The Greatest Gift of All
James 1:17-25
verse 17
That is one of the great Biblical statements about the greatness of our God and His unchanging and good nature. God is the Father of lights. That means that in this turbulent, changing universe of ours, we have something to hold on to. We have an anchor.
It speaks to us of the character of God. He is "The Father” of lights. That means God is the God of creation. God is the God who has created the light in the universe. The sun and the moon and the stars and all of the lights, God is the Father of those lights.
It says that He has no variation. That means there is no change in Him. Life has its shadows. But none of those shadows come because of any changing in the nature of God.
We are living in a world where there is a great deal of change, but it is good to know that there is someone who does not change and He is God. Malachi 3:10 says, "For I am the Lord, I change not." God does not change.
God cannot change for the worse for He would cease to be God. God cannot change for the better for then He would not have been perfect to begin with. The Bible says about Jesus in Hebrew 13, verse 8, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever." We need something that is unchanging.
An old music teacher was asked one day by a student, "What's the good news for today?" The teacher walked over to the tuning fork and hit it, and he said, "That's the note 'A.'" Five thousand years ago it was an "A." Ten thousand years from now it will still be an "A." You may hear the tenor be off key and you can hear the soprano sing out of tune. But "A" is an "A," and the good news today is that "A" is an "A." The good news tonight is that God is God and God does not change. He is the same. He never changes.
One of the great hymns in our song book is "Great is Thy Faithfulness." It goes like this, "Great is Thy Faithfulness, O God our Father. There is no shadow of turning with Thee. Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not. As thou has been thou forever will be."
We also see that this God who does not change gives us good gifts. The Bible says that every good and every perfect gift comes from above. God is a good God.
So with that in mind, God is a God who does not change, and God is a God who gives good gifts to us, let’s think tonight about this question: Of all of the wonderful gifts which God has ever given to us, what is the greatest?
He tells us in this verse. He says in verse 17, "Every good gift and ever perfect gift is from above." Look at that phrase. I want to ask you to tie that statement to what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3, verse 7. Jesus said, "Ye must be born again." It is the same word "from above." "Ye must be born again. Ye must be born from above."
When the Bible says that every good and perfect gift comes from above and when Jesus said, "You must be born from above," we know that the new birth, the life which Jesus Christ gives to us, is a gift which comes from above.
When you receive Jesus as your personal Savior, the Bible says that you are born again, you are born from above. You receive a brand-new life. The old life has been forgiven. You have a brand-new life in the Lord Jesus Christ; and the new birth, the new life, which God has given to you, is the greatest gift God ever gave to any individual.
I. How the New Life is Delivered
I want you to notice in verse 18 how this new life is delivered. How do you get this new life?
He says in verse 18, first of all, that this new life is delivered, "Of his own will." In other words, God gives you the new birth as an act of His will. You are born again, not because you decide to be born again. You are not born again because of anything that you do or because of any merit which makes you deserving of it. But the Bible says that you are born again because God chooses to save you.
We are born again by the will of God. It is God who decides to save. It is God who takes the initiative in our salvation. John 15, verse 16, says, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you."
All birth comes as a decision of parents. The fact that you are here tonight is because your parents made a decision for you to be born. You didn't decide to be born.
You weren't off somewhere up in the airwaves and say, "I think I'll be born. Here I am." Your parents made that decision. Salvation is of His will. It is of the Father's will. It is God who wills our birth.
Not only is it of His own will, but it is by His own Word. It says, "Of his own will brought us forth by the word of truth." Here's another beautiful picture of God's Word. God is called the Word of truth. God's Word is true, but God's Word is truth.
When the Bible is preached, when the good news of Jesus is preached, when the gospel is declared, it is the Word of truth. The Bible is the truth about God. It is the truth about man. It is the truth about eternity. It is the truth about salvation, and when the Word of God is preached and when people believe the Word and by faith invite Christ into their heart, they are born again. This new life is delivered by the Word of truth.
Not only is the new life delivered by the Father's will, by means or with the word of truth, the Father's Word, but also for the Father's worship.
In the last part of the verse he says, "That we might be a kind of first fruits of his creatures." That picture goes back into the Old Testament where when a harvest came in, they would take the first fruit of that crop.
For instance, they would go in the Temple and they would take that first fruit of the grain and they would wave it. It was a pledge that everything in the harvest belonged to the Lord. It was a promise that God indeed was the one who brought in the harvest. It was an example of more to follow.
When you are saved, God saves you in order that you might be an example. God saves you in order that you might live under Him and that you might be a testimony unto others. Every time someone is saved, it is a demonstration of what God can do with anybody.
So God is the Father of Lights, the God of Creation; always has been, always will be, never changes, and He gives good and perfect gifts, with the supremem example being our salvation. And verse tells us how this new life is delivered.
Then verses 19 and 20 tell us
II. How the New Life is Demonstrated.
We are born again by the Lord. We receive this new life. But the Lord wants us to now live out that life. The Lord wants us to demonstrate in our life the reality of the new birth which we have experienced.
Verse 19
"Swift to hear." Now primarily the reference is to hearing the Word of truth. He's saying that one of the evidences for our new birth is that we have a desire to hear the Word of truth.
