May 15, 2022 Easter 5 The Sunday of the Holy Spirit
Easter 5
James 1:16-21
May 15, 2022
“Can You See the Good?”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There’s a verse in the book of Hebrews we’ll start with first of all today. It’s in the middle of a section where he’s telling us we need to be more mature as Christians. We need to leave our ABCs and move on to more mature teachings. But some of us aren’t ready for it. He says we’re still drinking only milk like babies do when we should be moving on to solid food. And here’s the verse, Hebrews 5:14, “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
So telling the difference between good and evil isn’t simple. In fact, it’s something that only the mature can do, for one. And second, it’s something that takes a lot of practice. Constant practice, he says. Have you ever thought about this before? We tend to think it’s so easy to tell what’s good and what’s evil. Not so. Not so at all. Think about it this way. If it was so easy would there be so much evil in the world. No. It’s a skill. Christians have to develop this skill (through God’s Word and the Holy Spirit) to clearly distinguish what’s good in the world and what’s evil.
That’s exactly the skill that James is also trying to teach in his letter in chapter 1. That’s where we’re going to spend our time today. We had the reading from James 1:16-21 but we’re also going to back up a bit in that chapter to see his full teaching. He starts with the evil side of it. And basically he says, “If you’re being tempted to do something bad, don’t blame it on God.” I put the verse on your sermon insert. James 1:13, “Let no one say when he’s tempted, “I’m being tempted by God,” for God can’t be tempted with evil and He Himself tempts no one.”
So here is part 1 of our lesson. Evil does NOT come from God. It comes from below. From Satan and from us and from the world.
Part 2 of our lesson is where does all good come from? James answers, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” So that’s part 2 of the lesson. All good comes from God.
So all evil does NOT come from God. It comes from below. All good comes from above, from God. It sounds fairly easy. But in practice it takes much skill to distinguish them. It takes maturity. Takes the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.
Why does this matter? Because you and I need to see, above all else, that God is good. Do you understand? God is NOT evil nor can He be tempted by evil. God is good all the time. The same yesterday, today, and forever. He’s not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. James says that he’s not like the lights in the heavens—the sun, moon, and stars—which are always variating, turning, giving shadows, etc. He’s the Father of lights. He’s not cold one day and blazing hot the next. He’s always a perfect 70 degrees. He’s always good. That’s why this matters.
But when we haven’t matured as Christians we often make the mistake of blaming evil on God. We play the victim which our current society is so good at. We’re the victims and God is the bully. “Why did God do this to me? Why does God keep being so mean to me? Woe is me!” But sin and evil don’t come from God. They come from us and from the devil.
A good and faithful example of this in the Bible is Joseph. He was sold by his brothers into slavery, mistreated by the cup-bearer who forgot about him and by Potiphar’s wife who tried to seduce him. He could’ve blamed it all on God. He could’ve said, “God is bad. God is evil. God did all of this to me.” But he didn’t. He saw where the evil really came from—from his own heart, from his brothers’ hearts, from the world and the devil. And he saw that God never changed through all of it. God’s always good. So he says to his brothers later, when he could’ve gotten very angry and blamed it all on them—he says, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” God is good, friends. The evil is on our end. God is good.
Sometimes the letters in the New Testament just flat out give us two lists back to back. First a list of evil things from us and the devil and the world and then a list of good things from God. Galatians 5 is a perfect example although there are others. There Paul says, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these….But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…”
So when you’re walking around in this world every day and you’re seeing all kinds of evil everywhere—pain, suffering, lies and deception, jealousy, hatred, abuse, no fear or love of God in the world—understand where that all comes from. Not from God. Don’t blame it all on God. That’s us. And that’s the devil. And that’s the world. Put the blame where it belongs and call evil by its true name. Don’t say, “Well, God made me this way,” and proceed to defile yourself. You bear the blame. You’re the sinner. I’m the sinner. These are the sorrows of this world.
But then when you’re walking around in this world every day and you’re also seeing all kinds of good everywhere—don’t be deceived, brothers and sisters—everything good and everything perfect comes from God, from the Father of lights. Everything good! Your body and soul, eyes, ears, and all your members. Your brain and senses. All of you. And also your family, friends, clothes, house, food, light, electricity, laughter, marriage, work. All of it from God, who is always good. Can you see the good around you? It takes constant practice as we heard from Hebrews at the beginning. Can you see the good?
And then James takes us to the greatest goods. The goods that are so far above everything else. He says, “Of the Father’s own will He brought us forth [gave us birth, that is] by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” He has given you birth through Holy Baptism into a wonderful world of spiritual goods. He’s given you the greatest good of all time—His own dear, perfect Son Jesus Christ. Even though Jesus did not cause any of the evil or bad in the world, yet He took the blame for it all on the cross. He took the guilt and shame for it. So even though we shouldn’t blame all our evil on God—yet God still took it on the cross for us. That’s how good God is. How good Jesus is. And He’s always that good.
He continues to give good gifts to you and me. You are forgiven all of your sins and made a perfect child of God. You are given the body and blood of Jesus to eat and drink in the Lord’s Supper. You are given the Holy Spirit through the Word to work in your heart to produce good in you. To give you good and better things like love and joy and peace and kindness and self-control. All of this is from God. He’s good. Don’t forget it. He doesn’t change. He’s not one day out to get you and one day you’re best friend. He’s always good. It’s us causing all the trouble. It’s Him working all things for our good.
Then James proceeds to put this into practice for us. He gives us some practical examples of receiving the good things from God and putting away the bad things from us. This is in verses 19 to 21, “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
It’s an interesting word there, put away. It’s like literally taking off your clothes, or throwing something away, or locking something up. So all the evil that’s in us and from the world—that we put aside. We take it off. We lock it up. And then we receive good things from where all good things come—from God. So guys, what should we put away this week? Put away our anger. Put away our lust. Put away our greed. Put away our jealousy. Put away our self-pity. Our pride, in other words. And in humility receive God’s Word and the Holy Spirit.
I would finally give you one other example, the prophet Jonah. Jonah had our same problem of blaming everything on God. Remember that Jonah ran away from God because he didn’t think God was good. Well, at the end of it all, after Jonah had gone to Nineveh finally and preached repentance and they had turned to God, then Jonah gets angry once again. Once again he blames everything on God. And he especially gets angry that God had given him a plant for shade from the sun and then God has taken it away. So twice God asks Jonah this question, “Do you do well to be angry?” And Jonah, like us, stubbornly says, “Yes, I do well to be angry. Angry enough to die.” In other words, “It’s all your fault, God!”
But God lovingly lets Jonah know he’s quite wrong, actually, to be angry. Because God is always good. You can ask yourself quite simply this question, “Do you do well to be angry?” This is part of distinguishing good and evil. Part of what mature Christians do. No, we don’t do well to be angry. To blame God. We do well to listen to Him. To be quick to hear and slow to speak. To trust God. To know that He’s always good and that all good comes from Him. We do well, always, to put away our evil and to receive the good from God.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.