Discernment in Trials

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If you would take out your Bibles and turn to James 1, I realize I've given you the text on our worksheet here, but if you also like to look in your Bibles, we're going to be in James 1.
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Now, I just realized a mistake on the sheet.
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It says verses 16 to 21.
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That is incorrect.
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We are doing only verses 16 and 17.
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I began writing the notes for verses 16 to 21, got through the notes for verses 16 and 17, and said I'm not going to get any further than that with my time.
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So we will do verses 19 to 21 next week, just for sake of time tonight.
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Because I don't want to not deal with some of what's here.
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And I felt like verses 19 to 21, I was rushing to get there and overlooking some of what is here.
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And that's not fair to this text.
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So far in our study, we have seen that James is giving his readers or his hearers reasons to remain steadfast under trials.
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If we look at verse 1 of chapter 1, this is why I said you may well have your Bibles open.
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It says, James, and who is this James? Do we remember? The half-brother of Jesus Christ is the most likely of sources of this particular one.
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James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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He doesn't identify himself as Jesus' brother.
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Instead, he identifies himself as a doulos or a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And he says he's preaching to the 12 tribes and the dispersion.
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Of course, James would have been the pastor of the Church of Jerusalem.
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And most of the Christians that were dispersed from Jerusalem at the killing of Stephen would have been Jewish Christians.
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So, James speaks to a heavily Jewish audience.
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But certainly, as we've noticed, it's not limited to a Jewish audience.
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It's just specific when he speaks to the 12 tribes.
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We know the audience to whom he is speaking.
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And he tells us something very awkward in verse 3 or verse 2.
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He says, count it all joy.
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My brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, well, that's a hard thing to do because trials are what often rob us of what we would call joy or happiness.
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And so, he begins to speak to us in what we call the divine paradox.
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He's telling us to do things that are difficult to do and things that often seem very contrary to what is the norm.
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And what we've seen is that he calls for four things.
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He calls us to have joy in trials.
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And then he calls us to have wisdom in trials, beginning at verse 5.
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Then he calls us to have trust in trials.
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Where are we trusting in our trials? And that's verses 9 through 11 when he talks about the lowly brother who is exalted in his being poor.
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And then the rich brother who is brought low in his being rich.
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And the idea there is, what do you trust in when you're in a trial? Do you trust in your riches or do you trust in God? And oftentimes, the rich have that problem as they trust in what they have.
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And the poor, though, who do they trust? And they don't have anything but God.
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And that's the good thing about being poor is you don't look at your bank account for your trust.
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You look at the only one who can help you is God.
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And this is why Jesus did tell us that it's harder for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
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Why? Because he trusts not in God, but in his riches.
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Then we see blame in trials, and that's verses 12 through 15.
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We talked about this the last time we were together.
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It is so easy to cast blame on anyone else rather than accepting blame ourselves when we fall into sin.
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And the one person who it is always easiest to blame is God himself.
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And you go all the way back to the garden.
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And that's what Adam did when Adam was caused to sin by his wife.
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Who did he blame? He didn't blame her.
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He blamed God.
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He said, the woman whom you have given me, she caused me to do this.
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But it was you who did it.
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If you just give me a better wife, none of this would have happened.
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That's crazy, but that was Adam's defense.
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He blamed God.
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And James tells us, let no one say when he is tempted that I've been tempted by God because God is not tempted by anything.
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Neither does he tempt anyone.
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So this has led us now to this day or this verse, verses 16 and 17, which is what I'm calling it, discernment in trials.
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Now, I am making an outline.
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We've seen joy in trials, wisdom in trials, trusting in trials, blame in trials.
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I'm sort of keeping everything because I think James is.
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I think the whole idea of this first chapter is he's dealing with people who have been dispersed from their home.
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They've been dispersed from their families.
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They've been dispersed from their livelihood.
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They've been dispersed from any wealth they may have earned up until that point.
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These people are out and they're in difficult times and he's trying to give them encouragement during this difficult time.
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So I think that this sort of the underlying current or the thread which is weaving all of these verses together is the fact that these are people who are having it tough.
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And that's where James becomes a great comfort to us, because while you may not be having it tough now.
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You've probably had it tough in the past, and if you've never had it tough in the past, I'm amazed.
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But just know your time's coming.
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There's everybody is going to have times of triumph, in fact, believers even more so because it is those trials which conform us to the image of Jesus Christ.
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It's those trials that God uses to chip away at that, that pride, to chip away at self-reliance, to chip away at our own worship of self.
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That's what trials do.
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They cause us to look to only one source for relief, and that's God.
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When you have a trial, do you look to God for relief or do you look to your bank account? And then when it's empty, you say, oh, woe is me, I have no answer.
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You know, that's often how we do.
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We have to find something else rather than God to trust in.
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So having said all that, I want us to look tonight at discernment in trials.
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Can someone give me a definition of the word discernment? It doesn't have to be perfect.
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It's just an idea, thought.
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OK, wisdom and decisions.
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Can I get you to maybe say decisions between what? Right.
