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[0:00] James 1, beginning in verse 12, and reading through verse 18. Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

[0:17] When tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.

[0:30] Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death. Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

[0:50] He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. According to the Bible, a right view of God is absolutely necessary for living the Christian life.

[1:09] Erroneous thoughts about God are dishonoring to him, but they're also dangerous for us, to beholding them. Wrong thinking leads to wrong living. That's why they're so dangerous for us.

[1:25] Wrong thinking leads to wrong living. And that's why when James hears about Christians having wrong thoughts about God, he doesn't just yawn and brush it off as if it's something harmless, innocent, but he goes after it as a cancer that must be cut out and must not be allowed to survive.

[1:47] Now, verse 13 identifies just what that wrong thinking was. When tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me.

[2:01] That's what they were thinking. That's false teaching. Faulty theology. And that will get you in trouble.

[2:12] That will lead to faulty living. You see, if God is the one who tempts you to do evil, then that would make God out to be less than holy, in league with the devil and with evil.

[2:26] And it would give you reason to give in to temptation. For if God traffics in evil, it must not be so bad for me to try it out as well.

[2:43] If, after all, he's the one encouraging me to evil, then I might as well fall into it. You see how it's a trap. It's a trap to get you to sin.

[2:56] To say that God is tempting you to evil would shift the blame to God. We saw that last week. And that would make you feel better when you gave in to temptation. I mean, how can any of us really be blamed if God, after all, is the one who's tempting us?

[3:12] And the moment we think that we can sin without blame, we have put two feet in the path to sin. And our resistance is gone.

[3:22] The battle is already lost. Furthermore, it's to say that God's the one who tempts us, hides the real culprit in temptation, which we saw last week is your own evil desire, that desire within.

[3:39] And if we're blaming God, then we'll not be given proper watchfulness and prayerfulness about the enemy inside. We'll not even know where to fight the battle.

[3:52] And then, furthermore, if God tempts you, that would make God out to be your enemy in the temptations and trials of life. And if there's ever a time when we need to know that God is our strong ally, the one who is working for my good and not for my evil, it's when I am going through trials, when I am being tempted, if I think God is the one working against me, it will discourage me in the battle.

[4:24] It will leave no heart to fight, no strength to fight off the temptation. You see, in every way, the whole direction of this error, that God is the one who tempts us, is leading away from the pursuit of holiness and leading us toward giving in to sin.

[4:41] That's where this lie is heading. It's truth that leads to godliness. It's error that leads into satisfying our own evil desires.

[4:55] So, what's James to do with this error? Well, this is a letter in which he's seeking to encourage us to pursue holiness all out.

[5:06] And so he goes after this erroneous teaching with both barrels. God is too holy. That's the first barrel. God is too holy to tempt anyone to evil.

[5:17] And secondly, we'll see it today in verse 17. God is too good to tempt anyone to evil. Now, James shows us the utter impossibility of God tempting us by pointing then to his character, to his holiness, and to his goodness.

[5:39] And dear believers, these truths are welcome news in the midst of our trials and temptations. They remind us that God is for us in this battle against temptation and sin.

[5:50] He is on our side. He's not our opponent. In all that he does, he's working for our holiness, working for our good.

[6:02] And that always and only. And that provides no small amount of encouragement and strength in our spiritual warfare against sin.

[6:14] That's James' reason for writing. He wants to help us in this pursuit of holiness. And so it's his love for the people of God that moves him to issue a clear warning.

[6:28] Verse 16. Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Now, this is the first of three warnings in this first chapter.

[6:39] Three times he gets in our faith and says, Don't be deceived. Beware about deceiving yourself or being deceived. Now, God doesn't hang those warning signs out in the scriptures where there's no problem.

[6:53] If it's there, it means there's a danger there. It means there's a proneness in us to be deceived at this very point. So watch out. Now, what is the warning here?

