Turning on the Lights

Larry Kirkpatrick. Price SDA Church

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James 1:16-21

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God is the Source for Gifts From Beyond That Impact Us Beyond Today

Let's turn to James 1:13. "Let no man say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God:' for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man." Although Satan wants to peg God as the source of our temptations, our actual sources of temptation are not from above. They are in each one of our hearts, and are provoked by the devil, our initiator provoker towards sin. You know how he goes on and on, launching one temptation after another into our minds. But catch this: he is determined, not only that we should sin, but that we should blame our sins on God. He is persistent enough and we are gullible enough to buy the lie, so James warns us carefully three verses down, "Do not err, my beloved brethren" (James 1:16). And then what does the verse say? "Every" gift of a certain nature is from God; everything that God gives us has a consistent quality about it; all of the gifts of God are pointing in a certain direction. Do you know what that is? "Every good and perfect gift" (vs. 1:17) points up to God, because He is the source of every good gift from beyond that can change us. These gifts "come down from the Father of lights." They come down to us from the very bosom of the Creator of the stars and the planets that beautify and illumine the night sky. The greater light and the lesser light that rule the day, (Genesis 1:16) the sun and the moon, are nothing on his gauge. If there were a meter on God's creative power when He acted and made our solar system, I'm telling you that it wouldn't have even wavered at that outlay of power. Such a needle would never move, because our God has all power. ...All power. He is our steady, morally-potent source of moral life. When faith rightly lays hold on Him, no force in creation can countermand His will. What did James tell us in verse 13? "For God cannot be tempted with evil." How can you be tempted, when you know all that there is to know? How can anyone convince you that it doesn't all add up the way that you already know it all adds up? How does one tell an effective lie to God? It can't be done. In Him there "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." God cannot be tempted with evil. He not only knows evil's fruitage, but He knows how to perfectly estimate the total cost of evil. He knows that it is only destructive, and He can't be bought off. But that's not all. Neither does He tempt any person (James 1:13). God doesn't tempt you. Don't even think it. If Adam and Eve had remained faithful, they would have known life and known it more abundantly. Our Father would have showered them with "every good and perfect gift" from the beginning, and we'd be far, far in advance of where the human race is now. But let's stick with the way things are. Adam and Eve made a free choice. And now we are all weak. We are their "crack" babies, born oriented toward sin from the front-from the beginning on out. We are not directly responsible for the broken nature that we've been born into, and heaven knows this. But we are responsible for what we finally become. And that's what makes us afraid. Because deep inside (and maybe not so deep), we know that we are behind the curve; that we have not allowed our God to make of us what He would delight to make of us. Not yet. My mom had a habit, and maybe some of us have it: right before leaving the house on any significant trip, she would go around the house and just "make sure" that all the doors were locked, that the stove was turned off, and so forth. And maybe one or two of us right now might suddenly become concerned that-just maybe-the stove was left on in your home this morning. But we have something more critical to worry about. Because friends, for all of us, the stove is left on; for all of us are here at a moment in time, a midpoint along our passage through life, God is still working. And we can be thankful that He hasn't turned off the oven yet. Because we're not done baking; we're not done refining. He's not done offering us His good and perfect gifts; and we are not done receiving them.

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We Are Privileged to Be a Kind of Firstfruits

How do God's people arrive at 144,000-hood? Not by sitting by while the good and perfect gifts remain unclaimed. They will seek out and by experience learn how to cooperate with their heavenly Father. See, we are to be "a kind of firstfruits of His creatures" (James 1:18). The firstfruits of the harvest in ancient times were always the first to mature, and the best of the harvest. And God's will for you, is that you be one of the first to mature; that you would be among the best in His harvest. No, not the person sitting next to you there. No. You. See, because all of us live at the end of time, don't we? And all of us are here in this place to be changed by the message we bear to the world, aren't we? And what is the result of the third angel's message supposed to be? It is plainly a message that is designed by our Creator to facilitate our becoming more like Jesus. Oh friends, how could we ever entertain the idea that doctrine doesn't matter? That we can bumble along like a pinball, randomly careening along the devils bumpers and buzzers? We need to grow, and our Father offers us every good gift and every perfect gift so that we can grow into this likeness. Legalism? No, not at all. I like to call it, Jesusism.  

