James 4:13-17
James chapter four verses 13
to 17. This is, um, the wise advice
of James, the half brother of the Lord Jesus, who is teaching
the Christians who are scattered across the world, uh, how to
tune up their lives, how to tighten things up in order to live for
him. And so tonight, um, It’s just gonna be all meddling, right?
No preaching, meddling. He’s gonna talk about how you
spend your time. Nobody loves it. Nobody loves
to have the preacher in their pocketbook, their date book,
or their personal life. But it’s not me, it’s James,
it’s God, right? So let’s give our attention to
God’s word. James chapter four, verse 13 says, come now you who
say, today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town
and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Yet you do
not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are
a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if
the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. As it is,
you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So
whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for
him, it is sin. If I were to put the question
before you, what is the most common sin that Christians commit? You might make some good guesses,
wrong guesses, but good guesses. Some of your guesses might be
telling lies. breaking the Sabbath, taking
God’s name in vain, or maybe sexual sins or immorality. But how about what verse 17 tells
us? The sin of neglect. For if anyone
knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is
sin. The sin of neglect, or sometimes
when we’re speaking in fancy words, the sin of omission. Sins
of commission, the things we do that we know we ought not
to have done and we do them. And the sins of omission, the
things we know we should have done but failed to do. So the sin of neglect. What do
we neglect? What do we neglect that God has
commanded us to do? Well, we probably are pretty
good at neglecting prayer. I suppose we’re pretty good at
neglecting the command, the call to love God alone. to love our
neighbors, to be good stewards, or how about to have a thankful
heart? These are things we struggle with, but one of the things I
think James is gonna point out to us in tonight’s passage is
we neglect or we fail to include God when we make our plans. I know this is rather personal,
This is getting into our business, but that’s what God does by his
word and spirit. That’s what James is doing to
the early church. And so we want to let God get into our business
for a few moments tonight. Now, in our lives, there are
generally three important pieces of leather. Our checkbook, don’t
touch my checkbook, right? And then there’s our date book,
our schedule, and there’s our Bible. We’re to honor God and
his sovereignty in each of these areas. God cares about how we
spend our time. He cares about how we use our
finances and he certainly cares about how we receive and interpret
and live the scriptures. But tonight I want us to think
about the third piece of leather, the date book or our plans. Or maybe for some of you technologically
inclined folks, your iCal. or this will date you, the Palm
Pilot or the Blackberry. However it is, you may can keep
your plans. That’s what we want to think about this evening.
So James is addressing Jewish Christians who are scattered
around the Roman Empire due to the persecution that came in
Jerusalem. And they are prosperous. They’re
doing very well financially. And what always, not always,
but oftentimes happens when we become prosperous. we become
self-sufficient. And we can, if we’re not careful,
live as if there is no God. We can cease to pray for daily
bread because it just comes and it comes and it comes. And what’s
going on in the life of these Christian people that James is
addressing, they are speaking of doing this and doing that
with a total disregard for the Lord God, the sovereign King
of the universe. And they are, forgetting that
it is in him they live and move and have their being. And so
we want to think with James tonight. We want to think with God himself
tonight because he is the author of the word that we must submit
to God’s will in everything as Christians. And so the first
thing I think we ought to learn from this passage is that we
ought to include God in making our plans. Now I know it’s Sunday
night. Monday’s coming around, the next
week is. Well, it’s already started, but we, you know, got your grocery
list, your to-do list, your tying ribbons around your fingers,
you know, don’t want to forget things. But we ought not to forget to
include God in our plans. These Christians that James is
addressing, they’re merchants, they’re traders. And at their
conversion, because of their standing in Jerusalem, the pride
of Judaism, they lost a lot. They lost their pride, they lost
their business, they lost their income, they lost their wealth.
And for a period of time, they had to deeply trust God for provision. They had to get on their knees
and beg God daily. But now that they’re on their
feet again and business is good, James is having to say to them,
all right, you’re forgetting God, you’re forgetting the sovereign
one. And so their chatter, their words
is full of boasting and full of planning. but they fail to
include God in their plans and they neglect the sovereign one.
If you think with me again about verses 13 and 14, where James
says, come now you who say, today or tomorrow, we will go into
such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make
a profit. yet you do not know what tomorrow
will bring. What is your life? For you are
a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Verse
13 tells us about five things these folks plan to do. And nobody’s
saying plans are bad. We’re just saying include God
in your plans. But they’re planning a time,
they’re planning a location, they’re planning a length of
stay, they’re planning a trade or a business, and they’re planning
to make a profit. All good godly things. They’re
planning time today or tomorrow. They’re planning a location,
such and such a town. They’re planning a length of
stay. We’ll stay there a year. They’re planning their business.
We’ll trade. They’re planning the outcome will make a profit.
So it’s good to make plans. Success is biblical in the right
sense. It’s not good to be aimless.
