Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your church and for your word. Please help us to humbly receive your word this morning and help Daryl to faithfully preach your word. And by your spirit, give us the power to put it into practice this week, Lord. Help us to glorify you and serve you. and have joy in serving you, and fellowship with you, Lord, and peace, and help us spread your fame throughout this world. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Good morning. Gonna be reading from James chapter one, verse 13 through 18. James 1, verse 13. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. Let's pray. All the powers of darkness tremble. That song that we sing, Lord, it goes with what you say in James. If we resist the devil, he will flee in fear. But Father, that seems like it's not our experience so often. It seems like He's not cowering in fear and fleeing. Rather, He's winning in this battle we have with Him, with temptation and sin. And so, we pray, Lord, that through Your Word today, You would teach us how to gain greater victories, more frequent victories, in this warfare that we're fighting for Your name. We're striving to be holy, not because we want to be impressive to people or successful, but because we want to honor you and please you. And so I ask that you would grant this request. Teach us, Lord, how to fight sin. Give us victory, greater victory than we've known before this Christmas season. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, starting in verse 13 of chapter 1 of James, he gives us some very helpful instruction in how to battle temptation. And I think you can summarize what he's been saying to us in three parts. Look in and then look up. That's the, I think, outline of this, what he's teaching. Verses 13 to 15 are a warning. Look out, look out, watch out, be on your guard. That thing that seems so enticing to you, seems like it's gonna bring you so much good and so much pleasure, it's a baited hook. Look out, look out, that's the warning. The temptation promises life and good gifts, but only leads to death and bad days, so be alert. A huge number of our failures in dealing with temptation, our failures in the Christian life, are just due to us not being alert. We would be able to handle it if we were just ready, if we were in a stance that's watching and alert. That's why Jesus said, watch and pray so that you don't fall into temptation. But we let our guard down and we fall asleep spiritually and then the roaring lion sneaks up on us and catches us time after time. So look out. Secondly, when you're tempted, you need to look inward to find the source of the problem. The problem isn't that person who's provoking your sin. The problem is not the devil. It's not circumstances. It's not God. With temptation, the problem is always with our own desires, one of our own desires that has become deceived into thinking that it can get good from some sin. And so that desire starts to try to crawl up on the throne of your heart so that you'll obey its impulses. That's always the source of the problem, so we need to look in to find that. God's Word is constantly calling us to look inward and deal with those deceived desires. This is the way to fight sin. Start with desire. If you don't deal with sin at that level, you'll never have success. I'll just give you a sampling of some of the things the Bible says about sinful desires. If you just look up the word desire, here's what you find that we're commanded. First, don't conform to them, 1 Peter 1. Don't gratify them, Galatians 5. Don't obey them or follow them. Don't serve them. Don't be drawn out and enticed by them. And then in Romans 13, 14, there's an interesting one. Don't make provision for them. Don't give bad desires any room to operate. Don't give them any breathing room. Don't put yourself in context where they can start to get some traction. Those are all the things we're not supposed to do with bad desires. So what are we supposed to do with them? What are the positive commands? I found five of them. renounce them, abstain, flee, regard them as crucified, and kill them. Let me just briefly look at each one of those five. First, renounce them. That's Titus 2.12. The grace of God teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly desires. Say no that word translated say no means to renounce deny refuse repudiate or disown It's just a it points to a strong act of the will setting yourself against as a powerful earnest intentional wholehearted rejection That's where you start when it comes to temptation. John Piper has a great statement on this. He says, say no to every lustful thought within five seconds and say it with the authority of Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus, no. And you won't have much more than five seconds. Give it more unopposed time than that, and it will lodge itself with such force as to be almost immovable. Say it out loud if you dare. Be tough and warlike. As John Owen said, be killing sin or it will be killing you. Strike fast and strike hard. That's a good word. That's always step one in dealing with temptation. By itself, it's not gonna be enough, but it's always step one. And notice it says, the grace of God teaches us how to do that. How does the grace of God teach us how to say no? If you read the next couple verses in Titus 2 you'll see that it explains that Jesus died on the cross not just to pay for our sin but also to prevent our sin. The cross is the double cure, saving us from both the penalty of sin and the power of it. When we think of Jesus desiring our purity So much in a moment of temptation you just think of Jesus on the cross Desiring your purity desiring for you to say no to this particular temptation. He wants that so much He was willing to suffer and die on the cross to bring that about that gives you the motivation to say no That's how grace teaches you to say no the next command is to abstain from In 1 Peter 2.11, dear friends, I urge you, abstain from fleshy desires which war against your soul. That word abstain means to keep your distance, stay away, steer clear, avoid things that will activate desire. Don't go near the door of her house, 1 Peter 5.8. And the next one is flee, 2 Timothy 2.22. Run, don't manage temptation, run from it. Then Galatians 5.24, regard those desires as having been crucified. That verse says, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So think of it as crucified. Realize your desires have received a death blow from God. If you have any thought in your mind at all that maybe I won't be able to resist this, maybe it's too much for me, maybe I don't have enough strength. If you're thinking that at all, forget about ever having victory. Those desires have been crucified. You need to understand, they're crucified, they've received a death blow, All you need to do is finish them off. Just don't submit to them. Because you don't have to. And it's crucial to understand that you don't have to. Then the last one, kill them. Colossians 3, 5. