Well now, shall we turn together to the
letter written by James in chapter 1, and
we come this evening to the passage that
begins with verse 9 and proceeds to the
end of verse 18.
We have entitled it, Walking Along Wisdom's Way.
Now you will remember that in introducing this
book of James last Lord's Day evening, Mr.
McLeod reminded us that the background is one
of a somewhat bitter persecution of the Christian
community addressed here.
And the reference to trials is probably to
be found in that setting.
The trials that especially emerge from persecution of
one kind or another, and some of the
consequences that come with persecution, unemployment, no home,
no means of livelihood, no stable means of
livelihood, and many other such things.
That is the kind of background that we
have here.
And yet something of the challenge of this
whole book comes right at the beginning when
James tells us in verse 2 about his
first word, consider it pure joy, my brethren,
whenever you face trials of many kinds.
What a remarkable word.
What a strange word to begin with.
How is it humanly possible for any of
us to consider this to be the opportunity
of rejoicing when trials of many kinds come
cramming around us and pressing in upon us
and challenging us?
It simply doesn't make sense at first reading.
Now James gives us the key.
He tells us in a word that this
is possible for the people of God if
only we are in possession of what he
refers to as the divine wisdom.
And so he says in verse 5, if
any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask
God who gives generously to all without finding
fault, and it will be given him.
But when he asks, of course, he must
ask in faith, nothing wavering, nothing doubting, because
the man who wavers or the man who
doubts will receive nothing whatsoever from the Lord.
So the key to the situation is found
here.
If only we can ask without wavering and
receive without doubting the wisdom that is from
God, then it is possible for you and
for me, according to James, to rejoice when
we face a whole multitude, a whole galaxy.
I don't know whether that's the right language
to use or not, but a whole vast
accumulation of trials and troubles all coming at
once, like the waves of the sea coming
unremittingly upon us.
There is a place in the life of
the believer where he can rejoice even in
such circumstances.
Now in the passage before us tonight in
verses 9 to 18, James tells us something
about this amazing wisdom that is from God,
a wisdom that turns everything to gold.
That is spiritual gold, a wisdom that enables
us to transform and transpose our trials into
the occasions of the discovery of God's grace.
Now let's pause here before we move.
We've all got some trials or other.
I've no doubt.
There's hardly anybody.
Is there anyone here tonight who is free
of trouble, free of trial of some kind
or other?
I'd really like to meet you so that
this is very, very relevant.
How now can I transpose this trial so
that it becomes an occasion of rejoicing and
the means of grace?
Well, says James, use this God-given wisdom.
Seek it with all your heart, and when
you've got it, use it.
And as he leads us into the epistle
proper, he tells us something about this wisdom,
and that's my territory for tonight.
Now there are three things here.
We divide the passage into three, though they're
unequal in length.
First of all, wisdom's reasoning in verses 9
to 11, wisdom's reward in verse 12, and
what I would like to refer to as
wisdom's reassurance in verses 13 to 15.
Now let's look at them briefly.
First of all, wisdom's reasoning, the wisdom that
is from above, enables a man to reason
different from the man of the world.
Might I say that it enables people to
reason in a way which may be quite
different from the way a babe in Christ
would reason, or a carnal Christian would reason?
Now James refers this wisdom and tells us
very practically how a humble man should apply
it, and then how a rich man should
apply it.
So what he wants to say is this,
he doesn't want philosophically to analyze this wisdom
and try to tell us what it's like
or what it is in that particular way,
but he wants us to see it in
action.
First of all in the life of the
poor man, then in the life of the
rich man.
The wisdom of the humble.
Look at verse 9.
The brother in humble circumstances ought to take
pride in his high position.
Now you say, that doesn't make sense, have
you read it properly?
Have a good look at your Bible in
case I've made a mistake, will you?
The brother in humble circumstances ought to take
pride in his high position.
Yeah, I'm quite right, I'm reading the NIV
nevertheless, but I'm quite right, I haven't made
a mistake.
The reference to the lowly or humble brother
seems to point to someone who has become
poverty stricken.
Now the background is one of trial, persecution,
and probably the people that James is now
thinking of are folk who've lost everything.
