Our Giving God James 1:17-18 James began his Book by talking about some difficult experiences that all Christians will face... trials and temptations. Now he moves from those difficult areas to some delightful areas. It is as if he says to his readers, Lift up your heads. The Christian life is not all trials and temptations. Here, James just wants to brag on God for awhile. He wants us to know how good God is! -It's wonderful to see how many times the Bible writers speak of God blessing His people and tells us how we ought to praise the Lord when He blesses us. In Numbers 6:24-26, the Priest of God pronounce the blessings of God on His people because of their obedience. In I Chronicles 16, David's heart overflows with Thanksgiving for the Lord's blessings and goodness I Chron. 16:8-12, 14, 23-29, 31, 34, 36 We sing the little chorus: God is good all the time and all the time God is good. Growing up in Sunday School, as children we would sing: God is so good, God is so good, God is so good, He's so good to me. He loves me so, He loves me so, He loves me so, He's so good to me. He saved my soul...he answers prayers...he cares for me... Then we'd sing : I love Him so... I praise His name... James says that our God is a good God and He is a giving God. An old legend is told of a king who died and it was up to the leaders of his court to crown a new king. The king had twin boys and they were the rightful heir to the throne, but the problem was...which one of the boys would they choose? They went in to see the boys and found them asleep. They looked identical as they slept except for one thing: one boy had his little fist clenched and the other had his hands open wide. They said, We want a king who's generous, free-hearted. They chose the boy with the open hand. He became known as the king of the open hand. We have a God who is the God of the open hand. Every good and perfect gift comes from God. Two things I want you to see about our giving God: A. God is unchanging in His giving I. The Declaration of God's Giving 1:17 The Father of lights is a name for God; the creator God. The first thing God created was light the sun, moon, and stars. 1
-God commanded the sun, the moon, and the stars to shed their light upon the earth. From man's perspective, the celestial bodies have different phases of movement and rotation, changing from day to night, and vary in intensity and shadow. But God does not follow that pattern. He is changeless. With whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning means that God is not on a yo-yo like most of us are up and down and round and round. Mal. 3:6 I am God; I change not. God never changes moods: His moods never go up and down...he is never in a bad mood. B. God is unceasing in His giving Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father. There is no shadow of turning with thee; Thou changest not, they compassion, they fail not; As thou hast been thou forever wilt be. Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness Morning by morning new mercies I see; All I have needed thy hand hath provided, Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me. The gifts God gives is from above and these gifts come down. -God's gifts are always good Perfect and Pure-- because God is in Himself good and perfect and He could not give anything less than what was perfect and good. -The words cometh down are in the continuous present tense, meaning God continues to give. He never ceases to give, not for a single moment. He is always giving and will always be giving. There will never be a moment when He is not giving. -John 3:16; Romans 8:32 The song-writer said: His love has not limit, His grace has no measure, His pow'r has no boundary known unto men; For out of His infinite riches in Jesus He giveth and giveth and giveth again! I especially love the second stanza: When we have exhausted our store of endurance, When our strength has failed ere the day is half done; When we reach the end of our hoarded resources, Our Father's full giving is only begun. No wonder he said, He giveth and giveth and giveth again. II. The Description of God's Gifts 1:17-18 The word gift is used twice in verse 17. In both cases God is the source of the gifts, but the first word translated gift denotes the Act of giving and the second is the Object given. 2
-The gifts come from above, come from God, so there is a divine quality and value about these gifts Three particular gifts are referred to in our text: A. God's Profitable Gifts Every good gift speaks of that which is noble and beneficial for the recipient. All that God gives us is for our benefit. -Ps. 103:1-2 It is important to understand that God never makes mistakes in the gifts He gives or in what He allows to come our way. -Jer. 29:11 Sometimes we may not understand what God allows to come into our lives, but he never makes mistakes. He Maketh No Mistake My Father's way may twist and turn, My heart may throb and ache, But in my soul I'm glad I know, He maketh no mistake. My cherished plans may go astray. My hopes may fade away, But still I'll trust the Lord to lead For He doth know the way. Tho' night may be dark and it may seem That day will never break; I'll pin my faith, my all in Him, He maketh no mistake. There's so much I cannot see, My eyesight's far too dim; But come what may, I'll simply trust And leave it all to Him. For by and by the mist will lift And plain it all He'll make. Through all the way, tho' dark to me, He made not one mistake. A. M. Overton 3
B. God's Purposeful Gifts Every perfect gift when we think of something being perfect, we think of that which is without a flaw, fault or defect. It is true that God's gifts are without flaw, fault or defect, but the word here carries a different meaning. -The word speaks of the result, fulfillment, completion, and consummation. In other words, the gifts of God have as their end the accomplishment of God's purpose in our lives. They are given for our benefit and to bring about His divine purpose in our life. What God gives is not by chance, but by choice. He has designed what He gives. -God gifts are designed to increase our Adoration of Him and our Appreciation for Him. C. God's Paramount Gift - 1:18 God's greatest Gift is the Gift of His Son and personal salvation through His Son. Once we receive His Best Gift, the blessings from that gift in our life will never cease. -Eph. 2:8 tells us that salvation is a gift of God. (1) We see in our salvation The Will of God. of His own will He begat us means having willed it, He begot us. The Bible tells us that before the foundation of the world God made the choice to send His Son to this earth to die on Calvary's cross that He might provide salvation for all men. It was a choice that God did not have to make. He did not have to give His Son. He could have chosen to let me go to hell because of my own doing and sin. But He willed it. He chose to give His son and planned a course of action whereby men could be saved. (2) We see in our salvation the Word of God. The instrument God used to bring us to Christ was His word. There has never been a person saved that somewhere did not come in contact with God's word. -Eph. 1:13; I Peter 1:23; Romans 10:17 -God's word is the mighty instrument God uses to save people. (3)We see in our salvation the Work of God What did salvation do for us? We became a kind of first fruits of His creatures. The thought of the first fruits takes us back to the Jewish system of offerings. In the Old Testament the firstfruits of the harvest and first-born belonged to God. James has in mind the firstfruits of the harvest. They would bring a sheaf of the wheat and wave it before the Lord as an admission that the whole harvest belonged to God. Verse 18 is telling us that we belong to God! Salvation has made us the purchased possession of God. I am His and He is mine! We are God's people and God's property. Charles Studd was a successful businessman in England in the late 1800's. Studd was completely 4
unconcerned about spiritual matters, but when he lost a bet with a friend of his, he promised to go and listen to the American evangelist, Dwight L. Moody, as payment for his bet. When Studd arrived at the meeting place, the crowd was so great he had to sit right in front of the platform. Studd never took his eyes off Moody. After it was over, he said to his friend, That fellow has just told me everything I have ever done. He went back the next night and then the next until finally he decided to turn his life over to Jesus Christ. Charles Studd lived only about two years after that, but it was said at his funeral, that he did more in two years than most Christians do in twenty. He turned his great mansion into a meeting place for studying the Bible. He wrote to friends about their souls and laughed when they replied rudely. Someone asked his driver about the great change in his life. The driver said, All I can say is that it's the same skin, but there's a new man on the inside. I can't completely explain it either, but on the basis of my own salvation experience and on the basis of others I have known, when we ask Jesus to come into our life, forgive our sins and control us, He will change us and make us new. Return To Lowell Johnson Master page