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. So they've been nailed to the cross, they're still gasping for breath, God's given the death blow, you need to finish them off, kill them. And it's an unusual word for kill here that gives us some insight. It comes from a root word that was a medical term that referred to a part of the body that stopped functioning due to atrophy. So you don't use that part of the body, you don't use it at all, and over time it just withers away to the point of not even becoming, it's not even functional. The idea is that that's what we're to do with our desires. You don't do things or watch things or be around things that feed those desires. Starve them and let them atrophy. Let them die on the vine. Your desires are like a bully at school and you've got his meal ticket. If you stop feeding him after a while, he's not gonna be a problem. Feed those desires, they'll become a raging forest fire. Starve them and they will wither and die on the vine. So many times people, they just feed those sinful desires. They just feed them and feed them and feed them all day long. And then they wonder, why are my sinful desires so powerful? It's no mystery. Don't do things that excite or stimulate or awaken those desires. So that's just a quick summary of what the New Testament says about how to deal with desires that have gone bad. You'll never have success in fighting against sin If you just sit there and try and pick the bad fruit off the tree, you have to strike sin at the root. You have to look inward and identify the deceived desires and put them to death. So look out and then look in. Now that's what we've covered so far, but all of that is preliminary. The real power comes from the third step. Step one, look out. Step two, look in. Step three, look up. Look up. Look at God. Every good and perfect gift is from above coming down. So if you've got a problem with temptation, look up. That's where your solution's gonna come from. Look up. Make a reflex. Temptation makes me look up. It makes me look towards God as a reflex. You look inward to find the problem. You look upward to find the solution. Too many people get that backwards. They look upward or outward to find the problem. God's the problem. Satan's the problem. People are the problem. They're looking everywhere else besides themselves to find the problem. And then they look inward to find the solution. Self-help. I'll just, you know, fix myself up here in my own strength. I'll just pick the fruit off the branches. You look inward to find the problem. You look upward to find the solution. Victory over sin depends in very large measure on the way that you think about God. I say that again because it's crucial. Victory over sin in your life depends in very large measure on the way that you think about God. And so James is going to give us a little theology here. He's going to teach us some things about God. Three key things that we need to know about God that will really help us with temptation and give us victory over sin. Three things he wants us to watch for when we look up during temptation. And the first one is, God is the source of all good. That's verse 17. We talked a little bit about that last time. Every good and perfect gift is from above. We'll never have success in fighting sin until we stop looking at God as a source of good. We've got to stop looking at Him as one of the sources of good. We shouldn't even look at Him as even the best source of good. Victory over sin will come when we're fully convinced in our heart that God is the only source of good. The things that God has done in the creation, if you just look around at the works of His hands, use the wonderful things in the creation to remind yourself on an hourly basis of the good-natured giving of God, what God is like. Every good and perfect gift is from Him. Everything you see in the world, that's good. How many good things are there in the world? I mean, how many things has God done that are just wonderful? Just think of the gifts He's given us. Food? That's God's idea. Do you know that? Sleep? That's from God. Sex? God. Laughter? God. Rivers? God. Ski slopes, mountains, flowers, trees, music? All from God. How about the sun? I love the sun. It's my absolute favorite star. It warms me up every day, grows plants, gives us light, makes my wife really tan in the summer. I love it. All from the sun. God spoke that thing into existence. Oceans? From God. Beaches? From God. Women? God. Men? From God. Children? From God. How about perception? You like being able to see? You like having eyes? Your eyes didn't just evolve out of the slime. God made those things. He gave you them. Custom made for you. Even custom colors. Just for you. You like hearing? Tasting? Smelling? Touching? All compliments of God. You like thinking? Are you glad that you have a mind and you can reason and think and remember and wonder and imagine and create and learn and worship? Check the label on every single one of those, every one of them, made in heaven. What kind of God dreams up all that stuff and then just keeps giving them to a race of humanity that's rebelling against him and blaspheming him every day? This is what God is really like. He's the source of every good gift. It's evidence of His goodness, Acts 14, 17. Yet He has not left Himself without testimony. He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons, and He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy. Was there ever a temptation that came from God? No, never, not a single one, but every perfect gift came from God, everyone. Now you might hear all that and say, Darrell, some of those gifts that you listed aren't really all that perfect. I mean, children, men, women, I mean, not exactly perfect, right? In fact, isn't there something wrong with every single one of those gifts I just mentioned? The answer to that is yes, in this cursed, fallen world, God's good gifts are mixed with corruption and sin. So how do we reconcile that with this verse? The answer is very simple. If some good gift becomes mixed with evil or corruption, the explanation is simple. The good part came from God, the bad part didn't. Okay? It's that simple. When a gift becomes corrupted or ruined in some way, it's not something wrong with the gift. The fault lies not in the gift, but in the thing that corrupted it. If you went out and bought a new car, and somebody throws manure all over the car, the problem isn't with the car manufacturer, right? God's gifts are perfect. And it helps that James refers to them here as gifts. I mean, that kind of just sort of comes out of the blue. He hasn't said anything about gifts, all of a sudden, boom, gifts. The concept of gifts is important because it makes it even more obvious that it's from God and that it's a personal thing. It makes the contrast with sin that much starker, right? Life is a gift, death is a wage. Death is like a paycheck that you earn. Life is an undeserved gift that you're graciously given. Isaiah 55, 1, Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters. And you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy milk and wine without money and without cost. It's a gift. God's gifts are perfect. And even more than that, even more than his gifts being perfect, his giving is perfect, his heart of generosity. And that's