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OK, between what is right and wrong.
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Now, I want to I'm going to quote Charles Spurgeon here, because what you said is what most of us would say.
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Discernment is the determination between what is right and what is wrong.
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Here's what Spurgeon says.
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He says, Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong.
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None of these correcting us is not knowing the difference right and wrong.
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It's knowing the difference between right and almost right.
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I really like that definition because we often think of discernment as right and wrong.
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I've heard people tell me I have the gift of discernment.
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I can look at something and tell right away whether it's right or wrong.
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And the problem is, number one, there's no place in Scripture that calls discernment a gift.
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So when people tell me they have the gift of discernment, I ask what list of the gifts are they reading from? Because it's not you'll hear Pentecostals often claim the gift of discernment and discerning of spirits and things like that.
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But here's the thing.
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It's not just knowing right from wrong, but it's knowing right from almost right.
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And that's the way Spurgeon defines it for us.
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One of the things that seems conspicuously absent in modern Christianity is the idea that we're supposed to exercise discernment.
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In fact, people are actively told don't discern.
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You say, who tells them that every time they say don't judge? Every time somebody says never judge, what they're telling you to do is never discern.
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Even Jesus, when he said judge not lest ye be judged, he goes on to say judge with righteous judgment.
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What he was saying is don't judge with unrighteous judgment.
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Don't judge inappropriately.
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Don't judge without biblical discernment.
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That's what he's saying.
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He's not saying, no, don't ever make a judgment call.
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If you don't ever make a judgment call, you will allow all kinds of false theology into your life.
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If you never make a judgment call, you let all kinds of strange fire into your worship.
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You see, that's the problem is we live in a church and a culture today where the church has decided to not make any discernment.
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And the consequences have been disastrous.
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Scripture calls us to be discerning so that we do not fall prey to the deception of this world.
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Turn in your Bibles to Philippians 1.
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Just quickly, I just want to show you something in Philippians 1.
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Or open up your Bible app and go to Philippians 1, that's fine.
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But you know what? You do like to hear pages turning as a preacher.
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Maybe you can get your app to do that.
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Philippians 1 says this, verse 9.
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And it is my prayer that your love.
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This is Paul speaking to the Philippians.
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It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all what? Discernment.
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And what was your say? I don't understand the word.
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Yeah, discernment.
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It's exactly.
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It's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and discernment.
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You see, that's the part.
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And it goes on to say so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
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You see what Paul's saying here? I actually pray for you that your love would abound in what way? Knowledge and discernment, knowledge and discernment would accompany your love.
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You see what we're told today about love is actually incorrect because love has become all emotional and all ooey gooey, soft and touchy, cream filled.
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But it's with no discernment and no knowledge.
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And so Paul tells us something different here.
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He's saying that we're supposed to love.
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Of course, we're supposed to love and love more and more, but that our love is supposed to have an understanding and a discernment with it so that we can approve of what is excellent.
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What's the opposite of approving what's excellent? Disapproving what is vulgar or not excellent.
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You know, we're not supposed to just let everything go.
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We're supposed to discern in our lives between right and wrong, between right and almost right.
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And we're supposed to be seeking excellence.
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When's the last time you heard a preacher say that? You're supposed to be seeking excellence in your Christian life.
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We don't we're not told that anymore.
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Yes, sir.
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Mr.
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Mike.
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The quote I once heard is that be careful what you stand for or you'll fall for anything.
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Exactly.
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That's what this is.
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Yeah.
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Have to be willing to stand for truth.
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And if you want to write down this verse, I'll give you another verse that just kind of mirrors this one.
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Hebrews 514.
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It says solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
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By the way, there's the definition, Rob, so you were right.
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That's the way the Bible describes the discernment, distinguishing good from evil.
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And it says that we're supposed to train for that.
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We're supposed to seek solid food.
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You know, I heard a guy one time.
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He said, I'm tired of these Christians all wanting to go deeper, all wanting to go deeper in the word.
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You just want to be a big, fat theological pig.
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So what the guy said, he was a very, very, very nice guy.
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As you can imagine, I really don't like this guy.
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But he said, you just want to be a big, fat theological pig and sit around and talk about doctrine all the time.
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He was very, very rough character, very ugly speaking character.
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But his statement was, he said, we're not concerned with spiritual growth.
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We're just concerned with reaching people.
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And if you have come here and you've joined this church, this church is no longer for you.
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Your job is to go get more people into this church.
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We're no longer here for you.
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I get the quote.
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It's almost exactly what I'm saying.
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I'm paraphrasing somewhat.
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But you realize you are supposed to grow spiritually.
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Yes, we want to grow numerically because of souls, not because of our banks being filled or because of our buildings being bigger.
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We want to grow numerically because every number is a soul and every soul matters.
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So it isn't that numerics don't matter, but it's people that matter.
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So, yes, that matters.
