Recently I was reading news articles…someone did this, and someone else did that…then I came across an article about a star shredding black hole.
All the humans doing stuff occupy a small space in space.
The galatic stuff is mind-blowing in its scope.
It caused me to contemplate God’s vastness and our utter dependence on him…how he controls the cosmos and is involved in our small human stuff…fortunately, its not small for him, because its NOT small for us.
Then I read James 1 and how God cannot be tempted by evil nor does he tempt anyone.
God cannot be tempted by evil because he IS good and all good comes from him…all that he DOES is good.
Theologians talk of God’s goodness as meaning that He is the final standard of all good, and that all that God is and does is worthy of approval.
Approval by whom…By God.
This is going to sound circular.
Let’s call it the “what is good, loop”
“Good is what God approves”
“Why is what God approves good?”
“Because he approves it.”
Lest you throw up your hands and say, “That is dumb”
Let me ask you, “Who would you like to nominate to be the final judge of what is good?”
There is no one above him…he is by necessity the final judge of what is good…he is source of all that is good.
This is important…because, what if he were NOT good…what if he were great and powerful…not yet good.
I thought about that…when I thought about the star shredding black hole
What if the one who made and rules the cosmos…was a bad being?
Thomas Paine, 18th century writer who had wide influence during the time of the America Revolution, wrote…
“It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.”
His book, “The Age of Reason” swept across American Universites, like Yale in the late 18th century…shaping the minds of students
Fortunately, God raised up men like Timothy Dwight, who became president of Yale, who was way smarter than Paine…and ALSO godly…to turn the tide.
Perhaps we should let Paine determine what is good…he thought himself well qualified.
But what if, like so many Greek gods…the one true God is bad and not good?
What if he did just play with us, we are his chew toys?
What if he could not be trusted because he is not good?
What if he tests us, to get us to fail…maybe he gets a kick out of seeing humans try and try…only to fail and fail.
That would be bad…and some think that is exactly who God is…many of course, have come to disbelieve in him altogether.
When movie director Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate was murdered is 1969 by the Manson family…he said, “Some people turn to God in times of terrible distress, I turned away…I realized that everything is absurd.”
Unlike Polanski, Thomas Paine wasn’t an atheist…he just didn’t believe in the God of the Bible, or that Jesus was the incarnate son of God.
He was a deist…his god was absent, disinterested…God wasn’t bad per se, he just didn’t notice us once he made us…he was off doing something else.
He wound the universe like clock, of which we are cogs, and set it running on its on.
Now, we are the arbiters of what is good and bad…we decide…God is NOT interested in small details like us.
This deist god is not greater than the true God…he is far less
Our God is effortlessly able to run the cosmos and be involved in the details of our lives.
And God is good.
All that is good, comes from God.
We will either trust him…or we will trust someone else.
If you reject the God of the Bible…like Paine did(or Polanski)…you will put your full confidence somewhere else
Usually, your confidence will end up being in yourself…what you determine to be good and right will be good and right.
You may go with some expert…but if he or she disappoints or if you disagree…you will pick another expert…meaning, of course…you trust you above all else.
So, back to that what is good loop…this actually works when God is in the loop…
What if you take out God…and put in your name.
“Good is what Terry approves”
“Why is what Terry approves good?”
“Because he approves it.”
This, will be, always has been…a disaster when tried…and it’s tried quite often.
Let’s go to James, 1:12-18
James 1:12 Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.
Verse 12 is the connective tissue between verses 2-11 and 13-18, that’s why we read it both last week and this week.
God brings and allows trials to test our faith…not as in, “pass/fail” but as in grow.
In Verse 12, James writes of the enduring blessing of enduring faith in the face of trials…
…then he quickly shifts gears to head off some potential wrong thinking about God and trials.
Yes, God does test…No, God does not tempt.
You make say it is a distinction without a difference…but that is far from true.
Testing is a good thing…tempting is an evil thing…they are very different thing.
A good parent brings and allows challenges to help move the child towards thriving maturity…of course these challenges will include some failure, but the purpose is growth and thriving.
A bad parent would tempt a child in order for that child to fail…this is the opposite of helping the child grow…this hurts the child, undermines trust, and health.
But for us, as we seek to faithfully endure trials…we know that every trial carries with it a temptation, an enticement to sin…specifically, the sin of turning away from God, in it’s many forms.
God may allow or bring trials, but he is never the author of temptation.
James is concerned that as we wrestle with the concept of growth under trial…that we resist the temptations that accompany those trials.
We are to move towards God in trials and to move away from tempation in trial
This is a single movement…turning away from temptation, for the believer, is turning towards God
Last Sunday night I asked a group of middle school boys…what would you feel and think if you were at the bedside of a loved one who died?
They replied as you might expect…”I would be sad” “I would ask why” “I would be angry”
Good, honest answers
When a loved one dies, people can be tempted to question God’s love…to become angry with him…if he is there, and loving, and powerful…he would have done something.