the, I think the Holman does probably the best job in translating verse 17. It says, every generous act and every perfect gift is from above. He's pointing out two things here. Not just, it's not just, NIV says good and perfect gift. It's actually two different things. It's the gift and the giving. It's the thing given and the generosity behind the giving. When God gives you a good gift, don't ever look at just the gift without appreciating the meaning behind the gift. Think about what giving a gift means. What is the meaning behind a gift? A few weeks ago, my daughter Nikki got a diamond ring from the man she loves. And she likes diamonds, like every woman, but the ring itself was nothing in her heart compared to the meaning behind getting that ring, right? If she would have just found that ring laying on the ground somewhere, she would have been happy to have another ring, but that kind of happiness would have been nothing compared to the kind of happiness of having the man of her dreams get down on a knee and present that ring to her because of the meaning behind it, right? You ever thought about the meaning behind God's gifts to you? Maybe God just gives you a good night's sleep. Maybe last night you got a good night's sleep, or a tasty breakfast this morning, or the ability to use your eyes, or good health, or whatever gifts he gave you. And maybe you recognize them as good gifts from God. But do you ever stop and think about the meaning behind them? What does this mean, that God would give me this thing? I mean, a girl knows what it means when a guy gets on his knee and presents a diamond ring. Do you know what it means when God gives you all these good gifts? It's worth thinking about because the meaning behind God's gifts will give you 100 times more joy than just the gifts themselves. You enjoy a nice sunny day or a car that doesn't break down or whatever, great, so do atheists. Atheists enjoy that stuff. But what an atheist can never do is enjoy the meaning behind the gift. Never leave out the personal aspect of God's gift giving. All his gifts are expressions of his love for you, all of them. And when he gives you the ability to enjoy those gifts, that ability to enjoy them is supposed to be a reminder of his acceptance of you, his favor towards you, and of his delight that he takes in you because of your close association with his son. Enjoy that. Enjoy it. Sin can't offer you anything like that, ever. It's so important that we stop thinking of God as this irritated father who's constantly annoyed and disappointed in us. I mean, it's bad enough that we fall into self-condemnation without trying to drag God into that and imagining that He has a condemning attitude towards us. He has an accepting attitude towards us and He expresses that again and again in His gifts. One thing that marks James' thinking is the amazing generosity of God. This is a big thing for James. Back in verse 5, he referred to God as the giving generously to all without finding fault God. Remember? That's like God's middle name. Generosity without finding fault. Giving generously and freely without finding fault. That's God's middle name. If you lack wisdom, ask God. In chapter four, you don't have, because you don't ask. I mean, James just keeps hitting this generosity of God. You get the impression, reading through James, that James is just shaking his head, thinking, oh, if these people just had any idea how generous God is, things would be so different in their lives. Think for a second, how would an increased awareness of this attribute of God change your life? If you had more understanding of God's generosity and his kindness to you. Have you ever seen a mother bird feeding her chicks? This is what it looks like. We have that picture, there it is. Did you know that your soul looks like that all the time? That's what your soul, just all the time, every day our souls are walking around mouths wide open, desperate for good gifts to be dropped in. That's what we want. That's why when your soul gets deceived into thinking that the source of good gifts is some sin, you can't stop doing that sin. Because you have that attitude towards that. If we could become convinced of the generosity of God, and the good gifts only come from Him, we would have that kind of posture toward God all the time. How would that change your life? We'd open our Bible in the morning and our souls would look like that toward God. So what should you do to fight temptation? Look up. Look up. Look away from the baited hook. and look only at the giver of good gifts. Say, I lift my eyes up. Where does my help come from? Say that. My help comes from above. All good gifts come from above. Life comes from above. I found for me, many times, in the midst of temptation, when temptation really hits, it helps to actually go outside, outdoors, and physically look up at the sky. It's just something about seeing the grandeur of the sky helps me snap out of the fog of temptation and wake up to reality. God just seems more real. And the pleasure of sin seems more like the scrawny, worthless, pseudo-pleasure that it is. So God is generous, and not only generous, but powerful. And James throws this in, verse 17. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights. He's the father of the heavenly lights. He's the father of the stars. He's the father of the galaxies. Just a little reminder of the immensity of God. If someone's gonna be generous to you, it makes a difference if it's Bill Gates or some beggar who has nothing, right? I mean, generosity is fine, but there has to be some resources behind it for it to matter. This God who's so incredibly inclined to be generous to you, who wants to give towards you, happens to be the maker of the galaxies. The lights that you see when you look up into the sky, those are the greatest, highest, most awesome objects we know of in the physical universe. They're the biggest things there are. And James says, God's the father of those. The biggest things you can imagine, He made. He made the billions of galaxies and the billions of light years across the galaxies. He measures it with the span of His hand, the breadth of His hand. Which source do you want to go to for good? You're craving good? You want life and good days? What source do you want to go to? You want to go to that puny little temptation that has no power at all to do you any good? Or to the father of the galaxies? Do you want the source of your happiness to be the one who's designed the sunsets and sunrises? Or do you want it to be some moron in Hollywood who doesn't even have the power to give your soul a single good thing that it needs? I told you there are three main points that James wants to make about God. First, he's generous and the only source of good gifts. The second truth about God is in verse 18. Look at that. He says, He chose to give us birth. God is the source of good gifts. God is the source of life. is a source of life. There are two things that we seek from sin. The reason we sin is because we're looking for two things, life and good gifts. We want good gifts and we want a fuller, richer, better life. We sin because we think we can get a