Quarantine Epistles 45

Pastor Chris’ Corona Quarantine Epistles to the Flock of AIC Ngong Road, in Dispersion and Isolation. 45th. Edition.

Dear Pilgrims of the Dispersion, 

Yesterday, James 1:13-16 warned us against attributing temptation to God, because God is good by nature and cannot be tempted by, or tempt anyone with evil. We look today at the generous disposition of God in verses 17-18. The Source of Good Gifts (v17a). Good things don’t just appear from nowhere. They have an origin, and that origin is God. He is defined here as the Father of lights, to distinguish him from the prince of darkness.

We need to appreciate the fact that God is the source of every good thing. A doctor who treats sick people is God’s healer. He/she did not get the skills to heal from the devil. That is why I get frustrated with Christians who dismiss doctors and pray for miraculous healing. The two are not mutually exclusive. God can, and does heal, without doctor intervention. But God also heals through doctors. Likewise, a good architect, engineer, artist, musician, etc., have all been gifted their creativity by God. When we see something good, our reaction should be praise to God.

The Stability of the Giver of Gifts (v. 17b). I remember in high school, one of our favorite chapel hymns was “Everything Changes but God Changes Not.” People are so unreliable, you never know what to expect from day to day. God, however, is unchanging. Shadows keep shifting with the changing position of the sun, and that is the way we are as humans. But God is above the time and season changes. He does not have good and bad moods. He will never substitute evil for good. You depend on him to remain good and to do what is good. 

 The Sustainability of God’s Goodness (v. 18). The will of God brought about our salvation. This is the ultimate demonstration of goodness, especially considering that we weren’t even interested, in the first place. This is what I think James means. He is not talking about creation in the beginning, but salvation. The term “first fruits” is used here to depict the first in a series. Firstfruits was the very first of the harvest and was taken to the temple as a thanksgiving offering. It was a small portion, comparatively, that marked the onset of the much bigger harvest. In our context, James is seeing himself and the early Christians as a small, representative group of a much larger harvest of believers. James was not necessarily seeing as far as the Twenty-First Century, but he was confident that God was going to save a multitude.

That exercise of saving souls continues today, 2000 years later. Are you one of the laborers in the harvest (Matthew 9:37-38)?

Your loving Pastor Chris.