Pursuing Submission
OKAY – let’s do this, week 9 of our series on James…
NOW HERE - is the text that we are going to unpack this morning (August 30, 2015)
AND BEFORE – we read it, let me remind who wrote this passage. James the ½ brother of Jesus…
A GUY – who shoots straight, tells the truth whether it kicks us in the gut or not…
A GUY - who has no problem getting in our face and stepping in our grits…
SO – take a deep breath, brace yourself and open up your heart and mind to these God breathed shaper than a double edged word, penetrating, judging our thoughts and attitudes Word of God.
R U – ready?
AWESOME – oaky James bring it! Let us have it…
get ready because James, is going to do his thing once again…
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?
Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?
6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. mWash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. 11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy.
But you—who are you to judge your neighbor? 13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
MAPLE GROVE
2000 years ago God breathed a powerful letter through James the half brother of Jesus.
AND JAMES – a guy who did not have FAITH in Jesus until after he had an encounter with His crucified brother who had risen from dead… Had one primary concern, one driving passion as his pen danced across these pages…
QUESTION – what was his primary concern as he wrote these words?
James primary concern – was for the churches and Jesus-followers who attended those churches in the first century and God’s concern today in the 21st century…
AND – for all the churches and believers from that day forward
Until the day King Jesus splits the sky and returns in glory – that these believers who claim the name of Jesus, would not merely talk about FAITH, sing about faith - but instead would have REAL FAITH…
UNDERSTAND – real faith is not merely thought about, it is lived out loud… AND LISTEN – listen as we saw in Romans 2 this week (FCFH) a faith lived out loud is critical to the MISSION of Christ.
23 You are so proud of knowing the law, but you dishonor God by breaking it. 24 No wonder the Scriptures say, “The Gentiles blaspheme the name of God because of you.” – Romans 2:23,24
No wonder the world does not believe – look at how his followers are living…
OKAY JAMES – so what would our life look like if we lived our faith out loud?
AND JAMES – would look each of us in the eye and say,
“Steve (fill in your name), if you have real faith you will…”
• Turn your trials into triumphs
• Defeat sin and temptation
• Be doer and not simply a hearer of the word
• Reign in your tongues
• Looks after the widow, the orphan and the less fortunate
• Updates your favorites list (and welcoming all no matter who they are, where they’ve been, what they look like or struggle with) to come and sit with us at the feet of Jesus
• Combine your faith with works into a ‘dynamic duo’ that – saves, does good, makes sacrifices, takes risks, is alive and honors God and changes the world.
• Tame the untamable and use your tongue and the words that come out of your mouths to give and bring life.
• Chooses Godly wisdom over worldly wisdom
STEVE – if you have real faith, you would say NO to wisdom that is full of bitter envy and selfish ambition… to wisdom that makes you the point of everything and keeps you as uppermost in your own affections… a wisdom that only brings fights, quarrels, disorder and every evil practice…
AND INSTEAD STEVE – you would embrace the wisdom that leads to peace and a harvest of righteousness… a wisdom that leads to good deeds done in humility and is LIVED OUT LOUD BY BEING - pure; then peace-loving, considerate, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.
NOW THIS MORNING – we are going to unpack James 4:4-17…
ANOTHER - 14 powerful (‘James packed’ verses) that boldly proclaim that REAL FAITH pursues submission...
The central/theme verse for our text is…
Submit yourselves, then, to God… - James 4:7
Submit who? yourself
Submit yourselves to who? Submit yourself to God
AND – in our text James tells us 5 things that you must do in order to submit yourself to God…
1. BREAK up with the world
2. BOW down before Him
3. Stop BUSTING on your brothers and sisters
4. Refuse to BOAST about your tomorrow
5. Embrace the ultimate BOTTOM line
QUESTION – does anyone here want to submit to God?
AWESOME – so let’s do this…
B/S – if you want to submit to God you must…
I. BREAK Up With The World
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?