better life. Sin can provide neither of those. It can't give good gifts and it can't give life. The only source of either one of those is God. If you want fullness of life, life that's really worth living, like life that it's supposed to be, really living it up, this is the way. James wants us to understand, it only comes from God. He's the source of it. He wants us to understand that God is a source. James also wants us to understand, not just the source, but the how and the why. First, the how. And this will introduce the whole next section of the book. When God takes someone who's spiritually dead and makes them alive spiritually, able to interact with God, what tool does God use to get that done? Answer is in verse 18. He gave us birth, here's how, through the word of truth. Spiritual life comes through God's word. Sometimes people will ask, why do you emphasize the Bible so much at agapes? Bible this, Bible that, everything's the Bible. The answer is because that's how God saves us. We've had people leave this church because they say, you're committing Bible-olatry, you know, you're worshiping the Bible practically. Look, and I've had people say to me, Bible doesn't save you. Look what it says. This is how God saves us. Yes, the power of salvation comes from God, but He uses the Word. Verse 18, He gave His birth through the Word. And then look down at verse 21. That's pretty clear. The supernatural, awesome, mighty, life-giving power from God is the only thing that can save your soul. But that awesome power is carried from heaven on the wings of the truth of the scriptures into your heart. That's how it's conveyed. That's how the power comes, the delivery system. The delivery system for antibiotics might be a pill that goes into your mouth. The delivery system for immunization might be a syringe that goes right, injects it into your bloodstream. The delivery system for decongestant might be you inhale it through your nose. The delivery system for the awesome, saving power of God is a message that comes in through your ears. As the truth of God's Word is proclaimed, it travels into your ears and riding on that message is the saving power of God. And when it gets in there, that powerful medicine is delivered through the ear gate and drops down into the heart and it sparks faith. That's how it works. Romans 10, 17. Faith comes from what? Hearing the message. And the message is heard through the word of Christ. That's how salvation works. That's how sanctification works. Through the message. John 15, 3. You are already clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Last week somebody asked, where's the Holy Spirit in all this? You know, in the Q&A. That's a great question because we know all the power comes from the Holy Spirit, not from ourselves. So it comes from the Spirit, but how does the Spirit deliver that power? Answer, He delivers it through the sword of the Spirit, which is what? The Word of God. That's why Galatians 3, 5 says, does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law or because you believe what you have? Heard! That's what activates the power of the Spirit. How do you receive the Spirit? By believing what you hear from the Word of God. Hearing the Word sparks believing, and believing enables you to receive that power. If you want real power, real life-giving power from the Holy Spirit of God, open up the Word of God, and open up your heart to that message. And that's the topic that James wants to expand on. So the whole next section in the book is going to be about that. But for now, let's just focus on this context. He's in the context of temptation here. If you want success in resisting temptation in your life, use the same method that Jesus used when he was being tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. Every single time Jesus was tempted, he used the same method to defeat the temptation. He quoted scripture. Why do you suppose he did that? I mean, he's God. Why does he need to quote the Bible? He's God. Everything he says is already the Word of God. I mean, he could just make something up and it would be the Word of God, right? Why does he have to quote Scripture? He does it as an example for us. This is the way that God designed human beings to gain access to spiritual power. And even the Son of God himself, in his human nature, needed Scripture to battle temptation. And if you study that account in Matthew 4 of Jesus' temptation, you'll be struck with how absolutely perfect the passages were that he chose. I mean, they're the best passages in the whole Bible for his particular temptation. Think about it. He's out in the wilderness being tested for 40 days. He quotes from Deuteronomy 6, which is a passage designed to teach God's people about how to deal with being tested in the wilderness for 40 years. The exact same situation. Each passage Jesus quotes addresses the exact deception that Satan was trying to con Jesus with and exposes that as a deception. He's masterful. How did Jesus come up with those passages? Did he just whip out his iPhone and do a search? No, he didn't have an iPhone. In fact, he probably didn't even have a Bible. I mean, most people didn't own a Bible. So how did Jesus know these verses? You suppose those just happen to be the only three verses Jesus knew? In those days, Jewish boys starting at age six would go to school and begin learning the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And by age 10, they would have them memorized. You say, oh, that's no big deal. My 10-year-old can quote the first five books of the Bible. No, no, not the names of the books. The content of the books. They memorized Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy by age 10. Then they would go to another school and they'd begin working on the Psalms and the Proverbs and then the Prophets. And it wasn't unusual for them to, by age 14, have the entire Old Testament memorized. See, Jesus was able to quote those passages because he had hidden the word in his heart that he might not sin against his Father. What's the source of life? God. How does God deliver that life to us? Scripture. James wants us to know the source of life and also the how, and then also the why. And this is really amazing. Look at verse 18. Why did God give us life? What's the point? Well, He gave us birth through the Word of Truth so that, here comes the why, so that, and by the way, I started putting the text of the passage of Scripture in the bulletin so that you can get in the habit of just marking it up. One of the best ways to get the Word of God into you is to mark it up, circle things, underline things, draw connections, do things that, I mean, when you think about a passage that way, you'll be amazed how well it sticks. And here, you can circle, so that, and write in, this is a why, this is answering why. What's the purpose? Well, He gave us birth through the Word, that's how, so that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created. Now, the word firstfruits just refers to the first part of something much bigger, the first part of a harvest. The first people, for example, the first people who became Christians in a particular region