[7:08] Verse 16. Well, this verse could be pointing back to what's just been said in verses 14 and 15 about the deceptive bait and temptation.

[7:19] Remember the hook? And the bait is meant to hide the hook and to deceive you into thinking that that's something that would be good for me. And now James is saying, Don't be deceived, my dear brothers.

[7:35] If you bite that temptation, you will find that it leads to sin and it leads to death, damnation. Don't be deceived about where temptation is going and where sin would lead you.

[7:52] Perhaps that's included in this warning, but more likely he's still pursuing his broader theme in this whole section from verses 13 through 17. Don't be deceived into thinking that God tempts you to evil.

[8:08] He's already shot one barrel at this error. God is too holy to tempt you to evil. And now comes the warning midway. And he says, now don't be deceived into thinking God is tempting you.

[8:20] And now he unloads the other barrel. God is too good to tempt you to evil. And here's our text for today. Verse 17. Very familiar, but I wonder if we've ever seen it in the context of trials and temptations, as James puts it to us.

[8:36] Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

[8:46] James is telling us, God is not the source of anything evil. Far from it, he is the source of everything good.

[9:01] For every good and perfect gift is from above. Notice God's gifts. All God's gifts are good. That means they're beneficial. They're advantageous to you.

[9:13] You're better off for having them. None of them are harmful. And all God's gifts are perfect. Perfect.

[9:26] It's the same word used in verse 4. The goal to which God is working in our trials, that we may be perfect, or as it says in the NIV, mature, complete, not lacking anything.

[9:41] That's the same word used here of God's gifts. Every good and perfect gift. God's gifts are unable to be improved. They lack nothing.

[9:54] So temptations to evil don't come from God. Rather, everything good comes from God. Coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.

[10:08] Kids, have you ever seen a chicken drink water? You know what I mean. They get a little water in their beak, and then they look up.

[10:19] And they swallow it down while they're looking up. Thomas Manton, the Puritan, says, that's the way we should receive every good gift. Looking up.

[10:31] Because those good and perfect gifts are coming down to us from the Father of the heavenly lights. And so we look up in recognition of Him as the Father of them, as the source of them, the giver of those gifts.

[10:46] Whoever is the hand that puts it before us, it's God who ultimately is the one who gives it to us. And so we must recognize Him as the giver of every good and every perfect gift.

[11:03] Coming down, He says. Coming down. These gifts. Coming down. The participle is in the present tense, which points to its continuous action here.

[11:14] These good gifts are continually tumbling out of heaven down to us here on earth. There is a continuous shower of blessing.

[11:25] He never stops giving. It's a perpetual reign of gifts. And all of them are good. Day after day.

[11:36] All day long. God is giving, giving, giving. And we are receiving His good and perfect gifts. Kids. Kids even all night long were receiving what He is giving.

[11:50] Gifts came down to you from heaven all last night. What kind of gifts? Well, He was giving you sleep. He gives His beloved sleep.

[12:02] Safety. Some people died in their sleep last night. Not you. He was giving you safety and protection. He was giving you life. He was telling your heart to beat.

[12:18] You weren't. You were unconscious. He was giving you breath to take another breath of air. God is giving, giving, giving His gifts.

[12:30] He gives us parents. He gives us children. He gives us spouses. He gives us food. He gives us houses and cars and freedom and land. He gives us the Bible.

[12:42] He gives us the gift of faith. And the gift of repentance. And the righteousness of Christ. And the forgiveness of sins, as we've seen in our worship already. He gives us wisdom.

[12:53] He gives us the Holy Spirit. He gives us a right to come to the throne of grace. He gives us gracious promises. He gives us the crown of life.

[13:04] Good and perfect gifts. Ever coming down to us from the Father of the heavenly lights. Now, He's here called the Father of lights.

[13:14] And I think the translators have it right. That it's a reference to these heavenly bodies that give light to us here on planet Earth. The sun by day, the moon, and stars by night.

