Every Good Gift and Every Perfect Gift

Take your Bibles with me and turn to the book of James.

The Bible is a massive book. It’s huge. It’s made up of 66 books, written by the Holy Spirit with the help of dozens of co-authors. It’s easy to get lost in.

Let’s say you struck up a conversation with a man from India who had never known Christians before, and he saw you reading your Bible and asked, “What is that big book you are reading about?” What would be your answer?

There are a couple of good answers.

One good answer is “Jesus.” Jesus is certainly the theme of the Bible. Jesus walked the Emmaus road and taught through the Bible showing the disciples that it was all about Him.

But that answer may not make sense to someone who doesn’t know who Jesus is. You want to get him there, but maybe not yet.

So what is the Bible all about? I think there is a second good answer and it is this:

The Bible is all about who God is and what He expects from us.

We see that most clearly in Jesus, but all of the Bible teaches us about the character of God, and what God wants from us as mankind.

I want you to hold on to that thought as we look at our text tonight.

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Tonight we are going to look at just two verses in James 1: Verses 18-19.

”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.”

I’ve got to be honest. Of all of the verses in James 1, these two are the ones I was the least excited about preaching. They don’t seem to make sense. James is sort of a rambly, ADD kind of writer. He jumps from one topic to another with no warning, and verse 17 always seemed to me like it came out of left field.

Of course, it’s the Bible, and none of it came out of left field. All of it has a purpose. As I’ve studied these verses, they’ve been encouraging, and I’m actually excited to preach on them tonight.

These verses teach us about four things: God’s gifts, God’s nature, God’s greatest gift, and God’s purpose for us. Every one of those things is relevant to us every day.

Remember that I told you a moment ago that the Bible is all about who God is and what God expects from us. Well, these two verses give us a fantastic summary of who God is, what the nature of our relationship is, and what God expects from us.

Let’s pray and we’ll take a good look at this verse and what it means to us.

The first thing I want us to see in these verses tonight is:

1. God’s gifts

The text says:

”Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father...”

The last time I preached to you from James, it was all about temptation and sin. I told you that the reason we sin is because we are tempted by our own lusts—our own strong desires to do something that isn’t God’s will for us—and if we give into those lusts, then they result in sin and death.

Sin is anything we do, say, or think that is contrary to the will of God. Anything we do that God doesn’t want us to do is sin.

At the root of sin is rejecting what God offers us. When Eve sinned in the garden, she wasn’t just disobeying God. She was also saying to God, “I think you are holding something back from us. I don’t trust you, and I want to know what it is.” Every time God says, “Thou shalt not,” and we say, “You know what? I think I will,” we are saying the same thing in our heart. We are saying, “God, I know you say this is bad, but I don’t trust you. I think I know better.”

In a sense, sin always has an element of rejecting what God offers us. We are saying to what God holds before us, “That’s not good enough. You are holding something back. I want more.”

Here is what James is telling us: Everything that the world offers us through our lusts turns to death, and by contrast, everything that is good and perfect comes from God.

Listen: God wants you to be happy. He wants you to be fulfilled. When I look at my kids, I want them to have a full, happy life. I want them to have anything that is good for them. Our Heavenly Father is the same way. We are His kids, and He wants us to have a good life, a full life, a happy life. He wants us to have everything that is good for us. He’s not a miser. He’s not up there in heaven thinking, “Oh, Mark looks like he’s having fun this week and enjoying himself. Let’s see what I can take away from him.”

No! No. No. No.

If you want to have the best life you can possibly have, trust God. Trust the will of God. He knows what is good for you better than you do, and He will bless your socks off.

Look at what this teaches us. God is a giver. He’s THE giver. Every good gift and every perfect gift comes from God.

God is good. Just remembering that and believing that will help you immensely in temptation. God is good. Sin brings death. God brings life. One road leads to death, while the other road leads to “every good and perfect gift.” No brainer, right?

So we see God’s gifts. The second thing I want you to see here is...

2. God’s nature

The text says, ”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.”

James wants to make a point about the nature of God. God is the giver. God is good, but there is another part of God’s nature that is an important part of that mixture: God doesn’t change.

Several places in scripture, it talks about how God is light and God cannot be tempted by darkness. Verse 13 says ”God cannot be tempted with evil.” 1 John 1:5 says this:

”This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare we unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

In Malachi 3:6, God said:

”I am the Lord, I change not.”

God isn’t just good; He doesn’t change. He is always good. He can’t be anything but good.

That’s what “The Father of lights, with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning” means. James is pointing to the heavenly lights—the stars, the sun, and the moon. The thing about the sun is, at least from our perspective, it goes away every night. The thing about the stars is they go away every day, they flicker, and they get covered by clouds. From our perspective, there is variableness there. Sometimes they are on, sometimes they are off.

The best lights they had would be an oil lamp, a candle, or a torch, and all of those light sources would flicker and burn out.

James wants us to know that God isn’t like the sun. God’s light is ALWAYS shining. God is ALWAYS good. God can’t be anything but good, and God’s gifts are ALWAYS good. They can’t be anything but good.