AND NO – that verse has not made on many T-shirts or picture frames in our family rooms…
AGAIN – just hard hitting, in your face, typical James…
AND REMEMBER – James is not writing to unbelievers, to pagans, to people living in the world who do not know Jesus… NO – he is writing to churches and people who claimed to know and follow Christ, who claimed to be in a relationship with Him.
AND – says to them…
You adulterous people…
NOW – I don’t think that anyone wants to be called that – no one wants to be labeled as an adulterous person… to wear that scarlet letter… but yet adultery does happen.
IN FACT – if you have been following the news lately, you know that adultery is a pretty hot topic right now thanks to some ‘computer hacking’ that went down on a website called, ‘Ashley Madison.’
NOW - the Ashley Madison website was launched in 2001 as a place for people who are in committed relationships to cheat on their spouse or significant other.
Ashley’s Madison’s motto is ‘life is hort. Have an affair.
AND – their allure was secrecy.
We will help you have an affair and no one will ever find out.
WELL - for millions (from all walks of life),
their greatest fear was realized in July when The Impact Team, a hacker group, cracked the Ashley Madison database.
NOW - the group held the personal data of 30+ million users for ransom, demanding the owners shut down the operation.
Ashley Madison refused.
SO - Two weeks ago, the data was released on the Dark Web, and millions of users have since been exposed of cheating, or at least trying to cheat.
Without a doubt, millions of people are reaping what they’ve sown. Light has revealed the darkness. Spouses who may not have had any idea they had a fractured marital foundation now find themselves floundering in emotional quicksand.
NOW – the high visibility of this hack hass raise the question: What do Americans think about adultery?
Do Americans accept it?
It is like going to a movie—some do, some don’t, but no one really cares? Or, is it something more?
AND INTERSTINGLY – even in our increasingly sexualized culture, one may be surprised to find, that most people are still appalled at the thought of cheating on a partner—at least when they answer a survey questions.
In recent polling, around 90 percent of Americans said having an affair is immoral
YES - this week, we’ve found that it’s not as simple as AshleyMadison.com would like its (former) users to think. “Life is short. Have an affair.”
YOU SEE – they left off the part that you just might…
Get caught. Lose your reputation. Lose your spouse.
MGCC – I think James if he had a website his motto would be…
Life is eternal. Don’t have an affair.
AGAIN - James in James 4:4…
Calls us out these believers, these Jesus-followers, these churches for committing adultery (cheating, stepping out on, betraying, 2 timing) not each other, but God.
UNDERSTAND – throughout the Scripture, both in the Old Testament and New, the relationship between God and His people is often pictured as being a marriage.
For your Maker is your husband—the Lord Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. – Isaiah 54:4
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. – Ephesians 5:31,32
AND SINCE – God’s relationship with his people is like a marriage, God through His prophets calls them out when they cheat on Him…
During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree and has committed adultery there. 7 I thought that after she had done all this she would return to me but she did not, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it. – Jeremiah 3:6,7
“‘You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband! – Ezekiel 16:32
AND JAMES – here in our text calls them…
You adulterous people…
AND THEY – like us were probably like, but we love you God… When did we ever cheat on you?
And James would respond… don’t you know that friendship with the world
NOW – friendship is the first century had a much deeper meaning then it does today. It meant to enter into a deep and intimate relationship with someone.
NOW TODAY – we may refer to someone as our friend, but they are not a friend in the NT way.
FOR EXAMPLE - I have 799 facebook friends…
BUT – do I really know them.
YES – the internet has allowed us to feel connected to people in a way that was defined as illegal stalking 10 years ago. "Oh, look what they had for dinner. Who are they having dinner with? Oh, look at that guy. Who is he dating? Oh, that girl. Oh! Let's look at her life. Oh, she graduated from that college. What? Oh, I guess that's her sister. Let's check out her sister." Right?
AND - this constant and incessant peeking into other people's lives, carries this kind of false, drug-like, "I know them" kind of feel. But we don’t really know them! We're not really friends. No, we're casual acquaintances at best and, honestly, they might be freaked out if they knew how much we have learned about them, not by conversation or contact but just stalking them on the Internet.