When a “good person” suffers and the evil prosper we are tempted to question God’s justice…how is this fair.
When we have financial struggles we can question God’s providence in our lives…his personal involvement…does he care about me right now?
Testing almost always includes temptation.
Tempation is not sin…but if not resisted…it can become sin
In the OT God often brought trials into the lives of people to grow them…prepare them for his larger purposes.
Think of Abraham…and the great test revolving his own son.
Like a skill or muscle only grows when placed under increasing “tests”…humans grow when pushed past current levels of ability.
We might say…”I’d prefer to stay where I am, I’m happy here…so forget the trials please.”
But God has eternity and not just time in mind for us…he is not going to “leave us alone”…precisely because he is good.
So James writes…when tempted (even during God ordained trials) don’t say “God is tempting me.”
He is not susceptible to any evil desire and he never desires evil in us…so he won’t tempt.
Okay, then where does temptation come from?
James says it comes from us.
but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.
What about Satan? If I can’t blame God…can I at least blame him?
James will get to him in chapter 4…but even if Satan offers a temptation…we are the ones who take the bait or not.
It’s no good to say my own sin does not originate in my own heart.
This passage has been called the “fools biography….Here are the chapters of that biography…temptation…sin conceived…sin birthed…sin maturing…death.
It’s a Terrible, concise description of the lifespan of a fool.
Sin, if not atoned for by gospel faith, leads to final spiritual death.
Again, it is important to understand that temptation is not in and of itself, sin
Jesus was tempted, just as we are…yet without sin.
This is important to remember…because some Christians…with sensitive hearts towards God feel that their ongoing temptation indicates that they are out of fellowship with the Lord.
On the one hand, as we “train for godliness” and “grow in Christlike maturity” temptations ought to be losing some of their power in our lives.
But even still…we must not measure our maturity in faith by how often we are tempted but rather by how often we are not giving into temptation.
We are to grow in faith and in wisdom…wisdom is trusting God, believing God, living out of his power.
As I’ve mentioned several times, James is called the NT “wisdom” book…like the OT book of Proverbs.
If you look in Proverbs, chapters 5-9 you see this ongoing image of a temptress…lady folly who plays on the desires of foolish men and hooks like them fish and delivers them to destruction.
But this temptress is not blamed for the fool’s destruction, it is the fool himself who is to blame.
The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast. He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly. 5:22,23
Now, just in case you haven’t read the book of Proverbs…don’t get bothered by the use of lady folly…because he gives more time to lady wisdom…wisdom personified.
Does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice? …For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord.
Proverbs 8
Here’s the bottom line:
- Every trial brings opportunity for growth (if we turn to God and continue to trust him in them)
and
- Every trial brings opportunity for temptation (to turn away from God in some way).
But be sure of this…God is not the source of temptation to sin.
How could he be
Temptation to sin…is tempation to turn away from God.
How could God…be behind us turning away from him?
In fact, God will provide a way out (of temptation) but not necessarily a way out of testing.
Here is where we often get tripped up….we read…
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. 1 Cor. 10:13
And we expect that God will not allow a trial to be of such a severity that it will overcome our own ability to endure it.
After all, somewhere in the Bible it says “God will not give you more than you can handle.”
Right?
Wrong…its not there.
Its a confused version of 1 Cor. 10:13.
It conflates…trials and temptations.
There is no such promise that God will only give you trials you can “carry”
The promise is that temptations will never be more than you can withstand…not that trials will not bigger than your own strength.
A trial may take you all the way to the bottom…physically, mentally, relationally, spiritually…but in and through all of it…you can withstand the temptation to turn away from God…you need not sin in all of it.
Job, the most famous example of suffering…was taken all the way down to the ground…in every single aspect of his life…
Job 1:22 “Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.”
But then, Job eventually gave into temptation and began to question God’s goodness, and justice.
He began to blame God…he deleted God from the “what is good loop” and inserted himself.
Then God, never explaining the “why” of the trials rebuked Job for thinking he could take God to trial.
In Job’s trials…he fell to the temptation to put God on trial…to question God’s justice, and his goodness…this was a terrible mistake.
The story does end with Job regaining his spiritual sanity…with one of my favorite quotes…
“My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.” Job 42:5
This is a concise definition of spiritual growth.
I had heard and believed some things to be true of you.
Now I have experienced you for myself.
Is God asking too much to accept his testing us and not expect us to blame him when we are tempted by that testing?
Let’s ask that from a different angle.
Would God be good if he left us alone altogether…like Paine’s deist god
He could stop testing us…he could leave us are we are…but would that make him good…or just uninvolved
I’ve been reading “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, mind and the body in the healing of trauma.”
It is a very difficult and helpful book.
