Music playing Now, you see, the Father is even in contrast to his creation. Jesus contrasts a heavenly Father with an earthly Father. James contrasts the Creator with creation itself. Everything that God has made, including the heavenly lights mentioned here, everything is subject to change. But God, he says, is unchanging in his character—that's verse 13—and he's unchanging in his gifts—that's here in verse 17. In other words, there is no inconsistency in him at all. When we go to God as Father, we will never find him to be these four things. These are not points that I'm going to work out.
These are four things if you want to write them down. We will never find him to be unaware. We cannot take God by surprise.
He is omniscient. We will never find him to be unable. We will never find him unavailable. And we will never find him unwilling. Now, we cannot say that always of our earthly Fathers, no matter how good a job they're doing. When I wrote those four words down, I immediately went to a Johnny Cash song in my mind. Some of you who've had that kind of misspent youth may be able to track with me on that kind of thing. But it brought back the refrain, and I have a talk with him each day.
And he's interested in every word I say, and no secretary ever tells me he's been called away. I talk to Jesus every day. Or, in the words of the old hymn, when upon life's billows you are tempest-tossed, and when you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, count your many blessings and name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. Loved ones, we need to routinely step back from it all and ask the question from Thanksgiving dinner, And who do I have to thank for all of this? Now, the psalmist is very clear there in Psalm 145. God is the Creator, God is the preserver of life, and therefore he is the one we thank for everything. Every plate of turkey with stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet corn, sweet potato, cranberry, peas. The whole deal. We thank God. Did you remember to?
Did I? You see, we live in the barcode era, where Walmart and Target and great grocery stores are run by computer technology. If you live in a more rural community, and some of you do, where you actually plant potatoes and bring them up, where you see the produce come, or whether you fish and catch fish, you have an awareness of the fact that it doesn't come by way of the barcode.
Because when we stand there, we recognize that every time that product is scanned, it is sending information all over creation, generating the restocking of shelves that we will never see with the product that one day will once again go in our basket. And it is possible for us in our pride and in our ingenuity, simply to say, you know, in the immediacy of things, we're brilliant. We are so terrific. Every plate of turkey. Every glorious symphony. Every tuneful melody. That's as a result of God's common grace. Maybe McCartney will one day discover God's special grace in Jesus. But for now, I hope somewhere along the journey of his life he says, you know, I don't know where half of these tunes came from.
Of course, some of them are stolen. I was with Keith Getty a few weeks ago at Legacy Village, and it plays music to soften you up, get your checkbook going, makes your fingers move, makes you reach for a credit card. It's the great American way. And I love it. And the music was playing, and I said to him, I said, Here, youngster!
Because he's only about thirty, I think, twenty-nine or thirty. I said, Hey, there's a tune from the sixties. And he said, What's that?
And he was playing this song, And I'll never fall in love again. See? So I'm so good, I said, Hey, you know, that was the so-and-so in the sixties. He said, No, it wasn't. That is Rachmaninoff's second whatever. Well, I said, May it really? He said, Yes. Gets Rachmaninoff's second thing, rips the cover off, it takes me down the stairs, sits me in the car, plugs it in, goes to the second movement. What happened? I said, They ripped it off!
They stole the whole thing! Yes, he said, Philistine, if you had a modicum of a sensible background, you would know these things. But what united us was the fact of God's common grace expressed in a really good melody. Every flowering shrub. You take the best scalpel that is produced by medical instrumentation in America and put it under high-level magnification, and you will discover that no matter how fabulous it is, it is serrated. If you magnify it enough, you will find that it is not perfect, so that the closer that you scrutinize our creative handiwork, the more flawed it becomes. But take any of this and put it under high magnification, and what you see of its splendid intricacy is magnified many times over, because God is the Creator of every good and perfect gift, every good book, every glimpse of sunshine, every good night's sleep, every breath of life, every safe and happy landing, every friend's embrace. Everything that sustains and enriches life is a divine gift. All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness.
Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness. Now, having addressed it comprehensively, he then mentions one crowning act of goodness in verse 18. Here is the ultimate good and perfect gift—namely, spiritual new birth. And incidentally, may I say just parenthetically that it is in the discovery of God's specific goodness to us in his special revelation that the way in which we view his comprehensive goodness by way of natural revelation becomes transformed. Now, if that seems like a mouthful, let me give it to you in a hymn again. Heaven above is softer blue, and earth around is sweeter green, and something lives in every hue that Christless eyes have never seen. And birds with gladder songs o'erflow, and earth with deeper beauties shine, since I know, as now I know, that I am his and he is mine. In other words, it is the specific encounter with a living God in Jesus that makes the comprehensive nature of his manifold goodness come alive with a vibrancy that the unconverted can never know. And that is why, again parenthetically, we ought to be, of all people, so attractive in a hopeless generation, so full of hope, so joyful in a deadheaded world that people say, Why are you joyful? So aware of our surroundings, so grateful for really nice bread, so enthused by a good quote from a book that people say, What is it about you? Everything seems to taste better.
Everything seems to shine brighter. Well, you see, in the comprehensive nature of God's goodness, it all came alive to me when I discovered his specific goodness here in verse 18. Look at what we're told. Look at what we're told about God's initiative. He chose to give us birth. Hands up any children who sent a letter asking to be born.
Thank you. Everything that happened to a child in physical birth happened as a result of the decision and action taken by the parents. True or false?
True. Remember Johnny Carson describing the interaction between a disgruntled teenager and a disappointed father, and as they're at war with one another, the teenager about to slam the door and leave his dad behind shouts out, I didn't ask to be born. And the father shouts, And if you had, I would have said no. And in the same way, James points out that our birth, our spiritual birth, was not something that we prompted God to do.
Listen to me carefully. Believer and unbeliever alike, listen. The new birth is something God chose to do.
Unpressured by our helplessness, unimpressed by our supposed goodness, he acted in accordance with his free, uncompelled, sovereign will. And when we become Christians, it appears as though we have everything to do. Perhaps our loved one explained the gospel to us and said that Jesus was the Savior, and then we said, Well, how does that become real in my life? And someone said, Well, there needs to be a turning away from sin and a turning to God in faith, in childlike trust. You need to believe in Jesus.
You need to receive Jesus. All of those words with which you'll be familiar if you're a Christian. And when we did all of that, we said to ourselves, You know, it seems like we have to do everything. But later on, when we put the pieces together, we discover that our choice of him is predated by his choice of us. Some people get alarmed by that—write letters to their pastor when he mentions it. How strange is that? Imagine that your spouse, on a quiet evening at home with your children grown and gone, says, Honey, I'd like to tell you something I've never told you before.
And then your husband or wife proceeds to tell you that they actually saw you and set their affections on you before they ever spoke to you. I have one instance in mind where a friend who's now a minister in Dublin told me the story of how he saw this little girl feebly attempting to help her dad move a boat on a trailer in a cul-de-sac in suburban London. She didn't have the strength to do anything. But as he looked at this little girl, he said, What a wonderful little girl to be out there helping her dad. And what a lovely little girl.
She looks so cute. She's now a doctor and his wife, and they have children. And he told her, I saw you from my garden. And I loved you before I spoke to you. And she was ticked. Man, was she angry.
What are you doing loving me before I knew it? That's a ridiculous… No, she wasn't. Her heart was stirred, wasn't it? She said, How wonderful is this?
That's what he's saying here. I found a friend, oh, such a friend. He loved me ere I knew him. He drew me with the cords of love, and thus he bound me to him, and round my heart so closely twined these ties which nothing can sever, because I am his and he is mine forever and forever.
And what is my confidence in that? He chose me. He chose us. God's amazing initiative. Notice, too, God's instrument in this. He chose to give us birth, give us birth, through the Word of truth.
Now, listen. God has made himself known in creation. God has made himself known in our conscience. However, sin has blinded our eyes to God's glory. Paul says our foolish hearts have become darkened. And sin has a deadening effect on our conscience. So given our predicament, we need God to reveal certain things to us of which creation and conscience give not the slightest hint.
Are you tracking with me? Listen. This is the answer to the person that says, Well, I just go to the Rockies every year, and I meet God in the Rockies. Yes, we understand that. You may see God's glory in the Rockies, but the Rockies will not give you enough information to turn from your sin and become a Christian.
Well, I know that there is a God, because I have a sense of oughtness, and I have moral rectitude in my life, and I know what I should do and what I shouldn't do. Yes, that is true, but your conscience does not give you sufficient to be converted, because both creation and conscience are mitigated by the sin that's in our lives. Therefore, our predicament is such that we're not only blinded by sin, but we're lost in our sin, we're in the grip of sin, we're under the guilt of sin and the curse of sin, and therefore we need desperately to know the way that God has provided, out of which we can come from this predicament.
And how has it happened? Well, he says in the same way that creation happened. 2 Corinthians 4.6. You needn't turn to it.