We're living in a time where it is difficult for people to listen. They don't listen as well as they used to. I read sometimes sermons of the old preachers of another generation, and some of them preached an hour or an hour and a half. They were long sermons. I thought many times, "How did people listen to those sermons?"
But you have to be aware of the fact that they were living in a different age. We are living now in the visual age. Because of television we are used to so much going on and so many visual images are brought before us. It has had a negative impact on our ability to listen. We're not very good listeners. We don't listen as well as we should listen.
In fact, we have to train ourselves to be listeners to the Word of God. We need to be swift to hear the Word of God. I want to encourage you to begin to develop the desire to hear the Word and to work on the ability to listen. "Swift to hear."
Then he says to be slow to speak. He's not talking about slow talking. He's saying be slow to talk. He's saying, "Don't always be anxious to speak. Don't always be anxious to say something."
The Bible has a lot to say about the negative impact of our words. I was thinking about this Wikileaks debacle and how things are discussed that will potentially embarrass our government and threaten our well-being. But the truth of the matter is, it’s one thing to discuss threats and policy; it is another to belittle or demean. And the truth of the matter is you never have to take something back that you didn’t say in the first place.
Some of us need to close our mouths. God gave you two ears and one mouth. We should use them accordingly. God has put your ears opened and exposed. He has put your tongue behind teeth and behind lips. Do you get the point?
The Bible says we that we should be swift to hear, slow to speak; and we should let wrath straggle along in the rear, that is be slow to wrath.
There is an appropriate time for anger, but there is also an anger that is filled with sin. The Bible says that we are not to be angry. We are to get rid of anger.
Think about what anger does in families. Some of homes are like a war zone with all the explosions of anger that happen there. Sometimes it is in the workplace and even in the church. Notice what James is teaching here: The new birth is to help you get hold of that anger. Turn your anger over to God and say, "God take the anger out of my heart."
When Christ comes into your life you have a new life. The Holy Spirit now lives in your heart. Ask the Holy Spirit to take the anger out of your heart.
Why is that so significant? Verse 20 tells us: It doesn’t demonstrate the righteousness of God. Human nature will never produce CHristlike character. Here’s the point:
This new life is delivered by the Word of God. This new life is demonstrated by being swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. But you are saved and still living like the old man, and not demonstrating the new life, then there is a third thing that is needed. So he shows us
III. How this New Life is Developed
How do we develop this life that God has given to us?
He has already said that the Word of God is the Word of truth. Now in verses 21-25 he is going to give us two pictures of how God uses that Word to develop our new life.
First of all he says that the Bible is like a seed which means that God's Word needs to be planted in our heart.
verse 21
God's Word, like a seed, is planted in our heart; and when the gift of the new life comes and that Word of God is planted in our heart, it has the potential to turn our lives into a beautiful salvation garden. God can take your life and can use the planted seed of the Word to help you get out the weeds that should not be in your life and to get the beautiful things that God can produce in your life.
Notice what God's Word will begin to do as you let God's Word be planted in your heart, as I preach the Word to you and as you study the Word on a daily basis.
First, He says that it will help you lay aside all filthiness. The word there means moral disorder, moral uncleanness. It really means when sin is in our life like wax in the ear. We can't hear God's Word the way we should.
There are a lot of us who get some wax in our ear, and we don't hear the way we should hear. So he says to get rid of all of the filthiness and then he says, "overflow of wickedness." What that means is all of the undergrowth of the sin of that old past life.
When people get saved, they don't even have a clue as how to live. You have habits of life and patterns of behavior that are just normal for your life. But as God's Word begins to be planted, you begin to see that undergrowth and you ask the Lord to start pulling the weeds out of your life.
There should become a beautiful transformation in your life as the seed is planted in and as the weeds are pulled out and as God shows you the things in your life that should not be there and you let the Word of God pull out that overflow of wickedness.
Then he says, “and receive with meekness”.
The word "receive" there means to welcome with meekness, that is, with a teachable spirit the implanted, the rooted, Word which is able to save your souls. Not the salvation of your souls in terms of what I'm talking about, the new birth, but making your life a productive life.
Let me tell you what God can do with you. God can turn your life into a beautiful garden. You will be surprised what kind of person you can become. As you study God's Word and as you apply God's Word and as you let it be planted into your life, you will be amazed at the person you can become if you let the seed of the Word do its work in your heart. It's like a seed. It has to be planted in your heart.
Notice the second picture. He says that the Word of God is not only like a seed to be planted in your heart, but he says that the Word of God is a mirror and it is to be practiced in your life.
Verse 23,25
In those days they didn't have mirrors like we have. They had polished brass. They couldn't get a good reflection that way. But the mirror enabled them to see themselves to some extent. We look in mirrors today and we see ourselves.
Now there are two ways to see yourself. You can see yourself in a photograph and you can see yourself in a mirror. The photograph can be doctored up some. It can make you look better than you are.