[13:26] The giving light. Shining their blessed influence upon us. And He says, Our God is the Father of these lights.

[13:37] He is the source of them. He's the originator. Just like the Father is the source of the children in that family. He is the source of these heavenly lights.

[13:48] He's the maker and author of them. But God is not like these heavenly lights in an important way. We're told He does not change like shifting shadows.

[14:02] He does not change. I think that King James says that with whom there is no variableness. The word there does speak of variation. It's a word used for the setting of the teeth in a saw.

[14:16] Have you looked recently down the length of a saw? What do you find? You find one tooth bent this way and the next one bent that way.

[14:27] And then the next one's bent that way. And back and forth. They alternate. The teeth are bent one way and the other way. And that's what gives it such bite as you're trying to cut the wood.

[14:39] God's not like that. He's the author not of good one moment and then of evil the next moment. That's what James is telling us.

[14:51] There's no variableness in him. He's not the author of good gifts and then the author of temptation and sin. No, there are no variations in God.

[15:04] Now, there are changes in the heavenly lights, at least as they're perceived from the earth. The sun's shadow changes as it strikes the earth from different angles.

[15:15] At sunrise, it's lying low in the east. And then at noon, it's directly above us. And then in the evening, at sunset, it's setting low in the west.

[15:27] And wherever its position is in relation to the earth, it casts a different shadow. Even as the sundial reveals the shifting shadow.

[15:42] Not like that is our God, says James. He does not change like shifting shadows. Yes, he's the author of the heavenly lights, but he does not change like shifting shadows.

[15:54] There is no shadow of turning with him. He does not give us good gifts at one moment and then tempt us to evil the next. So what James is saying is really quite radical and it will affect the way you interpret life.

[16:12] It's a powerful statement that everything, everything that comes down from the father of lights is good, is constantly good, is unchangeably good.

[16:25] His goodness is not occasional. It's not sporadic. It does not alternate with evil, but is unceasing, unmixed, uninterrupted, with no possibility even of changing.

[16:39] A.W. Pink says God cannot change for the better because he's already perfect. And being perfect, he cannot change for the worse. I, the Lord, do not change.

[16:53] Malachi 3.6 He remains the same. He's always good. He's only good. And he's unchangeably good. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

[17:07] And that means that his goodness is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It wasn't that he was sort of good yesterday, but he's really good today. And tomorrow, oh, if I have problems, well, he's okay.

[17:21] He's unchangeably good. That's all he can do is good. Now that will put a different color, like glasses, rose-colored glasses.

[17:33] That will change the way you see everything. If you see everything as coming down from a father who is good and who can only do good to his children. You see then how James is advancing his argument against this lie that God tempts us to evil.

[17:48] So far is God from doing us harm by temptation and tempting us to evil that he actually does us nothing but good. He does nothing but good to us. And we desperately need to know this because some of the things coming down from heaven to us are trials.

[18:08] Some of the things that come to us are trials. Every joy or trial falleth from above, traced upon our dial by the sun of love, we sing.

[18:23] Whether trials of poverty or trials of riches, trials of sickness, trials of health, trials of relational conflict or trials of peace.

[18:34] They come down from above. And when they come down to us from God, we're already defeated if we think that God is tempting us to evil in them.

[18:48] No, God is always good and only does good. So in our trials, by faith, we must lay hold of this truth that God is doing us good and he is doing us nothing but good.

[19:03] Now, that's something about God that Satan hates with a passion. And so he attacks it with a vengeance. The perfect goodness of God. I suppose because he is perfect evil and knows no goodness, he hates that in God which is so good.

[19:25] And so what does he do? He comes and he casts doubt on God's goodness. And notice he does it even in the perfectly good Garden of Eden.

[19:39] Eve, you don't mean, do you, that God won't let you eat from any tree that you want to in this garden? Well, I hadn't thought of it that way.