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But what really matters, too, is that you don't remain a baby in Jesus Christ, but that you grow and your knowledge of him and your discernment, which comes from maturity, which comes from learning the word, being able to get off the milk or what we call the pablum of the baby food of the word, you know, the nursery school, Sunday school, not like what you think about, like baby Sunday school, you know, the the ark that shaped like a U and it's got two giraffe heads sticking out and two elephant, you know, y'all know that when I'm talking about that's the way most of us picture Noah's Ark.
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Why? Because we haven't really thought through the story of Noah's Ark where the floods of the deep exploded with water and sucked people down into the ground into a watery grave that was horrible.
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I always wonder why we made this a nursery lesson.
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It's terrible.
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It's horrible.
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We don't think about that because we want to think shallow.
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God tells us to think mature, have mature thinking, be willing to eat the meat of the word and not just subsist on the milk, but be willing to eat of the meat.
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So having said all that in our lesson tonight, James calls us to make the effort to not be deceived or to exercise biblical discernment.
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And this is where we get in verses 16 and 17.
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Now on your sheet, I realize most of you don't read Greek, but what I placed on your sheet is four translations.
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Well, three translations and the original language of the New Testament text that we're looking at, James 1, 16 and 17.
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At the bottom, I provided you an interlinear, which is gives you the Greek word and underneath the corresponding English translation.
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And the reason for this is I realize some of you bring different Bibles, but also because sometimes I'm not an ESV only guy.
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I'm not a KJV only guy.
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I'm I believe the Greek text is the answer to the question.
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If somebody tells me, well, I think the King James is the best, I'll say in some places it is.
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In some place, the King James is giving the best explanation of what is in the Greek.
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And I think some of the more modern translations have really run away from the heart of what was there.
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So I think in some places the King James are in some places.
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I think the New American Standard is the best someplace.
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I think the ESV is the best.
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So I just provide these to you so that you can look at this text and compare what is being said.
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Most of the time, you'll notice that there's very little difference.
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Look at verses 16 and 17 ESV, it says, do not be deceived, my brothers.
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That's the exact same thing it says in the American Standard, except it says, my beloved brethren.
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And then, of course, in the King James, it says, do not err.
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And I think on that, that's a little older term.
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Because when you think of erring, what do you think? You're doing something wrong.
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But in this particular sense, what the Greek underlying is saying is not being deceived.
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The idea here is actually being led astray.
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It's being caused to wander in your thinking.
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That's the underlying text.
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So I think the idea of being deceived is a little bit more close to the original language than to err.
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So just giving you the idea of why we'd look at different translations, verse 17 in the ESV says 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.
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In the new American Standard, it says every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
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And then, of course, in the King James, it says every good gift and every perfect gift is from above cometh down from the father of lights with whom there is no variableness.
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And that's actually an interesting word we're going to look at later.
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Neither shadow of turning.
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So we see these are all essentially saying the same thing.
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There is no major differences in the language here.
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So let's look first at verse 16.
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Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.
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Now, the question that we have to ask ourselves, because there is no verse which is an island unto itself.
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I realize that some verses become islands unto themselves.
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John 3, 16 is one.
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Most people have no idea the context of John 3.
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They just quote John 3, 16 as if it stands alone, as if like there's a like there's a whole book of the Bible entitled John 3, 16.
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That's all it's there.
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There's a whole story with Nicodemus and all that stuff happening that that comes before John 3, 16.
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Well, the same with this verse.
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This verse, do not be deceived, my beloved brethren or my beloved brothers, is in the midst of a context.
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Now, the question we have to ask, is this connected to what came before or is this starting a new thought for what's coming later? So let's think about that for a moment.
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This is possibly in the connection of what came before.
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If so, what do we see right before verse 16, verse 15 says desire when it has conceived, gives birth to sin and sin when it's fully grown, gives birth to death or brings forth death.
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Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.
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OK, now, if you have a newer Bible, NIV, NASB, ESV, there are paragraph breaks.
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The paragraph break in the ESV puts this with the next thought.
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So that can influence you.
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What you must remember is the New Testament wasn't written that way.
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There were no paragraphs when the New Testament was written.
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In fact, there wasn't even any spaces between the words at all.
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The New Testament was written in what's called unsealed text means it was all capital letters, no space, no punctuation, no nothing.
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It was all like if you imagine if I wrote a sentence and all capital letters with no spaces, no punctuation, that's what it was.
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That was how the Greek language was written for the first couple hundred years after the after the New Testament was written.
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So the first couple hundred years, the oldest manuscripts we have, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, these manuscripts are all written in all capital letters, no space, no punctuation.
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And that's just the way that they're read for them.
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It wasn't that hard for us.
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It would be impossible because that's not how we do things.
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We use what's called minuscule text, which is a combination of capital and lowercase letters.
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And the capital letters stand for things and the lowercase letters fill in.
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So we understand how that works.
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So when we look at this, you have to understand that if your Bible makes a paragraph break here, that's not part of the original text.
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So you can't use that to make your determination as to whether this goes with what's there or what's here.
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Understand what I'm saying? You can't use the paragraph break as your argument.
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All right.
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What it says, it says sin, when it's fully grown, brings forth death.
