_01: It's not in every moment right and necessary to go into an exposition of the doctrine of God and his sovereignty and his goodness.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you just need to shut up and listen and love.
SPEAKER_01: But if that's all we're doing and we're not helping ourselves and others to perceive the reality and to not be deceived about the character of God, then we are missing what God wants to do.
SPEAKER_01: It's just far easier to hear hard things when you know you're loved.
SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, for many people, we don't know we were loved.
SPEAKER_01: We weren't maybe raised that way, or we're ashamed, or whatever it can be.
SPEAKER_01: And just a loving, helpful, godly relationship, a spiritual friendship with someone.
SPEAKER_01: And in that context, you can just say, I know that hurts, but I love you.
SPEAKER_01: And God loves you.
SPEAKER_01: And I know it doesn't feel that way right now, but God is good and he's doing good things.
SPEAKER_01: So much easier to receive that truth encapsulate it in a relationship of love and gentleness.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what he actually says is very interesting.
SPEAKER_01: It's don't wander from the path.
SPEAKER_01: The word that is used here for deception in its original root meaning had to do with somebody who was on a path and began to wander like a vagabond, just kind of floating all around.
SPEAKER_01: Says, don't get off the path, don't be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: And as I was thinking about this, it reminded me of I love to hike.
SPEAKER_01: And we used to live in the mountains, not the flatlands of North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: We lived from our backyard, we could see the High Alps.
SPEAKER_01: And every week, I would take Monday as my day off, Saturday as a workday, Monday as my day off, and 50 out of 52 weeks a year, I was out hiking, abandoning my wife and kids, of course, but uh no.
SPEAKER_01: And I would get up on these high mountain trails.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not a mountain climber, but I love a strenuous hike.
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, on certain trails, you need to be very careful to stay on the trail.
SPEAKER_01: Um of my favorite uh hikes, and I'm still hoping that before I die, God will graciously allow me to go back to Otto Boden, Switzerland, and uh to hike that uh mountain.
SPEAKER_01: But there is a pass that I think about actually fairly regularly, where the path is literally this wide, and if you go off the path this way, you meet Jesus, and if you go off the path that way, you meet Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And duh don't wander.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Swiss hiking guides, uh, I don't mean the people, I mean the written maps.
SPEAKER_01: Uh the paths are marked out in red.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the paths are red-dotted paths.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what red dotted paths on a Swiss uh hiking map means?
SPEAKER_01: It means Walt.
SPEAKER_01: Stay off this path.
SPEAKER_01: It's not for you.
SPEAKER_01: It's too dangerous for you.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what if I got up to a point in the trail where it was going this way or this way, and I don't know what's down the path?
SPEAKER_01: Well, there is a red solid line going one way and a dotted line on my map going the other way.
SPEAKER_01: I know where I ought to go, don't wander down there.
SPEAKER_01: And yet he's saying, don't be deceived, as though sometimes you look and somebody has come along and changed which path is which.
SPEAKER_01: So you blithely wander off the path having been deceived.
SPEAKER_01: Now there's a word picture here, and uh it's all actually hidden, as it were, or deep in the words that he's using.
SPEAKER_01: But the idea is when we let go of a deep conviction of the goodness and involvement of God in our lives, we run the risk of wandering spiritually in places that are incredibly dangerous for us.
SPEAKER_01: And he just simply says, don't go there.
SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of illustrations in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to have you turn to one, which is in the book of Job, in the first couple of chapters of Job.
SPEAKER_01: Job Psalms Proverbs.
SPEAKER_01: So, middle of your Bible, turn left, last book before Psalms, the beginning chapter.
SPEAKER_01: Won't go into it in detail.
SPEAKER_01: You may know the story.
SPEAKER_01: Job was placed by the permission and intent of God in very difficult circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: And he didn't know why.
SPEAKER_01: The first two chapters of the book of Job give us a, it's like the curtain is pulled back and we see some of what God was doing.
SPEAKER_01: Job didn't have the privilege of reading Job 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_01: So he found himself, his wealth was taken away, his family was taken away, his health was taken away, and at one point he found himself sitting on an ash heap with broken pots scraping the scabs off of his body.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes life feels that way, and sometimes life is that way.
SPEAKER_01: Job chapter 1, verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground.
SPEAKER_01: And what did he do?
SPEAKER_01: He, what's the text say?