[19:49] No, of course you hadn't because he's so good. He's given you everything. He's only said, don't eat of this tree. But Satan points at that tree and says, you see, the Lord's withholding something good for you, from you.

[20:02] He knows that this would make you like him. He knows that if you ate from this tree, you would become wise like him, knowing good from evil. And that threat about death, oh, he's just trying to keep you from eating this fruit that would make you so wise.

[20:18] And I say to myself, if God can tempt Eve in a perfect Garden, where there was only good all around her, how vulnerable am I to deception in the midst of painful trials?

[20:35] Living in a world where the curse is now resting upon this world and things are painful. This is the bottom side of our trials.

[20:45] Yes, God is doing us good. But the bottom side is that Satan is seeking to get us to sin in our trials. And so he assaults the believer with lies that question God's goodness to him.

[20:58] If God were so good, this wouldn't be happening to you. If God were so good, then you wouldn't have this pain or this problem or this trial. And there's something within us that's all too quick to agree with the evil one.

[21:10] That would be our own evil desire. Even still remaining inside the believer. Think of Job. He was bombarded with such temptations.

[21:24] Not in a garden where everything was perfect, but in a world where he lost all of his possessions and all ten of his children and even his health. And the temptation came to him.

[21:37] God is not so good after all. Curse him and die. Asaph. He was feeling the brunt of this temptation. He was doubting the goodness of God in Psalm 73.

[21:50] He looked around at the wicked and saw them prospering. He saw their kids were all healthy and they didn't have any problems in their family. And he woke up every day to affliction and trouble. And he started to think, you know, God's not all that good.

[22:06] Here I am struggling to try to be holy and look what I get for it. And it took a long struggle before he eventually came to see what he states in verse 1 of that psalm.

[22:19] Surely, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. He didn't always believe that. In fact, he doubted it as he was going through his trials.

[22:30] He heard the suggestions of the evil when his own heart fell in step with it. God's not so good. God's not so good. The Bible is peppered with the theme of God's goodness.

[22:46] And I believe that we are leaving ourselves vulnerable for a fall if we do not know the goodness of God, especially in the time of our trials.

[22:57] It's a critical part of the new covenant in Jeremiah 32, verses 40 and 41. When God says, I will make a new covenant with them, I will never stop doing good to them.

[23:10] And I will inspire them to fear me so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good. You see, God has gone on record for everyone who's in the new covenant. Everyone who has been purchased by the blood of the new covenant, the blood of Jesus Christ.

[23:26] God says, I will never stop doing good to you. Not I'll do good to you once in a while and sporadically you will find my goodness. No, I will never stop doing good to you.

[23:39] All that comes down from heaven for me will be good for you. Never will anything be to your ultimate evil. So in your trial, child of God, you must know that God has not stopped doing good to you.

[23:56] That that trial itself is part of his goodness coming down from above. A good, a perfect gift that cannot be improved on. It's just what you need from your Father in heaven.

[24:09] Just what you need. Psalm 119, verse 68 tells us, you are good and what you do is good. God's nature, who he is, is unmixed goodness.

[24:25] And what he does, his works, are all good. good. Because what we do flows from what we are. God is good and what flows from him is good.

[24:38] You know, we've listened to our feelings too long. We've said, this doesn't feel good, so it can't be good. It doesn't look good, so it probably isn't good.

[24:49] It doesn't seem good to me, so it can't be good. Well, see that for what it is. It's your word against God. God says, I am good and all I do is good.

[25:06] So, if your word and God's word is conflicting on any manner in the midst of your trial, let God be true and every man a liar, the Bible says.

[25:21] However it looks or feels or seems to me, God says he's always doing me good. Now, I may be very confused as to what the good God is doing to me is. I may not have any idea what God's up to in this trial, but I can know this and I must be absolutely convinced that he is up to something good because he is good and what he does is good.

[25:45] The very nature of God guarantees that all the trials he sends us are for good. That's what James is saying to us in verse 17. That good and perfect gifts alone come down from him who does not change.