In the book, Dr. Van Der Kolk gives disturbing data concerning what happens to people if they are not properly nurtured, engaged by their parents when they are children.
It’s incredible how adult resiliency is so tied to proper attention to a child by their parent.
My point…is that God is too good to simply leave us alone.
We want his involvement…as long as we choose what that involvement looks like.
But then, we have placed ourselves, not God…in that “What is good loop”
CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain: addresses the topic of trials and growth and God’s goodness.
He wrote “Here again we come up against what I have called the ‘intolerable compliment.”
By this he means, God paying attention to who we are becoming.
He unpacks this by talking about an artist who makes a rough sketch to amuse a child…and doesn’t pay much attention to it.
But if he is seeking to paint the great picture of his life (like this Rembrandt)…he will take endless trouble to make it just right.
He says, what if the picture were “alive”
He says, you could imagine that picture after being rubbed and scraped and restarted over and over…wishing it were only a thumbnail sketch…something the artist cared less about.
“In the same way,” He writes, “it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love, but less.”
This is hard stuff.
Its one thing to hear it in church…its another thing to live it out there…in hard home sitautions, in hospitals, battlefiends, graveyards…or in the mundane of a tedious life.
But it is true…and it has been, and it is being lived by many…it can be lived by you, if you will choose to live it.
But you have to choose to put God, not self in the “What is good” loop.
But James doesn’t leave us with a negative… “God doesn’t tempt us”
He quickly goes to the positive…”God does give us good gifts.”
16-18 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
God is not the author of temptation, or of anything evil…he is the one who gives us good gifts…supreme among these gifts is new birth in Christ.
The phrase “shifting shadows” is a bit confusing.
Think of the sun as it moves across the sky casting variable shadows here below
The idea is that God is the creator of the cosmos (maker of the sun, and all heavenly lights)…but he does not change like the cosmos….he is constant, stable.
Every created thing undergoes change…God, the uncreated one does not change.
He is good…we can trust him.
He doesn’t change…he will always be good…we can always trust him.
His greatest display of goodness…is our new birth in Christ…the first fruits of more good to come.
What James is saying here is line with Romans 8
Where Paul wrote that God is working all things for the good of those who love him…who are called according to his purpose.
All things include, of course…trials of all kinds.
We can trust him, he is good…he has given us the greatest of all good…his own son.
What can separate us from the Love of God?…trouble, hardship, persuection, famine, nakendness, danger, death…(all kinds of trials)…NO!
Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ our Lord.
He certainly doesn’t want the trials to tempt us to turn from him, to seperate us from him…when he will never turn from us.
25 years ago, I met a man who was about 25 at the time…so half his life ago.
He was, by his own account…a wild man…I thought it myself at the time.
We have had sporadic contact over the years…but last week we spent about an hour together.
He told me of how he had changed…he told me of how his cancer has returned…of his love for children, his wife.
He told me of his faith and what he was asking God to do in his life…what this trial has done in him.
God has not left my friend alone…he didn’t leave him a “wild man”
You say, “If it means cancer, I would like to be left alone.”
Being left alone by God wouldn’t mean “no cancer” or “no trials”…it would mean no ultimate good, no real presence of God in the midst of trouble.
Being left alone by God…for me, is a good definition of what hell will be.
Don’t confuse trials and temptations.
Every trial has the potential to move us towards to God.
And
Every trial has the potential to tempt us to move away from God.
You don’t get to choose to avoid all trials
You do get to choose to not let temptation turn into full blown sin.
So, let’s circle back to where we began.
Is God good?
Will you trust him, even when you don’t fully understand what he is doing?
If you won’t trust him…who will you trust?
Yourself?
Polanski, the director who inserted his own name in the “what is good loop”…has been hiding from extradiction to the US for decades…for mulitple sexual assaults.
It is never good when we think we can be the judge of what is good..and become the judge of God himself.
“But why trust him, if I don’t understand him?
“How does he get to decide that everything he does is good?”
Because, everything he does is good…eventually everyone will see it and all knees will bow…better to bow sooner than later
So…like everyone human, everywhere, at all times…we are left to our faith.
Who will we trust?
If you say I trust no one…then you are trusting yourself…you are putting yourself…into that important “What is good?” Loop.
There is no getting around this.
But, as we grow to trust him…as we are able to say…”My ears had heard of you, now my eyes have seen you.”
We will more and more be positioned to see that who God is and what God does…is truly good.
Will you, take God off trial in your own heart?
I think this is key…in our own pride, we keep God on trial because we don’t understand him.
We think if we cannot figure him out then we cannot trust him completely…this is just not true.
Trials grow our faith, when in faith, we take God off trial.
Contemplate star shredding black holes.
Contemplate Christ on the cross.
He is great beyond imagination.
God is love beyond imagination
He is worthy of our trust…his name alone belongs in the “what is good loop.”
Gospel Invitation: Communion