They're right down at the bottom of the
ladder, they've got nothing as far as the
things of this world are concerned.
They're minus home, minus property, minus two cars,
minus even a donkey, an ass to ride
on, they have nothing.
They've lost everything, the barrel is dry.
And James is evidently thinking of someone or
of some people who have been considerably humiliated
in that way.
Even so, he quite clearly and deliberately bids
the Christian brother, engulfed in such dire extremity,
to boast, literally to take pride in his
high position.
James, what on earth are you talking about?
This is really a riddle.
I'm right down bottom, I've lost everything.
What do you mean when you tell me
to boast in my high position?
Well you see, he's addressing Christians.
And I can put it to you in
the simple form of a picture.
If you're a Christian man, if you're a
Christian woman, you have two banking accounts.
Well, suppose, there may be very little in
the banking account that you have down here
that contains your few dollars, whatever they're worth,
or many for that matter, but you have
a banking account and your dollars and your
cents are there.
But you have another banking account and you
lay up treasure in heaven where neither moth
nor rust doth corrupt, nor thieves break through
and steal, and wherein flesh untouched the treasure.
Now, says James, don't be silly, don't be
foolish.
When the one banking account runs a little
bit low and you even move into the
red, keep your eyes on the other, because
it's always full.
When in terms of material things you lack
and you can say, I have nothing that
I can really call my own, don't allow
that to blind you to the fact that
in Christ Jesus you have all things pertaining
to life and godliness.
That you have been blessed, to quote the
Apostle Paul, with all spiritual blessings in the
heavenly places in Christ.
Now, this is as psychologically sound as it
is spiritually necessary.
You see, the tragedy is that so many
of us forget that we have two banking
accounts anyway, and that they're quite separate, the
one from the other.
And when things go ill with us materially,
we tend to think, well, now I've lost
everything.
Brother or sister, you can only speak like
that.
I can only speak like that when I'm
blind to realities, if I'm a Christian.
I should not allow an evil day materially
to blind my eyes to the fact that
whether I'm a pauper or a prince, in
terms of things material, I reign with Christ
on the throne spiritually, and all things are
mine in him, so James is saying.
So when you've been thrust right down, groveling
in the dust, and you're under the feet
of men and of circumstances, being trampled upon,
says James, by the grace of God and
the wisdom of God, have a good look
at your heavenly banking account and see what
you have in your crucified, risen, reigning, coming,
crowned Lord Jesus Christ.
Some of us need to do that tonight,
and it'll give ballast to our lives in
days of storm and in days of trial,
to remember that though we do not have
much in the bank down the road, in
the bank up in glory, we have all
and more.
Wisdom and the poverty stricken, the wisdom of
God as it relates to the humble, as
the person who's sorely tried.
Now, in order for us to see what
this wisdom is or what it does, James
takes us to the next, the wisdom of
the rich.
How is this wisdom to apply to the
man who is rich?
Well now, this is a very challenging word
if you happen to be among this group
of people, but the one who is rich
should take pride in his low position.
He's thinking, of course, of a rich brother
in Christ who's lost many things, too.
Perhaps he hasn't lost his riches.
I don't know how James is thinking about
it.
He doesn't make it quite clear, but he
certainly has been humble, and he certainly has
suffered.
He's not unscathed in the persecution, but James
says, the one who is rich should take
pride in his low position because he will
pass away like a wild flower.
For the sun rises with scorching heat and
withers the plant.
Its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed.
In the same way, the rich man will
fade away even while he goes about his
business.
The rich man, catapulted from his earthly comfort,
rudely turfed out of his cozy circumstances by
persecution, will, if he has found divine wisdom,
learn to rejoice in his very lean and
low circumstances.
He will learn to say to himself, this
is good for me, but I've lost my
cozy comforts.
Why?
For the simple reason that the circumstances of
the storm will serve to show up the
reality of life.
And in James's inimitable way, the realities are
these.
Anything and everything that you can buy with
silver and gold only needs the heat to
rise a little bit further or the wind
to blow a little bit faster, and the
whole thing shrivels like a flower in the
desert.
There is nothing that money can buy which
you can hold on to and which will
hold on to you.