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Do not be deceived, my brothers.
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If verse 16 is connecting to verse 15, what it's saying is this sin is deadly.
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It's dangerous.
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It's going to kill you.
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Don't be deceived about it.
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That makes sense.
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It really does.
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Don't be deceived about where sin comes from and what it causes.
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That makes sense.
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But here's the other side of the coin.
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He says, my beloved brethren, as if he's starting a new thought.
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So if that's the case, then it connects to the next verse, which is this.
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Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above.
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So is he saying don't be deceived about where your gifts come from or don't be don't be deceived about what sin causes? Well, you could say both.
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You could say both because both are equally true.
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And I'm not here to stand on one or the other and say this is exactly where it is.
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But it's interesting that the idea of deception comes between this, too, because one is sin and one is blessing.
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And the reality is we don't need to be deceived about either.
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We don't need to be deceived about what sin causes and we don't need to be deceived about where blessings come from.
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So ultimately, it could be applied to either.
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It is a reminder that believers need to be careful regarding deception.
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Beloved, my friends, deception.
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Is a big part of our lives.
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It fills the airwaves, I can't open a social media page without seeing something which is based on a half truth or a whole lie.
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Facebook is filled inundated with false information.
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The websites that people link to on Facebook are just filled with false information.
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We used to relegate this information to the supermarket tabloid.
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You know, I never got a call from a church person that said, hey, is Batboy real? Remember Batboy on the supermarket? The little bat that looked like he had bat eyes and bat ears.
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I don't know if you remember that.
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That was the National Enquirer.
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Batboy, he was on every six months.
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He was on the I never had a person call me with that.
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But I have had people call me and say, hey, did you hear about this thing that the president did totally out, totally out of left field? Didn't happen.
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But did you hear about this thing? No, he didn't do that.
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It's not true.
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As Christians, you should be more concerned about the truth than you are concerned about your political standing and where your political opponents stand.
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You should be concerned about truth.
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Yes, ma'am.
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Oh, well, that's going to get me because you're relaxing your head.
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But that's the that's the key to this is we're being called to the truth and to not be deceived.
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And we're called especially to not be spreaders of untruth.
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I get very disappointed when Christians share something with me that I know is not true.
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Or unsubstantiated, we're supposed to be better than that.
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We are supposed to be people who are not only are not deceived, but we're not deceiving one another.
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But yet we get caught up in political gaming.
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We get caught up in social issues.
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And somebody will put something up and somebody will just share it without at all seeking that it's true or not.
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This is something I deal with a lot as a pastor because I send messages to people.
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Do you realize what you just said is untrue? Some people, oh, OK, I'll change it.
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I've had happen to me.
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I have had I've had people catch things that I have written and I've written incorrectly or I've referenced something that was incorrect.
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Somebody says, hey, this is not correct.
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OK, it's coming down.
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Boom, immediately coming down.
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No questions asked.
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But I have people, some people come back.
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They'll say, well, it's a good story anyway.
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What? You're not the National Enquirer.
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You're a follower of Jesus Christ.
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Truth is paramount.
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And there's a tremendous amount of deception which happens in the name of Jesus Christ.
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TBN is just the tip of the iceberg, y'all.
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TBN is just the tip of the iceberg.
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The Internet is filled with false Bible teachers.
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You know, there was a guy just two weeks ago who wanted to sell pens because he had prayed over these pens, ink pens.
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He prayed over them.
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And if you will purchase his pen, it will help you pass your exams.
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It was an anointed pen.
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I'll read it.
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It's a prophet, prophet.
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And I'm saying prophet in quotations for those who hear this by audio.
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Prophet Sam Hungwe of the House of Praise International Church, who operates in Macapiswa Shopping Center, managed to sell hundreds of the pens to his followers.
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They cost 15 cent for him to buy.
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And he sold them for anywhere from a dollar to twenty dollars apiece with this special anointing.
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Well, he was a businessman.
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Depending on the prayer, how how anointed do you want your pen? Exactly.
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A prophet for a prophet.
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And that's what we see.
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The life of the believer must be a life of discernment.
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We have to seek what is true and virtuous and avoid what is false and deceptive.
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And James tells us here that we have to do not be deceived.
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He's calling us to do not be deceived.
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Don't be deceived about sin.
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Don't be deceived about blessings.
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Don't be deceived about anything.
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And don't be deceptive.
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That's not in the text.
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But that's that's ultimately something the scripture teaches us to.
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Deception is not who we are.
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Deception is what we're against.
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One of the things we mustn't be deceived about is God's nature.
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And that's where I think this moves to.
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And I do think there is a connection to the next verse very clearly, because the next thing he tells us in verse 17 is something about God's nature that's often forgotten, not just about where blessings come from, but about the very nature of God itself.
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It says every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the Patras, Tan Fotas, the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
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This is a reminder of our blessings.
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We've already said that all people receive God's blessings in some way.
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Do you realize that every person on this planet has in some way received the blessings of God? Matthew 545, Jesus is preaching in the Sermon on the Mount and he says God causes it to rain on the just and the unjust.