[26:03] Psalm 84, 11. For the Lord God is a sun and a shield. The Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly.

[26:17] Every day, all my days, I will know the pure goodness of my God. He does not withhold anything good from his children.

[26:31] So, child of God, has he withheld riches from you? He's not withheld anything good from you. Some things that are good for others are not good for us.

[26:44] Has he withheld health from you? He's not withheld anything good from you. He knows what is best for you and he will not withhold it from you.

[26:57] That's his word of promise. And one day, from heaven's perspective, you'll look back and you'll say, you know, I couldn't see anything good in that, but now I see it as God sees it and I see that that was exactly the good that I needed at that time.

[27:13] That was the exact good thing in the plan of God. And what James is telling us and what the Bible is everywhere telling us is we don't wait to heaven to believe it.

[27:26] here and now we must lay hold by faith of the promise. He cannot withhold anything good from us. He cannot do anything but good. We are in covenant with him in Christ.

[27:41] So David, who saw himself as the sheep and saw his master God as the shepherd, closes that shepherd song, surely goodness, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

[27:59] Now there's a man who knew that God was good and all he did was good, such that he said every day and all my days I will find goodness from God.

[28:14] Now that's a ground to stand on. It's ground beneath our feet that doesn't give when everything else is giving around us. God never stops doing me good and that's sort of the background then to Romans 8, 28 and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purpose.

[28:38] And what is that good purpose? He tells us in the next verse that you might be conformed to the likeness of his son. So in everything he's working for your good to make you more like Jesus.

[28:49] He's performed a marriage and what two unlikable people to be joined in marriage. God's glory and my good.

[29:05] And in Christ he performs a wedding where these two are inextricably bound together. They cannot be separated. everything God does he does for his glory.

[29:18] Everything he does he does for my good. He pursues both of those ends. Everything that tumbles down out of heaven everything coming down from the father of the heavenly lights is for his glory and is for my good.

[29:34] But those trials that come to us from God are occasions for the devil to tempt us. He loves to kick us when we're down.

[29:46] That's not above him or below him I should say for him to kick us when we're down. You're in a wrestling match you don't kick a guy when he's down.

[29:57] But the devil kicks us when we're down. When we're chin deep in trials from above he'll come alongside and accuse God of evil and suggest that our God is not so good after all.

[30:11] He doesn't care about our good and so we must be ready in such trials to meet his sinister suggestions with the truth. Keep your guns loaded with the goodness of God.

[30:25] Drink in every blessing looking up recognizing this is another good and perfect gift from my father in heaven. lay hold of every promise by faith where he tells you that he can do you nothing but good.

[30:42] So it's really quite staggering I say to walk through life believing that whatever God sends us is good always good and only good.

[30:56] Does he send you the trial of poverty? He does so in order to do you good. Does he send you the trial of sickness? He's not stopped doing you good. Does he send the trial of death?

[31:06] Even death is made to do you good. It takes you out of this world of woes and takes you into the presence of Jesus whom you love even though you've never seen him.

[31:17] It takes you into those riches a better place and a better condition without sin. Yes he does us nothing but good. Now in conclusion this view of God's goodness should do several things for us then.

[31:31] first of all it should keep us from ever thinking that God is tempting us to do evil. What? This good God who is unchangeable in his goodness to me?

[31:47] Tempting me to do evil? Impossible. The goodness of God tells me that. God. Now he may lead us into situations where we will be tempted by the devil.

[32:03] He did that with his own son. Matthew chapter 4 and verse 1. The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. It doesn't say he led him into the wilderness to be tempted by God.

[32:16] No he was tempted by the devil. The devil is the one who is seeking to bring him down to sin. God was the one who was testing him and trying him and putting him into the situation where he allowed the devil to have his go at him.

[32:33] That we might have a perfect righteousness from one who has been tempted in every way like we are and yet was without sin. But if we believe James 1 17 then that will keep us from ever thinking that God is tempting us to do evil.