AGAIN - friendship in the first century would carry a completely different meaning. UNDERSTAND - friendship in the first century would have been sought after, and it would have been restricted.
If you watch Jesus do ministry, you get a sense of this. Jesus had the three. You always saw him with three. Then he had the 12. Then there were the 70. Then there were the 144. Then we see finally there's the 500. But Jesus spends the most time, the most intimate time, with the three. Friendships are restricted because you can't go deep with everyone.
AND – James is saying that when we go deep with the world, when we are intimate with the world and it’s values… when we allow the world to shape us and define who we are and what we do, say and believe that not only or we friends with the world but we are hostile to God
don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God…
That means hostility, hatred towards God. B/S - friendship with the world reveals a hostility and hatred toward God. Not indifference towards God, but hostility.
Now I don't have time to unpack this further, but let me just say that there are certain people you can flex at, certain people you shouldn't flex at. Correct?
I don't know that flexing at God is the way to go. All right. Friendship with the world is hostility toward God. It shows you're hostile to your Creator.
Therefore, anyone who chooses
It’s our choice, we get to decide.
And we ‘are’ deciding and we ‘have’ decided.
to be a friend of the world
anyone who chooses to enter into a deep, personal and life shaping relationship with the world
becomes an enemy of God.
AND – I will just say here that to make an enemy of an All-Powerful God who holds the oceans in His hands and breathes out stars is not a good idea…
B/S - James is saying that we cannot have it both ways
We cannot be a friend of the world and of God’s at the same time.
LISTEN – we cannot look like the world, believe like the world and behave like the world and still be in a relationship with God.
UNDERSTAND - James saying, “hey if you have convinced yourself that God is okay with you keeping one foot in the world and the other in your relationship with HIM, if you think HE is cool with you riding the fence, playing for both teams – you are wrong!
YOU KNOW – the way James is talking here – calling people to an exclusive relationship with their Creator reminds me of what the great prophet Elijah, said on Mt Carmel to God’s people who wanted to be in friendship with the world around them and also have a relationship with God…
Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” But the people said nothing. – 2 Kings 18:21
James continues…
5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?
NOW - the jealousy of God is a confusing concept, because when we think of jealousy, we tend to think of things birthed out of fear or out of insecurity. That's definitely not how God is jealous.
NO - God's jealousy is not built around, "Oh, look at all they have" because we've already covered this. You don't have anything! His jealousy is, "I put that spirit in there. My glory is at stake. Their joy is at stake."
His jealousy stems from the love of his own name and the hope that your joy in that name might reflect more perfectly his goodness and grace.
John Piper says it like this. "God's jealousy is not the reflex of weakness or fear. Instead God is jealous like a powerful and merciful king who takes a peasant girl from a life of shame, forgives her, marries her, and gives her not the chores of a slave, but the privileges of a wife—a queen. His jealousy does not rise from fear or weakness but from a holy indignation at having his honor and power and mercy scorned by the faithlessness of a fickle spouse."
SO - you have this picture of someone rescued and ransomed, cleaned, and put in a place of honor who then betrays that rescue and runs back to her shame.
Basically saying - "You're not a good king. You're not a good God. I'm going to go back to your enemies, and your enemies will take care of me"?
B/S - the Lord is jealous for the spirit he gave us, and he is jealous for us to experience the fullest joy possible, made manifest only in knowing, loving, and following him.
MGCC - James is saying to us today (8/30/15) that to pursue submission we have to break up with the world!
AND YES – I get it breaking it up is hard to do…
BUT – it must be done…
II. BOW Down Before God
QUESTION…
WHAT’S - God's response to this type of adultery?
WHAT’S - God's response to our cheating, stepping out and our rebellion., this type of hostility?
WHAT’S - God's response to, "You're not a good king. You're not a good God. I'm going to go to your enemies, and your enemies will take care of me. I love them more than I love you"?
ANSWER - it's this crazy insane statement/truth…
6 But he gives us more grace.
R U kidding me…
One of my favorite verses in the Bible... I'm sure I say this every week about some verse or another.
BUT – it is one of my new favorite verses.
R U kidding me…
God’s response to my sin, my rebellion, my adultery against Him is…
But he gives us more grace.
SAY – those 6 words out loud as if they were written for you.
LOOK UP –
There is no sin with more power than the cross of Christ.
That’s Paul’s point in Romans 5:20
Now the law came in to increase the trespass,
Here's what he is saying. When the law comes in, it reveals we're in trouble. It reveals how messed up we really are…
but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, - Romans 5:20
NOW - I don't know how you dragged yourself in here today. I mean, maybe you think he is done with you, that you've sinned in ways GOD couldn't possibly accept.
BUT LISTEN - regardless of how high the sin volume is in your life, grace abounds all the more.
I love how he words it. It abounds all the more.
I MEAN - it's not like a photo finish at the end of a race.
IT’S - not that grace wins by a hair, NO - grace wins by the entire track. GRACE - blows sin out of the water. It finishes, showers, gets dressed, has something to eat, goes home and watches some ESPN and around 1 am sin crosses the finish line. Right?
That's grace abounding all the more. That's the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Grace abounds all the more.
How does God respond to our adultery?
By turning up the volume of grace so loudly that the volume of rebellion is no longer heard but eradicated all together. That's the good news of grace. What should our response to this be?
To - Bow down before HIM…
How? Do we do that…
#1 Resist The Devil
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you…
This word resist a military word - it's wartime language.
In the Greek it is about aggression. Resist. Stand firm. Fight. You don't run. You turn, and you fight. You don't try to make it to safe ground. You pull your sword and engage.
Hit, kick, bite whatever it takes.
Resist the Devil. And he will flee from you.
UNDERSTAND – in Christ we can defeat him…
First Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it."
I love this, because here's what the Bible just said. I have a legitimate enemy. I have real flesh in me that desires to rebel against the Lord. AND - those two things come together and create a powerful pull on my heart away from the Lord and toward friendship with the world.
BIUT - Here's all I know. According to the New Testament, because the Holy Spirit is inside of me, I don't have to sin anymore. Now I will stumble. I will! But I don't have to. I can resist, and God is faithful to make a way out.
There's always an escape. There's always backup. There's always more powerful help coming. Resist the Devil.
#2 – Come near to God
HEY – are you blown away that you get to do this… come near to God.
Come near to God and he will come near to you.
Through the Word and Prayer
AND – I am not talking about just reading the Bible, knowing the Bible…
NO – I am talking about knowing the God of the Bible.
At MGCC – we are serious about you reading the bible.
We want you to I want you open up the Word and find verses like, "...he gives more grace," and let that fuel your belief that he is for you and not against you and to stir up in you the zeal to see him for who he is and to be transformed by it.
You're not transformed by law. You're transformed, by gazing upon the beauty of the Lord and being transformed from one degree of glory to the next as you dive into His word in the context of community.
UNDERSTAND - Community is an indispensable part in GROWING as a believer…. If what you do, if your involvement here at the MGCC is just sitting and listening to me talk, you like how I talk, you like the worship, then
AND - that's great until life happens.
Then when life happens...listen to me...that's going to be wholly inadequate. I'm telling you that as a brother who has been to a lot of hospital rooms and a lot of funeral homes in the last 24 years. What you want are brothers and sisters who are embedded into your life.
I don't ever want to lie to you. Trying to find community is difficult. It's awkward. It requires sacrifice that most of the time you don't want to give. People will get on your nerves, but here's the good news. You're going to get on people's nerves, and they're going to be longsuffering with you.
Don't live an isolated life where you think because you read your Bible and come to church on Sundays you're getting the best of what God has for you. We are refined best in the furnace of community. We will be exposed in our nature, exposed in our pride, exposed in our fears. It sounds awful, doesn't it? But it's in being exposed at that level that God sanctifies and grows us in confidence.
#3 – Get Real and Be Serious About Your Sin
Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
CIRCLE…. Grieve, mourn, wail, gloom…
NOW – those words don’t really appeal to us do they?
I MEAN – we want things to be light, fun and bubbly, right?
