|
| |
The Gift of Everything Good
James 1:17-18
The Gift of Christmas
December 22, 2002
Last Sunday night, we as a church went to Heather Ridge, a geriatric nursing community to sing Christmas carols. As we moved from house to house, many of the people, some well over 90 years of age, told us that we sounded wonderful. Well, they say that the hearing is sometimes the first to go.
Heather Ridge has a reputation in our community for having some of the most fabulous and elaborate Christmas lighting around. A few weeks ago, The Canton Repository wrote an article about their lights. And we all were quite impressed! The lights made the night seem aglow with festive joy.
It is certainly appropriate to put up Christmas lights. We light up our homes and hedges and trees with colorful lights, all as part of our celebration of Christmas.
As I walk along my street, some of my neighbors have really been in the holiday spirit. They have lit-up reindeer, glowing inflated snowmen, lights on every square inch of their homes. Some of this is a spectacular sight!
As I walked further down my street, to where the glow of the Christmas lights was not so bright, I looked up. In the cloudless sky I could see another light display. There was the moon, along with the stars of the constellations, and on this particular night, Jupiter and Venus were bright in the eastern sky.
And as I looked up, I realized that this light display made all the others pale in comparison. And, just as I stood in amazement at the creativity of my neighbors in their intricate attention to detail when they decorated their homes, I now stood in amazement again at the creativity of my God in his intricate attention to detail when he placed the stars and planets and moon in the sky.
This Christmas, I want us to stop and look up at who our heavenly Father is, and look at all the wonderful gifts that he has given us, especially the gift of a new life in him. For, as our passage (James 1:17-18) says,
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.”
Our theme this month has been “The Gift of Christmas.” And we would be remiss in this series if we did not stop for a while at James 1:18. In the season of gift-giving, we must remember that anything that is good in our lives is a gift from God. But very often at this time of year, we tend to allow ourselves to dwell too much on all the negatives in our lives. There is something about Christmas that makes many of us melancholy. A time of year that we feel should be filled with joy is instead filled with glum. And we even have a tendency to blame God for all that’s wrong in our lives.
But the truth is this: While we may be facing trials and temptations and hardships, we can know this: God gives good and perfect gifts that will get us through. That’s what James is telling us here in this passage.
1. Know that God does not change.
We are told that God is the “Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
In other words, he created all the stars, the moon, the sun, the planets. They are always there—giving their light to the world. But the shadows that are cast by these lights are always changing. As the full moon rises in the night sky over a snow-covered neighborhood, it is an incredible sight to watch as the snow reflects the moonlight. It is almost like day. Trees cast shadows onto the snow; even the smoke coming from your chimney casts an ever-changing shadow.
God does not change. Theologians call this the immutability of God; God is immutable, God is unchanging. It has been said that, here in our existence, the only constant is change. But unlike our existence, unlike the created order, unlike those shifting shadows, God does not change. He is the
creator; he exists in a completely other state than we do; he is unchanging.
This fact about God is meant to give us deep assurance in our time of need. We can know that we can rely on God completely. When all else feels lost, I can still cling to the certainty of God’s love in the midst of suffering. Last week, we said that the Good News of Christmas includes such descriptors of God as these: God is love; God is mercy; God is grace; God is kindness. These things never change.
In times of trial, times of difficulty, what is your image of God? Do you remember that God created everything, and therefore has authority over everything? Do you remember that God’s character never changes—that he will forever be a God of love and mercy and grace and kindness? Do you remember that God is a God of unfailing generosity? Do you believe that God gives you good gifts?
When we experience emotional distress (financial stress, a lost loved one, career problems, relational troubles), or physical problems (a torn tendon, a serious bout with the flu, or something worse, like a serious surgery, or a life-threatening illness like cancer), we can soberly say that we are facing a trial.
It is not a coincidence that this verse on God the father giving gifts is in James chapter 1, for trials are exactly what James is talking about.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
(James 1:2-4)
“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.
When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers.” (James 1:12-16)
Then, in the next verse, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
(James 1:17)
What James wants us to grasp for our good in times of trial is this: When we face a trial (a setback, a loss, an attack, an injustice, a suffering of any kind), we can respond in one of two ways.
Option A: We can respond out of
evil
desires making the trial an occasion for
temptation, leading to
sin.
Option B: Or, we can respond out of
faith, with joy that we are truly blessed by God the giver of good gifts. This response makes the trial an occasion for
testing instead of temptation, and this testing develops
perseverance which develops us into more
mature Christians, made more and more into the image of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We can more readily and easily make our response “Option B” when we keep our focus on the character of God. He does not change like shifting shadows. He loves me. He is merciful toward me. He shows his grace to me every day. He has made a covenant to always show me kindness.
2. Know that God is the provider of everything good.
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.” If I remember that God is the provider of everything that is good in my times of trial, it will make all the difference! In the midst of trials, God has good gifts for us.
In the Christmas season, we are all engrossed in thoughts of gift giving and receiving. We have our lists, we are checking them twice—both the list of gifts we want to give, and (Okay, I’ll admit it!) the list of things I hope to get!
