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Don’t
Celebrate the Wrong Birthday |
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Pocket Paper ______________________ Message by Robert J. Morgan, Senior Pastor The Donelson Fellowship 3210 McGavock Pike 615/871-4769 www.donelson.org I read this week an interesting story about West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who is 90 years old and is the oldest and longest-serving member of the United States Senate. For many years, he celebrated his birthday on the wrong date. His mother died when he was very young, in the flu epidemic of 1918, and he was adopted by his aunt and uncle. Somehow in the process, everyone thought his birthday was on January 15th, and for many years that was when he celebrated his “birthday.” And then in the 1970s, his brother found an old copy of the Senator’s birth certificate and told him, to his surprise, that he had actually been born on November 20th. He wasn’t as old as he thought, and he had to change his birthday. His political opponents accused him of flip-flopping! Well, today’s message is entitled: Don’t Celebrate the Wrong Birthday. Now, in some periods in the past, various obscure groups of Christians have taught that we shouldn’t celebrate birthdays at all. One of the reasons is that there’s no record in the Bible of anyone who was godly ever celebrating a birthday. In fact, in the entire Bible there are only two references to birthdays. One is in the Old Testament and the other is in the New. Two different men had birthday parties, and someone died at both parties. The first birthday party was
that of Pharaoh, king of Since those are the only birthdays recorded in the Bible, a handful of Christian sects have said, “Well, birthdays are pagan celebrations; we shouldn’t observe them at all.” Personally, I like my birthday, and I think birthdays are great. I’ve noticed that people who have the most of them tend to live the longest. The only problem is that at some point the candles start costing more than the cake. But the Bible does warn us not to celebrate the wrong birthday. And that brings us to our Scripture reading for today, from the book of James. We’re in a series of studies through James, and today we are coming to James 1:13-18. As we read this text, notice that it falls into two distinct paragraphs, and that both paragraphs discuss the idea of birth, or of being born: 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 firstfruits of all He created (James
1.
The Birthday of Mr. Death (vv. 13-15) The first paragraph describes
the birth of Mr. Death. Look at
verse 13. It begins: When
tempted…. It
doesn’t say, “If we’re tempted…,” but
“When we’re tempted….” Is there anyone in this room who
doesn’t know what it’s like to face temptation? Here is something that is wrong, it is
unhealthy, it is questionable, it is self-destructive, yet we are drawn
toward that item or practice or experience with an almost irresistible
force. We’re drawn like a
moth into the flame. We’re
drawn like a bird into a net.
It’s the magnetism of sin.
Where does it come from?
Well, James insists that it does not come from God. God may test us, but He never tempts
us to do evil. Verse 13
says: When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.”
For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone. Now let’s take a moment
to compare this verse with another one.
Look at Hebrews 4:15, which is referring to our Lord Jesus
Christ: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we
are—yet was without sin. So James says that God cannot be tempted with evil; and Hebrews says that Jesus Christ was tempted every way, just like we are. This illustrates the mystery of our Lord’s dual nature. He was both God and man. As God, He was beyond temptation; but as a man, He was subject to temptation. Who can understand that? It’s part of the mystery of His incarnation. Do you remember in the Gospels that immediately after His baptism, He endured an intense period of temptations by the devil himself? Satan was apparently mystified by the two-fold nature of Christ. The devil didn’t understand what was happening. Here was God becoming a man. God is untemptable. He is above and beyond all temptation. He is separate from all sin. He is holy beyond understanding. But when He became a man, suddenly He entered the world of fallen humanity, and He had a human nature, which was temptable. And so the devil tried it out. He was experimenting. He actually thought that perhaps he could lure Jesus Christ, in His human nature, into sinning. But he failed, and our Lord Jesus Christ proved to be the only human being in all of history who never yielded to temptation or gave in to sin. This tells us that temptation itself is not a sin, but it becomes a sin when we yield to it. That process is dissected and described for us in the next verse. James Now, the words “dragged away,” and “enticed” were hunting words in the original Greek, and they were used to describe the various traps and snares that hunters used to catch an animal, or the bait that fishermen used to catch fish. The devil sets traps for us. He studies us, knows our patterns, discerns our weakness, and attacks us at our point of weakness. And inwardly, our fallen human nature gives birth to temptations that draw us away and entice us to evil. And then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin,
when it is full-grown gives birth to death. James explains the chain reaction. First there’s an unhealthy desire within us, then we give in to it, birthing sin; and sin, in turn, gives birth to death. The birthday of Mr. Death occurs because of sin. Apart from Christ, the only birthday we celebrate is the birthday of Mr. Death, and the candles are burning in our own hearts. Aesop tells a fable about a farmer who went out to his barn during the winter and found a snake that was so cold and so frozen that it was a stiff as a stick. The farmer had compassion on the creature and took it and nestled it in his coat and inside his shirt; and the creature was revived by the warmth and resumed its natural instincts and bit the farmer with his deadly and poisonous fangs, and the man died in anguish and agony. Some of us may think we can tame the temptation and play around with the serpent, but temptation, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin gives birth to death. 2.
The Birthday of Mr. Life (vv. 16-18) But James doesn’t leave
us there. The Bible never leaves
us there. The next paragraph
tells us about the birthday of Mr. Life.
