Christ Church Washington D.C.

Well, our sermon text today comes from the Epistle of St. James. We’re still in chapter 1, and we will continue on with verses 16 through 18. As always, please give careful attention to the reading of God’s holy and inspired word. James 1, beginning in verse 16. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift 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 own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. The word of the Lord. Our Lord and our God, we do thank you that your scripture proves true.We do thank you for your exquisite generosity upon us.

And Holy Spirit of the living God, we pray that you would give us eyes to see it even more, even clearer. Grace upon grace, and especially in the gospel. We pray it through Christ our Lord, and in his name we do pray. Amen and amen. Well, if you are around me for any length of time, you’ll know that you are destined to hear at some point a G.K. Chesterton quote leak out of the seams somewhere along the way. Indeed, I owe a great debt of gratitude to the man. And I mean that quite literally. A debt of gratitude.For Chesterton, more than any other author I’ve encountered, save scripture itself, helps awaken the slumbering soul to the glory and the wildness of the world that we get to inhabit.

As our brother Atherton helped us do even in this prayer, we have need of awakening. And that’s because part of the malady of sin is its cause to make us go grace blind. We become grace blind, presumptuous upon the sheer glory of existence itself, the wild reality that we exist midair on a huge ball of water and rock. With things like waterfalls and dolphins and sunsets and campfires and baby coos and hot coffee and shooting stars, we get to exist on that planet.And this world, lest you forget, has all of these things while currently at this very second we’re being flung around a massive ball of fire at 60,000 miles per hour. But more, we’re also spinning on an axis at a thousand miles per hour while we go 60,000 miles around this big ball of fire.

And yet we step outside and there’s usually not much more than a slight breeze. And all quite pleasant. Thank you very much. with folks’ feet amazingly still planted to the ground by a magical force that we decided to name gravity, which somehow calibrates and connects us to Earth despite these mind-bending speeds.It’s all quite mind-boggling if we had eyes that could see our reality as it is. the razor’s edge of perfect precision that holds it all together, simply from the physical side, we would live in hushed astonishment. All the moments of our life, Chesterton wanted to help us see what’s really there. Near the very end of his autobiography, he said this, I hope it is not pompous to call this the chief idea of my life.

I will not say it’s the doctrine that I have always taught, but I will say it is the doctrine I should always have liked to have taught. Namely, it is the idea that things should be taken with gratitude and not for granted.This was his gift to the church because, as it turns out, in gratitude, A refusal to thank the creator for all of these things really is one of the main cracks that shattered the entire world. We had a world of yes, one no, and the man grasped ungratefully, led on by the serpentine lie. But that lie did not die in Eden, of course. To this day, all the sin and idolatry that defines so much of society stems from ingratitude. Paul makes this point clear in Romans chapter 1.

This is the chapter.where Paul traces a culture’s decline, which culminates in not just debauchery, but sexual perversion and inventions of evil, where people become lovers of self and haters of God and haters of his word. And listen to what Paul traces the moral decline back to. Romans 1, 21, he says, For although they knew God, They would not honor him as God or give thanks to him. So they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts became dark. So this is often the great sin lurching behind other sins. A refusal to humbly receive with gratitude. This gifted existence that the creator has given to us. A refusal to gladly live in accordance with the words of the creator.

About how he created the whole thing to function so that it might be fruitful and brimming with goodness and truth and beauty. An ungrateful God-hostile people cannot be fruitful. Instead, they set things on fire. seek to tear down in rage rather than build up in gratitude. And the images coming out of France in real time are a sober warning to all of us to this end, where all of that leads. Well, as we continue on in our study of James today, this is the angle the apostle is going to really dial in on. as he encourages this young church as they face all kinds of trials, all kinds of resistance.He’s going to explain that the posture of the resilient, maturing Christian when hard things hit is a trusting gratitude in an ever-generous, never-changing God.

That’s his thesis. So with that, let’s work through the text verse by verse. Verse 16, James warns them against being deceived. And this is most needed because when trials come… they often come with deceptions in tow. They shout false things about God and about reality. Now, you may have noticed I included this verse last week and this week, and that was intentional. And it’s because it’s a hinge verse. It really does connect both of those thoughts that we were in last weekend today. Last week, the church was warned of how external trialspressures can lead, can inflame internal temptations that can then hook Christians and drag them towards destruction. Even more, when temptations strike, James says one of the temptations will be to blame God for them when they come.

