God Is Good All The Time!

sea. James uses it here to admonish his readers who hold to wrong views about God’s character, purpose, and ways. His concern is more than a simple failure of judgment. It is a deviation from the truth. So James commands, “Do not be deceived.” This command is in a grammatical emphasis that forbids something that is already in progress. Literally, James says, “Stop being deceived.” Genesis 3:13 records God’s confrontation of Eve after her and Adam sinned: “Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” This is the ongoing work of the enemy of our souls. He seeks to deceive us. But in John 8:31-32, Jesus says, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

B. A WORD OF AFFECTION

Verse 16 says, “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.” Notice how James blends both sharpness and tenderness as he issues this warning with love, addressing his readers as “my beloved brothers.” In verse 2, James addresses his readers as “my brothers.” As a means of address, “brothers” it is a gender-neutral term that acknowledges his readers to be his brothers and sisters in Christ. But here James fills this phrase out, calling his readers “my beloved brothers.”

This term of endearment tells us something about the recipients of this letter. They were Christians. They were saved, redeemed, born again. They were fellow-members of the family of God. They were brothers and sisters in Christ. They believed in the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Yet they were susceptible to deception about God. So are you. The peril of the unredeemed sinners is unbelief. The peril of the redeemed sinner is misbelief. In A Grief Observed, C.S. LEWIS writes, “The thing I feared is not that I’ll stop believing in God, but that I might begin believing dreadful things about him. Not that I’ll say, ‘There is no God.” But that I’ll say, ‘So what’s what God is really like.’” That can happen to you. So beware that you are not deceived about God, because your view of God is everything. Jeremiah 9:23-24 says, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Let know the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

This term of endearment also tells us something about the author of this letter. James was clearly concerned about the truth of God being upheld. But he was also concerned about the people who were affected by error. James reminds us that our concern for what is right does not give us license to treat people wrong. You can win and argument and lose a soul. So we must speak the truth in love. James 5:19-20 says, “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

II. THE GOODNESS OF GOD DECLARED

Verse 17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” This verse highlights