If I were to ask you to talk about God’s gifts—If we were to turn this into a testimony service like we do sometimes near Thanksgiving and I were to have each of you stand up and say “I’m thankful for {{fill in the blank}}”—I know what would happen. It always happens. Nearly every one of you would say the same thing. You would stand here, and you would start by saying.

I’m thankful for my salvation.

Because that’s God’s greatest gift to us, isn’t it? Every other gift we have received from God only makes sense in that context.

And that’s just where James goes, too. Look at the next phrase in our text:

”Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth”

This is speaking of salvation, which is the third point...

3. God’s greatest gift

It’s saying that our salvation was God’s doing. It was a gift from God that took place because God wanted it done. It’s using the picture of childbirth. God is our Heavenly Father. Just like your earthly birth wasn’t your idea but your parents, your new birth doesn’t come about because of your volition, but because God was birthing you and orchestrating your new birth.

Now, I’m going to be the first to admit that I don’t understand this. This is the greatest theological debate in Christian history. Are we saved by free will, or are we saved by God’s sovereign decision?

On the one hand, you have the Calvinists who say it’s all God’s doing, and they take it to the extreme that God had a preselected group of people He died for and only those people can get saved. On the other hand, you have the Arminians who go to the opposite extreme and say that God just created the machinery of salvation, and it’s up to you to do your part in it. These two groups have been warring in this theological battle for well over a thousand years.

Here is what I believe: I believe that when God says, “Whosoever will,” He means, “Whosoever will.” I believe that anyone can be saved, and that we should preach the gospel to every creature and that every creature can believe it. I’m not a Calvinist. I don’t believe in limited atonement. I don’t believe in unconditional election. I don’t believe in irresistible grace.

But I do believe this: I believe God is behind each and every one of our individual salvations. I believe you were saved because God was drawing you. I believe God had more to do with your salvation than you did. And if you are saved this evening, I believe you can see it as God’s work and not your own.

If you can imagine the gates of heaven with me, imagine a big banner over the gate that says, “Whosoever will may come.” I believe in preaching that whosoever will. Anyone can come. I think the Bible teaches this clearly.

But on the other side, once you walk through that gate, the back of that banner says, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” I believe that as a Christian, you shouldn’t see your salvation as your work or your idea, but you should see it as God’s work all along.

I know that’s a paradox, but I think it’s a biblical paradox. I think we get in trouble when we try to systemize the doctrine of the Bible so much that we explain away either of those two contradictory things. God’s ways are higher than our ways, and I think that God clearly teaches both of these truths in scripture.

Now, back to the text, it says:

”Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth.”

The greatest gift that you and I have ever received is the gift of being born again by God—the gift of salvation. Knowing that God was behind that—that it was God’s work all along—is one of the most comforting and assuring truths that you can ever learn.

Jesus said in John 15:16:

”Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and [that] your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.”

Look at Romans 8:29-31:

”29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate [to be] conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. 31 What shall we then say to these things? If God [be] for us, who [can be] against us?”

Let me tell you what this truth does for you. It reminds you that this isn’t about you. It’s not about your effort. It’s not about how much you hustle. It’s about God’s work. You are God’s work. You aren’t holding on to Him; He is holding on to you. He’s doing a work in you. He started it, and He’ll finish it.

For a long time, I signed Bibles with the verse Philippians 1:6:

”Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform [it] until the day of Jesus Christ:”

Knowing that I didn’t start this thing and that ultimately God is at work in my life and doing His purpose in me is a comforting and assuring truth, and that is a great gift.

But salvation is only a part of it. We’ve seen God’s gifts, God’s nature, and God’s greatest Gift. The last point is...

4. God’s purpose for us.

Our text says:

”Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”

James is teaching us that the greatest gift of salvation, but that salvation had a purpose. When God saved you, God had a purpose for your life. He wanted you to be ”a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”

What does that mean?

I’ve got to be honest with you. Until I was studying for this message, I had no idea what the firstfruits were talking about. It always just seemed like a weird phrase to me, but this is actually really neat.

In the Old Testament, in Exodus 23 and 34, and in Leviticus 23, the children of Israel were commanded to bring the firstfruits of their harvest, and sacrifice them to the Lord. You can think of the firstfruits like a tithe. The tithe is 10% right off the top. That is God’s money. It belongs to Him.

It’s holy. That word just means it’s dedicated to God’s purposes. It’s sanctified or set apart for God. The firstfruits were just part of the crop that was given back to God to be used for whatever God wanted. It was part of the crop that was considered holy and considered to be God’s.

Here is God’s purpose for us: God saved us so that we would be set apart for Him. He saved us so our whole life could be dedicated to Him and His purpose. We are supposed to be a living tithe.

Our purpose in life is to live for His purpose, and to live for His will.

You might think “That’s terrible! I want to do my own thing,” but you are forgetting something. He’s the giver. He’s ALWAYS good.

Go ahead and do your own thing. It will never make you happy. You’ll be like a screwdriver trying to be a hammer. You won’t get very far, and you’ll just wear yourself out in the process. You weren’t meant for that. You were meant for God’s purpose and God’s will. So live for that.

So I guess we have to ask ourselves three questions this evening?

• Do you see God as the good giver?
• Have you received the good gift of salvation?
• Are you living for God’s good purpose?