[32:51] Let no one say when he is tempted God is tempting me. And secondly this view of God's goodness should encourage us to persevere in holiness through all our trials.

[33:05] As I said earlier when we're going through trials we need to know that God is for us. There's enough things to discourage us. Here is something to lift us up.

[33:16] The Almighty the one who puts the stars and the sun and the moon in their places. For me he's fighting against the evil one. For me he's on my side. He's not our foe he's our ally and he's working for my good.

[33:31] That's encouraging. That gives me joy and the joy of the Lord is my strength to fight on another day against evil in the midst of my trials.

[33:44] Maybe it's the evil of complaining and I fight on. God is doing me good. Maybe it's the evil of worry. I fight another day because God is for me.

[33:56] Is there any sweeter encouragement than knowing that my life is absolutely surrounded by God's goodness? Absolutely surrounded. That's medicine for the soul to strengthen our perseverance and holiness as we're going through trials.

[34:14] And then thirdly, this view of God's goodness will enable us to consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of many kinds. You see, that verse is way back in verse 2.

[34:27] That line is in verse 2. But James is talking about the whole trial temptation complex. And what he's doing in verse 17 is trying to help us to do verse 2. To obey that command.

[34:38] Remember all the imperatives we find? James not only lays them before us and says do this, but then he gives us help. How in the world can you consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds if you think God in the midst of that trial is tempting you to evil?

[34:59] You can't. But if you know that God is in that trial doing you good, then you have reason to consider it pure joy whenever you fall into trials of many kinds.

[35:12] And then you'll ask for wisdom to go through the trial rather than just ask to get out of it. He's helping us to obey those commands that have gone earlier in this first chapter.

[35:25] And lastly, if we have this view of God's goodness, it will give us confidence and peace in facing an uncertain future. People are committing suicide right here in Bremen.

[35:43] People are ending their life. Around 33,000 every year in the United States. Far more attempts than we'll ever know.

[35:55] What went wrong? Well, they got to the point where there was no hope for tomorrow. No hope. And so they ended their own lives.

[36:07] it is an uncertain future. It always is. And when God begins to move some things that have been fairly stable in our lives, we begin to see just how uncertain the future is.

[36:25] A lot of things constantly changing. Circumstances. Your financial bottom line changing all the time.

[36:35] the weather, your health, people, presidents, price of gas, economy, it's all changing.

[36:51] But God never changes. That's the one constant that is meant to give us peace and confidence as we move into this uncertain future. Troubling times, yes.

[37:04] But a God who has sworn by the blood of his son to do us good. Only good and always good. I say that's a life transforming promise.

[37:19] What will tomorrow bring? Only good and always good to those who are in Christ. And that gives me strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow as the hymn writer says.

[37:32] Now believers, I have a word of question just as we close and that's why, why, why are we getting such preferential treatment from this God?

[37:45] That we would only receive good from his hand? Well, because Jesus Christ earned this for us. He merited this for us by his perfect life and his death on the cross.

[38:01] He took all the bad things from God. He took all the wrath of God that we had coming to us. He stepped in and took it in our place that we might receive all the good things that he had coming from God.

[38:16] And that's why through the blood of Christ I say God has covenanted with us to never stop doing this good. We owe It all to Jesus. We owe it all to him.

[38:28] We think of the good gifts that have come out of heaven come down from heaven. What shall we say of God's son?

[38:40] Did he not come down out of heaven? Is he not a gift that's been given to us? Thanks be to God for this indescribable good and perfect gift the Lord Jesus.

[38:55] And in him we have all the rest of the gifts. All the rest of God's goodness comes bundled up in Jesus Christ. Possessed Jesus and you have it all.

[39:05] And you have nothing but goodness from God. But then think of some of the gifts mentioned in this very chapter so far. What are the gifts?