So they must resist both deceptions to sin and to blame. And now James gives an antidote. He gives a bucket of truth that douses the temptations and deceptions when they threaten. Namely, by understanding the Lord is the giver. The Lord is the source of every good and every perfect gift that they have. Now, each one of those descriptors for gift is important. First, the Lord is the giver of every good gift.There’s nothing good in your life that did not originate first in God’s mind and then come from God’s hand. He created everything good. There is nothing good. In this world, no delight you’ve ever enjoyed that God was not the author of and the giver of. 2 Timothy 6.17 God richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

Recalling Chesterton again, he called the saddest day for the atheist the day that he finally feels thankful. but then realizes he has no one to thank. And that’s exactly right. Whenever we receive a gift from someone, a parent or a child or a friend, the healthy soul naturally says, thank you. And so it ought to be towards our heavenly father.The problem is we’re so inundated with blessings. even common grace that God gives to all. As our Lord said in Matthew 5 45, he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good. He sends rains on the just and on the unjust. There’s so much grace packed into our world that in our sin, we can grow presumptuous and forget. that they’re actually gifts. It’s all, it’s all grace.

And so James says, don’t do that. Don’t do that. Remember every good gift is from above. However, not all gifts are equally obvious, equally conspicuous. And this is why James adds, not just every good gift. But every perfect gift as well comes from above.Now that word perfect may have rung a bell when you heard it. That’s the same word from back in verse 4, which means mature. Every mature gift, meaning, yes, even the trials we face, which bring about maturity. is not God withholding something from us. It’s giving us a gift. Namely, the gift of growing in grit and maturity, of putting some muscle on our souls and on our faith. Sure, the persecution they faced, the displacement they faced, the heckling they faced, it didn’t in the moment feel like a gift.

It wasn’t obvious. It’s not wrapped with a big bow. And they didn’t likely have it on their wish list. But James wants them to know it is, in fact, a gift.It’s a perfect gift. It’s the gift of maturity, which still ought to be received with gratitude. James continues on in verse 17 with an interesting title here for God. He says, every good and every perfect, so think maturity bringing, gift is from above, coming down from the father of light, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. And so that language of father of lights is rich. It marries the creative power. and the fatherly kindness of God. It marries the creative power and the fatherly kindness of God.

And of course, it draws our minds back to day four of creation, where the Lord created the heavenly lights, the great light of the sun, the lesser lights of the moon.And that imagery, this gratitude-expanding imagery, is again rife with meaning. One, these constant lights are continual reminders of the blessing of all of creation. God is the father of these lights and they are a good gift. But even more, it is a reminder of his sovereign power over his creation. Namely, that while the celestial bodies shift and wax and wane and change and have variation, indeed, the language of variation and change here has an astronomical tenor to it. While they do that, the one who created them does not do that. He does not change.

He is constant above their shifts, holding all things in perfect order, immovably orchestrating all of their movements.Which means, if he can hold the heavenly lights in perfect order at a cosmic scale of unimaginable scope and unimaginable complexity, how much more? Will he hold their world together? How much more does he orchestrate with precision and wisdom all the variations of your life? Or to say it another way, when we know the one we trust is a loving father who is sovereign over the sunsets, it will bring a calm as deep as the cosmos is vast. Nothing is outside of his sovereign control. Zacharias Ursinus, the writer of the Heidelberg Catechism, he has given the church a gift also in this regard, to help us dwell on the cosmic comfort that comes in understanding the sovereign power of God.

Question 27 of his Heidelberg Catechism says, What do you understand by the providence of God? So we use that language all the time, right? Providence of God. So he’s wanting us to think, what do we understand? What do we mean when we say that? What ought to come to mind? Answer. God’s providence is his almighty and ever-present power, whereby, as with his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth and all his creatures. And he so governs them that leaf and blade, rain or drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty. Indeed, all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand. That’s what we understand by the providence of God.And that is a good commentary on James 1, or chapter 1, verse 17.

All of that is caught up in the title of the father of lights. But there’s another layer to this imagery that James likely intends. When we go back to the creation account on the fourth day, we’ll see that the Lord created the great lights, not just to brighten things up, but to rule as well. That is very intentional language, and that typology follows all throughout the scripture. It says, God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. So here at their creation, and again elsewhere in scripture, cosmic lights represent rule, and for good reason.And it’s because, when you think about it, under God, these great lights do govern us in very practical ways. They define the bookends of our days.