He begins with a little preamble in verse 16: Don’t
be deceived, my dear brothers. And
then we have one of the most wonderful verses in the Bible about God’s
grace and His gifts and blessings to us:
Every good and perfect gift is
from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights. Commentators and expositors have marveled and wondered about that phrase, “the Father of heavenly lights.” It’s the only time this phrase occurs in the Bible, and this is the only time in Scripture God is given this title. Most people believe it means just what it says—God is the creator of the sun and moon and planets and stars, the heavenly lights. I read something interesting the other day about the stars. A star is really a giant ball of burning gas that’s held together by its own gravity. The force of gravity is continually trying to cause the star to collapse, but the pressure of its gas and radiation is continually trying to push outward; and at the very center of the star are constant nuclear reactions and explosions. And the heat and light from these stars is unimaginable. The brightest stars we know about are a million times brighter and hotter than our sun. And here’s something else I didn’t know. We all know that our earth is revolving around the sun, one time every 365 days. But did you know that the sun itself, and thereby our whole galaxy, is revolving around something? The sun and all the stars in our galaxy are revolving around the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Just as our planet makes a trip around the sun every 365 days, our sun makes a revolution around the center of the galaxy one time every two hundred million years. What’s at the center of the Milky Way? That’s a great question. A teacher asked her class that question one day—What’s in the center of the Milky Way, and a little boy answered, “Chewy nougat and caramel.” The point that James is making is that the same God who flung out the stars and scattered the galaxies is the same one who gives us so many other gifts, so many good and perfect gifts. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. And what particular gift does
He want to give us? Verse 18
says: He chose to give us birth—there’s our key thought
again—through the word of truth,
that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created. This is a very important verse, and I’d like to look at every phrase of it in turn. The verse opens with the
words: He chose…, and this points to the sovereign prerogatives of
God. Ephesians 1 says: Praise
be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the
heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy
and blameless in His sight. In
love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in
accordance with His pleasure and will—to the praise of His glorious
grace. James was hitting on this same truth when he said, “He chose to give us new birth…” James is the fourth writer of the New Testament to talk about being born again or experiencing a new birth. Ø We first encounter this concept in John’s Gospel, when Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” Ø The Apostle Paul said in the book of Titus, “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” Ø Peter wrote, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Ø And now James says that God chose to give us new birth. Just as sin gives birth to death, God gives us birth leading to everlasting life—and that’s why you often hear Christians described as “born-again-believers.” This is a big sports day around the world as we have the Super Bowl tonight, and as you know there are very many Christians involved in the world of high school, college, and professional sports. One organization that has advanced the cause of Jesus among athletes is the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, but many people don’t know how that organization came into being. Years ago there was a boy named Don McClanen who grew up in a family that went to church regularly, but their Christianity was largely external. Don’s father was a leader in the church, but there were some glaring inconsistencies in his life that weren’t lost on the boy. One day Don said that he was thinking of being a minister, a preacher, when he grew up, and his dad scoffed at that. To be truthful, Don did things that made a lot of people scoff. One summer he took over his brother’s job of mowing lawns, and one of the biggest lawns belonged to the mayor. He got on the mower, but the mower got away from him and went splashing into the pond. And in time, he became the school clown; yet he evidently had some leadership qualities because he was elected class president his junior and senior years in high school, and was the president of his church youth group. He also played sports and loved it. When Don was seventeen years
old, the Japanese bombed After the War, Don McClanen returned home and met up with a girl from high school, Gloria, who was working for the telephone company. He asked her for a date, she turned him down, and he asked again. They were married, and Don went to college on the GI Bill, and then he became a coach at Eastern Oklahoma State College. Don loved children, and he was thrilled with Gloria became pregnant. But Gloria lost the baby, and Don was disconsolate. His heart was absolutely broken. One day during the lunch hour, he went for a walk and he passed a Roman Catholic Church. He tried the doors, and they were open. Going in, he found a chapel and knelt down and gave his heart and his life to Jesus Christ. It was a life-changing moment for him. It was like being born again. He was born again by the Word of Truth that came down from the Father of Heavenly Lights. He and Gloria became involved in church, and Don wanted to incorporate his newfound Christian faith into his athletics and into his sports life. He started collecting articles that mentioned sports personalities who were willing to talk about their faith. He wrote to each one of them, wanting to see them; but he had little success. Finally the baseball player, Branch Rickey, give him five minutes; and the five minutes turned into five hours, and together they dreamed up an organization known as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Branch came up with some money, and Don did the footwork; and today, fifty years later, FCA has a ministry that reaches around the world. It’s because of one man who knelt down, gave his life to Jesus Christ, and was born again by the Word of Truth. The “Word of Truth” is a phrase that occurs two other times in the New Testament, in Ephesians and Colossians; and in both references the Word of Truth is specifically identified with the Gospel, the Good News of Christ. Ø Ephesians 1:13: You also were included in Christ when you heard the Word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation. Ø Colossians 1:4-5: We have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints—the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the Gospel. And this verse in James says that God chose to give us birth through the Word of Truth that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created. What does that mean? According to Revelation 21 and 22, one day God is going to make a new heavens and a new earth. He’s going to make all things new. He’s going to usher in the newness of eternity in a recreation of the stars above and the earth beneath. But when we’re saved, when we’re born again, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ within our hearts, we become the tokens and symbols and vanguards and firstfruits of eternity. I’d like to end with an
appeal for you to give your life wholeheartedly to the Lord Jesus
Christ. I once read that Rev.
Charles Spurgeon of
“Or you can stand there and let the streetcar pass by. You see it, hear its bell, and notice the people on board, but you stay where you are in. That’s a picture of those who love the world and stand in the mud of their sins.
“The third option is to step totally off the street into the car, entrust your full weight and being to it, and let it take you where it’s going. And that’s what I recommend. Give yourself fully to Christ. Jump in with both feet. Let the Conductor guide you along the tracks of holiness until at last He brings you to the terminal of His glory.” Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office.Other messages are available from our website. Just click on the Pocket Papers link on our home page for a list of available messages. |
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