SPEAKER_01: Worshiped.
SPEAKER_01: He brought his misery in connection with God, and saw God for who he was, and exalted God.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 21, and he said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall return.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed be the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now he didn't understand what was going on, but he had a sense of who God was that enabled him to see the things that he enjoyed and valued and received.
SPEAKER_01: The good things came from God, and God also took some good things away.
SPEAKER_01: Do you have a big enough view of God to imagine that in his love and his goodness he will take good things from you?
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what Job says, and look at what verse 22 of chapter 1 says.
SPEAKER_01: In all of this, Job did not sin, nor did he charge God with doing wrong.
SPEAKER_01: But basically he's saying, the good things I receive from the hand of God, and the bad things I receive from the hand of God, and God be praised.
SPEAKER_01: He knows what he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: What he's doing is good.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him when things go well, when life is sweet and God is near.
SPEAKER_01: Praise him when the world falls apart, and I can only say by faith, God is good and God is involved and God is loving.
SPEAKER_01: I don't feel it, I don't see it.
SPEAKER_01: But who God was last week on the throne is no different than who he is today on the throne, or who he will be next week on the throne.
SPEAKER_01: So blessed be the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Or, towards the middle of the next chapter, things continued this way, and it was difficult.
SPEAKER_01: At one point, his helpmeet, his wife, came with a very unhelpful word of counsel.
SPEAKER_01: Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast to your integrity?
SPEAKER_01: Curse God and die.
SPEAKER_01: Just live with it, curse God, He's left you, there's no good in this.
SPEAKER_01: Curse God and die.
SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, I don't have a wife who gives me that kind of counsel.
SPEAKER_01: But Job said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women.
SPEAKER_01: Shall we not receive good from God?
SPEAKER_01: And shall we not receive evil?
SPEAKER_01: You see, God in Job's mind was big enough to use bad things for good purposes in his life.
SPEAKER_01: And he had no idea that God had set the limits.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like Satan could have free reign in his life.
SPEAKER_01: He could go to this point and no further.
SPEAKER_01: He had to have God's permission to touch Job.
SPEAKER_01: And when he did that and he wanted to go further, he came back again and said, I want to do more.
SPEAKER_01: And God said, You can go this far and no further.
SPEAKER_01: Is our picture of God the way he's revealed in the scriptures?
SPEAKER_01: Or is it just the God that we want to have?
SPEAKER_01: A God, the God who is, is a God who is sovereign and is great and is good and he's working in ways that make no sense to us.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to make sense of God.
SPEAKER_01: We just have to trust him.
SPEAKER_01: And he has revealed himself in Scripture as loving and righteous and patient and good and merciful and full of compassion and able to use bad things for our good and for his good.
SPEAKER_01: And in all of this, Job did not sin with his lips.
SPEAKER_01: There's a little indicator there of the response of not wandering from the path.
SPEAKER_01: Well, this takes us then back to James verse 17.
SPEAKER_01: And you've already, hopefully, in your heart and mind been prepared for this.
SPEAKER_01: Every good and every perfect gift is from above.
SPEAKER_01: And in the context, these good and perfect gifts are the circumstances which are so hard.
SPEAKER_01: That's the context that he's talking about here.
SPEAKER_01: And he then says, from the Father, it comes from the Father, the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that happens when we really go through difficult times, as we said, is that you begin to question God and why are you doing this to me?
SPEAKER_01: I thought you loved me.
SPEAKER_01: Another thing that happens, and it's just part of who we are as human beings, our world begins to shrink down the more intense the trauma and the pain is.
SPEAKER_01: No longer do we really care who wins the playoff game this afternoon.
SPEAKER_01: No matter do we really care who wins the election.
SPEAKER_01: No matter do we really care when it gets really tight and really hard, the problems of our kids and their concerns and of other people that we love begins to fade a little bit into the background.
SPEAKER_01: And in times of intense testing, our world becomes about this big.
SPEAKER_01: And that's all we see.
SPEAKER_01: That's just the way a broken human being in a broken world where it often functions.
SPEAKER_01: And what God is doing is we've we've got a laser focus right now on our pain and on our hurt.
SPEAKER_01: And very understandably so.
SPEAKER_01: There is no denying the pain or the hurt, my friends.
SPEAKER_01: But what God does is he begins to open this back up and fill our vision and fill our understanding, not with the Vikings, but with God.