It only awaits the rising of the sun
into its heat and it'll wither away or
the blowing of God's wind a little faster
and it's gone.
You see, of all people, the rich man
needs to learn that lesson because one of
the great tragedies of being made the custodian
of riches is this.
We tend to have a false sense of
security.
With our checkbook, we can buy anything.
You can get to the head of the
queue.
You can do anything with your checkbook.
Show a bundle of dollars and you can
do anything.
Ah, but don't make mistakes, says James.
Anything that dollars can buy will ultimately wither
and wilt like the flower of the field.
Actually, James draws a very vivid picture here
in the language in which the New Testament
was written and a very familiar picture to
those that read this epistle in the first
place.
In the desert places in Palestine, if there
was a shower of rain, the thin green
shoots of grass would sprout very quickly, very
quickly.
But if one day's burning sunshine would make
them vanish as if they'd never been, the
scorching heat called the calzone, we call it
in English the simoon, it would suddenly come
and the whole thing would be dry, dead,
banished as if it had never been.
So says James, so are the things that
can be purchased with silver and gold.
Such is the transitory nature of all that
riches can buy.
One blow, one blast of wind is enough.
It can cause the entire produce to vanish
forever.
So let the man, let the man who
is rich, glory in the fact that he's
been made low, low enough to see that
after all these things are ephemeral and passing
and transient.
I believe it was something arising out of
this passage in the epistle of James, and
yet I don't know how that can be,
but at any rate I'll tell you how
I heard it from my predecessor in Westminster
Chapel, referring to the great Philip of Macedon,
the great Philip of Macedon, warrior, scholar, and
a very rich man.
Something had happened, somebody, some godly person had
been in his presence and had somehow or
other got some aspect of the biblical message
across to him, wherever it came from, I'm
not sure, but it had struck Philip of
Macedon with the fact that he cannot hold
on to riches and wealth and position and
that he must die.
You know what the man did?
He arranged that one of his servants should
come to him at certain hours every day,
I believe four times each day, irrespective of
who was with him in his palace, irrespective
of what he was doing, irrespective of anything
at all, and this servant was to come
up to him and say, Sir, Philip of
Macedon, you must die.
Imagine a man ordering a servant to do
that, and he did it.
In other words, he was aware of the
possibility of a man such as he becoming
so involved with his strength and his power
and his riches and his castles that he
would think of himself as incapable of death.
Wisdom as it relates to the wise, wisdom
as it relates to the poor.
Now, whichever category you're in, the wisdom that
is from above has got something to say
to you and something to say to me.
Let's use it.
Wisdom's reasoning, wisdom's reward, verse 12, solitary verse,
but here it is.
Blessed is the man who perseveres under trials,
says James, because when he has stood the
test, he will receive the crown of life
that God has promised to those who love
him.
The possessors of the wisdom that God gives
are never losers, be they rich or be
they poor, it makes no difference.
Let them be guided by their wisdom and
their blessedness is sure.
Now, look at the basic requirement.
The basic requirement, says James, is this, that
we should persevere.
Blessed is the man who perseveres.
What this wisdom is really going to do
for you is this, it's going to enable
you to go on in the Christian race
and in the Christian life, irrespective of riches
or of poverty, persecution or its absence.
This is a tremendously important word.
If you and I have this divine wisdom,
what it will make us do, what it
will enable us to do, is this, it's
to go on and on and on in
the name of our Lord, irrespective of circumstances.
You see it exemplified in our Lord Jesus
Christ, you see it exemplified in the apostles,
but I simply cannot go after the illustrations
tonight.
Armed with God's freely given wisdom to those
who wholeheartedly seek it, the rich and the
poor believer will have a ballast that will
save the boat from tipping in the sea
of life and enable a person to move
onwards and to go forwards and to persevere.
That's the first thing.
But now, look at the vital revelation that
we have here.
Persevering brings up the notion of somebody with
his teeth clenched and his fists likewise and
every muscle taught and all the energy of
his soul and of his body is put
into the business of running, moving, fighting, going
on irrespective of opposition.
Is this what wins the crown of life
that the Lord has promised?
Well, what does perseverance through trial reveal?
Simply grit, courage, power.
Well, notice what James puts his finger on.
