A couple of thoughts. I appreciate the song service.
Brother Robin Barkin Bailey was singing. Several years ago I
read an old preacher was dying. Some of the deacons went to see
him and they asked him, says, you got anything for the church?
Would you like to send back a message to the church? He said he whispered. Low voice. Accepted and beloved. That's it. A few days ago, I ordered a book. It was sayings of Mr. Spurgeon. And one of his sayings was, he
talked about grace and when the theme is grace, he says, I'm
in clover. Now I might have to explain that
to some of you young people. The older people know what I'm
talking about. Clover is rich. And that's what we're in this
week, clover. It's rich. Turn with me in your
Bibles to the book of James. Verse number 18 and I will go
back to verse 17 and we'll make some comments and look at verse
number 18. This verse has stood out to me
over the years, and it's just a wonderful verse
in God's Word. It reads, of His own will beget
He us. With the word of truth, that
we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures. Verse 17 says, Every good and
perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of
lights, with whom is no variedness, neither shadow of turning. Our
first thoughts ought to be that Christ is the gift of God. He's good and He's perfect. We
ought to also acknowledge that God is the author of all good
and perfect things. No, it doesn't come from nature,
it comes from God. So we ought to acknowledge that,
that it doesn't spring from nature, but it springs from God Himself. The book of Ephesians tells us
in chapter number 1 in verse 3, that He hath blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in the Lord Jesus Christ and heavenly
places in Him. And so here is God's gift to
us as Christ. And in Christ, look at all of
our blessings and gifts and graces that's in Him. Then it also speaks
to us of the bounty of God. He gives us common gifts and
that comes out of His bounty too. But we're really to be focused
upon that of His very special blessings. Eternal life is a
gift. the Scripture tells us, and eternal
death, the Bible says, is wages. It speaks that it cometh down.
And here again, we look at it and we know that it shows that
it's not by change. It cometh down from God. It cometh
from Him. And it goes on and says, the
Father of lights. That there's no variance, no
turning, no change, always the same. What we find is all good and
perfect gifts come from God. And He's the author of those
gifts unto us. It comes from above. It's always
a gift. Now, you have nothing that you've
not received. Is that not true tonight? Everything
spiritual that you have, you've received it. It's come to you. And God has freely bestowed it. That's how He does things. The
favor of God is not for sale. The grace of God is not for sale. Eternal life is not for sale.
A lot of people think they can buy it, but it's not for sale.
Eternal blessings are not for sale. Christ is not for sale. So there are these spiritual
blessings. There's Christ. Spiritual blessings. and they the best and the choice
of all. What if a man gains the whole
world, the Scripture says, and loses his soul? So the text tells
us He's the author of spiritual gifts. And our text tonight says
of His own will. There's no necessity on God's
part. When we look at Him, He's complete
in Himself. It's His prerogative in all of
this. It's all of His good pleasure,
the Scripture tells us. And it's of His bent. It's of His purpose. It's of
His inclination. And to do the creature good,
it comes from Him. And God's will is above that
of all. I like the Scriptures and I like
to just hear God say, I will. I like to hear Christ say, I
will. We can count on those things.
If I say, I will, it doesn't make a lot of difference. But
when Christ says, I will, and God says, I will, we can count
upon that. Then it tells us that He begat
us. That implies the very work of
grace upon our very souls. It implies the new birth, the
born again from from God, a pure act of God. Peter describes it
as a living hope or a lively hope, a manifestation of life.
Now, you didn't beget yourself, did you? It tells us here he
beget us and his children are begotten. If you're his child
tonight, you've been begotten. Then it talks about the Word
of Truth. That's the instrument, the Gospel. Then it says a kind
of firstfruits of the creatures. And we go back to the Old Testament
and we find the firstfruits of the sheaves. They are consecrated
to the Lord. And believers are to be set aside.
And they are set aside for the purpose of God. And the firstfruits
is always the Lord's and dedicated to Him. Now let's look at this
tonight. And I'll try to give you a few
thoughts that I've had. And that is the work of regeneration
or the new birth. It's of God's will and pleasure.
It's of His will. Several years ago, from Winston-Salem,
there was a preacher by the name of Ralph Barnard, and this is
where Don was reared. And somebody sent me his tapes. This is in 1970, the early 70s. He sent me some tapes of Brother
Barnard, and it was His instructions to young preachers. And in that
instructions, He said, God's preachers always preach a God-willed
salvation. He said, others preach a man-made,
they preach a man-willed salvation, but God's preachers preach a
God's-willed salvation. And that's what we find right
here in the Scriptures. It's just as plain as it can
be. And God's will is the reason for his actions. It's the reason
for his work. It's all within himself. Man
has no claims upon God. If he wants to claim something,
he can claim justice. And who wants to claim justice?