The distance to them defines how our seasons turn over, and the actual light they emanate is what feeds the seeds in the ground that then turn to food. And the gravitational pull of the moon upon the earth pulls the ocean’s tides in and out, which, as it turns out, is absolutely crucial to us even being able to exist in the world. So that’s a pretty important aspect. They are cosmic rulers in this way. And this fits in, when you think of James as a whole, with the maturity picture that he is painting for them.God intends for us to grow mature, to grow wise, not just so that we do better on Scantron tests, but that we might rule well, that we might rule well under Christ as his kingdom is established on earth as it is in heaven, in a way that is luminous and obvious and compelling.

not tyrannical and odorous against the backdrop of this wickedness. Paul in his letter to the Philippians actually makes this point explicit. This is Philippians 2 verses 14 through 15. He says, Do all things without grumbling or disputing. Defines DC, right? Do all things without grumbling or disputing. Okay, if we do that, Paul, what’s the upshot?That you may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you will shine as lights in the world. And the word for lights is the same word for celestial bodies, the great heavenly governors. And this is the trajectory the Lord has us on. Full maturity. The ability to rule well in the corner of the kingdom that he has entrusted to us.

And that begins with… joyfully receiving all the gifts that the Lord sends, including the undercover gifts of trials. That’s the positive way to say it, or to say it negatively as Paul did in the Philippian text, to do everything without grumbling or squabbling, which is the opposite of maturity.Complaining isn’t luminous. Grumbling is not glorious. But being a jovial warrior who rules well even when it’s hard in Christ’s strength is. That’s what he’s saying. The contrast is remarkable against the backdrop of the wickedness and the ingratitude of the world. Okay, so back to James. So to track his argument thus far. How do you avoid being deceived amidst trials, whether it’s the deception of falling into blatant sin or falling into the ditch of discouragement? Well, you understand the heart of the Father of Lights.

He’s an overflowing fountain of generosity, of gift-giving, including the gift of hard-won maturity, which is one of his best ones. And by understanding the nature of the Father of Lights.Namely, that while circumstances might change and the sun and moon might change, he never changes. His generous, gracious disposition. His providential wisdom and power over every second of your life never changes. And then, continuing on in the text, verse 18, James sures up this point for them by pouring some gospel footers for all of that to rest upon. Verse 18, of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth. that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. So what’s his point? Where’s the gospel here? Well, first we need to understand what he means by word of truth.

And that phrase is used only four other times in the New Testament.And it refers to the gospel message itself, to Christ himself, Ephesians 1.13. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit. Colossians 1, 5 through 6. Of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you. And indeed, in the whole world is bearing fruit and increasing. So God, through the gospel, through Christ, has brought us forth, has caused us to be born again, has made us into a new creation. And James wants them to remember that this was entirely the Lord’s idea. That was done by his will alone, not by theirs, not by ours.

The gospel was his idea, and he’s clearly drawing a bright contrast from his language last week. Remember, when our will and our desires and our lusts are given full range, they bring forth death apart from divine intervention. But he wants them to see that God did intervene. And his will, his desire, was not their death, not their perpetual frustration, but their salvation. John 3, 16 and 17. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him would not perish. but would have eternal life. 17, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

This is the great gift that the Father of Lights has given, not just the gift of the symphony of creation with all of its wonders, all of its delights, all of its splendor, but even more, the gift of redemption, the gift of salvation through the giving of his Son. And it was a gift, beloved, that was bought at an immense cost, which he paid. Because in order for us to be brought forth, in order for us to be born again, Jesus had to die. In order for his will of our salvation to be accomplished, he had to will the breaking of his son’s body. Isaiah 53.10, it was the will of the Lord.It was the will of the Lord to crush him so that we would not be crushed, but we’d be born again, would be brought forth.

Richard Sibbes, the great Puritan pastor and soul physician, in his work, A Bruised Read, which I glowingly commend. Read A Bruised Read if you need some gospel encouragement at any time. He said it this way. Christ was broken that we might not be broken. Christ was troubled that we should not be desperately troubled. Christ became a curse that we would not be accursed. Whatever may be wished for an all-sufficient comforter is all to be found in Christ.And all of this glorious, costly gospel comfort that is caught up in James’ reminder that by God’s will, through the gospel, we were brought forth, he goes on, so that we might be a kind of first fruits. And in context. When he says that, he’s referring to them specifically as the first generation of Christians after the cross and the resurrection.

They are the first fruits of the resurrection harvest that is to come. But for us today, putting the pieces together of these first weeks in James, and his great treaties, his great pastoral plea and call to embrace trials with a joyful resilience, to resist and not fall into the ditch of deception or discouragement.but rather to stay steadfastly, resolutely on the path that the Lord has you on, even when the terrain is bumpy and uneven, even when there’s resistance and hostility, even when it feels more like Mordor, less like Minas Tirith. The key is to understand the gracious, generous hearts of your sovereign Heavenly Father. who now, for those united to Christ through faith, always, always, always has his face set upon you with the intention to bless you, to bless you with good and with maturing gifts, including the gift of a faith of good vintage, matured, full-bodied, and altogether glorious.

Christ is the vine, and trials are the trellis where a mature faith grows.And for those whom the DC area is not home, which is many of us, one thing is for certain. Spoiler alert. This DC chapter in your life will bring trial. I promise. You will have opportunity to apply James 1 in this DC chapter of your life. The pressure will form you in some way as well. Trials will come and they will have an impact on you. I promise. So that’s not questioned. The question is, will you come out on the other side more sanctified or more cynical? That’s the real question. Will you come out more sanctified, more confirmed in God’s goodness, more happy in Jesus, more committed to the advance of his kingdom?

Or will you come out more cynical, more jaded than joyful? Well, we do not have to guess, beloved, how we get to the former. James has given us the path. the path to sanctification and not to cynicism, which I charge you here in conclusion. First, let us heed the Chestertonian call. Let us be a people at Christ Church DC known for taking everything with gratitude and nothing for granted. What’s true, beloved, is we live in a gifted existence. We daily enjoy a thousand graces that if we lost, we would be so sorrowful, yet having them daily, we miss. The grace of our parents’ provision, of our children’s voices, of babies cooing, the natural wonders, the blue skies, the golden sunsets, of this church.

the blessing of this church, these men and these women that the Lord has placed in the foxhole alongside you. For some of you, you’ve been gifted remarkable areas of influence and impact. That, when the season is over, will feel like a dream. It’ll feel like a dream that the Lord had entrusted you with that office for that season. A dream that you got to serve your countrymen and countrywomen in the capacity that you’re in right now. So let the reality that God in his providence is allowing you today to do work that by grace could have a massive downstream impact for our country’s good. Let that fill your heart with gratitude to God, never presuming upon a day or an hour.Let it fill you with a trusting joy, even in the trenches, moment by moment.

That is how you will shine like stars. That is how you will take dignified rule and reign in a cutthroat, trying environment. Again, going back to Paul’s charge to the Philippians. He says that they should do all things without grumbling so that they would shine forth against a wicked backdrop. And then in the very next verse, he models it for them. He says, this is Philippians 2.17. Even if I’m to be poured out. as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith. I’m glad I’m so thankful to be poured out for your sake. He says, I am glad.And I rejoice with you all that I get to pour myself out for you in that way. And note, this was written from jail.

joy, even in jail, and he would be poured out on the drinker, on the altar of their faith. So beloved, may this be our posture. May this be the headline we put over the start of each new day, namely that it is all of grace. It is all of grace. top to bottom, front to back, side to side, every breath, every breeze, every sunrise, every second, and every sacrifice, and every struggle. In all of it, if we have the eyes of faith, we will find a thousand reasons to rejoice, a thousand reasons to count it all joy.And if anything comes… that tempts you to doubt God’s kindness, to see his face as stern and stoic rather than brimming with compassion, the compassion of a generous father.

That means in that moment, the most important thing in the world for you is to remember the gospel. Remember the immense price that was paid. by God’s own will. Let us not forget, but remember the preciousness of the gospel logic of Romans 8 32, where Paul says, if the father would did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, well, then how will he not also with his son, then graciously give you all things?That is to say, if he was willing to pay the highest price imaginable for your redemption, why in the world would he now start being miserly? Why would he now treat with contempt those whom he purchased at such a great cost? And of course, that doesn’t make any sense at all.

What’s true is, as the psalmist said in Psalm 145.13, the Lord is faithful. in all of his words, and kind in all of his works, including the hard parts that you would have left out. Even those will prove to be a gift when the dust settles and we see all that the Father of Lights was gloriously orchestrating. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.Our Lord and our God, we thank you for your beloved Son. And I pray that as a people, we would even right now, and as we head towards communion, we would behold the Son of God crucified for us. We would be strengthened in the gospel, more confirmed in your compassion for us. And we would go forth with great joy. And now we would pray the way our Lord taught us to pray.

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