And as was pointed out a few weeks ago when we lit one of the candles in our Advent Wreath, the best kind of gift is the gift that really shows that the person knows you and has given great thought to what you might want. That’s a good gift. It is a wonderful feeling when someone opens a gift that you got them and then watch their eyes light up when they see it, saying, “Oh, it’s perfect!” It’s a great feeling to know that you have given the perfect gift.
That, I believe is God’s experience every moment of every day. He is always, always giving good and perfect gifts.
It may be in the form of a good friend who come alongside and helps in your time of need. It may be a peace that overcomes your anxiety when you are at the end of your rope. It’s going to be something, something that you will have to keep a watch for, maybe something so small that only the eyes of faith would notice.
For God wants the trial to be a test for your perseverance and maturity. He wants to encourage you through it. The promise of God is not to rid your life of the trial, but to give you all the tools you need to turn your trial into something for your spiritual good. He is going to be
with you in the midst of the trial.
Some will scoff, and say, “If God really loves me, really is merciful, then he would just make the trial go away!”
To this, the Bible says, “Sometimes that is true. If you pray, God may decisively rid your life of certain trials, if that is for the best. But, when we really think about it, would we grow up and be mature if we were not forced to face trials? Sometimes trials are for our best.”
What matures anybody (in any context) is facing tough times and making right or wrong decisions and growing from that spiritually. God is not about to deprive us of that. So, sometimes, even though we pray for God to remove the trail, God’s answer to our prayer is “No.” But his answer is not just “No” and that’s it. His answer is also, “I will give you every good gift you need to make the right decisions—to turn this trial not into an opportunity for temptation and sin but into an opportunity for perseverance and maturing.
And notice from what direction the gifts come: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.”
As George M. Stulac writes, “The implied application of this fact is that we are to
look up! …James evokes an image of looking up to receive something wondrous, in order that we may anticipate God’s good gifts instead of looking only at the hardship of our circumstances.”
When times get tough, we have a tendency to obsess on the negative. We get tunnel-vision, unable to see anything but the trial.
This Christmas, I urge you to look up and away from that which is sucking the joy out of your holiday. I want to encourage you to look up at God, the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change, who loves you with an everlasting love, who wants to turn your trial into something good.
Imagine it this way: When you look away from your hardship, and look up to God the giver of good gifts, you will gain a new perspective on your hardship. It’s like there is a beautiful prism in heaven through which you can see your trials as God sees them. If only you would look up! It’s as if there is a giant gift bag in heaven waiting to be released to you so that you can make it through your trials. If only you would look up!
3. Know that God’s gifts in the future is a function of the ultimate gift in the past.
In verse 18, we read of the ultimate gift that God can give us: “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.”
The ultimate gift is the new birth that comes from the gospel. This is not alluding to our physical birth but to our “birth from above,” the birth that Jesus spoke of when Nicodemus came to him and Jesus pointedly told him:
“I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born from above.” (John 3:3)
Some of you familiar with John 3:3 know the more traditional translation, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” That Greek word, (anothen “born again,”) can also be translated
“born from above.” (See the NIV and NLT footnote).
Jesus is actually saying that this new birth is from above, from heaven, from God. We are born once here on earth, by natural means, but we need a new birth, a birth from above.
We are meant to see the double meaning of this word anothen: both “born again,” and “born from above.” And this matches what James is saying about all good gifts. They come “down from above,” “from the Father of lights,” from God.
We are born “again” or “from above,” and that through “the word of truth,” according to James 1:18. Ephesians 1:13 reads,
“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.”
In other words, there comes a moment when there is a dramatic change—a new birth. We hear the story of Christmas and instead of it just being a cute story of a baby in a manger, it becomes the story of God entering the world in order to live and die for me and my sins. The Christmas carols are more than songs, they are hymns of praise to God incarnate: “Oh come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.”
And you, in your heart, really do adore Jesus Christ! You cherish him! You love him! He is your Savior and Lord! “Silent Night, Holy Night…Christ the Savior is Born!”
That is when you are born from above—when the word of truth, the gospel of your personal salvation finally takes hold of you.
And that is not the end of the story; salvation is just the beginning. “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a
kind of firstfruits of all he created.”
The effect of the ultimate gift is not only a new birth, but an ever-changing life. Our new birth has as its purpose the bringing into being “firstfruits,” the first harvest of the fruits produced by God’s eternal plan of redemption.
In other words, there is more fruit to come! We should expect that what God has started in us, he will bring to fruition. God’s work in us to make us the kind of people we were meant to be is not finished at the new birth.
God is still at work in us to bring us to maturity.
So, the Gift of Christmas is this: The gift of everything that is good. And what is good?
Anything and everything that we enjoy in this world that is pure and lovely and wonderful—every blessing we can name is from God.
And the ultimate good gift of Christmas is the new birth in Christ that comes when we respond by faith to the “word of truth,” the gospel that the baby Jesus is our Savior who would, some 30-odd years later, die on a cross for my sins, and then rise from the grave for my eternal life.
And the continued good gift from God is the promise that he will provide all that I need to continue to grow to maturity in him—that even trials can be used by God for my spiritual good.
Christmas gives meaning not only to the good times and the blessings in life, but the hard times and the trials in life as well.
That is the Gift of Christmas!
Back
to The Gift of Christmas Series
Back
to Bob's Messages |