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That is something that we call in theology common grace.
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Now, common grace doesn't mean it's common in the sense that it's unvaluable.
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Often we'll think of something as being common, as being without value.
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That's not what common means.
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Common is also a way of saying universal.
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There is a universal grace that God has given to all mankind.
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When God lets it rain on the good people and the bad people, by the way, when a man who is evil goes and plants a seed in the ground and a man who is a virtuous man goes and plants a seed in the ground, guess what? The seeds are going to do the same thing.
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God has given grace to every person universally that that seed is going to go through the process of growth and bring forth food.
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The rain is going to come and bring the hydration.
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We call that common grace.
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God has also blessed all men through something called general revelation.
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What is general revelation? Romans 1 18 and following, that's actually in my notes, that's true.
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But what is can you explain general revelation to us and just a quick.
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That's right.
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Every person knows that God exists by the very virtue of the fact that God has made himself known in their conscience and in the world around them.
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A person who looks at the world around them and says, I don't believe God exists, has to suppress the truth that God has put within them and turn a blind eye to the obvious evidence of his existence, which exists all around him.
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So God has been gracious in blessing all people with life and and food and all these things.
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But he's also been gracious in blessing every person in this world with general revelation.
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God has given grace to all people.
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But believers receive God's specific blessings.
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Yeah, that's what I meant.
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And yeah, the conscience is how all men know God exists.
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This is why when we go to speak to somebody about Jesus Christ, we try to speak to their conscience because we know he's in there.
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We know the knowledge is in there.
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We want to break past the shell that they've created and the suppression that they've created.
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So we know all people receive the general blessing of God.
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But what are some of the blessings that are given to save people specifically? That's a good one.
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Hebrews chapter 12.
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That wasn't even in my notes, but that is something that the Bible says that God chastens those who are his.
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And if you live without the chastisement of the Holy Spirit, then know that you are a bastard, not a son.
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That's what the King James says.
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Bastard meaning a child without a father.
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And that's the reference.
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If you're a person who lives apart from the chastisement of the Holy Spirit of God, then know that you are an illegitimate son.
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That's the more modern translation.
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You're not a child of God.
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What's another blessing that believers get to enjoy? Fellowship.
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The gift of the Holy Spirit.
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Anything else? I was thinking things like regeneration.
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Regeneration, we had a heart of stone, we had a heart that didn't desire God, didn't desire to follow God, only desire to do which was opposing to him and rebelling against him.
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The Bible says he took out the heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh.
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That's what regeneration is.
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Yeah, he placed within me a heart of flesh that desires to follow him.
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That's a gift.
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The very desire to follow God is a gift of grace to you, because apart from his grace, you wouldn't want to do that.
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Now, why am I talking about all these blessings from God? The unbeliever gets blessings from God, but the believer gets blessings even more so.
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And these are who James is talking to.
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He's talking to believers.
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He's saying, consider your blessings.
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Don't be deceived.
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These blessings come from God.
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Yes, sir.
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That's right.
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Peace that passes all understanding, the peace with God, the fact that we can look death in the face and know that on the other side of that terrible thing is for us an eternity of blessing.
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Yeah, the new the spirit within us, new birth, regeneration, I put I just put down a few things.
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What do we have as believers? We have God's effectual calling.
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That's what brought us to him.
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Regeneration.
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That's what allowed us to believe in him.
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Adoption.
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You ever thought about that? That's a blessing.
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Every child of God is adopted into his family.
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That you even if you know, we think about Father's Day, some people didn't have good fathers.
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I was blessed.
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I had a very good father.
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Some people didn't have a good father.
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Some fathers were abusive.
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Some fathers were absent.
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Some fathers never even met their children.
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But if you are in the family of God, you have a father in heaven who loves you.
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He is the father of lights and that that doesn't mean just that he's the father of all things that are light in the sense of the sun, the stars and the moon.
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He's the father of all that which is righteous, because in scripture, light and darkness is the separation of good and evil, righteousness and unrighteousness.
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He's the father of all that is good.
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He's the father of lights and he's yours.
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Amen.
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That's good.
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That's a blessing even adopted into that family.
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That's a blessing.
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And so when we read this and it calls us to remember that every good gift, every perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of goodness, the father of lights.
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That's something that we should keep in mind and never be deceived about.
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We should never forget where those blessings come from.
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No man can say that he's not been an object of God's kindness.
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And the believer can say that he's been an object of God's loving kindness, salvation, his grace, his mercy and his eternal adoption.
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There's so much that we could say, but this passage also speaks about something else.
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And time always comes and goes.
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We're getting close to the end, but this passage speaks about something else because it says first it talks about his blessings.
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But then it talks about something that we often don't get around to talking about because it's a big 50 cent theological word.
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It talks about God's immutability, immutability.
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I'm sorry.
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Never changes.
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That's right.
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Immutability means inability to change.
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Read with me again.
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It says every good gift and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation.
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And that's why I like the King James says there's no variableness.