I heard about one lady who went to a photographer to have her picture made and when he brought the proofs back she looked at them and was unhappy. She said, "These pictures don't do me justice." He said, "Ma'am, you don't need justice. You need mercy." A photograph can flatter you but a mirror shows you just exactly what you are.
Now in regard to that, notice verse 25
The word "doers" is where we get our word auditor. Some of you, if you went to college may have had the opportunity to audit certain courses. When you audit a course, that means that you go to the classes, listen to the lectures, but you have no responsibility whatsoever. It means that you don't have to take the tests. You don't have to give any accountability of how well you have learned the course you have audited. You are just there. You are just listening to it. That's as far as it goes.
He says that you and I are not to just be auditors of the Word of God. There are some people who just want to audit the Word. They hear it, but they never do anything about it.
That's the people who just come to church and they hear God's Word, but they never intend to put it into practice in their life. They hear about giving and they nod their heads, but they don't ever give anything. They hear about witnessing and they say, "Amen" in agreement, but they don't intend to witness and tell anybody about the Lord.
The Bible says, "Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only." The word "hearers" is the word auditor. "Be ye doers." Don't just be an auditor, a hearer only, deceiving your ownselves." What good is the Word of God if you don't put it into practice in your life? The same thing is true about your daily Bible reading. What good is it to read God's Word if you don't intend to practice it.
Then he uses this picture about the Bible being like a mirror. He uses an example in verse 23. He said a person who is just a hearer, who audits the Word and is not a doer, is like a man who sees himself in a mirror. The word natural face there is our word Genesis. He beholds his Genesis face; that is the face you were born with.
For most of us, before we get too far along in the morning we look in the mirror and kind of survey all the damage and see where all the improvements need to be made.
So you have this guy and when he gets up in the morning, he goes and he beholds his Genesis face. There it is. He's looks at himself, but he just gives it a little glance. There's the hair that's ruffled up. It needs to be combed. The face is a little bit soiled and needs to washed, but he just gives it a look and a promise.
He’s got dried swnot in his eyes and drool on his lips and he’s unshaven. But he finds himself acceptable, and goes on his merry way and never gives it another thought.
Now remember, the introduction to this illustration is conduct that does not produce righteousness. And here’s the deal: You may think you look fine;; you may be able to justify your appearance and behavior, but the world is watching. And what they see is a mess in the name of God.
How does that happen? Too many of God’s children are hearers of the Word and not doers of the Word. They read their Bible in the same way this man prepares for the day. They read their Bible in the morning, and they just catch a quick verse and then run on to their job; and they never really take the time to see themselves in the mirror of the Word and apply it to their life.
They listen to the preacher preach but it has no life-changing affect on them. They justify their appearance and behavior and rush off into the world wearing the title of Christian and give no thought to the misrepresentation of God’s righteousness that they are.
See, there are two purposes for a mirror. One of the purposes of the mirror is for examination. The second purpose of a mirror is restoration. It shows you where repairs and adjustments need to be made. The same thing is true with the mirror of the Word. As you study the Word it examines you, and as you study the Word it restores you. It shows you how to get things right in your life.
But there is a third thing that the mirror of the Word can do that a normal mirror can't do and that's transformation. You can look in a normal, natural mirror all of your life, and it can do nothing about transforming you; but this Bible is the perfect law of liberty, and when you look in it you not only examine and see yourself, you not only see how you can be restored, but you see the Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord can transform you and make you just like Jesus. It will help you to become just like the Lord Jesus Christ in your life.
Notice verse 25
"Looks into it". That’s the same word used in John 20 when Peter and John came to the tomb of Jesus after His resurrection. The Bible says that John stooped and looked. That's the same word that's used here. It means to stoop down and examine intently.
On the one hand, here is a man who has looked at his natural face in the mirror. He has just given it a look and a promise. He has glanced and moved on his way. But now here is someone who gazes in the Word. He takes a considered looked in the Word. He examines himself. He sees himself. He goes down deep. Sometimes that's not a very pleasant experience. Sometimes it's not all that pleasant to see yourself in the Word, in the mirror of the Word.
I heard about a woman who was suspicious of her husband. She noticed that he kept going up into the attic. One day while he was not there, she decided she would go up in the attic and see if she could find out what was going on. She went over to the chest where he put some of his valuables and other things. She reached into that chest and when she did, she pulled out a mirror and she thought it was a photograph and she said, "So that's the witch he's running around with!"
The Bible says that we are to look into the mirror of the Word. The Bible says that not only are we to look, but we are to continue in it and don't be a forgetful hearer but be a doer of the Work.
At the end of verse 25 it says, "This man shall be blessed in his deed." The blessing comes not just in the reading of the Word. The blessing comes in the doing of the Work. He doesn't say that you will just be blessed for doing it. He doesn't say that you will just be blessed because you do it. He says you will be blessed in the doing of it. What that means is that when you study God's Word and put it into practice in your life, the Bible says that it will make you happy. That's what the word "blessed" means. You'll be happy in the doing of the Work.
It's not enough to just hear the Word. We must be doers of the Work. When you begin to let it be planted in your heart and then work it out in your life, let it be practiced in your life, then there is the happiness that comes from God's greatest gift of all.
Let's bow our heads in prayer.