The crown of life, he says, is to
those that love him.
In other words, you see, this heavenly wisdom
will enable the people of God if they
obey it and act by it, to persevere.
But it's not the perseverance in and of
itself that earns the crown of life or
that brings life to its full glory.
But it is something that is undercover, something
that lies behind it, something that is deeper
than the surface.
What's behind this perseverance of a man or
of a woman?
Well, it's this love of God, love for
God.
This morning our emphasis was on the love
of God for us in Christ and what
a theme it is.
But James here refers to the fact that
if we really have the divine wisdom that
enables us to persevere, basically our perseverance is
due to this.
It is due to the fact that in
some measure we love our God.
And the crown of life is to be
given to those who love God.
It has been promised to those.
Can I bring out what to me is
a very important, another important issue here?
A question that our age needs to consider
with renewed seriousness is this.
How should we Christians express our love for
God?
You see, we live, whether we like it
or not, we live in an age which
is quite different from the way things were
20 years ago, 30 years ago especially.
Apart from the films, you didn't often hear
people talk to one another and say, I
love you.
Not that there was anything wrong in it
20, 30 years ago, don't misunderstand me, but
people didn't used to talk like that.
There may have been a few here and
there who were a little bit more open
than others and they would say to their
partners and say to their children how much
they loved them.
But 20, 30, 40 years ago, people didn't
used to put it in words like that.
Some of us don't realize this, so we've
forgotten this, but they loved each other.
I never heard my father say to my
mother, I love you.
Neither did I hear my mother ever say
to my father, I love you.
But I tell you, there was not a
couple that lived on this earth who loved
each other more dearly.
And we have got into the habit of
thinking that the only way of expressing love
is saying, I love you.
James is telling us that the way to
express your love is by persevering in obedience
to your law.
Talk about it if you have the freedom
of the Spirit.
Sing about it if the Spirit of God
is in your heart, as you will.
But fundamentally, the way to prove our love
is by persevering.
And you see, it doesn't matter how well
you and I can sing about love or
talk about love or shout about love or
write about love or whatever you like, unless
we are persevering in obedience, it's all empty
rattle.
The perfect example of this, of course, is
that of Peter in John 21.
Remember, Peter had denied his Lord three times.
And then in John 21, Jesus arranged that
fire of coals in the early morning when
Peter and his friends had gone back fishing,
caught nothing.
And Jesus was there and he prepared breakfast
for them.
And he'd become the waiter and he got
everything ready.
The fish was ready, cooked, and he was
to be the waiter.
And he was preparing for something, leading up
for something.
And then he turned to Simon Peter and
said, Simon, son of John, do you love
me?
He shook Peter a little bit.
And Peter said, yes, Lord, you know that
I love you.
Okay, says Jesus, feed my lambs.
He didn't say write a poem about it.
There's nothing wrong in writing a poem about
it.
He didn't say sing a song about it.
Nothing wrong in singing a song about it.
He didn't say write it on my hand
with a bit of charcoal or on your
own arm.
I love Jesus.
Didn't say that.
Feed my lambs, he said.
Silence.
After the long, apparently long silence, very long
as far as Peter was concerned, Jesus said
to him again, Simon, son of Jonah, do
you love me?
Yes, Lord, says Peter uncomfortably.
You know that I love you.
And Jesus said, take care of my sheep.
Got it?
Now we're not over yet.
Another long silence.
At least it was long for Peter.
And Jesus asked the question the third time,
Simon, son of John, do you love me?
And Simon was a little bit rattled.
He was hurt because Jesus asked him the
third time, do you love me?
He said, Lord, you know everything.
You know that I love you.
Jesus said, feed my sheep.
I tell you the truth.
When you were younger, you dressed yourself and
you went where you where you wanted.
But when you are old, you will stretch
out your hands and someone else will dress
you and lead you where you do not
want to go.
But go on feeding my sheep and tending
my lambs and tending my lambs.
That's the way to prove your love for
me, even when you don't want to do
it.
But that's not everything.
Peter saw John nearby.
The disciple whom Jesus loved was following them.
This was the one who had leaned back
against Jesus at the supper and had said,
Lord, who is going to betray you?
And Peter saw John.