SPEAKER_01: And what he says here is just so beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: This is beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: Who is God?
SPEAKER_01: God is never changing.
SPEAKER_01: There is no shadow of turning with God.
SPEAKER_01: And he uses the illustration from the natural world.
SPEAKER_01: And James, like his brother, half-brother Jesus, loved to use practical examples from the physical world around him.
SPEAKER_01: And now he's saying, look at nature.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the sun.
SPEAKER_01: The sun is always changing.
SPEAKER_01: It starts here, it just picks, it comes up with this little arching thing that almost blinds you to begin with.
SPEAKER_01: And then it keeps moving.
SPEAKER_01: It moves all day long.
SPEAKER_01: The sun never stops, and eventually it sets.
SPEAKER_01: And look at the sun and the moon and the stars.
SPEAKER_01: Everything is moving.
SPEAKER_01: The planets are moving.
SPEAKER_01: The earth is moving around the sun, and the earth is spinning on its axis.
SPEAKER_01: And no.
SPEAKER_01: What he's saying is everything you see around you changes.
SPEAKER_01: You never step in the same river twice.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever thought about that?
SPEAKER_01: It's no longer the same river.
SPEAKER_01: There's never any going back.
SPEAKER_01: Everything changes.
SPEAKER_01: Everything in creation, everything in our world, everything in our body, everything in our circumstances changes.
SPEAKER_01: All of life is an adjustment to change.
SPEAKER_01: And it stinks some of it.
SPEAKER_01: But there's one thing that does not change, and that is who God is.
SPEAKER_01: And his constant goodness.
SPEAKER_01: His constant goodness.
SPEAKER_01: So it's relatively easy to see God when life is sweet and God seems close at hand.
SPEAKER_01: But there are so many examples in Scripture of the right response in the midst of our difficulties.
SPEAKER_01: I think of Joseph, the Old Testament story of Joseph, who was betrayed by his brothers, who was abused, who was thrown into a pit, left to die.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't end up dying.
SPEAKER_01: Life went on, and at one point, towards the end of Genesis, Genesis 50, verse 20, he is confronted with his brothers, and he says to them, and by this time they had discovered who he was, and they're getting ready to duck because they had done him dirty, and he had lived with horrible consequences as a result.
SPEAKER_01: And his response was, You meant it for evil.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis 50, 20.
SPEAKER_01: But God meant it for good to bring about his good purposes this very day.
SPEAKER_01: That's talking about whose God's character was.
SPEAKER_01: Others mean it for evil, Satan means it for evil, the people who are out to get you mean it for evil.
SPEAKER_01: And God means all of this for good.
SPEAKER_01: Is our picture of God big enough to see God in the midst of the bad things of life?
SPEAKER_01: Or does that by definition mean that God has failed to show up?
SPEAKER_01: God never fails to show up.
SPEAKER_01: That's a silly statement.
SPEAKER_01: God showed up.
SPEAKER_01: Yikes! Lord, keep me from ever thinking that way.
SPEAKER_01: Suddenly I have a flash of reality.
SPEAKER_01: God is here.
SPEAKER_01: That's what really happens.
SPEAKER_01: God hasn't changed.
SPEAKER_01: We've begun to see our world get bigger and focused on the character and the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_01: Every gift that God sends our way is good, and nothing comes from God that is not good.
SPEAKER_01: God is always and only good.
SPEAKER_01: What he is doing, well, some of it and our experience stinks.
SPEAKER_01: It's just our experience.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't change who God is.
SPEAKER_01: God does always and only good.
SPEAKER_01: And he is on the throne working out his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: And some of it doesn't make sense to us right now.
SPEAKER_01: So?
SPEAKER_01: Does that change who God is?
SPEAKER_01: Some of it we don't like.
SPEAKER_01: I get it.
SPEAKER_01: And in and in what I just need to know is not.
SPEAKER_01: Walt, don't you understand the sovereignty and the goodness of God?
SPEAKER_01: What about theology 101?
SPEAKER_01: No, I just need to hear God say, I love you, I'm with you, I understand, and I'm good.
SPEAKER_01: Many examples of this.
SPEAKER_01: One in particular I want to draw your attention to.