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I just said it was a way of saying he never varies.
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He never changes.
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He doesn't have a turning shadow.
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You know, every time I move and I move a lot, I move, I sort of like watching me teaches like watching a ping pong ball going back and forth.
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I move around a lot.
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And every time I move, my shadow changes.
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Every time I move the shadow because the light is static, but I am mobile.
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And because I move, my shadow moves behind me.
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And that's a change that's resulting in my change.
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God never changes, he never moves, and thus his shadow never moves.
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He has no shadow that's constantly moving as him.
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I'm sorry.
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Exactly.
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He is like you ever see the picture of the match.
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If you hold up a match.
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And shine a light on the match, there will be a shadow of the stick, but not the light because light doesn't make a shadow.
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It's neat.
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One day, one day I'll bring a match and we'll make it dark and I'll show you what I'm talking about.
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But but there's no the the light around the end of the match doesn't cast a shadow because it is light.
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I cast shadows everywhere I go and my shadows are always changing because I'm always changing, changing where I am, I'm changing where I'm going, I'm changing what I'm doing.
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God is light and him is no darkness at all, John tells us.
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And what? And there's no shadow, there's no changing, there's no turning in God.
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God does not change.
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He does not move from sweet to bitter.
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He doesn't move from light to dark.
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I want to I want you guys to read some scripture for me.
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I'm going to assign a few readers if you don't mind.
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Mike, would you read? I see you pulling your Bible out.
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Would you read Malachi 3 6? Dale, would you read Numbers 23 for me? It's twenty three nineteen.
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Dale, Jason, you're there.
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Got your Bible open.
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You want to read for me? First Samuel fifteen twenty nine.
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Anyone else want to read? OK, you got you ready to go to Malachi 3 6 and just hold your place there and I'll come right back to you.
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Isaiah forty six, nine to eleven.
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One of my favorite sections of the Bible is Isaiah forty six.
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And you'll hear why in a moment.
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But Mr.
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Mike, if you would read Malachi 3 6 for me.
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For I, the Lord, did not change.
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Therefore, Jacob.
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No, you're fine.
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You see, if God changed, Israel would have been consumed a long time ago.
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If God changed, Israel would have been destroyed because they done messed up a bunch in the Old Testament.
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They messed up all the time.
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God said, my covenant is with you and I don't change.
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You change.
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I don't change.
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If I did change, you'd be consumed.
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But because I don't, you're not consumed.
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That's the reason.
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He would be, he would, if he could change, then you had to change from one place to another place, which means that he was finite.
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Yeah, we're going to get there in a minute.
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You're you're you're you're jumping ahead of me.
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I promise we're getting there.
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But yes, you're right.
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OK, who had numbers twenty three, nineteen.
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God is not man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind.
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As he said, we will not do it.
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He's not a man that he should lie, nor is he the son of man that he should change his mind.
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That's a powerful thought.
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And we're going to talk a little bit more about that one in a minute.
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But that's just just putting in our minds.
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What does the Bible say about God's changelessness? It tells us these things.
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What did you say, brother? First, Samuel 15, 29.
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And also the glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man that he should have regret.
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Yeah, right there.
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He's not going to he's not going to regret or neither is he a man that he should regret.
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Now, last one, brother, Isaiah 46, 9 through 11.
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Remember the former things long past, ancient things which have not been done, saying my purpose will be established, calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my purpose from a far country.
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I'm God and there is no other.
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I'm God and there's none like me.
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I just love that phrase.
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And this is that's one of the one of the ones I do with the Mormons.
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By the way, just sort of I don't want to spend too much time on that rabbit trail.
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But the Mormons believe God was once a man who became through obedience God.
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He lived on a star on a planet that surrounded a star called Kolob.
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And because of his obedience to Mormon teachings, he became God and and gave birth through his celestial marriage relationships to the race of people which would eventually become the human race.
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And it's a really odd belief system.
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But the whole idea is that there was an infinitesimal number of gods and it goes on and on and on and on.
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There's always been different gods all the way back.
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But but this scripture tells us I am God and there is no other and there is none like me.
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The Mormon God can't say that Isaiah 46, 9 through 11.
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They would say and because I have dealt with Mormons in the past, they would say that that's speaking of this universe only.
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Because God is the God of this universe, there's other gods, there's other universes, there's other places he's speaking of here.
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It's not one biogenesis.
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No, exactly.
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Exactly.
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It certainly doesn't agree with all of scripture.
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But if you want to, I always try to have just one one in your gun.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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But that's their argument.
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And I'm not saying I agree or that I would even give deference to that.
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It's laughable almost.
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Oh, it's sad, of course.
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Sure enough.
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God's purposes are always in alignment with his will.
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This is why he can say in Romans 8, 28.
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That he causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him.
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And that never changes.
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You see, when we're going through something hard, we're going through something bad, we're going through something difficult.
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We might be tempted to say, God, have you lost control? And he's right in the control.
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He's right in the middle of it.
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And that's the that's the point of Romans 8, 28 is God doesn't change.