You remember, they were great friends.
And Peter saw John.
He said, Lord, what about him?
Jesus answered, if I want him to remain
alive until I return, what is that to
you?
You follow me.
My friends, have you got it?
A biblical way of expressing love for God
is obedience to his commandments and doing his
will and persevering on to the end of
the road.
Come rough weather, come shining sunshine, alone or
in the crowd.
I don't want anybody to stop writing poems
because of anything I'm saying or writing hymns
because of anything I'm saying.
Come and sing your songs of love.
But my friend, remember this, you can sing
and you can sob and you can cry
and you can assure people I love Jesus.
If you're not obeying his command, it's all
froth.
A vital revelation is this, a crown of
life coming to its maturity in this world
and in the world to come is for
those who love him and persevere.
The blessing received, he will receive the crown,
the victor's crown or the crown of life.
Now that must bring me to the last
point because there's something too important here to
miss.
Wisdom's reassurance, verses 13 to 18.
You followed, I trust so far.
Now let's come here to a word of
reassurance.
Two things.
One, God is not the author of temptation
to evil.
If you're a man or a woman of
God and you've fallen upon hard times, be
sure of this.
God, says James, is not the source of
temptation.
This is a very important denial.
When tempted, no one should say, God is
tempting me.
For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor
does he tempt anyone.
Now that's clear enough.
It is all too easy, you see, to
form false notions of God when things have
gone a little bit awkwardly with us, especially
when we are going through times of prolonged
testing, persecution, loss of material wealth, unemployment.
Oh, it's so easy to talk about this.
Lord, help us.
In these circumstances, I say it is very
easy and very possible to have wrong notions
of God, and we think that God is
seducing us to evil.
James assures us that God is too holy
to be himself tempted.
You can't tempt God to do evil, neither
does he tempt anyone else.
That God tests his creatures is everywhere, conceded
in scripture.
That is, he tests us in order for
us to show our faith and express our
hope in him.
He tests us in order to bring out
the grace that is in us, that we
may manifest ourselves as truly Christian to the
world around us and to him above us.
He tests us, but God tests us in
order to bring out the grace in us.
Satan tempts us in order to bring out
the evil in us.
God never tempts us like that.
He will never put anything on your path
to draw you towards evil of any kind.
If it is there, you can be sure
of this.
God didn't do it.
This is part of the divine wisdom.
If you have this wisdom, you will always
know that and you will always count on
this.
God does not tempt you.
It hasn't come from God.
There's a very instructive declaration here then.
If God does not entice us to sin,
then where does temptation come from?
And now many of us would find it
very comfortable to say, well, it's the old
devil again.
Poor old devil, he gets blamed for a
lot of things and in the first place,
he's not responsible.
Not always.
Now I've got no pact with the devil.
Make no bones about it.
He's too much of a nuisance for me.
And I don't want to plead his cause
for one solitary moment.
But you know there's something comforting in being
able to say, oh, it's the devil after
me again.
The devil's at my heels.
The devil does this, that, and the other.
Poor old devil.
Now we've become so devil conscious, we are
not God conscious.
Listen to what James says.
If you've got this heavenly wisdom, you'll recognize
it, he says.
Each one is tempted when by his own
evil desire, your own, my own, 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.
The wretched thing called sin actually starts where?
Brother and sister, I know it's hard to
say it, but the book says it, and
I must say it.
It starts in your heart and mine.
Right there.
It's there like a pea in the pod
of your heart.
It's there in your desire.
In our human desires, as fallen creatures, there
are the seeds of temptation in our own
desires.
Leave the devil out of it for a
moment.
The basis of it, the first ingredient in
it, is right in our natures, in our
desires.
Not necessarily desires that are always evil, but
just a desire as desire.
But how does our ordinary human desire come
to spawn such a monstrous fruit as sin?
Well, James replies using two expressive verbs.
Look at the verse again.
Each one is tempted when by his own
evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.
Dragged away and enticed.
The late Dr. G.
Campbell Morgan of Westminster Chapel insisted that there
are two metaphors here that come from two
different worlds, but they're related.
The first verb, he says, comes from the
hunting world.
It is a hunting metaphor.