SPEAKER_01: It's Acts chapter 2, verses 22 and 23, and it's talking about God's intention to bring evil and pain into the life of one he loves.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have room in your understanding of who God is to see him intending evil and pain for someone he loves for good, then you don't understand the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus did not have to go to the cross.
SPEAKER_01: God could have found some other way of doing it.
SPEAKER_01: But what Acts chapter 2 says is God handed Jesus over to evil men, quote, according to his God's set purpose and will.
SPEAKER_01: The cross was not just a response, that was an intention of God.
SPEAKER_01: It is the highest example of a loving God doing painful, harmful things and intending them for good?
SPEAKER_01: How could we imagine that God intended the cross for Jesus and then not give room in our understanding of God's dealing for us to think that suffering and pain and evil could not possibly be a part of his good and perfect purposes?
SPEAKER_01: If he's done the greater, how much will he do the lesser with us?
SPEAKER_01: Even the bad experiences of life, evil though they are oftentimes.
SPEAKER_01: And you don't have to underplay it.
SPEAKER_01: Don't water down the evil, but do not water down the goodness and the purposes of God who does what He pleases.
SPEAKER_01: What He pleases is good, ever and always good.
SPEAKER_01: That's the message, that's the crescendo of this whole discussion.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be misled.
SPEAKER_01: The constant goodness of God.
SPEAKER_01: When our world shrinks, we broaden out our world.
SPEAKER_01: I love the old hymn, which we'll be singing at the end.
SPEAKER_01: Great is thy faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: Do you realize that parts of this great hymn were taken directly from our passage this morning?
SPEAKER_01: Great is thy faithfulness, O God our Father.
SPEAKER_01: There is no shadow of turning with thee.
SPEAKER_01: Thou changest not.
SPEAKER_01: Thy compassions, they fail not.
SPEAKER_01: As thou hast been, thou forever shall be.
SPEAKER_01: I was on the throne then, I'm on the throne now, and I shall be.
SPEAKER_01: I was good then, I am now, and I shall be.
SPEAKER_01: This is a statement of faith.
SPEAKER_01: Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the world around.
SPEAKER_01: It's all changing.
SPEAKER_01: Join with all creature, all nature in manifold witness of thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.
SPEAKER_01: Pardon for sin, and he does exactly.
SPEAKER_01: What James does.
SPEAKER_01: He points us to the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth.
SPEAKER_01: Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide.
SPEAKER_01: Hope for today and bright hope for tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: Blessings all mine with 10,000 behind.
SPEAKER_01: I don't feel those blessings at this particular moment.
SPEAKER_01: I don't see it, but I confess it because I know who God is, and I will not wander off the depth of the deep conviction, the solid foundation into places I shouldn't go.
SPEAKER_01: I will stand on the promises of who God is, how he has been revealed in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: That is more real than what I see and what I feel.
SPEAKER_01: But what I see and what I feel is also very real and it's very painful.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not all there is.
SPEAKER_01: Things are not always as they seem.
SPEAKER_01: The constant goodness of God, the greatest expression of which is in the cross, which brings us new birth in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And so he goes right into the gospel, verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: Right into the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the gospel is our hope.
SPEAKER_01: The gospel reveals who God is.
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't leave us in our sin.
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't leave us in our pain.
SPEAKER_01: God draws near, and he drew near to us on the cross of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The mediator.
SPEAKER_01: We just took the Lord's supper.
SPEAKER_01: That picture of the mediator bringing us to God.
SPEAKER_01: But it was through the pain and the suffering and the evil of the cross that God brings about our greatest good.
SPEAKER_01: And that greatest good is clearly found in the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And these verses are all verses that talk about the word of truth, that same phrase.
SPEAKER_01: So verse 18, he chose to give us new birth through the word of truth, or as the ESV says it, of his own will.
SPEAKER_01: He chose, he brought us forth, or other translations, he gave us birth.
SPEAKER_01: He brought us to birth by the word of truth, that we should be the firstfruits of all of his creatures.
SPEAKER_01: First fruits.
SPEAKER_01: It's like that first part of the harvest.
SPEAKER_01: It's another illustration that comes from the agrarian society in which they lived.
SPEAKER_01: Like, here's the first bit of grain, here's the first bushel of wheat.
SPEAKER_01: And my friends, there is a whole lot more coming.
SPEAKER_01: All we're experiencing now is the first taste, the first fruit of God's goodness.
SPEAKER_01: It's like the first apples that ripen.