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Your circumstance will change tomorrow.
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You could wake up and terrible things hit you.
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You could wake up and and by the way, I'm sorry, but yes, that's true.
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You know, a lot of pastors won't say, oh, you're speaking evil over my life.
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Don't listen to that nonsense.
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Bad things can happen tomorrow.
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Good things can happen tomorrow.
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But God won't be different.
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He will still be on the throne Friday.
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If I die tomorrow, God will still be on the throne Friday.
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This passage, I think verse 17 is pointing us back to what has already been stated.
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God does not tempt us to evil and this will not change.
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God will not all of a sudden become the tempter to do evil.
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He will be the father of lights, the father of goodness.
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He will remain that and that won't change.
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So we need not be deceived about the nature of God.
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I brought a quote with me tonight from a theological website that I like to frequent.
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Wrote this says the shadow of turning refers to our perspective on the sun.
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It is eclipsed.
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It moves and it casts its shadow.
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The sun rises and sets, appears and disappears every day.
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It comes out of one tropic and enters into another at certain seasons of the year.
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But with God, who spiritually speaking is light itself, there is no darkness at all.
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There's no change with him nor anything like it.
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God is unchangeable in his nature.
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Perfect, his perfections, his purposes, his promises and his gifts.
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He being holy cannot turn to that which is evil, nor can he who is the fountain of light be the cause of darkness.
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Since every good and perfect gift comes from him, evil cannot proceed from him, nor can he tempt anyone to evil.
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The Bible is clear that God does not change his mind, his will or his nature.
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End quote.
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That's what James is trying to get us to understand.
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God doesn't change.
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He can be trusted.
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He's self-sufficient.
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He's absolutely unique.
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And why is this doctrine so important? Well, we've already said because it gives us confidence in God.
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But it's also important because this doctrine undergirds other doctrines.
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Immutability is essential if we are to believe that God is perfect.
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This is I'm going to get back to what you were saying earlier.
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Immutability is essential if we believe God is perfect.
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Because here's the thing.
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If you believe God changes, then you don't believe God is perfect.
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Because either he changes for the better, which means he wasn't perfect to begin with, or he changes for the worse, which means he stopped being perfect or he had the necessity to make a lateral change.
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Even that would show a necessity or deficiency, which would mean he wasn't perfect because of the necessity to change.
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Exactly.
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So we have to ask the question, is God perfect? If he's perfect, he doesn't change because he would stop being perfect.
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OK, so that's one.
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His perfection requires his immutability.
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Number two, his timelessness requires his immutability.
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Do you realize that God lives outside of time? You ever think about that? Does that not blow your mind? Blows my mind every day.
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Every day, the fact that I realize that God is not bound by time.
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He invented time.
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That's right.
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Time is a marker.
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Time doesn't exist in the sense of God.
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God is outside of time.
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And if God were bound by time, he would not be immutable because he would then be chronological.
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You realize God talks about the cross as something that already happened before it happened? He said the cross, the lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.
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He said he chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world.
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You weren't even thought of from a human perspective, but God knew you.
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He chose you.
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He loved you before you were born because God is not bound by time.
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That's.
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That's heavy.
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But if God changed, there would mean there was a time when he was one way and then there was a time when he was another way.
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That would mean God is on a chronological order.
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Of action, which I mean, God is bound in time.
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And he's not.
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And thus, his immutability is required for his timelessness.
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It's heavy thought.
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This is some seminary level stuff that's important.
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Thirdly, and I'll get off this.
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It's required for his omniscience.
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The Bible is clear that God knows everything.
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You realize God never learned anything.
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You ever thought about that? That's mind blowing stuff.
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God doesn't learn anything.
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This is how I know Arminianism is wrong.
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Oh, what am I talking about? Arminians say God looked down the corridor of time, saw what I was going to do.
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And as a result of seeing what I was going to do, made his decision based on what I'm going to do.
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What does that demand? Demands God had to learn something from me.
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God doesn't learn anything.
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That's thoughtful.
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That's harsh.
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But that blows the mind of the Arminian.
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Did God have to learn something from you? That he didn't already know.
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Of course, the answer is no.
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God's immutability undergirds so many of the other doctrines that we believe about him.
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That's why it's so important.
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Now, some people will ask, and I know I've gone past time, so I'll make this quick.
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Some people ask, well, why does the Bible seem to indicate that God does change? You know, this can be confusing because there are times it talks about God relenting or repenting or things like that.
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That's an important question.
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And I'm not just going to not answer it because it is important.
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Scripture is not intentionally confusing, but it does provide us with paradoxical language.
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And we've already talked about this in our study of James.
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There are paradoxes which come up in Scripture that we have to consider.
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God, when he addresses us, uses what we call the language of condescension.
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He must.
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Even the words that we use to describe God are not accurate.
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Because we talk about God as being omniscient.
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What does that mean? All knowledge.
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God has all knowledge.
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But what are we comparing that to? Us who have limited knowledge.
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We have limited.
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God has all.
