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.—James 4:13–17

Outline

1. The Complicated God Who Gave us the Text
2. Examination of the Text
3. Application of the Text 

Prayer
Psalm 139 (as a prayer)

My aims in this message include …

• To look closely at our text from a complicated God and observe how we ought to speak. How should our hearts talk?
• To marvel once again at Jesus. What is James saying about Jesus?
• To point to what we can expect for the coming year, if there is one.

God – is complicated.

The reality that God is complicated makes him difficult to understand. Not impossible, at least in some small measure, but nevertheless difficult.

How is he complicated?

1. He is incalculably vast.

Meanwhile, our capacity to understand is comparatively small. There are an estimated 100 billion cells in your brain. There are an estimated 100 billion stars in the observable universe. So, when it comes to understanding the universe, you have about one brain cell per star. We’re small. When it comes to understanding the God, who breathed the universe into existence,

Job puts it this way:

By his wind the heavens were made fair; Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! … the thunder of his power who can understand?—Job 26:13

God is complicated. He is vast.

2. God is nearly inconceivably ancient—infinitely previous.

“from everlasting to everlasting!”

Way “back there” he wrote in his book all the days that were formed for you when as yet there were none of them! How could he do it!? He’s amazing; he’s complicated. He’s incalculably vast and infinitely previous. 

3. He’s difficult to understand because …

We can’t define him. We can describe him, but we can’t define him. To define something is to determine its boundaries—a circle, an acreage, the city limits, an ocean, a continent, the orbit of a planet. But God has no boundaries. Seen things are governed by unseen things. With God we are dealing with something unseen (if not for Jesus).

God is complicated. 

4. He’s difficult to understand because he’s paradoxical. For example …

• He is a finisher (fulfills all his plans, all his law, all his promises) yet is never finished.
• He stoops to
• He makes himself of no reputation in order to gain a name that is above every name.
• The Lord of all is servant of all.
• To provide eternal life, he
• His poverty obtains great riches.
• He supplies comfort through grieving deeply with us.
• For us to see most clearly, he exhorts us to focus on things that cannot be seen.
• He teaches us that we must lose our lives in order to truly gain them.
• To be accepted by God we must give up striving to be accepted.
• We are to seek rest in his yoke.

He’s complicated. One more way he is complicated is this:

5. He has more than one kind of will.

• Will of decree. All that comes to pass, he ordained—rocks, presidents, the death of my children, Satan …
• Will of command, which can be disobeyed. He has decreed (will of decree) that his will of command be disobeyed on those occasions when it has been disobeyed. It is his will (of one kind) that his will (of another kind) be disregarded—all this without being culpable, or being charged with sinning.

He’s complicated, but even though we cannot know him exhaustively, he’s made a way that we can know him truly: He’s given us a Book … with today’s text. 

With this wonderful and complicated God in view, let’s go to today’s text, which is another one of those omni-applicable biblical texts, for it applies to every person in every situation every day. 

James 4:13–17

Come now,

Which means, “Pay attention here! Behold! Wake up! Get this!” 

you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will …”

We will? Plans can enslave hearts. Expectations about the future sprout emotions. We attach our happiness to our plans.

 … go into such and such a town and spend a year …

This word (year) is why I selected this text to preach on this date. 

Who invented the year? Where did we get that concept? Who identified a year as 365 sunrises and sunsets arranged in four seasons? God did.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.”—Genesis 1:14

The “year” was not invented by Time magazine.

This text acknowledges that we make our plans. We decide. We act. We execute, but only if God wills it. While this doctrine does not obliterate our planning or acting, it does make our plans and actions contingent. If our plans materialize, it is not either God’s plan or man’s plan; it is man’s plan carried out, because it was also first God’s plan. Both/and.

In this text, we see plans being made in yearlong segments: “spend a year there.”

This sounds similar to our culture’s New Year’s resolutions and books on the market today with titles like …

• The Aquarius Horoscope Planner and Journal 2019
• The Complete One Year Meal Planner
  

I am making no case against planning. Neither is James.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

James is making it clear that all of our plans are contingent upon the Infinite Planner who works everything according to his well.

Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it?— Lamentations 3:37

… there and trade and make a profit”

“Profit” infers material wealth as a pursuit. Let us pursue wealth that matters.

yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

If we did know what tomorrow will bring, there would be no such thing as insurance. While we do not know what tomorrow will bring, we know the One who does know. Therefore, we need not fret.

God knows what every tomorrow will bring.

In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.— Psalm 139:16

This truth calls for humility on our part. Great cockiness about our plans is presumptuous. Consider the unsinkable Titanic, the state of the art Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor, and the book 88 Reasons Why Jesus Will Return in 1988.

Presumption.

• Whoever prognosticates sets himself up to be laughed at by Providence.
• Vicki’s plaque: “We plan. God laughs.”
• 1 Timothy 6:17 speaks of “uncertain riches.”

What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”

Again, this is humbling. 

Our times are not in our own hands. Our entire lifespans are comparatively brief, like the burst of a detonated bullet. Bang… and then it’s over and vanished (though we might think of the trajectory as being everlasting … right now counts forever. We have “right now” to aim the trajectory of our eternity.)

[Pop demo – your life is but a pssst.]

Quotes About the Brevity of Life

Wang Yi, arrested pastor of Early Rain Covenant Church in China in his letter to be released 48 hours after disappearing or being arrested:

Every man’s life is extremely short, and God fervently commands the church to lead and call any man to repentance who is willing to repent. Christ is eager and willing to forgive all who turn from their sins. This is the goal of all the efforts of the church in China—to testify to the world about our Christ, to testify to the Middle Kingdom about the Kingdom of Heaven, to testify to earthly, momentary lives about heavenly, eternal life.