Having reference to a creature being drawn away
from the safety of its normal habitat, and
it's drawn and it's enticed out.
You can think of it, can't you?
If you're a hunter, or if you know
anything about hunting, you're enticing the creature out
of its habitat, and he comes, or it
comes, and sooner or later he's enough.
That's the first.
The second verb, enticed, comes from the fishing
world, and envisages the use of a bait
in order to seduce the fish, to make
a bid for what is apparently to its
taste and advantage.
I don't know how a fish thinks, but
if a fish does think, it looks up
and it sees the bait there coming down
into the water, says, my, I like that.
That'd be a great mouthful.
And the fish determines, and he jumps even
up out of the water, maybe to get
it, and only finds that he's entangled to
a hook, and death has come.
In each case, says Campbell Morgan, there is
a deviation from the given line of rectitude
in order to satisfy personal desire, and satisfy
personal desire in an unnatural way, in an
abnormal way.
Now the essence of the temptation that leads
to sin is to be seduced, to satisfy
what may be a legitimate desire, but in
an illegitimate way.
To satisfy a legitimate desire in a manner
in which God has not appointed, or which
God has positively proscribed.
There temptation becomes actual sin, then there is
a yielding on the part of the individual.
He's seduced out of his habitat, or like
a fish out of the water to the
bait, he's seduced, and he gives in to
the seduction.
He agrees to go.
He entertains the suggestion or the notion, and
he says, I will go for it.
That's sin.
It is not sin at the first suggestion.
The first suggestion may be rebutted.
Jesus was given three separate suggestions, yet he
did not sin.
He considered the three suggestions mentally.
He examined them.
He scrutinized them.
He looked at them.
He dissected them.
He saw them for what they were.
There was no sin in that, but he
didn't heal.
He didn't embrace them.
He didn't accept the suggestions.
He said, no, get behind me, Satan.
Sin is born when I entertain the notion
and go with it, and say, okay, I
will.
The process is not yet complete.
You see, we Christians of the 20th century
especially think that the process is complete when
sin has happened.
The process is never complete with sin.
James goes on and adds, and sin, when
it is finished, when it is full grown,
brings forth death.
So here is the whole thing.
Desire, enticed, received, agreed to.
Sin is committed.
Yes.
Here is the wisdom that is from above.
God never sets you going along that route.
Never, never, never, says James.
God will never ask you to do anything
that will lead you along that route.
Never.
Be sure of that.
The last thing is this.
God is the exclusive author of every good
and every perfect gift.
God will never lead you up a street
like this, be it a cul-de-sac
or be it a way to death.
God will never lead you that way.
God is quite a different person.
Don't be deceived, my dear brothers, says James
in the NIV.
Every good and perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of the heavenly
lights, who does not change like shifting shadows,
who chose to give us birth through the
word of truth, that we might be a
kind of firstfruits of all he created.
Now can I summarize that?
That God is not the author of sin
needs to be made clear, as James has
done in the preceding verse.
That, however, is not the end of the
story.
In order to be reassured in our Christian
life and thus enable to persevere through our
temptations and trials and tribulations, we need to
know not simply that God will do us
no harm, but we need to know that
God is the source of everything good.
And you see, this is the very thing
we need when we're in trials and temptations.
In the midst of my trials, in the
midst of the chaos, in the midst of
the bewilderment, when everything's falling around me, I
need to know God is not tempting me.
He may be testing me, but he's not
tempting me, not seducing me to do evil.
Never.
He may be giving me the opportunity of
trying my spiritual wings, to claim my spiritual
possessions, to call upon his name, to have
grace upon grace.
Yes, he's doing that, but never seducing me
to sin.
But what is more, the God who is
doing this is the source of every good
and perfect gift, and he has everything I
need.
I may turn to him for whatever is
my need at any given moment.
You know, there is a legend.
I don't know whether you are aware of
it or not.
It's years since I read it for the
first time, but I came across it again
recently.
That's why I'm able to refer to it.
I don't remember these things, but some people
are good at this.
But there is an old legend concerning the
death of a king of an ancient kingdom
whose court officials were given the task of
choosing a successor from two twin sons that
had been born to his wife just about
the time when he died.