I'll just read it for you. But God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. God did this, and he did it, says James, through the word of truth. Now, our time is almost gone. I have one final thing to say. Let me read this to you as a quote. And please listen carefully, because in the realm of quotes, this is a get-up and walk-around-the-room quote. In the realm of quotes, this is a jump-up-on-your-seat quote. In the realm of quotes, this is a phone up the person who wrote this and tell him, Thank you, thank you, thank you.
You have helped me to understand something that I could not crystallize, although I was sitting at my desk for so long. Listen to this, and listen carefully. What is God's instrument in bringing men and women to faith? He chose to give us birth through the word of truth.
Listen. The Father uses the gospel in two ways. First, he speaks it inwardly to our dead souls, imparting life, bringing us to birth. Secondly, he presents the same word of truth to us as a preached gospel to which the new life within us makes a personal and believing response. This is one of the most glorious truths of the whole Bible. It teaches us that salvation is all of God. It is no more possible for us to be agents or contributors to our new birth than it was for us to be so in our natural birth.
All the work from initial choice to completed deed is his. Were salvation to depend upon my choice, it would be as uncertain as my will, which fluctuates, blows hot and cold, and reflects my divided and fallen nature. But it is his choice. Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth. Now listen to this glorious finishing sentence. And until he changes, his word alters, or his truth is proved false, my salvation cannot be threatened or forfeited.
Yeah? It is so unbelievably humbling and wonderful. Can I ask you this morning, unbeliever, has the goodness and kindness of God brought you to repentance—his goodness, his overflowing, spontaneous generosity, ultimately, finally, savingly in Jesus?
Time is gone. There's one final observation. God's initiative, God's instrument, and notice God's intention. What does he intend? Well, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. The picture here is of the harvest in the Old Testament.
The new season's crop was available for ordinary consumption only after the firstfruits have been presented to God. Says James, the proof of our new birth is holiness. The ground of our birth is in the choice of God, in the instrument he has used, and it will become apparent—no holiness, no heaven. We've been made for his pleasure and for his purpose. And those who were these early believers, the recipients of this letter in its infancy, were, if you like, a kind of firstfruits of all that God was going to do.
And James is essentially saying, and there's going to be much more that follows from this. There will be people from every tribe and nation and language and tongue and so on who will believe the gospel and who, even in the face of trials and temptations, will affirm the goodness of God. Oh, I hope that you today are able to affirm the goodness of God, not simply because you understand it in its comprehensive nature as revealed in creation and conscience, but because by his great mercy you have come to understand it, having been given new birth through the Word of truth in order that you might be a firstfruits of all that he created. Just a moment of silent prayer, shall we? In light of all that I've said, let me give you a little prayer that some may want to make their own. There's no special phraseology that is required, but some may have just come through a journey of wandering and wandering and have reached the point where in their hearts they've said, You know what?
I believe this. I want to commit my life to Christ. Well, you can make this little prayer your own. Lord Jesus Christ, I admit today that I'm weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but through you I'm more loved and accepted than I ever dared to hope.
I thank you for paying my debt, bearing my punishment, and offering me forgiveness, and I turn from my sin and receive you as my Savior. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. By the way, if you just prayed that prayer along with Alistair, we would love to hear from you.
You can speak to someone at Truth for Life by calling 888-588-7884, or you can email us letters at truthforlife.org. And if you'd like to learn more about the gospel, visit truthforlife.org slash learn more. Now as we start looking forward to Christmas and celebrating the coming of the Lord Jesus, we look back in time to a salvation plan that began long before Starry Night in Bethlehem.
In fact, we see the first glimpse of God's rescue mission in the opening chapters of Genesis. And to help you relay this remarkable gospel story to children on your Christmas list, we have a booklet called The Storymaker that you can attach to a Christmas package. It's a small 14-page booklet that introduces children to creation, the fall, and God's plan of redemption through his son Jesus. The booklet makes a great stocking stuffer. They're perfect for handing out to children you spend time with during the holidays. We price them at our cost of just 50 cents and our hope is you will distribute these widely.
They're available to purchase as a 10-pack for $5 or a 20-pack for $10. Look for The Storymaker booklets along with other great gift ideas online at truthforlife.org slash gifts. And if you add a donation to your purchase, be sure to request the current book we're recommending. It's a family devotional for Christmas titled Promises Made, Promises Kept. Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow we'll learn why joyful thankfulness should be the spontaneous daily expression of God's people, even when life lets us down. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
