When You are Down, Look Up to God’s Goodness
By Pastor Matt Black
06 May
2007
Lord’s Day evening
James 1:17
Introduction: Open your Bibles to James 1. We’ll read in verses 17-18. The title of this morning’s message is “When You are Down, Look Up”. James 1:17-18 read, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. 18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”
[Prayer for illumination]
Sometimes when we see all the bad in the world, we tend to get a little discouraged. We look at bad decisions we have made, and we can get inward focused, and we tend to forget God’s goodness. Maybe right now you are terribly discouraged because of trials in your life. Maybe you want to serve the Lord, but you keep getting sidetracked by sin that so easily besets you in your own life. You know it is God’s will to overcome and persevere to become more and more like Christ, but you are discouraged. Listen, we are going to learn today, that God is so good! God is able, He is more than enough, and He is loves you more than you can ever know, and He is good! Here’s the outline today:
I. When you are down because of trials, you need to look up and remember God’s goodness. God is so good! He is good everywhere and all the time! Whatever trial you are in, if you trust in God, He will not forsake you! He is so good! You can’t do it on your own! Cling to Him. When we cling to Him, we truly can “count it all joy when we fall into divers temptations” (verse 2).
Count it joy when you are in trials because God is good! He is so good. He’s not just a little bit good, but He is pure goodness. I want to back up all the way to verse 2 where James says, “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations”. Consider it all joy, or pure joy when you find yourself in various kinds of trials of life. This is not a form of Christian masochism. “Go ahead, hit me again, I love it!” It is absurd to say that we love the pain of trials. No one loves the pain of trials. No, we can count it all joy because God is doing something beautiful through the most difficult trials in your life. God is using these trials to make us like Christ, and remembering God’s goodness, we can rejoice!! We can know that God is good because—
God has a purpose for every test. When bad things happen to you, it is because God has certain goals for you. He wants you to grow and change. Suffering for a Christian always has a purpose. That is exactly what verses 2 and 3 say: “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; 3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience”.
As a Christian, God has put a love for those goals in your heart. You love Christian maturity, and you hunger for the crowning life.
God wants to bring you to the end of your life looking like Jesus Christ, perfect (completed) and entire (mature), not lacking in anything! Wow! What a goal! How does a long distance runner grow in perseverance? He perseveres every day in his training. I remember seeing a documentary on Lance Armstrong. He won I believe it was seven Tour de France competitions. How was he able to persevere like that? In the story of his life, they showed him daily going out in all kinds of whether conditions downhill, uphill, in wind, rain, snow and sleet, persevering! So that when his race came, he was mature enough to win the race, and win it again and again and again!
In the same way, you and I as Christians daily fight in every trial and temptation. There’s all different kinds! And what are we fighting? We are contending against all of the sins that so easily beset us under trials and tests.
One preacher said, “Show me a Christian who has not endured many through many trials, and he will be a Christian who is immature in the faith!”
So trials make us stronger to endure more trials, but during it all we are growing and changing being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. But then we are going to see that God’s goal is not only Christian maturity or Christlikeness, but…
So we should count it pure joy when our faith is tested. Why, because through it God stretches our faith, you will become more mature, and on the Last Day, verse 12 says, you will enjoy the eternal crowning life.
Listen to verse 12, “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation [perseveres under trials]: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown [stefanov stephanos] of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.”
Application: When you are struggling under trials, remember the goals has God has for you. His goal is not your earthly comfort, but your soul’s comfort. You see life is not to be lived with maximum personal instantaneous pleasure. The aim of most people is to get through life with as few difficulties as possible. But if you remember the Christians goals, that is Christlikeness and that this life is lived not for now but for eternity, then you can “count it all joy when you face various trials and tests in your life”! You may have an assignment at work that seems impossible. God says, endure and trust me. You may say “I hate my job”. You need to go to work and trust God. Consider it all joy! God is making you like Christ, and He is going to crown you with something more than this life at the end.
Notice it says at the end of verse 12 that God has promised this crowning life to “to them that love him.”
Illustration: I heard of a pastor who once preached the funeral of a woman in her mid 80s. At the graveside her husband said with tears in his eyes, “I suppose God has more things for me to do, else why has he left me here?” The pastor put an arm around his shoulders and said, “My dear brother, God has nothing more for you to do, except to love Him still”. You see he didn’t mean literally that there was nothing more to do. But your self identity is not bound up in what you do! Your identity is bound up in how your heart loves Him. Verse 12, “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him”.