If you claim justice, it's punishment. It's hell. So here's his pleasure. That's his motive. He always
begins first. He's always first. When we think
of salvation, we think of God being first, don't we? We think
of eternity. We think about what He's done
in eternity. He's always first. He told the
disciples, He says, you've not chosen Me, I have chosen you.
He's first. He's always first. When we think
about love, who's first? I like that, Jeremiah. He's loved
us with an everlasting love. He's first in love. We love Him because He first
loved us. And He says, I will love freely
who's first in mercy. It says, He hath mercy upon whom
He hath mercy, and He hath hardened whom He hath hardened. He's first
in mercy. It's a moving upon His part,
and it's without incentive and prompting. He's the mover. It's
of His being. So He's first when it comes to
the covenant of grace. He's first when we look at sending
His Son. He's first in sending His Word
to the very heart. He's first in sending out of
His Spirit. He's first to make alive. I like
to read over there in the book of Ephesians, and it talks about
in the second chapter of Ephesians, and you have the quickened who
are dead in trespasses and sin, and you walked according to the
course of this world, according to the prince of power of the
air. The spirit did not work for the children of disobedience.
And it goes on, down to verse number 40, it says, but God,
but God, that's the difference. That's the difference in one's
life tonight. But God. And He's the first in
making alive. If you act spiritually tonight
and you have spiritual acts, you've been made alive. He first
has done that. It's all of His own will. Aren't you glad that He didn't
pass you by? God can save you or He can pass
you by. I thought about this. I was thinking
about it this morning. Most people's all right. They're
all right in themselves. I don't know how many people.
I spoke to my daughter-in-law before she was my daughter-in-law,
and she says, I'm all right. But one morning, she came to
my house, and she wasn't all right. She was lost and undone. You know, we could have went
on our way just thinking we was alright. Oh, aren't you glad that He spoke
to your heart? God's people admire His mercy. They know what mercy is. God's
had mercy upon us. They admire His grace. How great is His grace. where
sins abounded, grace did much more abound. They admire his
love. How great is his love. And they
bless him. They praise him. They worship
him. And they're thankful individuals. They're thankful people. There's
nobody in the world should be as thankful as we are, should
they, when we look at it. It says here of His own will.
He willed Christ's coming. He willed the death upon the
cross. He willed our salvation. The
Bible says in the book of Isaiah that it pleased the Father to
blue bruise Him. Not only that, but it pleased
the Father to prosper Him. The Bible says He shall see His
seed. Rabbi Duncan, several years ago,
when I had it recorded in my Bible, he said, he shall see
his seed brought in and born. He shall see him brought up and
educated. He's going to see him brought
through and he's going to see him brought home to glory. God's will to send the Spirit. And the Bible says this, that
the wind bloweth where it listens, that is where it pleases. We
find Paul on the road to Damascus. And you know, he looked like
a vessel of wrath, didn't he? Many God's children look like
vessels of wrath. But he is a vessel of mercy.
We see him on that road and the Lord speaks to him and says,
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And we know what he is doing. He is persecuting the church.
And he spoke to him and called out unto him. And there's others,
they just heard a sound. But Paul heard the voice of the
Lord and he says, it's the Lord. It's Him. There's many today,
they just hear a sound. And you know better off if you
just hear a sound. You've got to hear the Lord.
As a brother read Paul ago, and I don't know where he is now,
I don't see him, You better hear the Lord say, Thy sins are forgiven
thee. We're not letting man tell you
that. You better hear the Lord say it through His Word and by
His Spirit. Thy sins are forgiven thee. Hear
Christ, oh, speaking to the very heart and giving a new life. Then there's this begetting.
It speaks of regeneration and new birth. And the Scripture
says you must be born again. And if one has no more than that
which nature's made, he's in bad shape, isn't he? But he has
to be born again. He has to be born anew. And that
says, He begot us. Thine is the first birth. Thine
is the second birth. Thine, the Scripture says, that
which is born of flesh. And it can be refined flesh.
It can be beautiful flesh. It can be religious flesh. But
it's still flesh. And that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit. And this shows us that our first
birth is out of the way. The Bible says that we've gone
astray, every one of us. We have to have a new making.