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An Attitude From Beyond

I am so glad, my brothers and sisters, that the gospel isn't bottled up someplace in someone's garage, with some bored angels selling tickets for a walk-through tour of it. Since every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, it is obvious that heaven has no plan to make merchandise of the gospel. Buy the gospel, and don't sell it. But the gospel is free. It cost heaven an infinite price, but it is offered to us freely, without money and without price. Does that mean there are no conditions in there? No. The gospel has some very important conditions built into it, because it comes from the Father of lights in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. And that means there are moral edges in this universe that there is no way around. We will never put one over on God. Oh why do we try?! Yes, we've failed, each one, to live God's way always; but that was yesterday. Today--here--now--we can start again. We can receive one of heaven's good and perfect gifts here and now. If we will let God give to us. But who here needs gifts from the Father of lights? Well, only those of us who have sinned. I guess that would be all of us. Only those of us who need to let God work on us and change some of our less-than-dynamic personality traits. By that I mean maybe some of us need to loosen up, while some of us need to get more serious about our life. I'm not your pharmacist, so I'm not standing here prescribing for you. You listen for the Holy Spirit. Let Him convict you. But I'll bet that there's something that He is ready to do for you. God needs to adjust our character carburetor; He needs to tune our onboard computer; but He won't do it if we don't pop the hood for Him. Maybe we need to pop the hood so He can work more.  

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Tips For Turning the Lights On

What suggestions would our God offer us today? Look with me at verse 19 and let's see what we find: "Wherefore my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath."

Be Swift to Hear

See, because God has set out to make us "a kind of firstfruits," He urges us to adopt these important behaviors. And the first one given is "let every man be swift to hear." Practical Christianity right here-that's what James presents before us. "Let every man be swift to hear." To hear what?

• To hear and live the teaching of God
• To hear the godly counsel of our fellow believers
• To weigh the preaching we hear and apply it to our lives
• To hear the Bible's doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness

To apply all the balm to all the wounds. To receive the healing of the word in our actions and let it fit up our character. Let us receive the help that God would give. And its awfully hard to receive with our two ears when our one mouth is flapping along at warp speed, its fire lit from the hellish torch of Satan. But it need not be that way. We all need to control what we think and what we see so that we don't needlessly spew darkness out onto the wind. Yes, "let every man be swift to hear."

Be Slow to Speak

Again, James admonishes us to be "slow to speak." What does he mean? Perhaps in part he means that we need to be more purposeful about weighing and thinking about the things that come to us before we open our mouth to respond to them. If our natures weren't fallen, this might not be such a problem. Pride would be a lot less likely to get in the way. We might much more readily be willing to admit we were wrong. But we do have fallen natures, and we have long practice in indulging these natures. Once we've opened our mouth and committed ourselves by saying something, the only thing we can do if we were wrong is to take it back, to back down. But in the fallen nature this means pushing the pride button. If I back down, I lose ground; I look like a fool for having said what I said it was in the first place. So heaven warns us be "slow to speak!"

Be Slow to Wrath

If we are swift to hear and slow to speak, then and only then, I think we have hope regarding the third admonition: that we be "slow to wrath." If we will start by listening, and then thinking about what we have heard, we'll be much slower to provoke or respond in wrath. Notice in the next verse that "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." The righteousness of God can only come if we let God rebirth us by His own will with the word of truth. Look back to James 1:18. Oh yes. Some of you saw me go past that. Yes, I did; but I knew we were coming back to it. Let's read it through: "Of His own will begat He [God] us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." I want you to know something: it is God's will that we be begotten. This word here in the Greek means that it is through God's will that we are given-birth-to. And the agency of our new birth by God is His "word of truth." But did you know that in James 1:15 it speaks of birth using the same Greek word? "And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death," literally, "and sin, when it is finished, gives birth to death." The contrast here is between two all-important agencies:

• The word of truth, through which God's will can give birth to us as renewed people, and
• Following our own lusts, through which our own willful disobedience leads finally to anti-birth, to death

What a contrast! Isn't it obvious that if God's power gives us new life, we'll be slow-to-wrath, or that if we persist in our disobedience, we will be the cause of our own fast-to-wrath life that finally ends in our own death? God's will and His Word give life. Our will and our rebellion give death. See, if "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God," is it not the reverse, namely the self-control of man through the Holy Spirit that worketh the righteousness of God?  