SPEAKER_01: They're juicy and sweet.
SPEAKER_01: And not only can we enjoy them, it gives us confidence that there is a whole harvest to come.
SPEAKER_01: We are experiencing what we have in Christ through the new birth is not the end.
SPEAKER_01: It is the barest beginning.
SPEAKER_01: It's only beginning.
SPEAKER_01: The best and the truest and the greatest expression of God's love and his goodness is yet to come.
SPEAKER_01: And if we are wise, we will begin to long for that instead of for this.
SPEAKER_01: There's really a call for the gospel, to the gospel in this passage.
SPEAKER_01: God's word is not meant to tickle our intellect.
SPEAKER_01: God's word always elicits a heartfelt response in the believer.
SPEAKER_01: And God's word in the life of a non-believer, someone who's on the journey but isn't there yet, God's word is to provoke a response of faith and trust in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And in the believer, God's word is intended to provoke a response of faith and trust in who God is, and especially in the midst, in the midst of the days that are not sweet, where God seems far, far away.
SPEAKER_01: There's two possible ways that I would ask you to consider responding, not to me, but to God through what he says.
SPEAKER_01: I would challenge you today, in your heart, I'm not going to have anybody raise their hand or come down or sign a card, but in your own heart and mind, will you commit yourself to a firm conviction of the goodness, the constant goodness of God?
SPEAKER_01: You may actually be going through a very encouraging phase of life.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God.
SPEAKER_01: Rejoice and enjoy that.
SPEAKER_01: There's no better time to get this kneeled down than when life is sweet and God is near.
SPEAKER_01: Now's the time to do that.
SPEAKER_01: But if this is not your situation, I would still make a firm commitment by faith.
SPEAKER_01: Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.
SPEAKER_01: Faith is exercised when we don't see it.
SPEAKER_01: We take God at His word and we trust Him.
SPEAKER_01: Today ought to be a day of faith for the believer.
SPEAKER_01: Will you affirm between in your own heart and mind the constant goodness of God, whether you're on the mountaintop or whether you're in the deep valley?
SPEAKER_01: And if you are here and you are not a believer, have not been born again, have not experienced the new life, it's talked about, you know something about it, you hear about it, you've got friends who have experienced it, then what I would say is would you respond by faith to the God of life and receive the gift of eternal life where the best is yet to come?
SPEAKER_01: It's not enough to just know it, we need to respond.
SPEAKER_01: So two possible responses.
SPEAKER_01: A response of I am not going to be double-minded.
SPEAKER_01: By your grace, God, give me the ability to stand firm even when it hurts with a deep conviction of who God is and what God is doing.
SPEAKER_01: Or, and would you trust Christ?
SPEAKER_01: Would you come to faith?
SPEAKER_01: Would you give your life and your heart and trust God for your destiny this day and forevermore?
SPEAKER_01: It comes through the cross.
SPEAKER_01: God made him, the Father made the Son, the Son knew no sin, to become sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
SPEAKER_01: When he died on the cross, the full fury of God's wrath was poured out on his beloved Son, that we might have the full ecstasy of God's mercy and grace forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: It's an exchange.
SPEAKER_01: Would you receive that?
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, unless you are speaking to us, then all of my words are just words.
SPEAKER_01: As true as they may be.
SPEAKER_01: But Lord, I pray that you are working in our hearts as we hear the Word of God, and you are doing a deep and a true work.
SPEAKER_01: You're changing us.
SPEAKER_01: But if you don't do that, we're just going to become good little hypocrites.
SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord, we don't want that, and you don't want that either.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, would you give us a soft heart?
SPEAKER_01: A heart that rejoices even in the midst of pain to see you as you truly are.
SPEAKER_01: Don't allow us to wander off the path.
SPEAKER_01: May we have an undivided heart.
SPEAKER_01: And especially when it doesn't feel that way.
SPEAKER_01: I pray you would do a work of grace in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: That's what it takes to take you working.
SPEAKER_01: Do your work in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Father, for anyone who's here this morning and really has never made definite a confession of sin and an expression of a need for repentance and turning around and coming to faith.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that you would be working in lives and that you would do that as well.
SPEAKER_01: Father, we need you.
SPEAKER_01: We don't need my words, we need your word.
SPEAKER_01: And beyond that, we need the power and the reality of who you are alive and working in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: We pray to that end in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.