[39:16] What are the things that God gives? Well, he gives trials. But for me as a believer, they're only good for me. He gives wisdom. Chapter or verse five.

[39:27] He gives it generously to all who ask him. This is our giving God. Wisdom to see trials as God's goodness pursuing me.

[39:38] Is that the way you look at trials? God's goodness pursuing me, finding me out again today. Wisdom. God gives it that we might see our trials in that light.

[39:52] Wisdom to live as I ought in the light of God's truth. What else is God giving in this chapter? He's giving a crown of life to those who love him, to those who persevere to the end.

[40:06] We saw the value of that crown of life, eternal life. God is giving. He's giving. And then in verse 18, he mentions yet another gift. He chose to give us birth.

[40:19] He chose to give us birth. What a demonstration of his goodness is this to find us dead in sin and to make us alive in Christ.

[40:30] And we're going to have to wait till next week to consider this text fully. But I just mention it now so that you can see it in its context that you might see the new birth as an expression of God's goodness.

[40:43] You know, he could have left us dead in our sins. That would have meant that we would have lived every day of our lives from the moment we were born to the day that we died quite content to live as if God were not real.

[40:58] Just to live for ourselves. Dead toward God. Spiritually dead. He could have left us in that state and we would have lived and died in our sins and sin when it is finished brings forth death.

[41:12] The second death of hell. He could have just left us to go our own way and we would all be in hell. But what is the goodness of God? That he has come and given birth to some of us.

[41:27] And I say that to some of us. Are you born again? Have you received this gift from God? The new birth, a new heart?

[41:38] We'll look at it more next week. But this is a word to believers where James is saying, don't be deceived. My dear brothers, he's talking to dear brothers in Christ who have been given this gift of birth.

[41:54] So may we treasure it as we leave this thought of the goodness of God that chose to give us birth and united us to his son. You see, if you're not united to Christ, then these things in this chapter are not true of you.

[42:10] Your trials are not working for your good. Your trials are not working for your faith being strengthened and holiness and perseverance.

[42:23] It's not working on that scheme. Rather, if you're outside of Christ, then your trials are finding you giving in to sin, which when sin conceives leads to death and death on down, down.

[42:39] That's the track you're on if you're not in Christ. No, your trials aren't for good. They're working for your ill. But why? Why?

[42:50] Why will you die? The scriptures ask. Why will you separate yourself from pure goodness? Jesus Christ is offered to every one of you.

[43:01] He's offered. Receive the good gift. Receive Christ. Surrender to Him. Trust in Him.

[43:13] This God looks after us. Far better than we could ever look after ourselves. He can do us no harm. Such is His commitment to do us good.

[43:25] So what have we seen today? Well, we've seen another well-known verse. James 1.17. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

[43:41] And we've seen it now, I trust, in context with trials and temptations. So when tempted, no one, no one should say, God is tempting me.

[43:54] He is just too holy to tempt you. And secondly, He's just too good to tempt you to sin.

[44:04] let's pray together. Oh, good and gracious God, we have sung of your mercies that are new every morning.

[44:14] Indeed, all of your goodness to us is mercy. None of it is deserved by us. And so when we see it coming to us, streaming to us like the sunshine, we confess how great is your mercy, how great is your faithfulness.

[44:31] Indeed, how great is the value of your Son that should turn all of our deservingness of wrath to the point where you would pour such goodness upon us in him.

[44:45] So make us lovers of this Savior. Make us lovers of you for having been so good to us. And forgive us for ever thinking that you're anything less than that in the midst of our trials.

[44:57] Come to us. Lord, you know some are going through very deep waters. And they find it harder to lay hold of your goodness. Oh, come by your Spirit and convince them afresh of this wonderful truth that you will do them nothing but good.

[45:17] And draw sinners who have received many good gifts from you to trust in your Son. May the goodness of God lead them to repentance. We ask it for your eternal praise and their good.

[45:30]  Amen. Amen. Amen. may may may