If you are in a trial, your main goal is not to try to figure out an end to the trial. You are not called to “do” something, but simply to love God! Just love God where ever you are at, what ever you are doing. Love God and trust His goodness. God does not want to hurt you! He wants to help you become more like Christ! When we look back at life from heaven, it will all make perfect sense, because God is good. He is not only a little bit good, He is SO good. It is impossible to measure His goodness, because it never ends!!
So when you are struggling under trial, remember God’s goals for you! He would have you to be mature and Christlike. He wants you to hunger for eternal life, that life that you will be crowned with at the end of the world—the consummation when Jesus comes again!
So you should remember God’s goodness when you feel abandoned and crushed in your trials. Wherever you are in life, God is good. Every day, all the time! Even on your hardest day—especially on your hardest day, remember that He has a purpose for you—to make you like Christ and to give you eternal life!
You might say, I just can’t believe God could be that nice! Why would God want to be that nice to me? To give me eternal life? To make me like Christ? To create in me a clean heart and a heart of love for Him in every trial? Because God is good! He is so good, you can’t comprehend it. That’s why it is called grace! It is God’s riches at Christ’s expense. It is His deep, deep love for sinners, enough to take the wrath for their sin and put it on the Beloved One on Calvary! We are going to see how great that love is later on, but it is more than you can ever comprehend.
So when you are down, you need to look up! When you are down because of trials, you need to look up to God’s goals. He wants you to strengthen your faith and give you that spiritual robustness and maturity. He wants to create a heart of unconditional love for Him in you, and He wants to give you eternal life. God is that nice! He’s good! He’s so good!!
II. When you are discouraged because of sin, you need to look up and remember God’s goodness. Remember that God came to pay a debt that wasn’t His! He’s that good!
Explanation: Now the flow here is that God brings tests to your life to strengthen your faith. But many times during the testings and trials, we turn to something sinister within us and we are dragged away into sin by our own lusts. Look at verses 13-15, “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
A. Since God is so good, He is not the author of your sin. I want to tell you something, God is good! He is never the author of temptation to sin. He may bring a trial, but if you sin, it is your fault, not God’s. In fact in verse 16, James says, “Do not err, my beloved brethren.” James literally says here: Don’t kid yourself about these things. Don’t make lame brained excuses! Don’t blame God for your sin. The fault is within you, the fault is within me.
I want you to see this in In Psalm 145:15 we read, “The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season.” Every morsel of food that you eat comes from above! The entire creation waits upon God every day to produce the food. And when it doesn’t come, people starve. In our country, we have an abundance of food, but in many places they do not have enough food. Now it is very evident that with the blessing of God, we could feed every last person on the face of the earth, but we do not. We don’t even try. God has made a creation in which it is actually possible to feed every last person with blessing and plenty. But because of the sinfulness and selfishness of man, people are starving in war-torn countries. Even in drought, we have more than enough food to feed the hungry. But mankind wants his own will. He wants to go in his own direction. And so people suffer. God made a world that could easily provide all people to have plenty. But mankind hoards and is filled with greed. Mankind gathers things together and doesn’t share them. You can see this in the smallest children in this church! And so the mess of this world continues. Why? Because man is not good! God is good. Now we must always see this contrast. In human nature, there is a horrible flaw. Man has a streak of evil within him. He is not altogether good. Even in his best moments he is not altogether good. But God is everywhere and all the time perfectly good!
1. If we are to be good, we must come to God. No man is good in himself. Even though every man proclaims his own goodness, Solomon tells us that there is not a just man on the earth that doeth good and sinneth not.
You say, how can I get this goodness. You must get God! He arranges all things together in this world for our benefit, that we might come to a knowledge of Him! That He might give us His goodness. No goodness can come from you or I; it always comes from God Himself. Everything good that you see in the world is from God, and everything bad is from man! God wants to bring us into His presence, and make us like His Son, and make us able to dwell with Him forever. You see that’s all grace. That’s God’s riches at Christ’s expense. You don’t deserve God’s goodness. He is so good. You don’t deserve it, and that’s why it’s called grace. You cannot earn it, but He gives it to you for free because He is so good. And you can never repay God for even one little ounce of His goodness. You must receive it all for free.
2. In fact, God is the essence of all goodness.
Verse 16, “Do not err, my beloved brethren.” Again, James says: Don’t kid yourself about these things. Don’t make lame brained excuses! Don’t blame God for your sin. The fault is within you, the fault is within me. For verse 17 says that God himself is immaculately good, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness [change], neither shadow of turning.”
“God is light and in Him is no darkness at all!” (I John 1:5).
God doesn’t change like we do. He is the Father and creator of the heavenly lights—the stars in the sky, like the sun and the moon. Now of course the sun and the moon cast shadows.