Sigmund Marvin in the movie What About Bob?

There’s no way out of it. You’re going to die. I’m going to die. It’s going to happen. What difference does it make if it’s tomorrow, or in 80 years. Or much sooner in your case? Do you know how fast time goes? I was six like yesterday. I’m going to die. You … are going to die.

Moses 

The years of our life … are soon gone, and we fly away. …  So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.—Psalm 90 :10, 12 

David

O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!— Psalm 39:4

Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.— Psalm 144:4

Job

My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and come to their end ...“Remember that my life is a breath.”— Job 7:6–7

Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.— Job 14:1–2

Peter (quoting Isaiah 40:8)

For “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” [Hmm, there’s a clue as to what we should invest our lives in!]— 1 Peter 1:24–25

Instead you ought to say,

(This—when read in conjunction with verse 17—is the point of this text.)

We ought to speak a certain way, “Because we ought to think a certain way, believe a certain way, calculate life a certain way, and operate on the basis of that thinking/believing/calculating.”

J.R.R. Tolkien

“It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him” (The Hobbit). A dragon lives near every one of us: “the brevity of life.” We are not wise to leave it out of our calculations.

Therefore, there are ways we ought NOT to think/speak and ways we ought to think/speak.

If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

God has two Wills.

This verse refers to his Will of Decree.

Saying “if the Lord wills” is not a mantra, or formality, but a healthy heart humility.The aim is not to make a sin out of omitting the phrase, but to tune our hearts in humble attention to God’s superintendency over every detail … for our good! 

All of our attitudes, plans, and actions are to be entirely Godward. Jesus himself famously says, “Not my will, but yours.” The Father’s will pleases him.

We don’t know if we’ll be alive in January. That’s why the Bible says today is the day of salvation. God has wisely left us in the dark about future events, even concerning the very length of our lives.

Since life is so short—how short? pssst short!—we should use our opportunity in this momentary span to lay up treasure for the life to come.

As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

Such boasting is not only foolish, but evil.

• The rooster who thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow.
• What do Texans say? ... “All hat, no cattle.”
• Sports prognosticators … predictions that fail just under 50% of the time (they’re 8 and 7 on average)”

How do you respond when your plans fail?

When my nephew, Sam, was three, he poured himself a big bowl of Cheerios, and threw a big hissy fit when his dad wouldn’t let him eat them, because we were just about to have supper. “But it wasn’t in my plan!” he cried.

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it,  for him it is sin.

James’ teaching here has become known as a matter of Sins of Omission. Sin is not merely doing wrong, but lack of doing right when you know what you should be doing.

Note well: There is no sin in Jesus. He leaves nothing undone, no righteousness unfulfilled. This is the Good News—he has left nothing undone for us.

Applications

1. Get a heart of wisdom, as Moses says. Think like God thinks.
2. Make plenty of room in your heart and mind for Providence. From the heart say, “If the Lord wills.” Hold all your plans loosely. Do not attach your emotions to your plans.

• You don’t know if you’ll be alive tomorrow.
• You don’t know if your children will live.
• You don’t know if the economy will thrive or fail.
• Ultimately, don’t put your emotional stock in stock.

3. Act now, without delay. You don’t know if you have a year ... or a next breath. If it’s important, get after it!

2018 will never return. It is gone. Think of all the year’s-end editions of magazines. If 2019 arrives, the same will happen next December. Steward the time well while you have it. Yesterday’s vanished. It’s not coming back.

We avoid future regret by acting now.

If this life is but a vapor, how should we invest it? Answer: Pursue godly character according to his word, a profit that you can enjoy in this life and take into the life to come.

Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.— 1 Timothy 4:7–8

What actions should we take in 2019? According to James, what should we do this year?

1. Count it all joy when we meet trials, and remain steadfast.
2. Ask God for wisdom.
3. Do not be deceived.
4. Be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.
5. Put away wickedness.
6. Receive with meekness the implanted word.
7. Be doers of the word (not hearers only, deceiving ourselves).
8. Visit orphans and widows in their affliction.
9. Keep ourselves unspotted from the world.
10. Show no partiality.
11. Listen (as brothers).
12. Demonstrate the meekness of wisdom.
13. Submit ourselves to God.
14. Resist the devil.
15. Draw near to God.
16. Cleanse our hands and purify our hearts.
17. Mourn and weep; humble ourselves before the Lord.
18. Do not speak evil against one another.
19. Say, “If the Lord wills, we will do this or that.”
20. Be patient until the coming of the Lord.
21. Establish our hearts.
22. Above all, let our yes be yes and our no be no.
23. Pray.
24. Sing.
25. Call for the elders to pray.
26. Confess our sins to one another.
27. Bring back a sinner from wandering.

4. Trust God for outcomes. He could “derail” your plans and expectations for this coming year. If he does, it will invariably be for something better, which is always a kindness on his part.

5. Take hope! We’re closer than ever to pleasures at his right hand forever!

What can we expect for the coming year? If the Lord wills …

• There will be risks to venture.
• And Jesus will remain the same.
• He will have been patient and merciful even longer than ever.
• His mercies will be new every morning, if there are mornings.
• He will be closer than ever to returning!

Closing Prayer

Search me, O Lord, know my heart
Try me and know my thoughts,
See if there be any grievous way in me,
And lead me in the way—not of the mere mist—but the way everlasting.
Lead me to say from my heart, “If the Lord wills.”
Help us …
Get a heart of wisdom
Leave plenty of room for your providential rule
Take action
Trust you for outcomes, and …
... take hope!
In Jesus’ name. Amen.