There's our depravity of our very nature. And it reaches the
whole man. That's denied today. They say
a man just fell just a little ways. But he's a fallen man. Somebody said He's done more
than just stomp His toe. And He has. He's failed. And
the new birth is not that of mending up of the old. It's not
a repairing of that of the old. It's not bettering that of the
old. It's not reforming the old. It's not changing the old. But
it's God giving a new nature. Making a new creature. And that's
what he does in this begetting us. And that shows us also that
we contribute nothing to it. Now, what does an infant contribute
to that of his very birth? This is a begetting of life.
And this effect of generation is life, spiritual life. And
when you have spiritual life, it means that you act It means
that you move. It means that you have spiritual
feelings. It means that you are coming
to the Lord Jesus Christ. You come to God. It means you
have a toward to God and to Christ Jesus. It means that you're looking
to Him. Peter said like this, to whom
cometh. And I believe that's a way of
life for a child of God. To whom cometh. The soul. It means this, that the soul
is not dead toward God. Paul said it like this. He says,
Christ liveth in me. He liveth in me. A child. The first thing that happens
to a child, he desires milk. And the Bible says the newborn
babe desires the sincere milk of the Word. Paul said, and it
goes on, and this morning, if we're not any more than nature
has made us, how can it be said that we're begotten? If we're
not moving toward God and have God in our thoughts and Christ
in our minds and looking toward Christ Jesus, how can it be said
that we have a new life? This new life looks to Christ. That's how it begins and it goes
on and it continues. This begetting is the work of
the Lord. It says He begat. It also says
in the Scripture, and you can trace this out and look at it,
there is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,
and each one of them talks about begetting us. And Paul even uses
this statement himself. He says to Onesimus, I have begotten
you in my bonds. I have begotten you. So God begets,
and the instrument is the Gospel, and Paul preached the Gospel,
and Paul was used as an instrument of God. And this teaches us some
things, and one of the things that it teaches us is that you
can't beget yourselves. John says this in the first chapter
of his Gospel. He says, Not of blood, not of
the will of the flesh, not of the will of man, but of God. This beginning, this new birth.
In this new birth, we have a new relationship. God's our Father
and Christ is our Savior. God's our Father. He's our Papa. We're born into His family. We're
adopted into His family. I remember reading Thomas Watson
about 37 years ago. He said, God had a perfect Son
in Christ Jesus. What did He want with us? He
had a perfect son. But we adopted into His family.
Now what a privilege and what a blessing to have a Heavenly
Father. Just to say, go to the Lord in
prayer and say, Our Heavenly Father, what a blessing, what
a privilege that is. Just think about His love and
His care and the comfort that He has. That's our resting place
and that's our hope and that is God's, our Heavenly Father.
And our text would tell us that He's a good and perfect Father.
There's none so perfect. There's none so good. There's
none so able. There's none so wise. There's
none so loving. Now let me just throw something
else in. It never changes. It never changes. It means this morning, and here's
the means is, that he's begotten us with the gospel, the word
of truth. Paul wrote and he says, I've
begotten you in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Peter, over in 1 Peter, it says
that we are begotten by the incorruptible seed of the Word. That's how He begets us. The
Word. Faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the Word of God, the Scripture tells us. And it didn't
say this morning, now notice, of His own will beget He with
the Word of truth. It didn't say that He begets
with entertainment. It didn't say that He begets
us with stories and cute stories and sad stories and all of this. It didn't say He begets us with
baptism. And it doesn't say He begets
us with error, does it? He begets us with the truth of
the Word. And I take it, I don't know,
it's the whole, isn't it? It's the whole. This is His truth. This whole Word is His truth
in the Gospel. I thought about this. A Father
that loves His children and cares for His children and is wise
toward His children, will He not lead them Will He not teach
them? Will He not give them the truth? This tells us this, how important
is the word of truth. I can't impress upon you just
how important the gospel is. The pure gospel. How dangerous
is error? You think about it. The Gospel,
the Bible tells us, and Paul says it's a faithful saying,
worthy of all acceptations, that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. Two important things in that
statement that Paul makes, and the first one is, surely we are
sinners, and surely Christ is Savior. Now, we grasp the first one pretty
easy. And that is, we are sinners.