UNDERSTAND – in our entertainment and feel good culture – we don’t want anyone making us feel bad, do we?
Nothing too thick or too heavy for us.
We just want somebody to make us feel good, and we want to laugh. We want church to be that, and we want home to be that. We want movies to be that, and we want..."
Our drug of choice is levity, and James is not having it. He says, "Mourn. Weep. Wail." Why?
NOW - the Puritans were very deep thinkers. I mean, they had their own issues. How those guys could think so rightly about the things of God and own slaves has always kind of been an issue in my mind concerning the Puritans.
But they wrote some profound things. One of the things the Puritans would pray for is tears. They would pray to be grieved by their sins.
When they felt like the weight of their rebellion against God wasn't falling on their hearts, they would literally stop and they would pray and ask God to help them mourn about their own sin.
"God, I just pray you would crush me completely. I just have not seen my sin for what it really is, so will you just turn me into a heaping,
sobbing mess of regret?"
No. We want happy and chipper and, "Yeah, tell me how awesome things are. Let's talk about new heavens and new earth. Let's do that one!"
Yet it's in the dirt, being fully busted and fully understanding what's now at stake, through tears and snot that the grace of God sends us into the orbit of joy.
The Bible tells us a woman was caught in adultery. She was dragged naked into a crowd and flung at the feet of Jesus. The men who caught her said,
"The law says..." This woman was caught in adultery. "The law says we should stone her, should kill her." She is busted in her sin. She is naked and ashamed. She is thrown in front of a mob that has dragged her to this Rabbi and has the law on their side. "The law says she dies! What do you say?"
With snot and tears and dirt and shame all over her, Jesus says, "Let the one of you who is without sin cast the first stone." The Bible tells us from oldest to youngest, they dropped their stones and left. Then he picked up a rock and pelted her. No! That's not what happened.
No, the Bible says he walks over to her. He picks up her face. Don't miss this. He picks up her face! The Son of God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, picks up this guilty woman's face. Her guilt is never in question.
It is visible for all the world to see. In the most shameful, despicable moment of her life, he looks her in the face and says, "Has no one condemned you? Neither do I. Now go and sin no more."
See, it's in the dust. It's in the dirt. It's in our tears. It's in our heart-brokenness over our sin that the forgiveness and grace of this jealous God who gives more grace launches us into an orbit of joy. Do you think this woman got up and moped away, or do you think she leapt up and skipped away?
Satan’s greatest nightmare is the Christian who is convinced of these two realities - sin is serious and His grace is enough.
Then this type of grace penetrating this type of lives brings about a humility which God exalts.
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
AND B/S – in light of this incredible mercy and grace that God has poured out on us James says…
Or in in truth a natural outflow will be that we will…
III. Stop BUSTING On Your Brothers and Sisters
NOW - James here hits a topic that he uses up more ink on than any other topic in this letter… our words and our tongues being used in a way that tears down our brothers and sisters!
AND – James is like just stop!
Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.
‘Slander’ is a legal term today, implying telling a falsehood that ruins another’s reputation. The term here (katalaleo) is broader than that. Literally, it to ‘talk down’ or ‘speak against.’ One can tell the truth about others and still put them down. ‘Gossip about’ might be a better translation. – Gary Holloway
A defamatory word may be perfectly true: we do not have to tell lies in order to defame. The fact that is true gives us no right to say it. – J.A. Motyer
The belief that it isn’t slander if it’s true, is a lie.
To judge a brother, in the sense here intended, is to form unfavorable opinions regarding him without being able or willing to know the real character of the act condemned, or the motives which led to its commission. It is to impute unworthy motives to others; to put the worst possible interpretations on their words and actions… - Guy Woods
AGAIN – James says just stop… already.
12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
Now the way the argument James is making in this letter is that those who have experienced grace, those who have experienced mercy, those who have mourned, those who have had their faces picked up by the Son of God, who understand he gives more grace,
NOW - become an expert not in the weaknesses of their brothers but in the strengths of their brothers. They rejoice in the God-blessing movement of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
With their mouths, with their lives, they don't tear down others. They build others up.
