“18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created.”
What makes for a generous person? Think about the generous people you know. What makes them generous?
The following characteristics come from Art Rainer. He says that generous people are satisfied. He writes, “They may have a nice house and they may have a nice car, but those things do not drive them. They would be just as content without them.” Generous people say, ‘yes,’ more than they say, ‘no.’ Rainer writes, “Do they have more money than everyone else? No. Do they have more time than everyone else? No. Do they have more possessions than everyone else? No. But they may manage money, time, and possessions in a way that allows them to say, ‘yes,’ more often.” Generous people ask, ‘what can I do for you?’ and they mean it. They see themselves as stewards of God’s possessions rather than owners of their own possession. Rainer says that generous people have a sense of levity about them and that they are energized by giving.
Do those characteristics describe anyone you know? My guess is that there are some people in this congregation who are not only thinking about this question but are being thought of at this very moment.
Was anyone thinking about God the Father? Do you think God the Father loves to give? Do you think He enjoys giving? Do you think He actively looks for opportunities to be generous? Do you think He asks, ‘what can I do for you?’ and means it? Do you think He says, ‘yes,’ more than He says, ‘no’? Do you think He gets a charge out of giving?
The Father is far more generous than any man or woman you have ever known. In fact, the most generous person that you have ever met is a window through which you can see the generosity of God. That doesn’t diminish the generosity of your uncle who drops everything to fix your car. That doesn’t diminish the way your mother gave more of herself to you than you can comprehend. It just says that God the Father is even more lavish.
We are gathered in this sanctuary, in part, to know the Father. Knowing God means knowing Him as He is. I’m not called to tell you what I imagine God might be like. I don’t have the right to speak from this pulpit because perhaps I’ve read more books about God than you. I’m speaking because God has called me to tell you what He says He is like, what He requires, and what He gives, and He tells us in HIs word.
Tonight, I am to tell you that He is generous. I’m not giving you guess work about the Father. He has made His generosity clear. He loves to give. You need to hear that because you, like me, are so very prone to misunderstand the Father.
God is a cheerful giver; your new birth is proof. That is the claim of this sermon: God is a cheerful giver; your new birth is proof.
We will study this in two points. First: new birth through the word of truth. Second: firstfruits of the new creation. We see the new birth through the word of truth in the first half of the verse, before the comma and the firstfruits of the new creation in the second half of the verse, after the comma.
First: new birth through the word of truth. James has been making an argument. He has been arguing that God the Father is uninterruptedly good and that He is extravagantly generous. Now, you are a thoughtful person. You want evidence. Why should you believe that the Father is good and generous?
If you really want to know God, you have to ask yourself for evidence. Too often we settle for platitudes about God. Too often we don’t require people to prove what they say about God. That allows preachers and all of us to say a fair bit of nothing about God and feel like it’s something.
Now James was making an argument about the Father. He has argued that the Father is good and generous. Now James gives evidence. Verse 18, “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth.”
How do you know the Father is a cheerful Giver? The fact that you even know Him shows that He is a cheerful Giver. On your own you could not know the Father. Without Him you would be dead in sin. Without His generosity you would be a navel-gazer obsessed with yourself, thinking that life was about you. You were locked into an empty way of life. The Father made you alive. He loves to give good gifts like that.
James tells us that Father chose to do that. That means He was under no compulsion to give anyone the gift of new life. No one with any leg to stand on would have blamed God for letting us all follow our own wayward hearts. Now, you and I sometimes do what is good and generous out of a desire to seem good and generous, but God never does that. He has no need. That makes Him even more generous. He is good and generous not because He feels like He should but because He wants to be. He chooses to be. “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.”
The Father is always motivated by goodness. Sometimes you are motivated by goodness. It is, after all, a fruit of the Spirit. Sometimes you aren’t. Sometimes you do evil. Sometimes you show kindness and you show it for the wrong reasons. The Father isn’t like that. He gives good gifts because He is perfectly good. He gave His Son because He wanted good things for us. “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” He gave new birth so you could believe in him. ““He chose to give us birth.”
This new birth is a perfect picture of the Father’s generosity; it displays His extravagance is the face of defiance. We humans need to be born again because our hearts are set against God. We have hearts of stone as Ezekiel put it, stubborn hearts.
