Marvel at God's Gifts to You!

16th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/20/09
James 1:17-27

Marvel at God’s Gifts to You!
I. He gave birth to us through his word.
II. He gives opportunities to listen to his word.
III. He gives the power to obey his word.

What do you do with the gifts you receive? Probably without thinking very long or hard you respond, "I enjoy them. I open them and I tell the giver how much I appreciate the gift. And then I take that gift and use it as the giver intended."

And I’m glad that’s how you are likely to respond to my question. But now that you’ve had a little more time, is that always what you do with the gifts you receive? Let me ask you another question. Have you ever re-gifted a gift? To be sure, re-gifting is better than discarding, but both of those actions say quite a bit about your opinion of that gift. You didn’t need it. You didn’t want it. You’ll never use it. You can’t stand the color. It’s far too small or too large. It’s the ugliest thing you ever laid eyes on. In fact, you may have even received a gift that insulted you. Imagine that! For whatever reason, the gift you received from a friend, a loved one, a co-worker, or your boss was an indication to you of just how little they thought of you.

So, to summarize, I shouldn’t take for granted that we’re always thrilled when we receive a gift.

And sadly, that’s also true when those gifts come from none other than the holy, eternal, almighty God who has saved us from hell through the life and death of his Son.

The writer James opens our text with the truth that our God is the best gift-giver ever. He gives perfectly and he gives the perfect gift. Does that impress you? Maybe not so much. So let’s take the time to study what James says and to marvel at the gifts God gives us. Marvel at God’s gifts to you!

Part I.
There are several gift-giving and receiving times of the year. The biggest one is probably Christmas. The other one that comes to mind is your birthday. Most of us celebrate our birthdays with a special dinner, cake, ice cream, and gifts. It’s especially children that look forward to the birthday gifts. They may talk about them for days leading up to their birthday.

The writer James speaks about your birthday in this morning’s text, although it’s not the birthday we usually think of. He speaks about the day that our God gave us the gift of spiritual life. He says, "[The Father] chose to give us birth." He’s talking about the day we came to faith in Jesus as our Savior. That’s the day that spiritual life began in us. Do you recall that day? Many of us were far too young to recall it. But do you celebrate it? Some us can’t even recall what day that was. The fact that we don’t celebrate it and perhaps can’t even remember the date doesn’t reflect very well on what we think of God’s gift to us, does it?

Have you ever noticed how an adult who comes to faith in Jesus seems to be on fire for the Lord? They so appreciate their new relationship with Christ that you can see it on their faces.

Contrast that with you and me. We struggle to recall the day we came to faith. We tend to take our spiritual life for granted. So what can we do about it? Recall what you’d be if the Father hadn’t created spiritual life in you. We’d be headed for our worst nightmare—eternal suffering in the life after this one.

But our God saved us from it and gave us spiritual life. James says that came to us through the word. As an infant the word of God attached to the water of baptism brought you to faith in Jesus. Or, at some point in your life someone shared with you the good news that Jesus is your Savior from sin and that word created faith in your heart. That’s God’s gift to you. Please don’t take that gift for granted! Instead, marvel at God’s gifts to you! He gave birth to us through his word.

There are many troubling phrases about life. One of them is "separated at birth." That phrase indicates a break in the relationship of a child with its mother or with its twin. And while our hope is that the child is placed for adoption and receives loving care, there’s still pain in that phrase. It’s not the way things were meant to be.

Our God created us to have a relationship with him. Sin ruined that, but our God did not give up on us. He sent us his Son to be our Savior from sin. And by his grace our God has given us spiritual life through faith in that Son. He has re-established a relationship with us. What a blessing that is! And he doesn’t want to be separated from us ever again. It’s his deepest desire to sustain and nurture that relationship through his word. But is that feeling mutual? Do our desires and actions speak the same way about our end of the relationship with him? Would others get the impression that we would rather die than lose our relationship with our loving God? We have much for which we need to repent and a "take or leave" attitude towards our God is one of them. How eternally grateful we can be that he is faithful to his promise to forgive us and to renew our relationship with him through his word! Marvel at that, my friends! Marvel at God’s gifts to you.

Part II.
I’ll bet you’ve heard this saying before: "God gave you one mouth but two ears for a reason. He wants you to listen more than you talk." Maybe someone has even spoken those words about you.

James repeats that same thought in another way here in our text. He says, "My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry." He urges us to listen more than we talk. There’s nothing more irritating than listening to someone who talks incessantly. They often don’t say much of anything. A wise person once said, "No one ever learned anything by talking."

It’s obvious we should listen more. To what? In the context of this portion of his letter, it’s obvious James wants us to listen more to God’s word. That’s the way God gives us his gifts. First and foremost, listening to God’s word nurtures our saving faith in Jesus. Your faith in Jesus is never static. It’s either increasing or decreasing. One way to increase it is to listen to his word.

And when that happens, it produces the fruits of faith, one of them being the righteous life that God is looking for. He wants what we want: we want to be more like Christ every day. James mentions one practical aspect of it. Our anger is diffused. No one likes being an angry person or being with an angry person. The way to deal with anger is to listen to God’s word.

In fact, when we listen to God’s word we are helped in every facet of our lives. James posts a short list of things in our lives to leave behind, a list that covers an enormous amount of our lives. "Get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent." It’s too easy for us to live like the rest of the world, to accept its humor, its entertainment, its way of doing business. Getting rid of it isn’t easy, but James tells us how. "Humbly accept the word planted in you." God’s truth lives in us by faith in Jesus. He’s giving us the opportunity right now to hear that word and thereby to grow in our faith and godly living.

Marvel at that gift! Marvel at God’s gifts to you. He gives you the opportunity to hear his word.

When our God asks us to hear his word, he’s not robbing us of our time. He’s not keeping something from us. Instead, he is giving something to us. Jesus said, "Blessed…are those who hear the word of God" (Lk. 11:28). Your forgiveness and eternal life are in that word. Your guidance for life is in that word. Your help in trouble and your comfort in death are in that word. You won’t find those gifts anywhere else. Marvel at God’s gifts to you. He gives you the opportunity to hear his word.

Part III.
Before he was crucified, Jesus told his followers what to expect on Judgment Day. He will separate Christians from unbelievers, like a shepherd separates sheep from goats. The sole basis for that separation will be faith in Jesus as the Savior or the absence of that faith. But since no one can see faith but God alone, Jesus will point to our deeds of love as evidence of our faith in him. In Matthew 25 he speaks about giving food to the hungry and water to the thirsty, giving clothes to the needy and visiting the sick. Those good works don’t save us, but they are the visible evidence of saving faith in Jesus.

James spends much of his letter encouraging such good works. One of the reasons for it is that God despises hypocrisy. How can we say we love Jesus but refuse to help those who need it? How can we proclaim that we trust in Jesus as our Savior but fail to show it in our lives? Thus James writes, "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

That’s James’ way of urging us to live as Christians, to show our faith in Christ by the way that we serve one another and reach out to others. It’s one of the reasons that our congregation exists—to share the saving love of Jesus with everyone.

And don’t forget that the power to produce those fruits comes from Christ through his word. Your God is not asking you to do the impossible. He’s not even asking you to find the power in yourself to live as a Christian should. Remember, he is the giver of every good gift. What he asks us to do he gives us the power to do.

Friends, the word of God is not a collection of lifeless words on a page of paper. They are living and active. They have power—the power of Christ’s forgiveness won on the cross and the power of his resurrection. That word is the power for Christian living. Don’t take that power for granted. Marvel at it. Marvel at God’s gifts to you. He gives you the power to obey his word. Amen.