A quick question.
Are you more apt to see the shortcomings in others or the strengths in others?
Are you more apt to identify where somebody needs to grow up, or are you more apt to celebrate what God is actively doing?
I'm not talking about discernment. I'm talking about judgment and condemnation. Do you feel the need to tear others down to exalt yourself?
That would be somewhat of a litmus test that you haven't experienced grace. You might have a concept of it, but you haven't experienced it.
Are you more apt to speak life into others or to point out to others (whether passive-aggressively or aggressively) that they have fallen short?
James is arguing that where we walk in true wisdom and understand the grace of God, quarrels and fights and judgments begin to dissipate.
It's not that we won't have them, because we always will. We're sinful. But we're quick to own. We're quick to seek forgiveness. We're quick to absorb things that normally would bring...
If it's all about me, I can't absorb. I have to be right. If I've experienced grace, then I can absorb some sin against me.
Can you imagine what would happen in a community of faith where what we were most of all is experts on how God is growing each other? Our speech would revolve around that, and our calls would revolve around that, and our Facebook updates would revolve around that. On the wall or whatever, you would say, "I've just noticed God has been doing this in your life, and it's encouraged me, sister. Thank you. It's encouraged me, brother. Praise God for his work in your life."
Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? 2 The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart; 3 whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor, and casts no slur on others… - Psalm 15:1-3
IV. Don’t BOAST About Your Tomorrow
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”
QUESTION – what appears to be the motives and the driving force behind this guys planning? Money and Self
14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.
That’s true, right?
We really don’t even know what will happen today.
What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
Mist – in the Greek this is not like a fog that lingers, but just like a puff of smoke…
James is saying not only do you lack knowledge, but you lack power to do anything about what you do know.
He starts to unpack this further. "For you are a mist [a vapor] that appears for a little time and then vanishes."
OKAY – here is James' statement about you and me and all of us as created beings: we lack knowledge, and we lack power to do anything about that.
So this is you. This is me. That's not a good starting point for swagger. "I'm ignorant and will only be here for a second. Hear me roar."
In contrast to us our God is ALL knowing and ALL powerful – hear Him roar!
15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.
QUESTION - is James teaching that we shouldn't have future plans, that we shouldn't make plans, or that when we do make plans we had better always have the little caveat, "If God wills" added to our plans?
Well, we know James is not teaching that making future plans is sinful or wrong, because the Bible views planning and preparation as a virtue. The Proverbs are filled with the wisdom of planning and executing upon a plan.
So we know planning is not sinful or wrong. That's not what James is saying. Nor is he saying that every time you ask me about a future event I have to say, "If the Lord wills."
So if we go back to the day I have today, and after service you catch me in the foyer and you're like, "Where are you heading, Steve?" and I'm like, "LGF huddle, if the Lord wills." I can say that every time, but this text isn't a command to add that caveat to all things.
So what's happening here? Well, it's interesting. James' point is that since human plans and even our own existence in this world is somewhat insignificant and that we quickly disappear (that's all of us), we ought to take thought for larger matters, matters having to do with faith and submission to the will of God.
James' point is that our future plans, which are right and good, should be informed by, driven by, fueled by, greater reality – the Lord’s will.
It's not that if you have a vacation planned in October that's evil, but rather it's what's driving that vacation, what's driving your business, what's driving your plans that ultimately matters.
If there is a sovereign King of glory who has a mission, who has created us, then who he is and what he has called us to is what drives all of the areas of our lives.
Embrace The Ultimate BOTTOM Line
17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
Now that pretty much speaks for itself, doesn't it?
And listen, James in our text has told us 4 things that we in this room ought to begin doing right now...
BREAK up with the world
BOW down before Him
Stop BUSTING on your brothers and sisters
Refuse to BOAST about your tomorrow
And I am sure 1 or more of these is something that God and His Spirit are prodding you about at this very moment.
(Some of the thoughts in the message were influenced by a youtube sermon I heard by Kyle Idleman)