were referred to as the firstfruits in that region, Romans 16 and 1 Corinthians 16. The first part of something that pointed to a much larger harvest is coming. In 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus is called the firstfruits of those who will be resurrected in verse 20. So the reason he gave us new birth is so that we might be a kind of firstfruits. That word kind of just means, this is an analogy here, a kind of firstfruits. Firstfruits of what? We're the first part of a much, much larger harvest. Harvest of what? Well, look what it says. So that we might be a kind of first fruits of His creation. See, God created the universe for a purpose. In Genesis 1, it's like God is planting a crop. He's putting seeds in the ground in Genesis 1. And the whole point of it, of the creation, is He wants a harvest. God wants something. He wants to harvest something. Right now, the thing is still in process. It's still growing. What you see when you look around you is not the final crop that God intended when He came up with the idea of creation. But when we know, we know what that final crop is, we can look at the end of the book of Revelation, we can see what it's supposed to be, we can see the eternal state, and the firstfruits point to that. The firstfruits show us what it's going to be like. The firstfruits are us. Our redemption is a guarantee of the redemption of the whole universe. The whole universe is groaning, waiting to go through what we've been through, redemption. If you're into end times, anybody here into end times? If you are, you should know, this is one of the most exciting end times verses in the Bible. What will the new heavens and the new earth be like? What will they be like? Well, God wanted to give us a preview, but instead of making a video, putting it on YouTube, or a brochure, or giving us a poster, or something like that, what he did for the preview, he gave spiritual life to a group of people so that they could function as a preview of the world to come. That's the church. The church is a sampling of what the new world will be like. And we are the section of God's creation harvested already by God to be the first part of the new creation. There are some Christians who are mostly just irritated by the church. All they can see is the flaws. The miracle of the new birth, the sanctifying work of the spirit and the saints, the supernatural. that flows through spiritual gifts. They can't see any of that. They can't appreciate any of that. Redemption doesn't impress them. Sanctification doesn't impress them. Spiritual gifts bore them. The way that Jesus functions as the head of the body and orchestrates all the movements of the body of Christ, they don't care for that. They'd rather just stay away. If that's you, you're missing out on one of the most glorious things that exists in the world. The most glorious thing that exists in the world. It's a preview of the new earth. Jesus gave his life to create this preview. And when God gives us spiritual life, he describes it as giving birth. The word for giving birth here is the same as in verse 15, where sin gives birth to death, and then God gives birth, in verse 18, to us. You say, isn't it a little strange that James would talk about our Father giving birth to us? Actually, no, not at all. The reason, see the reason there's such a thing as a father in the human realm, the reason we have fathers in the human world is to teach us something about what God is like, right? Why do we have mothers? Why is there such a thing as a mother in this world? To teach us something about what God is like, some other stuff about what God is like. Everything that is good about maleness is good because it represents something about God's nature. And everything that's good about femaleness is good because it resembles something about God's nature. The reason women give birth, the reason God created women to give birth to babies is to teach us something about what God is like. God's like that. Think about that for a second, this marvelous picture of how you receive spiritual birth or spiritual life, how your spiritual life came into being. It came forth out of God like a baby coming out of a woman's womb. You participate in his very nature. Think of this image that he's giving about how he gave you life, came from his very self. And notice the first word in verse 18. He, what? Chose to give us birth through the word. Why does James use that word, do you suppose? Chose. Why not just say, he gave us birth? I mean, obviously, if he gave us birth, that would be his choice. Why does he emphasize choice? Literally, it's really emphasized. It's in the front part of the sentence, and literally it sounds like this. Having willed, he gave us birth. God willed something, he desired something, and the result of that desire was we were given spiritual life, we were given birth, new birth. Our deceived, sinful, messed up desires, where do they lead? Where do our bad desires lead? They give birth to what? Death. The opposite of that is God's desires, which lead to life. His will, His desire for us is life. God wants us again. James is pointing us past the gift to the meaning behind it, the attitude behind it. Not just God's generosity, but also God's desire that we have life. He gives us good gifts because of a generous heart. He gives us life because He wants, He just really wanted to. He wants you to have life. There's nothing grudging about the life and good gifts that you receive from God. He loves to give them to you. He gives them without finding fault. He's not nitpicky. When God gives to you, When God sits back and just sort of gives into His impulses, just does whatever He feels like doing, He gives you life and good gifts. That's what He does when He just sort of goes with His impulses. In Lamentations 333, it says that God, when He gives you hardship, He doesn't like doing that. That's not from his heart. He doesn't enjoy it. He does it when it's needed. He gives you hardship when it's needed, but he doesn't like it. He doesn't enjoy it. But when God just does whatever he enjoys doing, whatever he feels like doing, what he does is he gives his children life and good gifts. It's what he feels like doing. But every temptation you face stimulates you as a reflex. Look up. Look up. Look up. And when you look up, notice three things about God. First, He's the source of all good gifts and He has a generous heart behind that. Second, He's the giver of life and He loves giving you life. That's His desire. And then the crux of James' argument is the third truth about God. And this is the crux. God's desire to give us good gifts and His decision to give us life never changes. That's, look at verse 17. Every generous act and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father, the heaven and the light, who does not change like shifting shadows. You could translate that, in whom there is no shadow caused by turning. This is the verse that's quoted in that great hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness. There is no shadow of turning with thee, that came right from this verse. As the heavenly bodies turn, they create shadows, right? When