That's a given, isn't it? That's a given. We break God's
law. You can't get very far. When
you start looking at God's law, you break it. We are sinners. Another part of it is, the grass
that is my Savior. To come to that place, as Peter
writes, He bore our sins in His own body upon the tree. Lay hold of that. It be manifested
with assurance. And again, it's by the will of
God and by the work of God. To grasp that. Turn with me to
Ephesians chapter 1. And I just noticed this afternoon,
this verse came to my mind. And I want you to see how it
just ties right in with this. In chapter 1 of Ephesians, in
verse 13, it says, To whom ye also trusted after that ye heard
the word of truth. Now, over here it says, Of His
own will He begat us with the word of truth. And here it says,
You trusted after you heard the word of truth. Now notice the
next phrase. The gospel of your salvation. That's it. The gospel of your
salvation. Has it ever come to you that
it's the gospel of your salvation? That's what it's about. Grasping
that. It being manifest to you by the
Lord. This gospel is the gospel of
your salvation. The gospel that Christ came in
this world. Christ went to the cross and
shed his blood and he stood as a substitute. It was your substitute. The gospel of your salvation. So that's what the gospel, this
is where we rest our very souls. Right here, upon this, upon the
Lord Jesus Christ. You know you rest your eternity
upon Him, don't you? That's what you're resting in
salvation upon Christ, is your very eternity. We're to believe the gospel.
We're not only to believe it, live by it, and die by it. In the book of Hebrews, that
great chapter 11, the scripture says, they died
in faith. You know, that's the only way
to die. Isn't it? Isn't it? That's the only way
to die in faith. That's the Gospel to bring us.
And the design of the Gospel is to bring us to believe and
to trust. There's a message of God, what
God has done in salvation, what He's done from eternity. There's
a message of Christ and His redemptive work What a great work it was. Those wonderful words that came
from the cross, it is finished. I've tried to preach upon that
a time or two, but boy, there's a lot in that, aren't there?
It is finished. It's a message. The Gospel is
a message of the Holy Spirit. And He fetches. He convinces
of sin. He shows us Christ. It's a message of man and his
depravity. It's a message that he's a sinner
and lost and undone. It's a message of the cross and
the suffering of Christ. And the Scripture says, the just
for the unjust. It's a message for justice and
mercy. The Scripture says, have met
and kissed one another. It's a message of Christ that's
redeemed us from the hands of justice. Micah says, how can
I come before God? Sacrifices of rivers of oil,
thousands of rounds, burnt offerings, giving of the firstborn. There's
nothing of man that can take the place, recompense for the
offended, justice. But in the gospel, Righteousness
and truth have met together. Justice being satisfied by the
Lord Jesus Christ. I like that song, Christ has
paid it all. And that's what He's done. And
since He's paid it all and satisfied the justice of God, God is righteous
in dispensing pardon. It's been some pardoned sinners.
It's an act of free grace. Brother Todd, we have to use the word free
grace. Gracie is free, but we try to
distinguish it and say free grace. And you have to in the day that
we live. Whom Christ, the Bible says, is set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness in
the remission of sins. That's our resting place. That's
where we have peace. Of His own will beget He us with
the word of truth. That we should be a kind of first
fruits of His creatures. These firstfruits is called the
Lord's portion. They was put in the hands of
the high priest. And as the firstfruits of these
creatures were we, we're in the hands of Christ, aren't we? Our
high priest. Christ, He must wash our very
service in His blood. He must perfume our service with
His myrrh. An ever-redeemed person, they
acknowledge that they are bought, they are not their own. That
they've been plucked from the burning. That's exactly what has happened
if you're a saved person, you've been plucked from the burning. You've been purchased. You've
been redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And how
thankful that we ought to be. How dedicated we ought to be
in offering ourselves and willingly and freely. I ask, what's going to matter
at the end of our very lives is this. That we are the Lord's. All of a sudden, I've had people
acknowledge to me what I thought was important is not so important. That's what's going to matter
at the end of our very lives. That we are the Lord's. That
we are His peculiar people. That is His possession. His possession. Now we're His jewels. Now we're
the sheep of His pasture. I was reading several years ago
about the Eastern Shepherd. And it talked about the sheep. And it said the sheep, they were
followers of the Shepherd. that we have a good shepherd,
a great shepherd, and a chief shepherd. But he said the sheep
were followers of the shepherd. He said some would be back a
little ways. They'd be following, but they'd
be back a little ways. Some more, a little closer. Some
more, a little closer. And the rider said they were
some of those sheep that just wanted to be and nuzzle the shepherd's
legs just right against him. That's how near we ought to desire
to be, isn't it? Right near to the shepherd. Because he's a good shepherd. He's the chief shepherd. He's
the very bishop of our very souls. The overseer. The first fruits, they belong
to the Lord. They're for Him. They're in the
hands of the High Priest. May this verse just bless your
heart. May as you read it, you know
that He's begotten you to have a new life. You're a partaker
of a new nature. You are a new creature in Christ,
knowing that it is with the word of the truth, the gospel. Oh, the blessed gospel. The gospel
of our salvation. The word of the truth. I thank
you. May the Lord bless you. This
is my prayer.