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God's knowledge isn't like ours.
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Why do we compare the two? Because it's all we have to compare it to.
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That's all we got.
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We say God is omnipresent.
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I mean, he's everywhere and we're in one spot.
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But God is more than omnipresent.
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But we can't really we can't fathom how he is.
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So we have to compare it to us.
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We say God is omnipotent.
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He's all powerful.
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You know, he's stronger than the rock or Hulk Hogan.
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Right? Again, that messes him up already.
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Because that's saying he wasn't.
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At the end, he isn't what he was at first.
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At the beginning, so.
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Let me let me.
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Let me just very quickly.
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God condescends and speaks to us in a way that we might be able to relate to him.
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And if he didn't, it would be impossible for us to relate to him at all.
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So he uses what's called the anthropomorphism.
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He uses man language.
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Anthropomorphism is language of man.
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Or man form language is what it is.
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He talks about himself like he is us so that we can understand him.
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But he's not like us.
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Yeah.
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And he uses the language of relationship.
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And he talks about being grieved.
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He talks about being repentant of having made man on the earth.
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We see these languages and we say, oh, well, here it is.
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God, the Bible is contradicting itself.
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It's not God's timeless immutability shows that he is never changing from his essential nature or his perfect purpose.
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However, from our vantage point, because it is impossible to understand a timeless being, God speaks to us in time.
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He speaks to us in the bounds of time so that we can have a relationship with him.
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If he didn't, it would be impossible to have a relationship with him at all.
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In fact, there is a whole system of theology that tries to answer this question by saying that God just is not immutable and he's not not bound by time.
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He is.
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It's called open theism.
52:06
You've heard of it probably.
52:07
Have you ever heard of open theism? Open theism believes God is bound by time.
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He does not know the future because you are so free in your will that you can absolutely make a decision that God can't see coming.
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And thus he is always in flux.
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That's open theism.
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You tell me which one sounds more biblical.
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What I'm saying or that nonsense.
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I am telling you there are some times where there's tension in the text.
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I am telling you there are some times that we have to come up with an answer as to why does God speak a certain way.
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And I think that the reason why he does is so that he can relate to beings that are not like him.
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He's having to relate to beings that are in a different category altogether and yet have a relationship with them because he chooses to.
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God doesn't have to have a relationship with me.
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God didn't have to have a relationship with you.
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He chose to do so.
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And by choosing to do so, he chose to condescend to you because he knew you couldn't rise up to meet him.
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Yes, sir.
53:17
And that's another thing.
53:18
Yeah, absolutely.
53:18
The ordination of God.
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Why does he know what's going to happen tomorrow? Because he's already determined that's what it's going to be.
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It's not going to be any other way because he's got a plan and a purpose.
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It's going to the end.
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That's exactly right.
53:30
So let's make let's make a point of application.
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By the way, if you ever talk to an open theist, go to Psalm 139 verse 6.
53:38
My days were fashioned before me, before there was even one of them.
53:44
Psalm 139 verse 6.
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God for me in the womb of my mother.
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He knew who I was before I was born.
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And the very days that I live on this earth have been fashioned before me.
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I am immortal until the day God has done with me.
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And I could not, no matter how healthy I am, live one day past it.
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God has fashioned my days.
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That page has been torn out of their Bibles.
54:06
But that's why I always like to have a Bible verse Psalm 139.
54:09
Verse six.
54:11
All right, let me give you the answer to the blanks, because I know if I leave you with blanks and some of you will give you a splitting headache.
54:16
So you don't want to leave with blanks.
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Here are the things things to think about from tonight's lesson.
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Number one, the world is filled with opportunities to be deceived.
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So we must be willing to exercise biblical discernment.
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Notice, I don't just say discernment, but biblical discernment.
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Somebody wants to talk to me about something.
54:34
Somebody wants to argue about something.
54:35
Let's see what the Bible says.
54:37
Let's spend some time in Scripture.
54:39
Let's be discerning from a biblical perspective.
54:44
Number two, one of the things we can be deceived about, especially in trials, is our trust in God's goodness.
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Because we're in a trial, we start doubting God's goodness.
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We can be deceived about that.
54:58
That's what James is telling us.
54:59
Don't be deceived.
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But we can be easily when times get tough.
55:06
Has God abandoned me? Has God turned me over to my to my own flesh? Has God turned me over to the world? Has God turned me over to does he hate me now where he loved me before? You see, that's easy.
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Might not be that might be hard for you to imagine that now.
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But tomorrow, if things were bad, it might be easier for you to imagine what he's dealing with here.
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Don't be deceived to start thinking that God's changed.
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He hasn't.
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Number three.
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And finally, because God is immutable, we know that his goodness toward us will never change, never change.
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God's goodness is immutable.
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So the next time you're dealing with something and you're having trouble with discernment, just know this.
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God hasn't changed.
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And hopefully that discernment will get you through and allow you to maintain peace in the midst of whatever storm you're in.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth.
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I pray this has been beneficial to your people and ultimately true to what your word is telling us.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.