It’s not good to be disorganized, but we’ve got to include God
in our plans and see that our plans meet his will. What’s the problem here with
these folks, these Christians, these Folks that James is fussing
at, well, they’ve presumed on God. They’re living as if there
is no God. They’re living as if they are
God. There’s a bit of arrogance. And they’re planning a life and
a business without God. And James is tapping them on
the shoulder. And he’s saying, hey, stop and wait a minute and
listen. They are presumed on God Almighty,
the God of space and time. And they’re presuming that he
will allow them to go to profit and to trade and to spend time
to be safe, have health. They’ve forgotten that God is
sovereign and that he rules and that he governs all people. They’ve
forgotten the doctrine of providence, that God works through and in
all our circumstances. They’ve forgotten that there
is a divine one. So God is sovereign. Yes, over
our date book. Yes, over our checkbook. Yes,
over our business. Yes, over our, well, all our
plans. God is sovereign over them. So
we must include God. I would guess the sin of American
Christians might be the same as these folks in our passives,
the folks in the context which James is speaking into. Americans,
we’re not all, I wouldn’t say we’re all rich, but we are all
wealthy, right? We all have houses, we all have
food, we all have, You know, you could probably dig in your
ashtray of your car and find a pocket change to be richer
than most of the world. We don’t do without very often,
but we’re so wealthy that I think, we think in our heads, at least
we live it in our lives as if we don’t need God. When is the
last time, just not out loud, but when’s the last time you
prayed for daily bread? When is the last time you thanked
God for your daily bread? When’s the last time you weren’t
self-sufficient? I can go to work. I can earn. Look at what my brokerage account
has done. Look at what my retirement savings
has done for me. And I think the worst problem
for American Christians is this. If we don’t have it, we’ll just
borrow it and we’ll forget about it. We live as if there is no
God. We live self-sufficiently and
not biblically. But the bottom line is this,
we need God. We need James to tap us on the
shoulder, or maybe he’s punching us in the back and saying, hey,
hold up a second here. We need to depend on God more.
Maybe we are prosperous. Maybe we are able to do a lot
for ourselves. But this is a rebuke. Notice
the words of James, come now, see, here, you don’t know what
tomorrow will bring. What is your life? And tonight,
how appropriate on a rainy evening, your life is a mist. It appears
and tomorrow the sun will come out on it and the mist will vanish. And so we need to be careful
to include God in our plans. But we also need to include God
by salting our talk. Let me explain what I mean by
that. Have you ever heard the expression, good Lord’s willing
and the creek don’t rise? Yes, you have heard that, right? The British settlers had this
saying, it has nothing to do with water and floods and creeks.
It’s about the Creek Indians, right? And I think maybe in Georgia,
I’m not sure if I’ve got all the details right, They were
the Creek Indians, and so the settlers would say, if the good
Lord’s willing and the Creek don’t rise, tomorrow we’ll do
this or do that. That’s really not a bad saying.
And it’s kind of a Southernism. You hear people in the South
say, good Lord willing, and the Creek don’t rise. It’s something
we say. but it’s right out of verse 15
in some way. Instead, you ought to say, James
says, if the Lord wills, we will live and we will do this or do
that. So instead of boasting, instead
of making plans without God, instead of being sure of what
profit will come a year from now or the duration of our business
or trade, we ought to say, if the Lord wills, We will do this,
we will live or do that. It can be annoying and it can
be trite, you know, Lord willing, Lord willing, Lord willing. Some
people say it very often, but it really ought to be the reality
of our lives, whether we say it or not, it ought to be the
reality of our lives. We ought to make plans. Yes,
do your to-do list. Yes, fill out your calendar.
Yes, fill out your dry erase board or your refrigerator list
of who does this, that, and the other. It’s good for us to keep
our dental appointments and our school appointments, our work
appointments, business appointments, oil changes, and it takes planning
to do all that. Get our grocery list, do it in
faith, and then bathe it in prayer. Ask the Lord to bless your plans. And then, of course, do biblical
things. You don’t want to have a set of plans to do something
unbiblical. That would not be good. But add to your talk, add to
your Add to your speech when you say
to others, Lord willing this or that. Sometimes you’ll see
people put the little Latin abbreviation after something. It’ll say capital
D period, capital V period. It’s just a Latin little symbol
for Lord willing. But when we make our plans, we
should do so with diligence and with faith and with prayer. but
put the little stamp on there, if the Lord’s willing, we will
do this or do that. And so we ought to include God
in making our plans. We ought to include God by salting
our talk, if the Lord’s willing, but we also need to include God
and avoid arrogance. That’s really the sin that James
is aiming at in our passage. You’ve got a people who have
prospered, but only God. You got a people who’ve done
well. Why should I pray for daily bread? You’ve got a people who
have this long look of I’ll do this or I’ll do that. And it’s
good to be reminded God can fix arrogance. Take for example,
in the book of Genesis, after the flood, God told Noah and
his sons, go out into the world, be fruitful, multiply and fill
the earth. And very soon after that, A group
of people said, you know, we don’t want to scatter and spread
the glory of God across the face of the earth. We want to stay
all in one place. Y’all are remembering the story
now. And we want to build a tower and we want to make a name for
ourselves. And God sitting up in the heavens
is looking down and he says, I think I’ll go down and see
the city and the tower. Um, God fixed them, right? He confused their language. He
scattered them as he had intended to do. And so God can fix our
arrogance. And verse 16 tells us what James
is prescribing, what he’s diagnosing. He’s saying, as it is, you boast
in your arrogance and all such boasting is evil. All such boasting is against
the Lord. He’s pretty cut and dry, isn’t
he? He’s pretty black and white. Boasting is arrogance. Boasting
is prideful. Boasting is evil. James, remember, is the half-brother
of Jesus. He’s followed him, he’s seen
him, he’s heard him, he’s listened to him, he’s been converted by
him. And in a sense, he’s saying Christianity is not for wimps.