Illustration: Up here in the pulpit the lights are fairly good. There are some places I have preached where the lights are blinding, and I couldn’t see anyone out in the audience. I had to preach by faith. But even in these lights here at Tabernacle, as good as they are, there are shifting shadows. If I put move my glasses here, there are shadows all around. If I put my hand here or there, there are actually several sets of shadows from all the lights. They are coming from all directions. In fact you can probably see several shadows of me on the wall behind me while I am preaching. Why are there so many shadows? Because all of our earthly lights are focused from one direction or another. You see that with our sun. It casts a shadow on one side of the earth. The moon is the same way. All earthly lights whether they be lights in this auditorium or the stars in heaven always cast some kind of shadow. And with people, that’s also the way it works. In this fallen world, we might have some strengths and gifts, but because we are a fallen people in a fallen world, those gifts and strengths often are expressed with corresponding weaknesses, and even outright sins. Don’t’ they?
We come across someone who is an extrovert and has certain gifts for leadership and imagination and so forth, but that person may also be a bit selfish and takes over every conversation, and may intimidate the softer, quieter sort of people. It almost seems that every personality type (since it is in a fallen and a broken world) has a dark side! …but God has no dark side! He even made the heavenly lights, the sun, moon, and stars, and they all have dark sides, but not God. In him we are told there is “no variableness [change], neither shadow of turning”. None. This is a powerful way of saying that God—is good! He is only good. There is no badness to Him.
God is good! He doesn’t change. He always acts in such a way that He is good.
B. Since God is so good, He can forgive your sin!
Yes, you may be beset by sin in your Christian life, but remember that where sin abounds, grace much more abounds (Romans 5:20). Just because we have the promise of forgiveness does not mean we should sin more and more. No, the Christian’s one desire is holiness—to be like Christ.
But it when we sin that we see the very goodness of God. When we have failed we cannot blame God, because He is pure goodness. but instead we need to take personal responsibility for our sin, and remember there is no sin that God cannot forgive! There is no sin that you have committed that God cannot heal your soul! He is so good!
That brings us to our final point:
III. When you are down because of trials or because of sins, look up to the Cross of Calvary! God’s pure goodness is ultimately found at the Cross of Calvary.
None of us have to be told that God is angry with sin and sinners. The wrath of God is upon sinners (John 3:36). We all know that! We know that His wrath proceeds from His goodness. Like a father who is ready to protect his daughter from harm, God protects His character. He is light, and there is no darkness in Him. Therefore He must oppose everything that opposes His goodness.
That doesn’t leave any of us with a good feeling about God. Ah, wait a minute. I haven’t told you the whole story. God shows his ultimate goodness to sinners who are totally unworthy!
Look at verse 18, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. 18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” We find out in Ephesians 1:13 that the Word of truth that James is referring to here is “the gospel of your salvation”. Through the Son of God’s death on the Cross, God chose to forgive your sins, and put a hope of eternity in your heart. Why? Because God is good! He is so good!
I love the hymn: Come ye sinners poor and needy:
Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love and power.
Come, ye thirsty, come, and welcome,
God’s free bounty glorify;
True belief and true repentance,
Every grace that brings you nigh.
Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.
Refrain
I will arise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms;
In the arms of my dear Savior,
O there are ten thousand charms.
Conclusion: Listen, the goodness and severity of God on a little hill outside Jerusalem. It is there that Jesus said, “It is finished”! You cannot be good enough to be accepted by God. You can only receive what Jesus already finished. You cannot add to it or take away from it. This is the Word of Truth that God puts into the heart of every Christian. Jesus paid it all! You only need to trust in it! God’s ultimate goodness is found in Christ.
It is the Cross that saves you. Christ justifies the ungodly! You are in the trials of life today. Perhaps you have lost a loved one. Perhaps a friend is dying. Maybe your job or your home, or your life seems so unsettled. Perhaps our children do something unthinkable. We face disappointment because someone else was promoted at work. And instead of saying, “But I am justified before God! I’m loved with an everlasting love. I don’t have to prove myself to anyone, because God loves me in His Son” You don’t have to justify yourself in this life! You ARE justified in Christ alone!
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.
Refrain
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
Listen, God is a loving Father that is so good! We are going to find out today that every good and perfect gift comes from above, and that the center of all goodness is the greatest gift He’s given. He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. If you do not know His blessed goodness, come to Him today! Revelation 22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” All who are tired of this world and weary of sin, come and drink from the river of God’s goodness today!! It’s grace! It’s free! You can’t earn it! God gives it away to you freely!! Come and drink of God’s goodness today!! God is so good!
Closing Hymn: 21 Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow