I. Introduction
A. James 4:13–17 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”— 14 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. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
B. In chapter 4 James has talked a lot about being humble – and about pride. Pride and humility have a powerful effect upon the way a person lives, affecting the big things and the little things.
1. It affects your relationships. It affects your schedule. It affects your finances. It affects your ethics. It affects everything!
2. Well, here in James 4:13-17 is one concrete example of how humility and pride affect your life. And it has to do with how we make plans for the future.
3. The proud person, says, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.”
4. The humble person, on the other hand, says, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
5. The proud person “boasts in his arrogance,” putting his confidence in himself that he can control his life and make himself prosper. He lives under the false impression of being independent and permanent, when in reality he has no idea what tomorrow will bring, or even if he will live until tomorrow.
6. The humble person knows we are created by God and completely dependent on Him who rules all things. The humble person knows therefore that life is fragile and ephemeral: “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” The humble person knows we’re not in control of our lives.
7. This passage is one more illustration of how God is opposed to our pride but gives grace to the humble. James 4:6
C. Over and over again as we’ve walked through the epistle of James, it seems like James is picking up on things his older brother Jesus taught. And this is no exception.
1. Luke 12:16–21 “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ 18 Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ 21 This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”
2. In this Jesus may well be thinking of Proverbs 27:1 “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.”
3. “This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”
II. There is so much here for us to think about, so much which is relevant to our lives.
A. It’s all built on the fact that God is sovereign.
1. He is the One “who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Ephesians 1:11
2. “He does all that he pleases.” Psalm 115:3 “He puts one down and lifts another up.” Psalm 75:7
3. Sometimes He lifts a person up and allows him to look mighty, like that person can do anything he wants. But behind the curtain it is actually God’s power making him appear mighty.
4. We see an example of this in the story of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, and his conquests.
a. Sennacherib had been very successful in conquering the nations around him and building a great empire. He had turned great cities into ruins, and mighty peoples into cowering beggars. And God quotes Sennacherib as saying, “I’ve reached all of these great heights myself!” (Is.37:23-25)
b. But then God responds by saying to Sennacherib, “Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it. In days of old I planned it; now I’ve brought it to pass, that you have turned fortified cities into piles of stone, and that their people, drained of power, are dismayed and put to shame.” (Isa.37:26-27)
c. And then God put His hook in Sennacherib’s nose and sent him back the way he had come (Is.37:29). He sent one angel, who struck down 185,000 of Sennacherib’s soldiers, and the rest fled in fear (Isa.37:36-37).
5. Proverbs 19:21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand. (See also Proverbs 16:9.)
6. God’s sovereignty means that He is the great changer of human plans.
a. JOKE: You know how to make God laugh? Make a plan.
7. He is a God of surprises!
8. Last year, our son Nathanael and his wife had no intention of getting pregnant, but God had other plans. And after the initial shock, they embraced the new reality with deep and profound joy. They restructured their whole lives and their whole expectation of the future around this bright new reality. But then their little Leon died in the womb at seven months. And suddenly, the two of them were forced to completely restructure their lives and expectations yet again. It’s not the way any of us would have planned it, but it’s what God knew was best. And He insists on making the best thing happen even if we get angry and accuse Him of doing a bad job in the process.
9. God is not only the God of flowers and cookies and sunsets. He’s also the God of losses and cancers and natural disasters.
10. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8–9
11. Not only are God’s ways different than ours, they are higher than ours, better and wiser than ours.
12. Our sinful human nature loves to be in control, to be independent. We think if life would just go the way we wanted, we could be really happy.
a. But this attitude is nothing but foolishness! When we think like that, we are thinking that we’re better at running our lives than God is! We are thinking that we’re better architects of our true happiness than God is! What an insult to the One who loves us more than we love ourselves!
b. How wants nothing but the best for His beloved children. And He is all-knowing and all-wise, so He knows what is best!
B. Only God knows what is going to happen in the future. We have no powers of prognostication.
1. Do you ever get a feeling that a certain thing is going to happen? I’ve had that feeling. And sometimes it did happen. But more often it didn’t.
2. Do you know how many people have had a very strong sense of what is going to happen – even to the point of feeling absolutely sure about it – and ended up being totally wrong?
3. I know by experience that I don’t have the power of prognostication. And the fact is, no one does.
4. God gave us the ability to imagine, and it is a good gift. But we must be careful not to put too much trust in our imaginations or intuitions.
5. Plans are mere intentions. Feelings about the future are mere impressions.
6. In this passage James is condemning self-assurance in one’s imagination of the future.
7. Since when do we decide what is going to happen?
8. The fact is, you are not a prophet – and neither am I.
a. A prophet is someone who is given special knowledge directly from God in order to declare it to others. And sometimes they are given special knowledge of what is going to happen in the future.
b. There were prophets in Bible times. But there aren’t today, according to my understanding of Scripture, and that of the PCA.
9. So, no matter how sure we feel about something happening in the future, unless it is something God has told us in His word, we don’t really know if it’s going to happen.
C. That’s why we need to be humble. That’s why we need to say, “Your will be done.”
1. Praying “Your will be done” is something Jesus taught us explicitly in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt.6:10), and something He taught by example at Gethsemane (Matt.26:42). (See also Acts 18:21, 21:14; Rom. 1:10, 15:32; 1Pet.3:17.)
2. When we talk about “Your will be done,” we’re not really talking about what we say, although that can be a part of it. We’re talking about how we think.
a. Jesus, Paul, and the other apostles don’t always verbalize “if the Lord wills” when they talk about their plans. That’s not the point. The point is that they have this principle firmly fixed in their minds as they make and contemplate their plans.
3. How about us? How do we handle our plans?
a. Is the “if the Lord wills” principle firmly embedded in our minds?
b. Do we know that everything we plan is tentative?
c. Do we hold loosely to the plans we make?
d. Do we live our lives conscious of the fact that we’re not in charge of them?
e. Do we get frustrated when our plans go awry?
f. Do we get exasperated by interruptions?
g. Do we get irritated when our ideas or proposals come to nothing?
h. Do we feel like a failure if we don’t get our to-do list done?
D. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
1. At first this seems strange, like it doesn’t really follow.
2. But sometimes in Scripture, and I think this is one such case, there is a truth cited because it applies in this circumstance. (We see it, for instance, in Matthew 18:15-20, when, after discussing church discipline, Jesus says, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”)
3. This verse says that there are degrees of sin. And one of the most significant distinctions between some sins and more serious sins is knowledge. When we know that something is wrong to do, then it’s a more serious sin and if we never really thought about before.
4. Every time our knowledge of God’s word increases, our culpability also increases.
5. Now the Bible is clear that sin committed in ignorance is still sin. In the OT law, there was even a sacrifice to cover unintentional sins (Num.15:22-29; Heb.9:7). But there are NT passages as well:
a. 1Cor.4:4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. (Also 2Cor.10:18.)
6. But the severity of a sin increases if we know the right thing to do and fail to do it.
7. And so James is saying, “Now that I’ve taught you how to think humbly about your plans, it is sin if you fail to think this way.”
III. Conclusion
A. Planning is important! People who don’t make plans live lives of chaos and dysfunctionality.
1. Some of you have gone to time management seminars. They have a lot of good things to say.
2. They talk about asking yourself what’s really most important to you and conforming your calendar and schedule to those priorities.
3. They talk about having one year plans, 5 year plans, 10 year plans: There’s nothing wrong with any of this.
4. But most of them don’t get this right – at least the ones I’ve been to. They leave out the “if the Lord wills” part. They talk about life as if we’re in charge of it, and as if it’s all up to us.
5. They leave God out of it. But seeking God is the first thing when it comes to planning your life (Matt.6:33). Including God in our thinking is the first step of becoming wise. (Prov.1:7, 9:10)
6. Otherwise, a person’s priorities will be wrong. Plans will be made with the wrong goals in mind. And plans will become idols.
7. Plans need to be made before the living God. “What do You want me to do, Lord? What do want me to plan?”
B. And then we need to expect that sometimes God’s going to change our plans and do His will.
1. I can tell you after 68 years that God is really good at throwing curve balls. And I think my peers would agree.
2. It seems every time things start going smoothly, something happens which disrupts the peace, or which stings deeply or which sends a shudder down your spine.
3. God is teaching us to trust in Him instead of in our plans. He knows how easy it is for us to get too attached to this life. And so He keeps sending reminders.
4. Verse 7 says to submit to God. And that’s what James is talking about here.
C. The Christian life is a life of submission: submitting to God’s will, submitting to God’s timing, submitting to God’s agenda in your life.
1. Now submission is not very popular today. Submission is widely seen as capitulating to tyranny.
2. And we can understand that, on the human level, it sometimes is.
3. But we know that the One who rules the universe is good, and wise, and loves us.
4. So, to do anything else other than submit is not only foolish but arrogant, acting as if we know better than the all-knowing God.
5. There are different kinds of submission.
a. There is fear-based submission. It’s the kind of submission you have when someone pulls a gun on you and asks for your wallet. It’s the kind of submission Pharaoh had when he finally yielded and let the Israelites leave Egypt.
b. Then there’s love-based submission. This is when husband says, “I don’t really like yellow, but I love you so much, my Love, I want the room to be yellow!”
c. But I don’t think either of these is what James talking about. I think James is talking about a third kind of submission. It might be called faith-based submission, or wisdom-based submission.
(1) It is the submission to an all-wise and perfectly good God, a God who loves us more than we love ourselves, and who promises to exalt us if we submit to Him, a God who has proven His limitless love by sending His Son to die on the cross (Romans 8:32).
(2) We acts like fools when we refuse to submit, thinking that we know better than God!
D. In the end, it comes down to worship again. What truly rules your heart? What is it that you most desire? What gives you life? What is your food?
1. In John 4:34, Jesus said, “My food is to do the work of my Father.”
2. Is that our food? Is God our treasure? Or is our treasure things on the earth?
3. James quotes a person as saying, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.”
a. Well, Christians have a future plan we know will come to pass! The fact is, we can say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into a great city called the new Jerusalem and spend an eternity there and receive unimaginable treasure.”
b. That is the Christian ambition, the Christian certainty, the Christian boast!
c. This ambition must outshine all other ambitions so that the rest seem dim in comparison. It’s really the only one which matters. If none of our other aspirations are fulfilled, we’ll be more than fine if only this one great aspiration comes to pass.
4. Do we want the pathetic treasures and pleasures of this world? Or do we want the glorious treasures and pleasures of the world to come? (Luke 6:24,12:15)
5. Are we satisfied with the world’s approval or do hunger for God’s approval? In Matt.6:1-2 Jesus says that if we receive the world’s praise, that will be our only reward.
6. When we grasp the depth of God’s love for us, it makes us ready to say, “Your will be done.” For “if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? ...We are super-conquerors through him who loved us... For nothing in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:31–39
7. That man is no fool who submits to a God like this, who’s both absolutely good & perfectly wise.
E. The world says to follow our dreams. But God says that our piddly little dreams aren’t nearly big enough. He’s got way better things for us than we could ever dream!
1. “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” 1Corinthians 2:9
2. This is why God is sometimes not content with our plans. They’re not good enough!
3. He is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. Ephesians 3:20–21
4. Our only logical response is to “trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; but fear the LORD.” Proverbs 3:5-7