Christianity may cause you to be persecuted It may cause you
to be rejected. It may cause you to lose your
standing in society, your financial well-being. James knew this all
too well. He suffered at the hands of persecutors
and supposedly in around the year AD 62, he died. He was martyred as were many
of the early church teachers and apostles. Proverbs chapter
27 verse 21 echoes James or maybe James echoes Proverbs 27. Do not boast about tomorrow for
you do not know what the day may bring. This is a hard saying,
but it’s a true saying. It’s something we ought to think
of and we ought to remember. So we need to include God in
making our plans. We need to, salt our talk with
it. The Lord is willing. We need
to avoid arrogance. There’s a fourth thing. The last
thing, I think it’s the last thing. If it’s not, forgive me.
But we need to include God in our lives by doing his will.
It’s one thing to make plans. It’s another thing to say, Lord
willing. It’s another to say, I’m not prideful or arrogant.
But it’s a whole nother thing to say, what will I do? I’ll
do the will of Almighty God. So we asked the question at the
beginning, what’s the most common sin? The most common sin is neglect
or omission. Verse 17, so whoever knows the
right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. We fail to do what is commanded.
And I think most often it’s because we’re ignorant of God’s word.
We don’t study it, we don’t know it, we don’t hear it. Probably
all of us need to pop our hand up and say, guilty as charged.
And so how do I find the will of God so that I can do it, so
that I can follow it, so that I can be obedient, so that I
can not neglect God’s commands and his duties? Well, it’s not
complicated, I’ll tell you that. Read your Bible, pray, strive
to live a godly life, come to church. where the word of God
and the sacraments center your life around God. Live a life
of prayer, a life of obedience, a life of knowing and seeking
his will. And the results will be God will
bless your obedience. Yes, you’ll have some ups and
downs and some hardships. Yes, you’ll have some prosperity
and some lean times, but to be in the will of God, to be in
the blessing of God is a great thing. It’s good for our growth
and grace. but it’s good for others to see
us submit to God, to rest in Him. And it might be that you
go to this place. It might be that you go to that
place. It might be that indeed you do profit and you prosper. In days of old, when a man became
an emperor, This would be many centuries
ago in a Eastern land, this story goes. The biggest day of your
life would be to be crowned the emperor over the empire, right?
But before the crown was placed on the head of the emperor, he
was taken out to a marble yard. And there he selected his gravestone.
And so before he would be crowned as emperor over a great land
with all the human pomp and circumstance, all the, probably the bowing
and the obeisance that would come from the peoples, he was
reminded at the height of his power of his mortality. And as James says, that his life
was a mist. I don’t know if some of you have
selected your headstone yet, but I imagine that’s a rather
sobering thing. In fact, it’s so sobering, we probably chuckle
about it or make jokes about it, hope we never need it, something
like that. We remember the words of Jesus.
Your soul could be demanded of you this night. Your soul could
be demanded of you. And what of your plans? Whose
will they be? We need to remember that God
is the creator of everything. He’s the Lord of heaven and earth.
He’s independent. Man cannot make him a debtor,
as we sang just a few moments ago from Romans chapter 11. He
gives to mankind life and health and blessing and everything.
He allots boundaries and time and seasons. And it may be tonight
you need to repent of your arrogance or your boasting and your pride
and submit yourself to him again, remembering that one day you’ll
lie under a piece of marble, just like the emperors of the
earth and every common man. Let’s look to God in prayer.
Pray with me. Our Lord, we thank you so much
for the tap on the shoulder, the poke in the back from James.
In fact, from you, your own word. Lord, we do. We do get going
in life. We do fill up our calendar. We
do zip along and we swipe our credit cards and we. We think
all as well so far so good and it’s good to stop tonight and
to think about your sovereignty. And to think about our. creatureliness,
our weakness, our being sinners and not God
Almighty. So Lord, help us to think and
ponder on this, not just now, but in the remaining hours of
the day. Help us to ease into tomorrow,
submitting to your will and submitting our plans to you that you might
bring blessing as we seek your face and humility. Help us. and
hear us in the name of Christ, we ask all this, amen.