they move around, they create shadows. And so sometimes we have light, sometimes we have darkness, we have day, we have night, it's because of shadows. God's light, God is a light that casts no shadow. There's no downside to God and His gifts. He's utterly reliable. According to Genesis, I mean, it's like it's always daytime with God, that's the idea. In Genesis 1, we get the information about why God made the heavenly lights. Do you know why he made them? Do you remember in Genesis 1 why he made the sun, moon, and stars? The reason was to enable us to have accurate standards for measuring time, seasons, days, and years, the Markov seasons, days, and years. So, what he's saying here is the creator of that process obviously has to be more regular and reliable than the thing, the process that he created, right? God is more reliable and more unchangeable than the best timekeepers that exist in the universe. You can tell the guy who wrote the hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness, understood this passage. I mean, this shadow of turning, it's talking about God's faithfulness, exactly what the passage is about. And I love that hymn because the whole hymn never strays from that one idea. That's exactly what James is saying. You just look at the courses of the time keepers in the world and their markers, their pointers pointing to God's faithfulness. Nature itself testifies to a creator that must be utterly reliable and trustworthy and regular. In Boulder at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, they have an atomic clock. That clock measures time by the regularity of the movements in the atom. Those movements are so regular that for that clock in Boulder to get off by one second would take more than 300 million years. What James is saying is think of how regular and reliable and unchangeable the creator of that must be. Reliable, but reliable for what? What is it that you can count on God to be unchangeable in? Everything about God's nature is unchangeable, but the thing that James is concerned with here, to make sure we really understand, is God's desire to give you life is unchangeable. And God's decision to give you life, that will never change. God's desire to give you good gifts and his decision to give you life never change. 1 Timothy 6, 17. This is a really interesting verse. I just happened to be reading this last week. 1 Timothy 6.17, command those who are rich in this present world not to put their hope in wealth. Why not, Paul? Why should I not put my hope in my wealth and my paycheck? He really says, because it's so uncertain. Don't put your hope in something that's so uncertain, like money. Don't put your hope in that. Instead, put your hope in what? Put your hope in God. Why? And what you expect here is for him to say, put your hope in God, who? is certain and utterly reliable. Don't put your hope in money that's unreliable, but instead put your hope in God who's reliable. That's what you expect, but Paul says more than that. He says, tell them not to put their hope in wealth which is uncertain, but rather in God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. See, God is reliable. Reliable to do what? You can count on Him. But count on Him to do what? You can count on Him to richly provide you with everything for your enjoyment. Everything you need to have joy in the Lord, you can count on Him to provide it. He won't fail. He won't fail. Is it possible that God would give us life and then tempt us to walk down the path towards death? No! No, because His desire for us to have life doesn't change. Why would He tempt us? Is it possible that at one point it was God's desire for you to have life, but now that's changed? Is that possible? Maybe He'll tempt you now towards death? The sun will rise in the West before that'll happen. Before God will change His mind about His desire for you to have life and not death. He gave you new birth. That's His decision. That's what He wants. And He will never, ever, ever entice you in a direction other than that. The purpose of temptation is to drag you off toward death. We saw that. God's unchangeable desire is to pull you in the direction of life. And that's unchangeable. Now, does God allow us to take steps in the direction of death? Yes, obviously. He just got done warning us about that. God shows us, allows us to choose death, if that's what we choose, but he would never, ever entice us in that direction because his desire for us to have life never changes. The people who are close to you, the people you depend on, your wife, your husband, your parents, they desire what's best for you, sometimes. Lots of times, lots of times, they desire what's best for you, but at certain times, they change, don't they? They change. You can't really count on them. You can't count on them to always, always, always be the same. When a drunkard says, I'll never drink again, he means that with all his heart, sometimes, but then he changes, right? The husband might say, I don't ever want to hurt you again, and he means that with all his heart, but then, in a moment of anger, he changes. God doesn't like that. God says, I've decided to give you life and good gifts and the universe will go out of existence before I'll change that. So when you face temptation, look up. Look up. First, look out, be on your guard, avoid, be alert to temptation and avoid it. Then, look in, inside you to find the source of the problem. It's not outside, it's inside. then look up for salvation. Look up for life and good gifts. Fix your gaze on the only source of good gifts, the only source of life, the one who desires good for you and whose desire for good for you never changes. Draw near to him. Experience his presence and you will have pleasure and joy beyond what any sin can give you. He's saying to you the same thing he said to David. If that is not enough, if what I've given you is not enough, I will give you even I'll give you something. When temptation is offering you something, God is saying, I can offer you something a lot better. I will give you something a lot better than that. Just trust me. And the sin seems so desirable, so satisfying. The awesome, glorious creator of the heavens is saying, trust me, I can beat that. I can satisfy your soul better than that. And when it just seems like you just don't have the strength, or it seems to you like, if I don't do this sin, if I don't do this thing, I'm just gonna be missing out, I'm gonna be missing out, I'm gonna be missing out on one of the pleasures of life. When you say that, the unchangeable giver of life from heaven says, I'm the only one that can give you life. You're not gonna miss out on anything. That's, I'm the one that decided that and I will do it. That's my desire. It was my choice to give you new birth. In the first place, I'll give you fullness of life. And he's saying the same thing he said to David. If you just don't despise my word, I will give you even more until you're satisfied. I'll give you all you need to be happy forever. Just trust me. Wait for my timing. Don't run after any other source of fulfillment, and I will give you abundant life. Let's pray. Father, help us to believe these things. Help us to look up. Teach us how to do that. Give us the faith that we need to trust that you are the source of life and good gifts, the only source. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. I'd like to close our time with a hymn. Do we have somebody who can lead this hymn? We do. Okay, great. I just want to sing Great is Thy Faithfulness. We have the words, right? Do we? Yes, great. Okay, so a group is gonna come up here I just wanna close out our time singing about the faithfulness of God and let, as we sing this, let this just be a prayer from your heart, a prayer of commitment. Lord, I will fix my eyes on your faithfulness. I will use your creation. I will use enjoyment of your creation. All the food that's coming this month, all the lights that are so beautiful, all the fun of family, all the beauties of creation. I'll use it all to fix my thoughts on your faithfulness, your goodness, your generosity, your desire for me to have life, and the fact that it's unchangeable. Let's sing that prayer to the Lord. It is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father. There is no shadow of turning with Thee. Thou changest not Thy compassions, they fail not. As Thou hast been, now forever will be Great is Thy Faithfulness Great is Thy Faithfulness Morning by morning new mercies I see provided great is thy faithfulness lord unto me summer and winter and springtime and harvest joined with all nature in man and all wisdom. Through thy great faithfulness, mercy I am. Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. All I have needed, thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord of all. for sin and of peace that endureth. Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide, strength for to Blessings all mine With ten thousand beside Great is thy faithfulness Great is thy faithfulness Morning by morning New mercies I see Amen. Amen. All right. Typically at this point we have just, I take a few questions the last 10 minutes of the service before we dismiss if there's any questions about the sermon. But today, one question you might be thinking of is, Daryl, what is that handout that we all got in the bulletin that you didn't talk about in the sermon? So glad you asked that because I was hoping to get a chance to talk about that. So if we could keep the recording rolling or restart it if, okay, because this is part of it. I've been working for the last several months on studying everything I can find in the whole Bible about how to fight temptation and consolidating it down to something that you can remember at the moment of temptation, easily call to mind. And this probably should be a whole sermon, but since we're moving into the Christmas time now, and we're going to be a while before we'll be able to get back to James, I didn't want to have too much of a gap in between. So let me just give you a preview of this handout that everyone hopefully has. And this is just an acronym that I think will help you fight temptation. Just A, B, C, D, E, F for each of the points. Although, I find it better to move F a little closer to the front because, well, you'll see why. The A stands for two words, alert and avoid. When you're fighting temptation, the very first principle, and the thing that you see repeated in scripture over and over is the word alert. Like Jesus said, watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation, okay? Be alert, be on your guard. How many times do you hear that in scripture? And James gave this warning. So picture yourself always being alert. Like if I told you, if somebody ran in here and said, there's a mountain lion in the building. Somehow there's a mountain lion in the building, it's running around. What would you do? I mean, you would be like in an athletic stance, right? You'd be looking around. You'd be alert. You'd be watching. There's danger. You'd be ready to run, jump, hide, you know, whatever. This is the way scripture calls us to be with sin all the time. Picture yourself in an athletic stance looking. Alert. Be alert. You know when times of temptation come, right? You know when they're coming. Be alert. Okay, so that's A. The other A is avoid, but in between those two, let's put the last one, F, fight. Fight. That's that, say no. Remember, and I put that towards the beginning because, remember John Piper's, you got like five seconds. You got five seconds to turn your whole soul against this temptation. No, no. That's a first thing, so you're alert. Soon as that mountain lion appears, no, no. Then avoid, run. Run, be like Joseph with Potiphar's wife, run. So alert, fight, no, avoid, run. Then B, B is for Bible. Fight temptation the same way Jesus fought temptation. Hide God's word in your heart so you will not sin against him. Memorize scripture, quote it, go to the Bible, go to scripture, that's where you'll get the power. That will help expose the hook. So go to God's Word, and not just Bible, but prayer and fellowship. Let's put all those under B. Bible, prayer, fellowship. Pray in the Spirit. Jesus said, watch and pray so you don't fall into temptation. and fellowship. You need help. You need help. Get yourself around other Christians, lone rangers or dead rangers. So, alert, fight, no. Avoid, run. Then B, Bible. Go to God's Word, fight the way Jesus fought. Bible, prayer, fellowship. C is change. Change your thinking. Stop thinking about good coming from that sin and start thinking about good coming from God. Change your thinking. Repent of the deceived way of thinking and think the right way. Change your thoughts and the scriptures will help you change. So change the way you think. D, draw near to God. James is going to teach us that in chapter 4. Draw near to God. Resist the devil and he'll flee from you. Draw near to God and he'll draw near to you. Those all go together. Part of resisting the devil is drawing near to God. When you read your Bible, when you run to the Bible, don't just read it. Don't ever just read the Bible. Read it to draw near to God. And when you draw near to Him, experience His presence and enjoy that. That's E, enjoy. Enjoy what God gives. Prefer God's gift over sin's gift. prefer or enjoy. So that's the acronym ABCD. I was teaching that to one of the kids last week that I was just meeting with and I was teaching him how to resist temptation. So we did the donut thing like we did last week. I said, imagine this donut. I said, well, I said, imagine there were a temptation in this room. He said, you mean like that donut? I said, okay, yes. Use that as an illustration. Suppose this were a sin, this was a temptation of sin, what would you do? And I set the doughnut on the table and he gets an athletic stance and then as soon as he sees that doughnut he's like, no! Shouts no, and then he gets up, takes off and books it down the hall at the other end of the church. And I chased him with that doughnut. I followed him all the way down the hall, chased him with that doughnut. We got all the way down to that last Sunday school room on the right, got down there. My Bible was laying open on the table in that room. We got down on our knees, set the doughnut down, got down on our knees, looked at