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What to Lay Aside

And so the last verse now comes to us: James 1:21: "Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls." Literally, "therefore, strip off your sinful ways." But it's not so easy to set aside our wicked ways, is it? But there is something going on here. Do you know also that this is in the middle voice, and means "therefore, you strip off your sinful ways." There is a work for each of us to do that won't be done for us. No, we are not called upon to empower it, but to consent to it, to cooperate with it. God gives the power, we cooperate, and He gives the victory, and He is glorified. And what is this "superfluity of naughtiness?" It speaks here of excess, an excess of badness. Why will we let a crust of overflowing wickedness build up upon our being? We are to strip off our sinful ways with God's help, and we are to strip off the character-warping crust of evil too. See, we're not prisoners to that anymore. If we are looking to God, then that's not part of our reality any more. So strip it off! In exchange for this toxic, stinking monkey on our back, God gives us something so good. Do you know what it is?  

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What to Receive

No, not the wrath of man, but the meekness put into man by God is necessary if we would receive "the engrafted word," literally, "the implanted word." Commenting on the passage here, Cleon Rogers says in the Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament "It is the word for an 'implanting' not at birth but later in life." p. 725. And I like the way the SDA Bible commentary puts it in commenting on this verse: "The 'word' is 'engrafted' within a man when he chooses to make the principles of Scripture the pattern for his life." vol. 7, p. 513. Now let me share this with you. After doing my Bible study on this passage, I turned to the writings of Ellen White, just to see what she had said. And what did I find there? Listen!

When one is fully emptied of self, when every false god is cast out of the soul, the vacuum is supplied by the inflowing of the Spirit of Christ. Such a one has the faith which works by love and purifies the soul from every moral and spiritual defilement. The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, can work upon the heart, influencing and directing, so that he enjoys spiritual things. He is "after the spirit," and he minds the things of the Spirit. He has no confidence in self; Christ is all and in all. Truth is constantly being unfolded by the Holy Spirit; he receives with meekness the engrafted word, and he gives the Lord all the glory, saying, "God has revealed them to us by his Spirit." "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God." The Spirit that reveals, also works in him the fruits of righteousness....When God's people humble the soul before him, individually seeking his Holy Spirit with all the heart, there will be heard from human lips such a testimony as is represented in this scripture: "After these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory." There will be faces aglow with the love of God, there will be lips touched with holy fire, saying, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." Ellen G. White, from The Home Missionary, November 1, 1893

What is this "engrafted word," this "word of truth" that will make your heart and mine glow with the love of God? It is a gift from "the Father of lights." It is one of His every good and perfect gifts. There is no shadow of turning in Him, and there is no shadow of turning in His perfect gifts. What there is, is change, positive change, growth, new life. But we haven't let James finish yet, have we? Because the last part of his sentence says not just to receive this implanted, engrafted word, but of the word he speaks of, of this gift from heaven, we read that it "is able to save your soul" (James 1:21). It illuminates. It turns on the lights. It brings power for change. It doesn't affect just an isolated sin here and an isolated sin there, but it changes the whole person. It can change even deeply ingrained character patterns. See, it saves not by counting you something; it saves by making you something. And that something is a new creature in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17). It is an implanted word of truth, not a divinely spoken lie draped over you. Oh friends, if you've ever doubted whether God cares for you, whether he can change you I pray after this morning you'll doubt it no more. Let His light be turned on. Let your light shine, because the night is far spent, the day is at hand (Romans 13:12). Let us walk in the light as Jesus is in the light; and He was always basking in the beams of glory of His Father of lights. He endured the darkness of the cross so that the Father of lights could enter your heart, and do a work there. Let us receive so that we may live like Jesus before a world caught up in darkness. Let's turn on the lights. Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.