It is hard to be generous to people who are continually opposing you, but that’s what God does. We aren’t like that. You and I are selectively generous. You might give your shirt of the back to some people and yet find it hard to even give begrudging help to others who have hurt you. You know that struggle. The Father isn’t like that. “He is patient with you,” as Peter says, “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
God’s generosity is such that He continues to give in the face of opposition. You see this literally fleshed out in His Son. As John put it, “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
How long would you endure with people who couldn’t care less about what you are trying to do for them? Imagine moving to Zimbabwe, which seems to be falling apart right now. You move there to help. You say goodbye to the comforts and love you enjoy here to help these people made in the image of God. Now, they could care less that you’ve come. It seems to make no difference to them when you give life-saving antibiotics to their children. You help install a well in a secluded village and no one thanks you. In fact, they tell you that you’ve outstayed your welcome. Five years in no one you have met has made any meaningful effort to do you one act of kindness. How long would you put up with that?
Behold the long-suffering generosity of God. “All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations…” In the face of that, God chooses to give new birth. He takes people like that, people like us, and he gives us life. Speaking about this life Calvin writes, “this invaluable benefit every one of the faithful feels in himself. Then the goodness of God, when known by experience, ought to remove from them all contrary opinion(s) respecting Him.”
If you have been born again, you know that God is a cheerful Giver because He has given to you. You know the grace of our Lord Jesus. Although he was rich, for your sake he became poor.
Now, maybe you don’t know the grace of our Lord Jesus. Maybe you don’t have this new birth. This birth comes through truth. “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth.” James is about to tell you about this word of truth. He is going to tell you how to humbly accept the word of truth, which can save you.
If you are here tonight or if you are listening online and you are still living for yourself, if you are still dead in sin, you need truth. You need to be brought to life by truth. Truth saves.
I you are living for yourself, it is clear that you don’t know the truth. How could you? You aren’t God. You only have your limited perspective which is colored by dozens of prejudices. You only have the reflections of other humans who have limited perspectives.
You can’t find your way to the truth any more than a goldfish could calculate the molarity of hydrogen gas. That fish doesn’t have the perspective necessary because he lives underwater. He doesn’t have the intellect necessary because is limited. You have neither the perspective nor the intellect necessary to find the truth about God, the truth about yourself, the truth about others, and the truth about life. None of us do. That’s why God speaks.
Secular scholars recognize that they can’t find this truth. Rather than humbly admitting that there is truth they can’t find, they arrogantly say that the fact that they can’t find truth means there is no truth. There is only your truth and my truth. There is only the way you see it and the way I see it. That’s not what James says. He says that, “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth.” That’s not what David says. He says that, “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.” Do you want life? Do you want to be wise? Do you want joy? This comes from knowing the truth. As Jesus said, “if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
The Father didn’t need to speak to you. The Father didn’t need to tell you about Himself. The Father didn’t need to tell you about yourself. But He did. He did because He is good. He did because He is generous. The Bible in your hands, the word of truth, is a sign that God is a cheerful Giver who enjoys helping and making people’s lives better. He is a God who says, ‘yes,’ far more than He says, ‘no.’
We’ve seen God bring people to life by His word. Now we see one reason why He does it. That’s our second point: firstfruits of the new creation.
It’s unnatural for you and I to think beyond ourselves. We regularly think about us. You regularly think about you. I regularly think about me. That’s even true when it comes to grace. That’s just a sign of how radical the fall into sin has been. We even make grace about us. We make God’s undeserved generosity about us.
Now, you certainly benefit from God’s grace, but it isn’t all about you. The rest of verse 18 makes that clear, “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created.”
God’s grace turns saved sinners into firstfruits. The firstfruits of the harvest were the first crops harvested. You knew what kind of yield you were getting by your firstfruit.
This metaphor pictures God as the farmer, saved sinners as the firstfruits, and all of creation as the rest of the field. How do you know what the rest of the field will be like? You look at the firstfruits. How do you know what God is going to do with this fallen, messed up world? You look at Christians.
Now, no one, Christian or otherwise, is going to disagree with the statement that this world is messed up. We all have a sense that Alzheimer’s is wrong, not just debilitating, not just sorrowful, but wrong. We have a sense that this is not the way it is supposed to be. We all, Christians and others alike, have a sense that the death of a beloved pet is not the way things are supposed to go. Yes, we use these sad moments to teach our children about life and death, but that doesn’t remove the feeling of wrongness from the whole affair. The best way to see the fall of creation is to compare it with the Creators words at the beginning, “it is very good.”