the Bible. It was open to Proverbs 7. Her feet go straight down to death. The fool goes for temptation, little knowing it'll cost him his life. And it helped us change our desires. And that's when I turned the donut over and showed him the poison. I said, that's what scripture will do. It'll show you the poison. It'll help you change your way of thinking about the sin and about God's gifts. And then we need to draw near to God. So we knelt and we prayed. And then we need to enjoy his presence. So I gave him an ice cream sandwich just to illustrate the enjoyment piece. Think about that. If you can keep that in your mind. A, B, C, D, E, F. But stick the F right near the beginning. No. That'll help you. And the words won't help you. The scriptures behind them will. And that's why I wanted you to have that handout. So here's what I would suggest. Yeah, and if you didn't get a handout, there's a pile of them out there. But here's what I'd suggest. Take that handout, and what if you just spent the next month or so, team up with some friend, And just say, hey, let's just go through these. Let's just, you know, once a week we'll memorize one of these verses for each word so that we have a passage of scripture in our mind. And we'll get this so the rest of our lives we can fight temptation with these principles from scripture. And just walk through it with someone else so that you can hold them accountable, they can hold you accountable, and you can work through it together. I think it'd be a great way to spend the month of December. So, okay. Any other questions? Yeah, I'm not saying speak to Satan when you say no I think I'm not suggesting that you engage in some kind of a conversation with the devil. Scripture actually never tells us to do that. When it says, resist the devil, sometimes people think, oh, resist the devil, that means, I bind you in the name of... That's not the idea. If you study that passage in James 4 about resisting the devil, you'll see exactly what it entails. You know what it entails? Just read it for yourself, you'll see. Repentance. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Draw near to God. It's all about repentance and humility. That's how you resist the devil. You don't resist the devil by getting in an argument with the devil. You resist the devil by falling on your face before God. Repenting of sin. Drawing near to God. Okay. Alright. So the comment is when you discipline your children for their good, that's from your heart, right? And so, isn't the same thing true of God? The good thing that God is doing is from His heart. What it means in Lamentations 3.33 when it says it's not from His heart, I think what that means is he doesn't enjoy the suffering aspect of it. See, as a parent, when you discipline your child, the good that you're doing is from your heart, but the pain you're inflicting isn't. You never discipline your child and enjoy inflicting pain, right? You don't enjoy that part. At least, you shouldn't. If you do, you need some counseling, because that's not good parenting. It should pain you to inflict pain on your child. It should be something that requires you to discipline yourself to do it, because you know it's for their good, but the actual inflicting of the pain, you don't like that, you don't enjoy that. What you really enjoy is giving them gifts. So I think that's what the Lamentations verse is talking about. Okay, Lori? There's always something not fun or hard mixed with it. Do you think that we just don't believe that about God? Yeah, I think there's a number of reasons why we have a hard time believing the truth about the fact that God wants to give us good gifts. And part of it is we have lots of pain mixed in with our good gifts every day, and so that's a big part. Another part is we develop, we so often seek our pleasure from sins that the idea of pleasure itself becomes tainted in our hearts. and we think of pleasure itself must be kind of evil. I'm having too much fun here, I should probably repent. And so yeah, we have to have a constant retraining. That's why we have to set our attitudes by what the Bible says rather than our experiences that we have through the day. All right, good questions. Let me just wrap up here with a couple of announcements before we dismiss. First of all, if you're here visiting, you're here for the first time, thanks for coming. I hope you were made to feel welcome and a part of our family, and I hope to get a chance to meet you if I haven't met you already. So as soon as we dismiss, if you could go right through that exit door to your left, that'll pass you through our welcome lounge on your way out. I'll be standing in there. I've got a gift for you. I'd like to give you a CD and say hello. So please come through there on your way out. And if you don't have plans already for the next hour, we do have a welcome class in that same room. We call it Agape 101. It's for new folks. It's a class where we cover, it's kind of like a Bible study, where we cover a different topic each week. It takes like two months to go through the whole cycle. And each one will get you acclimated to what Agape is all about and what we believe here. The one today is about missions and Pastor Andrew will be teaching that one. So everybody's welcome if you want to find out what we believe about missions here. couple other things Saturday services we're gonna we're gonna keep the Saturday service going just through the end of this year and then starting in January we're not gonna have the Saturday service anymore now there is a there's a 125 group that has been meeting on Saturday nights and that'll be Jerry leads that you can talk to Jerry about about what's gonna happen with that and whether they'll be still watching videos the sermon afterwards and so on but But as far as a full worship service, we're not going to do that anymore on Saturdays. So, just a heads up on that. And then also, parents, just so you know what's going on with the Sunday school classes this month, they're all combining during the month of December, and they're doing a lesson together, and then they're also preparing for the kids program, so that's... That's going to be on the 21st at 11 o'clock. So just so you know, all the kids, they're not going to the regular classrooms. They're all going to one place during the Sunday school time. And then I just want to take a moment to say thank you to Virginia, just for all that you do, Virginia. She edits the sermons every week. and gets those ready. She oversees the bookstore and does all that work. She does all kinds of work in the library, and there's just so much that Virginia does. So we're so thankful for you, Ginny. Thanks for your work. All right, well, as soon as we dismiss, go ahead and just leave your stuff in your chair, go find somebody that you didn't come to church with and greet them, make them feel welcome, find somebody without a name tag and say hello, and then you can get your stuff. Let's all stand for the benediction. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all. He has compassion on all he has made. All you have made will praise you, O Lord. Your saints will extol you. Lord bless you all.