These courtiers went into the room, and the
two children, twins, two boys, were sleeping.
They examined them as best they could.
They were not medical.
They had no means other than that of
common mortals to judge between two babies, and
they argued with themselves, well, they look very
much the same.
They make the same little baby noises, and
one is not looking as if he's going
to be a giant, the other a dwarf
or anything like that.
How can we choose?
Really, they didn't know how to choose.
But as they were going out from the
room, one of the men turned back, and
he saw something that struck him.
He saw that one of the twins was
sleeping with both his little hands tight-fisted
like this, and the other little knight was
sleeping with both hands wide open.
And he said, men, he said, look, one
of these twins is sleeping tight-fisted as
if he's a fighter or a miser, or
both, and the other is sleeping with his
hands wide open as if he's a friendly,
genial sort of little character.
Evidently, they chose him to be king, and
they chose a right.
My friend, what I want to tell you
is this.
It's no fable.
It's truth.
We have no tight-fisted God.
Ours is an open-handed heavenly Father.
He's the Father of the heavenly lights, and
we may conclude, wrongly, that as there are
shadows caused by the heavenly lights, God changes,
too, and there are shadows in the divine
character.
No, no, no, says James.
There is no shadow caused by turning or
deviation in him.
He's unchangeably the same open-handed, open-hearted
God, and to prove that, he says, let
me remind you, of his own will begot
he us by the word of truth.
What do you mean, James?
This.
We've been born again, have we not, fellow
believers?
We've been given new birth.
How did it come about?
Of his own will.
We didn't ask for it.
You know, this is, I'm amazed that more
people don't recognize this.
See, you had no say in who was
going to be your father.
Now, men and women, forgive me for being
so awkward in the pulpit here and saying
a thing like that, but I want to
get it home.
I don't care who you are.
You had no say in choosing your own
father, nor your mother, but your father and
your mother determined they were going to have
a child.
They made the choice.
Now, says James, how did you come into
the spiritual world so that you are rich
even though when you're poor you may be
poor?
Of his own will.
There was nothing in you to deserve it.
He didn't even ask for it.
You couldn't because you weren't there.
He chose you in eternity, and he brought
you to birth in time, and he sent
his evangelist, he sent his servants to preach
the gospel to you, and his spirit to
draw you, and he wrote upon you, and
he brought you into life, and it was
all of his own will eliciting a response
from your will.
He chose you first before you chose him.
That's the kind of God ours is.
He calls you to your riches.
He calls you to be a prince, and
he hasn't changed.
You need to know that in your trials.
Not only that God will do you no
harm or tempt you to do evil, he's
a God whose hand is always open wide
with anything and everything you need.
So what?
Keep persevering.
Let wisdom have her perfect work.
Employ the wisdom that is from above.
Use it.
Apply it.
Live by it.
Walk by it.
Serve by it.
Die by it.
An awful lot in this epistle of James.
I don't know why Martin Luther called this
an epistle of straw.
Surely he didn't have a good taste for
food at that time.
There's hay here.
Better, there's cream here.
There's rich fodder here.
There's some of the richest of all the
spiritual food of the New Testament here.
May the spirit of God grant us gathered
here tonight.
May the spirit of God enable us to
cry and to seek this heavenly wisdom, and
in possessing it, to march forward together irrespective
of circumstances, in order that we may prove
that our God is the God revealed in
his Son, expressed in the cross, and he
hasn't changed with the years.
Let us pray.
Our heavenly Father, your word is a lamp
unto our feet and a light unto our
way, and yet we have to confess that
sometimes we read it only in the light
of our human wisdom, and we know little
of the wisdom that comes from above, that
reasons in the manner in which this passage
tells us we ought to reason, teach us
how to grow in grace.
Lead us onwards and forwards and upwards, we
pray.
Enable us to persevere, though the road may
sometimes be rough and lonely, and grant that
having fed upon your word and been guests
at your table again today, we may find
that we are supernaturally enabled, that we have
manner that has come down from the very
heaven of the heavens, even your own dear
Son, and ours is the water of life
that springs from beneath the very throne of
God, who quenches the deepest thirst of the
redeemed.
We ask these things with forgiveness of sin,
through Christ our Savior.
Amen.