No one sees perfection anymore when they look at this world in which we live. The apostle Paul told the Christians living in the capitol city of Rome what we all see. “The creation was subjected to frustration… we know that the whole creation has been groaning… right up to the present time.” You still see those groans on the nightly news just like Buddhists and Jehovah’s Witnesses and atheists see it. No one thinks this is the way things were supposed to go.
What will God do about it? James says that you Christians are a picture of what God will do to the world. You are the firstfruits. You were unable to put yourself right, just like this world can’t put itself right. Left to your own devices you were hopeless just like all creation left to itself is hopeless. Your dignity and beauty are just as fading as the world’s. Creation needs salvation just like mankind. Jesus saved us sinners, in part, to show what he will do with all creation.
For that reason, it isn’t surprising that the book of Revelation ends where the book of Genesis began. It isn’t surprising that the garden comes back. It isn’t surprising that the tree of life comes back. It isn’t surprising that the rivers of life come back. It isn’t surprising that the precious metals and jewels come back. It isn’t surprising that the one seated on the throne says, “behold, I am making all things new”—not just sinners new, but all things new. The new birth that has happened to us Christians will happen for all things.
Everything will be the way it is supposed to be in the new creation, which simply means that everything will be as God intended it to be. You will be as God intended it to be. Anything you can imagine will be as God intended it to be.
I can’t tell you the splendors of the new creation. The book of Revelation is filled with imagistic language because it is impossible to put the glory into words just like it is impossible to explain the glory of romance to an eight-year-old boy. He has no categories for it. We have no categories for the splendor of everything being right and so we get the word-pictures John gives. We get streets paved with gold. We get a city dressed up like a bride. We get a world with no more night.
The apostles all saw that. John wrote about it using word-pictures. Peter wrote about it in terms of the earth being destroyed and remade. Paul wrote about it in terms of creation waiting for the sons of God to be revealed. Hebrews wrote about it in terms of a final Sabbath rest. James wrote about it in terms of firstfruits.
I think that agreement is remarkable, but that is what you would expect if God were really speaking through each of these men. James wasn’t in Jerusalem developing his own theories while Paul’s thoughts were evolving out on the field. They all agreed because they had all heard from God.
They all see the new life we Christians enjoy as an example of the new life everything will enjoy. “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created.”
You might not think that Christians are all that remarkable, and, in many ways, we are all less than we should be. But us saved sinners are weaned off pride and we do become humble. Us saved sinners are weaned off immorality and we do become pure. Us saved sinners are weaned off greed and we do become generous. Us saved sinners are weaned of ourselves and we do now worship the living God. We become like Him, full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
We are changed and that is evidence that this messed up world will be changed. It will miraculously come to new life just like you did. It will be transformed just like you are being transformed.
Now, can you find a Christian who isn’t all that transformed? Can you find a firstfruit who isn’t a great picture of new life in Christ? In other words, can you find a Christian who is like Christ than a non-Christian?
Of course. Listen to CS Lewis. “Take the case of a sour old maid, who is a Christian, but cantankerous. On the other hand, take some pleasant and popular fellow, but who has never been to church. Who knows how much more cantankerous the old maid might be if she were not a Christian, and how much more likeable the nice fellow might be if he were a Christian? You can’t judge Christianity simply by comparing the product in these two people, you would need to know what kind of raw material Christ was working on in both cases.”
Think about how much God has changed you. That should be an indication to you of how much He will change everything. You have been made a new creation as an indicator to you of the change you can expect in all creation.
If you aren’t a Christian, you might know how much God has changed others. Maybe that’s why you are listening right now. You’ve seen someone else change and you want to change.
But maybe you haven’t seen this new life. Maybe you don’t know a born-again Christian well enough or haven’t known one long enough to see this new life. You need to look at Jesus. He is what we are being changed into. You know fallen human nature. You are in it. You can see how different Jesus is. He delights to love others. That’s not human nature. He delights to serve. That’s not human nature. He delights in God. That’s not human nature. Ponder how different Jesus is from human nature and you will see the extent of the change in store for the new creation. The new creation will be as superior to this one as Jesus is superior to a man dead in his sins.
If you know the sad state of mankind, you know that is quite an improvement. You also know that the world desperately needs that improving. Christians are the promise that this change is come. You are the promise that this change is coming even as you lay down your life for your children, honor your spouse, work at your job as for the Lord, teach GEMS and Cadets, pray with a sick friend, and do the good you can. You, dear Christian, are a human sized picture of the new creation.
You didn’t ask for that honor, but God is generous. He loves to give what you don’t deserve. Amen.